Chase the Dark (Steel & Stone Book 1)

by Annette Marie

  “I’m a haemon,” she said flatly.

  “You’re human where it counts.”

  Piper folded her arms and glared at nothing, but she couldn’t stop picturing Ash’s black-scaled hand, the deadly claws, that glimpse of a wing. Maybe she didn’t want to know what he actually looked like.

  Leaning back in her chair, she tried to relax, but she couldn’t stand to sit still with nothing to do but wonder if Ash was dying below them with no one but a daemon he hated for company.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, mainly to fill the silence, “about those daemons that attacked Ash. The minotaur and that Cottus guy . . .” A memory of a textbook page floated into her mind’s eye and fear trickled through her. “Uh, when Ash said ‘Cottus,’ he didn’t mean the Cottus, as in Cottus of the Hecatonchires brothers, did he?”

  “Cottus the Striker,” Lyre agreed tiredly. “One of the nastiest, most expensive mercenaries in the Underworld.”

  “And Ash fought him?”

  “Unsuccessfully, considering the end result,” Lyre muttered darkly.

  She chewed on a fingernail. Compared to Cottus, Ash’s reputation was like a summer thunderstorm to a volcanic eruption. Cottus was an ancient daemon with several millennia of accumulated nastiness.

  “Who’s this ‘big boss’ that sent Cottus after Ash?”

  Lyre stared at the table as if he was concentrating hard . . . or thinking fast.

  “You know about the main families in the Underworld. The ‘big boss’ would be the head of one of those families.”

  She frowned. The loose authority structure in both the Underworld and Overworld revolved around a handful of extremely powerful and ancient families; their names were familiar to everyone, most having been ascribed long ago to gods and goddesses of mythology. Acting in the role of regional dictators, they were always competing against one another for power and breaking into minor wars. Though the daemons had put an end to human war, they were hardly a peace-loving people.

  Laying a hand over her chest where the Sahar was hidden, she frowned at Lyre. The Sahar’s history was long and convoluted, but the tale generally went that a member of the most powerful Overworld family, the Ra family, created the Sahar 500 years ago. Unfortunately for them, the Underworld families heard about it. It was stolen shortly after its creation, rumored to be in possession of the Hades family. After that, the Sahar’s travels got murky. Only in recent years was it leaked that the Hades family had it again. When the Ras found out, they demanded the Sahar be returned to them.

  With the Sahar between them, the two families were on the verge of all out war. The Ras insisted the Stone was rightfully theirs. The Hades family denied they’d ever stolen it, and besides, after five centuries, it was finders keepers.

  After years of Consul-mediated negotiations and pressure from other families, the Hades family surrendered the Sahar to the Consuls for safekeeping. While the Sahar was secretly transported to the Head Consulate, negotiations had continued until an agreement was reached: The Hades family would allow the Sahar to be returned to the Ras on the condition it was sealed away forever. The meeting three nights ago had been to hammer out the details before the Stone was secretly transported to a neutral meeting place. There, both families would witness its permanent sealing beneath the earth, buried beneath their most powerful spells.

  Cottus’s ‘big boss’ could be the head of any of the Underworld families, up to and including the Hades family. That one of these families was directly involved was terrifying. Piper had hoped it would take them longer to get organized.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and pulled her feet onto the chair. “What does it do?” she asked softly. “Why does everyone want the Sahar so badly?”

  Lyre gave her a considering look. “Do you know how lodestones work?”

  She nodded. The magic that daemons and haemons used was fueled by their body’s energy. Without recovery time, they needed an outside source. There was a way to make hard metals and gemstones store energy. With a lodestone in hand, a daemon could draw energy from the stone to fuel his magic. The harder the material, the more energy it could hold and the longer it could hold it. Daemons were the main reason diamonds were so expensive.

  Lyre looked at his hands, slowly flexing his fingers. “The Sahar is an unlimited lodestone, the only one in existence. It can hold an infinite amount of energy. Whoever holds it has infinite power at their disposal. What daemon wouldn’t kill for that?”

  Piper swallowed hard. An unlimited lodestone? That would explain the fervor it inspired in daemons and haemons.

  “They say it’s nearly impossible to use. No one’s had it long enough to figure it out.” Lyre smiled wryly. “Apparently the Sahar is picky about who gets to access its power. All lodestones take a bit of breaking in; they attune themselves to whoever uses them the most, and then they’re as easy to use as any tool. But breaking them in is tough. It’s almost more work to drag the energy out than it is to cast the spell.”

  She nodded again, lost in thought. Lodestones were expensive but most daemons who could afford them had only a few. Haemons had a lot more trouble with lodestones. Breaking them in, as Lyre put it, could take months or even years depending on the stone. A daemon couldn’t simply pick one up and use it. They were easy to charge but difficult to use. Charging lodestones was big business for the daemons and the main reason they visited earth.

  Daemons couldn’t put their own energy into lodestones—something about magic and energy being intertwined. They could put spells on things but they couldn’t put magic in things. However, they could put human energy into the stones. So daemons came to earth and harvested the easiest form of energy to capture: emotional energy. They didn’t need a lodestone; the lodestone was like carrying a storage battery around for emergencies. Daemons could draw energy straight into their bodies if they wanted.

  But they couldn’t just walk up to a random human and start siphoning. The human had to be giving off pretty significant emotional energy first. Over thousands of years of stealing human energy, some daemons had developed specialized skills for that very purpose.

  Incubi were a good example. Through their appearance, skills, inherent charm, and magic, they could inspire lust in humans—forget-your-own-name kind of lust. Lust did in fact count as an emotion and incubi were adept at capturing that energy. It didn’t hurt the human, and face it: most women weren’t going to complain about getting the undivided attention of an impossibly hot man. Succubi, the female equivalent of incubi, were equally talented. The Overworld daemons had their own version: the cupid. They didn’t incite lust in humans; they created temporary, obsessive infatuation that tended to ruin relationships. Either way, it made for good emotional energy.

  There were other daemon emotional specialists who honed in on one particular emotion like fear or hate or jealously. Some daemons went for positive emotions. Piper’s favorites were the seraphim: a widely varied group of Overworld daemons who loved love. The daemons with the best, most effective emotion-inciting skills were the ones who did good business charging lodestones for other daemons. Although she’d never asked him, Piper was pretty sure that’s what Lyre did for a living. She was certain he was very good at it too.

  The daemons’ dependency on humans for energy was the driving force behind the creation of the Consulates. Before the war and the public revelation of daemon existence, daemons had to sneak around to collect energy. Human mobs and other daemons were a constant threat, so the Consulates evolved as safe houses; Consuls kept humans away, provided safe room and board for visiting daemons, and made trips to earth productive instead of life-threatening.

  The Consuls’ roles grew with time. Now, Consuls also held a court of sorts for daemons who wanted a fair decision for a dispute. Consuls acted as negotiators and record keepers for deals and agreements. They hosted diplomatic meetings between the Overworld and Underworld to keep the peace.

  After daemons had come out to the public, the Consu
ls had taken on another role: arbitrators between human society and daemons. The government trusted the Consulates to keep the majority of daemons in check and the daemons in turn trusted the Consulates to keep humans from turning on them.

  Piper bit down on her lower lip. That’s what she wanted, what she’d always wanted: to be a Consul, a judge, guardian, diplomat, and arbitrator all wrapped into one.

  Dealing with daemons wasn’t easy, whether they respected the power of the Consulate or not. It took quick wits, a strong personality, and the ability to back up authority with force when necessary. To match daemons who could and did respond aggressively with magic, a Consul needed magic of her own. Piper could be the smartest, strongest, toughest candidate ever, but without magic, her chances of being inducted as a Consul were nonexistent.

  She’d never had a drop of magic. She didn’t even know what having magic was supposed to feel like. Haemons, born to a human and daemon, inherited physical traits from their human parent; they always looked fully human. But they could also inherit a significant portion of the magic capabilities of their daemon parent. The ability to wield magic was built into a dominant gene carried on the X chromosome, inherited from the daemon parent.

  Piper didn’t have a daemon parent. Her father was haemon and so was her mother. Instead of being half-and-half, she was one-quarter daemon times two. Her parentage wasn’t unheard of, but around eighty percent of haemons were as sterile as mules; that didn’t make for a lot of fertile haemon couples.

  Of those couples that could have children, most refused to reproduce because of a horrifying trend: every female child born to two haemon parents died before reaching puberty.

  Male offspring didn’t suffer any kind of unusual mortality rate. They grew up normally, developing magic just like a regular haemon child. But the girls all died.

  There were a lot of theories, some dating back hundreds of years. It mostly likely had something to do with that gene on the X chromosome, especially since the daemon/haemon birthrate suffered the same mortality rate for girls. Boys only inherited one X chromosome—one magic gene. But girls inherited two X chromosomes. Two magic genes. And that, apparently, was a death sentence.

  Except for Piper. Despite having two haemon parents and, theoretically, two magic genes, she hadn’t died.

  It was a miracle. She had beaten the odds. However, unlike the male offspring, she hadn’t inherited a drop of magic. Maybe the two magic genes had cancelled each other out. Maybe she hadn’t inherited any and that’s why she was alive. Either way, most Consuls thought Piper’s father should have sent her off to a human boarding school a long time ago.

  Brooding in silence, she sat curled in her chair as the minutes dragged by. Lyre stared at nothing, his brow furrowed. Every few minutes, he glanced toward the stairs. There were no sounds from the lower level, only the occasional tickle of magic in the air.

  Two agonizing hours later, quiet footsteps announced Vejovis’ approach. The Overworld daemon tiredly rubbed one blood-splattered thumb against his goatee as he sat across the table from them.

  “He’ll live,” he said. “The scar won’t be too bad as long as he takes it easy for the next forty-eight hours.”

  “Thank you,” Lyre said. “How can we—”

  Vejovis waved a dismissive hand. “You owe me nothing. I follow my calling, nothing more.”

  “Ash recognized you in the hospital, didn’t he?” Piper asked. “The moment we got into the main building,” she added, remembering Ash’s sudden, distant distraction once they’d gone through the security gate.

  Vejovis shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s unlikely to forget me.”

  “Why does he, uh . . . ?”

  “Loathe me?” Vejovis suggested with a dry smile. “He does indeed despise me. You see, I saved his life once before.”

  “He hates you for saving him?”

  “Yes,” Vejovis replied, his gaze losing focus and his voice going slightly dreamy. “I saved the wrong life, you see.”

  “Um,” she said, sharing a confused glance with Lyre.

  “I didn’t realize, of course,” the daemon went on vaguely. “His survival was the least important of everything at stake that night. Saving his life cost him everything. He will never forgive me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lyre asked in a hushed voice.

  Vejovis refocused on them. “It is his story to tell, not mine. But I will warn you now. If the three of you survive this . . .” He sighed slowly. “He will need your forgiveness. If you can.”

  Piper’s brow wrinkled. “Huh?”

  The daemon stood. “My dear child, do not forget. Daemons are not humans. We live lives you cannot comprehend, ruled by a world you know nothing of. If you cannot forgive him when the time comes, then you are not strong enough to stand among us.”

  “Forgive him for what?” she demanded angrily. “What the hell are you going on about?”

  He tugged his bloodstained scrubs straight, ignoring her. “I have a car parked outside. You can have it. If you will accompany me,” he said to Lyre, “we can lay him out in the backseat. It will be twelve hours at least before he wakes from the healing sleep and he will be hungry . . .”

  Vejovis’s voice trailed away as he and Lyre descended the stairs. Piper sat alone at the table, staring at nothing. What was Vejovis talking about? What would she have to forgive Ash for?

  But then, he had already apologized to her, hadn’t he? For what? Something he’d done or something he’d planned to do? He’d been dying and half delirious. It probably didn’t mean anything. He’d saved her life and Lyre’s. Without him, they never would have gotten free from the prefects, let alone avoided immediate recapture. They never would have been able to break into the medical center, although she half wished they hadn’t.

  She swallowed hard and pulled the scrap of paper out of her pocket. SAFE. OFFICE. 14-25-9. Cryptic warnings and nagging suspicions aside, at least she knew where they had to go next.

  . . .

  “I don’t know, Piper,” Lyre said slowly.

  She gave him a stern stare from the passenger seat of the beat-up old four-door. They’d driven in winding circles for hours after leaving the abandoned garage where Ash had almost died. Just like the draconian had done on their first escape, they’d made their trail so convoluted no supernatural tracker would be able to find the end of the tangle. Finally, with the morning sun cresting the horizon, they’d parked in an overgrown park where they had both fallen into an exhausted sleep.

  “We can’t wait for Ash to wake up,” she explained for the third time. “We have to move quickly. It won’t be like the medical center. They won’t be expecting us to go back to the scene of the crime.”

  “Isn’t it the other way around?” Lyre asked skeptically. “I thought criminals did go back to the scene of the crime.”

  “Well, we are, but only because we need the information in that safe.”

  “But without Ash to help . . .”

  Together, they looked over their shoulders. Ash lay comatose over the backseat, his dark red hair clashing terrifically with the puke-yellow fabric and a scratchy gray blanket they’d found in the trunk draped over him. He hadn’t so much as stirred in the last ten hours. Zwi was curled in a miserable ball on his chest, watching them with unfriendly golden eyes. She’d gotten so overprotective of her unconscious owner that Piper and Lyre couldn’t so much as touch him without the dragonet hissing and baring her teeth.

  Piper took a deep breath and turned back to Lyre. “Look. The information in the safe aside, we’re starving and thirsty. We haven’t showered in days. We need clothes and supplies. The Consulate is the easiest way to get everything we need.” When Lyre opened his mouth to argue, she rushed on. “All we have to do is check the place out. If there’s any sign of people, we can come back here and wait until Ash wakes up.”

  Lyre frowned at her as he thought it over. “I don’t get why we can’t wait. You know I don’t have a lot
of magic, Piper. I’m okay in a fight but I’ve got nothing on Ash. Of the three of us, he’s the powerhouse. It doesn’t make any sense to go when he’s unconscious.”

  “We can’t wait, Lyre. Every day brings the prefects closer to finding us—not to mention all the daemons after the Sahar. And then there’s my father too. He needs our help. Even if Ash woke this minute, it’ll be another day before he’ll be in any shape to do anything physical and days more before he’ll have any magic to use! I bet he used all his stores in that fight.”

  At her last words, Lyre’s face froze in an “oh!” expression of epiphany. He lunged over the back of his seat and, ignoring Zwi’s warning hiss, grabbed Ash’s wrist. Fumbling with Ash’s wide leather wristband, he pulled it off and thumped back into his seat. He flipped the wristband over to reveal the inner lining.

  Three huge, flat, wine-colored stones sparkled in the sharp light of the sunset. They were embedded into the leather, polished but irregular in shape, and laid out so that two would rest against his inner wrist and one would sit against the top. They were big, all three the size of the end of her thumb.

  “Those aren’t rubies,” Piper said, swallowing hard.

  “Conundrum,” Lyre said absently, studying the gems. “Damn. Two are empty, and the third has only a little left.”

  “Conundrum,” Piper repeated, staring at the twinkling jewels. “But the only stone better than conundrum is diamond. Where did Ash get three huge conundrum lodestones?”

  Lyre shrugged, still absorbed in the stones. “These are excellent quality. They could hold a lot.” He looked up, meeting Piper’s gaze. “If these stones were charged, then Ash could help right away. Even if he wasn’t up to a physical fight, he would be all set in the magic department.”

  She looked at the lodestones, frowning. “But how will we charge them?” She gestured out the car window. “We’re in the worst neighborhood in the worst district of the worst part of the city slums. What people there are around here won’t be helpful. They’ll probably try to rob us, kill us, and stuff our bodies in the trunk of our own car, unless they stole that too.”