by Tarra Blaize
One hour and ten minutes later Layla strode out of the bathroom, paper towels clutched tightly around her index finger. She’d never filed so quickly, and though the cost was a wicked cut from a metal tab, it was well worth it. She had almost two hours to knock out her goal of fifty names and addresses before she had to deal with another assassination project for Gethin.
“Lana!” Todd was at her desk looking worried. Accustomed to being called Ms. Gills by all others, it took Layla a moment to respond. Todd was one of the few bright spots in her life right now. A quiet, friendly blood demon, nowhere near as powerful as Gethin, he was always there when she needed help. She’d grown closer to him than she’d anticipated and had to struggle daily to keep a friendly distance.
“Lana, I’m so sorry, but—what happened to your hand?”
His gaze was level with her face and he even made an attempt to hide his growing fangs, bless him. If it had been any demon other than Todd, she’d worry that his bloodlust would result in her being an unintentional lunch. But Todd had the kindest heart she’d ever known. Too bad he assisted a murderer and drank blood in an office where she was an undercover spy. Otherwise, he might have been the perfect guy to ask out on a date.
The blood had soaked completely through the paper towel. “Oh, drat. Nothing major, Todd. Just a paper cut of epic proportions. I’ve got some first aid at my—” Her voice trailed off and the blood rushed from her face as she registered what Todd was holding in his cupped hands.
Her glasses.
Snapped in two.
Layla cried out. Her stomach clenched in horror and her lungs struggled to take in air. Terror made her head feel light, and she lurched forward to grab her glasses, heedless of her injured finger. Sure enough, the transmitting device inside the frames had snapped cleanly in half. Todd’s mistake had sent her blackmailers the emergency signal. The air demons were about to attack, and she had barely any data ready.
Chapter Two
Todd grabbed her arms and carefully lowered her into her chair, kneeling before her. “Lana, I’m so sorry. They were on your desk and I didn’t see them and I put something on top of them.”
Lips numb, she asked, “When did this happen?”
Todd’s face filled with guilt. “About fifteen minutes after the boss sent you off filing. It’s all my fault. You’re in shock. I’ll get them replaced. I promise.”
She didn’t answer. She had to download the files onto a PDA, no matter the risk of someone detecting it. When the small receiver in the wire core of her spectacles was broken, it had signaled to her blackmailers that something had gone wrong and that she needed to be removed. She had to have something to show the demons or her brother was gone. Dead. Just like she would be very, very soon.
With a deep breath, she tried to clamp control over a world that had just imploded. “It’s not your fault, Todd. It was my fault.” The honest words felt bitter in her mouth. “I shouldn’t have forgotten them on my desk. I know it can become a nuthouse around here.” She turned away, her mind beginning to spit out warnings. She had around five minutes. Five minutes before a portal would open in thin air and the air demons would flood the room, killing all in their efforts to recover the data stored in her brain.
Her brother. Herself. Gethin. Todd. Someone was going to die today, and she’d lost her bargaining chip.
She needed those files. Now. But Todd was still in front of her, his reddish-brown eyes filled with remorse. She needed to save him, somehow. At least him. How to get him to leave?
“Todd, I’m fine. Really. They’re just glasses. But, if you don’t mind, can you take them over to the optometrist’s to get them fixed right now? I’m sorry to be such a bother, but I get headaches when I don’t wear them, and I know you’ve got a lunch break right now.”
Todd stood, visibly relieved. “Of course. Want to come with and grab lunch? The boss is still in his meeting, and we could get back here in an hour or so if we leave now.”
She forced herself to smile at him. “I’d love to, but actually, the reason I rushed through filing is because I remembered an assignment he gave me yesterday that I totally forgot about. I just want to download some stuff onto my PDA so I can have a chance to read them whenever possible. I’ve got other small errands I need to do, and reading on the way will help save my rear end.”
Todd’s eyes crinkled slightly as he gave his trademark sweet smile. “Let’s avoid getting you into trouble, shall we? If you fall behind, I’d be glad to run some errands for you. Lana—” he paused, delicately cleared his throat, “—you’re dripping blood everywhere. Do you need help?”
“Thanks, Todd, but I’ve got it.” She didn’t need a demon going crazy on her right now. She grabbed a tissue and started to mop at the cut she’d forgotten all about. Her finger stung anew with a vengeance. “The glasses are already a huge favor.”
“No problem,” he assured her and hurried off, cradling the frames as delicately as he could. She instantly turned towards her laptop, grabbed her PDA and set up the downloads required.
Four minutes, approximately.
She grabbed a piece of paper and began to jot down some of the biggest names. If her PDA failed she’d have a hard copy backup. James Elron. New York. Elron Corporation, Vice President. Demon. Marked for assassination. Blood dripped all over the paper, but she didn’t care. Tabitha Stevenson. Roy Jacobs. Agatha DeMarcus.
Two minutes later, an observation brought with it a rush of nausea so intense she made a blind grab for her wastebasket.
Gethin’s meeting had apparently ended early, and he was striding along the offices, ducking into each one to check up on his employees.
He would reach her in less than a minute, and even a blood demon without his astute observations would see red flags instantly with her heart racing, breath short and blouse dotted with blood. She wrote faster, racing the downloading files. Perhaps if she had thirty very important names the air demons would believe she had gotten as many as she could. She’d scribbled twenty-seven down so far. Twenty-nine. Thirty-three. Spinning her chair so she faced away from the rest of the floor, she folded up the piece of paper and slipped it under her bra. She turned back to end the file download—she’d gotten about a tenth of them—and was reaching for her first aid in the top drawer of her desk when her office door swung open.
“Fucking hell, what did you do?”
The unfamiliar cadence to his tone shocked her so much she dropped the first aid cream. “N-nothing,” she stammered.
Gethin looked absolutely furious as he strode around the desk, but his voice—there was a thread to it she’d never heard before. One that made her heart lodge in her throat and tears prick her eyes.
“Your heart is racing. You’re covered in blood. You’re about to hyperventilate.”
She held up her finger, morbidly fascinated by the small ribbon of scarlet twisting down her finger to race across her palm. “I think I sliced my finger on a file. I didn’t get blood in them. But the carpet here needs to be cleaned before it sets in.”
“I don’t care about the fucking file or the damn carpet.” His fingers wrapped around her upheld wrist as he knelt before her to better examine the injury. Clearly, her sex drive was kicking in overtime before she died, she thought, sardonically amused. Gethin kneeling between her legs almost made her last hours on Earth worth living.
“I’ve got a Band-Aid…” Her sex drive nearly turned inside out with dark delight when Gethin’s mouth closed around her finger. Instinctively, she tried to pull her arm back, but it was like trying to escape a steel trap. She was utterly helpless as Gethin ran his tongue across the cut, his newly elongated fangs whispering across her flesh before he lifted his head. His eyes blazed as he dragged that same tongue around his lips to remove all bloodstains. Her breath hitched in her throat.
“Do you have any idea how good you taste?” he rasped. As if unable to help himself, he lapped one last time at the cut, his rough tongue creating a painful pleasure that fa
nned across her skin.
She closed her eyes. Shuddered. No, but if it were half as good as she imagined he’d taste… “Please let go of me. I’ve stopped bleeding.” Demon saliva had healing properties, but she’d prefer a Band-Aid to playing with fire. “I—I think you’ve nearly closed the cut back up.” The slash had been at least a good inch long. Where it had been weeping blood before, it was nothing but an angry red line now.
He didn’t move from his position. He tilted her hand down, his grip heated around her wrist. Entranced, she watched as his other hand lazily traced the contours of her palm. She knew he was watching her face, but she couldn’t summon the courage to meet his eyes.
“You certainly bleed a lot, Ms. Gills,” he finally said. “Do you often injure yourself filing?”
“No,” she whispered. “I’m fine now, thank you.” How much time left? A minute? Maybe more? Maybe less? She was on borrowed time. She had no idea when exactly her glasses had been broken, but she could feel the snakes writhing deep inside, every sense, every inch of her skin hyper-alert to what was going on. Muted noises of other workers outside her office. His hot skin pressed demandingly against hers, her hand delicate in comparison to the hard, wide palms of his. The slight scent of coppery blood. She couldn’t bring herself to give a damn right now that she was breaking just about every rule in her book. If she was going to die she might as well remember something to put a smirk on her face before her time was done.
“Lana,” he whispered roughly. His hands left hers to wrap around the nape of her neck and draw her inexorably forward. He cradled her jaw as he leaned forward to meet her halfway, eyes melting into a hot, flaming crimson, face taut, and his firm lips slanting over hers with no hesitation whatsoever.
She’d barely registered the heat of his mouth when a horrifying noise rent the air, as if Heaven itself were being torn in half. Gethin’s lips tore away from hers as he shoved her so hard her wheeled chair slammed into the far wall of her office. Dazed, she realized a slash of blue light had ripped, in midair, right next to where she’d been sitting.
“Air demons!” Gethin roared, and the office exploded.
She scrambled to her feet just as Gethin grabbed her around the waist and flung himself through the glass walls of her cubicle, shattering them as other blood demon warriors rushed towards them. She writhed and twisted, desperately trying to free herself as the air demons poured through the enlarging holes torn in her office, their normally pale blue eyes darkening with their burgeoning powers. More and more portals slashed into existence, and already she saw bodies falling to the floor, throats torn open and wounds gaping.
He continued running, arms locked around her so tightly her breathing was restricted. She was forced to fall limp in his embrace as he raced full tilt through a maze of hallways, doors and stairs, many of which were only vaguely familiar to her. Having abandoned her attempts to free herself, she concentrated on memorizing the path he took, one hand on her chest to anchor the priceless list of names lest it fall out into the chaos.
Her world flipped again when Gethin halted abruptly, opened a door and flung her into a small room—one that looked strongly barricaded, she realized. She staggered and would have fallen had his hands not gripped her upper arms with bruising force. There were others in here, all looking as terrified as she felt. “My private office is the most guarded from these attacks,” he snarled. “Stay here with the other humans. Do not leave. If you leave, you will die. My demons are capable of fending them off, but you don’t stand a chance out there. Do you understand?” He shook her, hard, sharpened teeth bared in a snarl, muscles straining against his white shirt.
“You saved me,” she whispered, aware that tears were streaking down her face.
He’d been turning away, heading back to the battle that raged on behind them, but he turned at her words and grinned fiercely. The red of his eyes were swirling with dark streaks, and his powerful energy nearly crackled in the air around him. “But of course, Ms. Gills,” he drawled. “You owe me a hell of a lot more than a kiss for this, and I fully intend to collect as soon as possible. Lock the door behind me.” And he turned and vanished into the labyrinth of the office building.
Heedless of the cries and warnings of the other humans behind her, she waited a few agonizing seconds before she slipped back out. One woman whom she vaguely recognized from the front desk leaped forward to try to pull her back into the safety of the room. She tore herself from the woman’s grasp, kicked off her heels and darted the way Gethin had taken her as quietly as possible.
He’d saved her, and the least she could do was get to the air demons before they killed him. She had enough blood on her hands already, and she didn’t know if she could live with herself if Gethin was murdered too.
It was in an eerie silence that she tripped over the first body as she rounded a corner at full speed. Pain exploded in her ankle as it twisted, sending her to her knees with a force that promised bruises. Disoriented and dazed, she looked for the obstacle and gagged, the bile rising in her throat sharp and acidic.
She couldn’t even tell who or what type of demon it was—its face looked like it had been methodically tortured with a cheese grater. Blood trickled down the mass of pulpy, torn flesh to pool on the floor where her foot had slipped. She jerked away, scrambling on her hands and one knee towards the other side of the hallway. The blood followed, soaking into her skin and smearing a trail of red after her.
She fought her rebelling stomach, but failed. Hunched over, she vomited violently, head spinning so fast she would have fallen had she not been on the ground. Not my fault, not my fault, she chanted, but it did nothing to ease her pounding head. So instead, she focused in on her brother’s face, with his baby cheeks and the mischievous brown eyes they shared. How grown-up Nathanial had looked in his navy blue uniform as he went into the third grade this year, chin up and never looking behind him as he strode confidently into his new school.
He wasn’t on the floor behind her. He wasn’t dead. And she had to keep going if she wanted to keep him that way.
With both arms braced on the wall for balance, she struggled upright and limped down the hallway, not even sure where she was going, fighting the waves of pain as each move jarred her ankle. Twisted, she hoped. Not broken. Either way, she was even weaker than before. A sitting duck, really. But if I get lost now it’ll be easy to trace a path back. Just follow the blood. Just follow all the blood and it always came back to her. The silence pressed in around her, mocking her labored breath and the frantic, uneven pitter-patter of her feet against the cold, white floor.
She felt like she’d been hobbling for hours using the walls for support—though in reality it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes—before she heard shouts and screams piercing the air. She must be approaching the main office. Layla touched her chest nervously. The paper with the names was still there. She needed to see an air demon, and she needed to let herself be taken before anyone tracked her down.
And then what, once she was dead? She’d beg the demons to kill her quickly, and dump her body somewhere in this labyrinth of halls, she realized dully. Because if not, Gethin would figure out what happened and go after Nathanial. And all she’d sacrificed would be for naught.
Flattening herself against the wall, she stealthily wiggled her way forward, holding her breath as she peered around the last corner. The air exploded out of her lungs in a gasp of shock, and when she tried to draw it back in it was as if the air had thinned. She’d seen battles rage between demons and angels, but never between two groups of demons.
As opposed to the dark against light superpowers she’d always associated with the war, the room billowed with acrid smoke and violent colors. Blood demons on the far side of the room were throwing up swirling shields in their trademark crimson, using their powers to disrupt the blood flow of their enemies so that either their bodies starved without oxygen or they bled out in just a few short minutes. The air demons were closer to her, manipul
ating the oxygen in the air, slashing through the shields with dark blue light, ripping rents in the air. As she watched horrified, an air portal tore through the space a blood demon was occupying and tore his body in half.
If she hadn’t emptied her stomach before, she would have now. Before she could choose what course of action to take, she heard a now familiar screech behind her. Spinning around and going to the precious piece of paper, she watched as Vyn’s head appeared in a small portal in midair about ten feet away from her. She couldn’t get closer to him without the blood demons seeing her.
“Human!” Vyn snarled. “Where are the names?”
“I have them,” she whispered, trembling from head to toe. “Th-they’re right here. Thirty-three names. Thirty-three names and addresses.” She hesitantly drew out the piece of paper, shaking her head when he reached out impatiently, beckoning for her to come closer. “Swear. Swear you’ll forever and ever leave my brother alone, and never harm him or anyone near him either directly or indirectly. Promise me.”
Vyn smiled, a sickly, smarmy smile. “But of course, Layla. And we shall spare you too.”
She swallowed hard. “No, you won’t.”
The smile grew. “You’re right. We won’t. Come. Now.”
“You have to kill me quickly.” Tears rose, blurring the battle that rained sparks and poured blood behind Vyn. “You have to leave my body here so that Gethin doesn’t realize it was me and go after Nathanial. You have to. Or you’d be indirectly responsible for anything Gethin does to him.”
Vyn laughed. “I don’t have to do anything, human.”
“Swear!” Her voice rose hysterically as she dangled the paper just out of reach. “Swear on your liege lord!”
Vyn’s breath hissed out as his face contorted into a snarl, his pale blue eyes narrowing with shock. Very few people knew that the only thing that could bind a demon was his oath to his liege lord. Not every demon had one, but if he did, outright falsehoods were impossible.
