Left them close to torment him.
The car bounced, and I couldn’t hold my rising sickness down. I retched, feeling a hundred different sorts of miserable.
My fate would be the same as Fidel’s unless I escaped.
I rolled my forehead against the metal floor. I wasn’t going to beat this bastard at his own game.
This was amounting to be a gods-awful day.
Can’t die.
That thought alone was enough to drive me to action.
I bit down on my lower lip until the skin split and I tasted the sweet tang of my blood. I felt the brush of heat and the lick of flame as I culled it. Whatever misfortune I’d have to pay as tithe, it couldn’t be much worse than what I already faced.
I breathed in the magic that laced my blood, feeling it slide into my veins; there was precious little of it.
Focusing on the chains that dug into my wrists. I rubbed my arms against them, putting a little of my magic into it. Under my ministrations, the metal began to bend and weaken. Slowly it gave in to the magic until, eventually, one of the links broke apart. Bringing my hands around, I stretched the pliant metal of the cuffs until I was able to squeeze my hands through each. The shackles clattered to the ground.
I pushed myself up, and more chains clinked against my ankles.
For the love of—
I had only vapors of my magic left. I reached for my ankle cuffs, and I began to rub my thumb and index finger against one of the metal links, massaging the last bit of my magic into it. Under my fingers, the metal thinned then finally snapped, allowing me to separate my legs.
Biting my lip again, I culled more blood, using it to free my ankles from the last of the chains. The bruises they left would just have to heal without the aid of magic.
I picked up one of the discarded chains, playing with it as I glanced around. I was free from the bindings, but not free from the metal box I was imprisoned in.
No windows. Two doors. I tried the handle for both. Neither gave.
No windows and two locked doors, I amended.
I twisted around, looking at the wall my back rested against. A small, closed slot was embedded into it. I pried at the edges until I managed to slide it back.
I caught a glimpse of the interior of Asher’s car, the section not meant for prisoners. Impeccably clean, save for the weaponry. None of it, unfortunately, was within arm’s reach.
Cruel, wily human.
I still clutched the chains, and as my anger got the better of me, I silently gathered them into my fist then threaded my arm through the slot.
Asher heard the clank of metal.
“What the—?”
Too late.
I threw my chains at him. The metal links whipped against his face, not enough to hurt him, unfortunately. But the bastard was surprised.
The car swerved, and I heard someone honk their horn.
“Clever girl . . . you’re going to regret doing that,” Asher said.
“I regret nothing.”
The vehicle slowed, pulling off the road.
He killed the engine, and the silence that followed felt ominous.
Asher sat there for a second. Then casually he reached across to the seat next to him and grabbed his gun.
Fear threaded its way through me.
“I’m awfully curious about your healing ability, demon. The scope of it, the limitations,” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt.
This was where it would begin.
Asher got out of the car only to slide into the back row of seats. He was so close I could almost grab him.
He studied me through the slot, and behind the stoic calculation in his eyes I swear I caught a flicker of anger. Endless, bottomless anger. He shored it up inside him like I did magic.
“We could test the limitations now, or you could settle the fuck down and let me drive.”
“Damn you to a thousand deaths, Asher.” I don’t know if I ever met a more depraved being in all the worlds.
He looked bored. “Will you behave?”
I sank away from the opening.
“I’m taking that as a yes, demon, only because I’m not interested in cleaning blood off my car twice in one day.”
I worked my jaw. “My name is Lana.”
Asher leaned forward. “Because you creatures are so dense, I will tell you again: I don’t give a shi—”
I lunged forward, my hand darting through the opening to swipe him.
He jerked back just in time, his face a mere breath away.
When he recovered, the corner of his mouth curved up. “Careful now, demon . . . that temper’s going to get you into trouble.”
Chapter 5
Asher
As I turned into the Tudor-style estate house an hour west of DC, I surveyed the steep gabled roof and half-timbered walls for signs of a break-in. But if demons had beat me here, they were exercising uncharacteristic restraint. Place looked untouched.
My safe house.
Nicole had inherited it from her parents when they died in a car crash, and over the years I’d fortified it into a fortress.
I pushed the remote clipped to the sunvisor and took the Hummer down the cobblestone driveway into a bunker-like garage, where a blast door sealed shut behind me. From outside, it looked like a normal garage door.
Nothing here was normal.
The entire subterranean level had been built to withstand a siege—reinforced concrete walls, diesel generator and battery backup, water and rations to last six months. The contractors had been led to believe they were building a bomb shelter.
I called it my safe house, but really, this was my only house—not counting my one-bedroom apartment in LA.
I parked and sat for a moment, breathing heavily.
What a clusterfuck I’d gotten myself into.
I reached back and opened the slot to the cage.
“Demon, talk to me.” I watched the rectangular opening, hand on my gun in case she tried anything again. “How you doing back there?”
“Die in hell,” she grumbled. By the sounds of it, she’d gotten sick.
“You have two choices,” I said. “I can leave you in the truck, and in the morning I’ll see how well you fared . . . or you can behave yourself, and I’ll take you inside, and I’ll feed you, and I’ll give you a bed. Your choice.”
She glared at me through the slit. For some reason, of all things, I fixated on her long eyelashes.
“Why do you ask a question when the answer is obvious?” she said.
“It only seems obvious,” I climbed out, jingling my keys, “because I gave you two options. Trust me, if I hadn’t spelled it out for you, you would have tried to stab me in the eye.”
Don’t give her any ideas.
But still.
Even though she was a simple healer, even though her blood magic had run dry, even though she was half my weight and I could easily overpower her, even though she was unarmed and very aware of the consequences of misbehaving, she was still a demon.
And demons were hot-blooded, reckless creatures who loved to die for their pride.
Opening the rear doors, I stood back and aimed my Taser at her torso, waving her out of the back of the truck. “You so much as look at me wrong,” I threatened. “You’re going right back in there, understood?”
Earlier, I’d taken off her hoodie to search for weapons. I would have strip-searched her, except her skin-tight leather jumpsuit had no seams to speak of. It was molded to her long legs and slender torso like a second skin.
Which, it might actually be, considering the fucked-up way demons accessorized.
She glowered at me, her gaze not even a hint less nasty. “What is the wrong way to look at you?”
Her words dripped poison. “Are you presuming to tell me what expression I should wear in your presence?”
“How about a smile, kid?”
She plastered on a fake grin, baring two razor-sharp canines. More like a snarl.
“Good girl.” I let the matter drop.
Chewing my lip bitterly, I gave her another once-over—now starting to really not like how pretty she was—then wrenched my gaze off her formfitting jumpsuit and beckoned she follow me toward a second blast door, which led to my dungeon.
Infernarus, my ass.
I’d captured myself a freaking succubus.
From the garage, a narrow, dingy hallway led past my armory into my underground pad. It looked like your typical man cave—black leather couches, big screen TV, fully stocked bar—except for one detail.
Sunk back in the shadows, steel bars cordoned off a holding cell. Inside it rested a thin mattress on a rickety cot and a stainless steel latrine.
Not my proudest moment, building that thing.
Grabbing the demon’s arm, I shoved her inside and bolted the locks. On the other side, she threaded her fingers through the bars and watched me silently. I could sense a deep, soulful despair sinking in behind her blue-violet eyes.
I paused.
It didn’t seem right. I’d built this cell for hardened killers, demons that would crawl out of the dirt in the night and bleed you dry.
Instead, I felt like I was caging an exotic bird of paradise, a creature that shouldn’t be caged.
She was a healer. The equivalent of a medic.
She had a name.
Lana.
I pushed the thought from my mind. She was still a demon, still unnatural, still evil incarnate.
They all needed to die.
They preyed on human misfortune. Those blood bags I’d found earlier—whomever that blood belonged to would soon find their life fraught with catastrophe. A car accident, a heart attack, a debilitating work injury. What was borrowed had to be repaid . . . always by humans.
So long as even one demon haunted our world, none of us would be safe.
The demon wrinkled her nose. “I can smell your car’s fumes.”
“And I can smell your evil.” I backed away from the cage, perturbed by my lapse of conviction, and opened the nearby fridge to peer inside. “So what do you eat? Raw horse meat? Blood? Carrion? Little children?”
She inhaled sharply. “You keep little children in that box?”
“Yeah, I cut them up and put them in my stew.” Seeing her aghast expression, I added, “It’s a joke, demon. Sarcasm.”
“Every lie you tell carves out a piece of your soul,” she said.
“What I got is frozen dinners.” Ignoring her, I picked one out—meatloaf and potatoes and corn—and popped it in the microwave. “You don’t like it, you starve.”
“That would be the happiest thing that could happen to me in here.” Running her finger between perpendicular bars, she inspected her cage.
“Those bars are an inch thick and welded together with tungsten,” I said. “Go ahead and bleed yourself dry trying to escape . . . it’s going to take a lot more magic than you got to get through those.”
She flashed me a glare.
“So how’d you heal that other demon?” I folded my arms and leaned on the couch. “You still haven’t told me.”
“Ah, so that’s why you haven’t killed me.”
I held her gaze. “Let me explain how this works, demon. I’m going to kill you unless you tell me. Then, if you tell me where the next portal is, I’ll let you go.”
“Liar,” she hissed. “That’s exactly what you told Fidel.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t like the way he looked at me.”
Her eyes narrowed.
The microwave dinged, and I kicked the steaming tray toward her cage. “Eat.”
She poked at it, frowning. “This isn’t food.”
“Well, it’s not a dick.”
She peeled up the plastic and sniffed the grayish slab of cardboardy meatloaf. I couldn’t read her expression, but I doubted it appealed to her.
Why the fuck do you care what she thinks of your food, Asher? She’s your prisoner.
She looked at me. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
Her long, dark hair fell to her hips in loose waves. Like everything demon, it seemed to flow around her like smoke. These animals were more spirit than flesh.
“Lana,” I said, testing her name on my tongue for the first time. It had a nice lilt to it.
She chewed the inside of her lip, and I got the feeling she seriously regretted giving me her name. It gave me power over her.
“Jame,” she said, staring right back at me.
There.
There it was, for a split-second.
That glint in her eyes.
I’d seen it before, too. When I could have sworn she was playing my mind games right back at me.
Learning from me.
Demons didn’t communicate on that level. They shouldn’t, at least. They talked straight. Deception and calculated psychological manipulation was a human thing; it boiled their blood.
Then again, she was no ordinary demon.
Clearly, much, much more went on behind that young, pretty face than I’d given her credit for. The spark of scary intelligence in her eyes worried me most. This demon would try to get under my skin.
She already had.
I had to remind her who had power here, or else I’d have a petulant and spiteful demon on my hands.
“Eat,” I ordered, “or I will shove that meatloaf down your throat.”
“Ugh, just fucking kill me.” She flung the tray aside, splattering the wall with gravy, and began to pace like a caged panther, her mane of hair sailing out behind her.
“Fine. That’s the last food you get. Ever.” I continued to watch her, my fascination getting the better of my anger.
Who was this demon and how come I’d never heard of her?
I was still watching her when Brad rang the buzzer to be let downstairs, yanking me out of my trance.
After I unlocked the blast door, his heavy footsteps clomped down the stairs into the basement.
He halted in the doorway, his face two years wearier than I’d last seen it.
We regarded each other, unsmiling.
“You look like shit,” he said. “As usual.”
“Ditto. How much weight you gain since I last saw you?” I asked. “You getting fat on me?”
“It’s all muscle.”
“Bullshit.”
We stared each other down for another moment, then broke into a grin at the same time and collided in a great backslapping bear hug. Like no time at all had passed.
Like nothing had ever come between us.
“Alright, let’s take a look,” he said, steering clear of the subject altogether. “You said you’d captured one?”
“You fucking blind? Right there.” I jabbed a finger at the cage. “Juvenile female, healer, early to mid-twenties, my guess . . . she gives me the willies, bro. Been freaking me out all morning.”
Her captivated eyes, I noticed, flicked back and forth between us . . . missing nothing.
Lana
I paced behind the bars.
Trapped.
Trapped in this world, this house, this room. Inside all this welded metal, as Asher had been so eager to inform me.
Once I got my hands on some blood, he wouldn’t be so impressed with his welded metal then.
The other human—the one he called Brad—startled at the sight of me. “Asher, you have a fucking cell down here? How many of them have you brought here?”
“A lot less than the number I’
ve killed.”
“To your house?” Brad said. “Bro, you sleep here.”
“That’s never stopped them from coming in before,” he said darkly. “Now, at least, they have proper accommodations.”
Brad took a tentative step forward. He was nothing like Asher, save for the mercenary build. He was light to Asher’s darkness, his hair the color of dry grass, his eyes the clear, cerulean blue of sky, skin the color of dry sand.
This one made me nervous. For one thing, he looked at me the way Infernari did when they wanted to court you. For another, he seemed to be Asher’s opposite, and I wanted to like him simply because of it. But humans were all the same when it came to us.
Brad walked over to me, and the way he stared . . . I felt like I was on exhibit. The man was transfixed. I stared back. He could be on exhibit too.
He dipped his head, not quite managing to look away. “You’ve probably noticed, Jame here, he’s kind of a dick—”
“She’s lucky I haven’t done worse,” Asher growled.
Fidel’s severed hands, his decapitated head, all that blood that pumped out of his neck . . . I could see it like it was happening all over again.
Asher glared at me, as if the fact that I was still breathing personally upset him. Knowing what a psycho he was, it probably did.
Brad turned back to him. “This is wrong, imprisoning her down here.”
“She should be used to it. The fucker’s love those shithole caves.”
A growl began low in my throat.
Asher’s friend stepped in front of my line of sight. “Ignore him.”
I forced my attention to drift to Brad. “You humans think we don’t understand your ways, but in our world, we also question prisoners this way—one man good, the other bad. So save your lies for someone who can’t see through them.”
He placed his hand over his heart. “I’m on your side, sweetheart. Swear to God.” Leaning closer, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder and whispered, “I don’t even like this asshole.”
“Then why aren’t you trying to get me out of this cage?”
Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1) Page 5
