“Will you let me explain?” she demanded.
At least the entryway was fairly contained. It cornered off after thirteen paces on each side. The demon was superstitious that way.
“You will be banished. Shamed.” Fawzi stared at her gloved hand and went white from the tips of his ears to his smoky tail. “You will be killed.”
Damien stared at the ifrit. “He can see through objects?”
Shiloh glanced at Damien. “Unfortunately.”
“This could be good,” he mused.
“Hush. I’m counting,” she said, ticking off the skulls to make sure she got the right one. They were all the skulls of betrayers, but Judas was on the left, thirteenth from the top.
“Here we go. Judas Iscariot.”
Damien about choked. “You mean Napthulo was the one who tempted—”
She knew where he was going. “No. He just won his skull in a card game.”
Damien stood motionless, back to his old self. “I can see why a demon was needed to enter.”
The comment hurt more than Shiloh cared to admit. “Yes. No pass code. Just evil-ness.” The door locks clicked open.
She glanced up at Damien. “By now, the cameras will have a lock on us. Stay close and Napthulo will take longer to detect you.” They had five minutes. Tops.
She opened the door to reveal Napthulo’s ornate audience chamber. In here, he’d abandoned the Art Deco look in favor of the opulence of the kingdoms of old.
Rufus nosed his way past them.
The walls were done in gold gilt, engraved with scenes from the many battles Napthulo had fought and won. Rich handwoven carpeting stretched across the room and curved up the stairs to an ornate throne made of gold, alabaster and—
“The bones of his enemies,” Damien said under his breath.
“You catch on fast,” Shiloh said, as the door closed with a boom behind them.
The cloying scent of incense mixed with sulfur hung low in the air. For the first time, she could feel the evil crawling over her skin.
Fawzi hovered beside her, his eyes wide with alarm. “We are not allowed in here.”
“I’m a succubus,” Shiloh said quickly, before she could agree with him.
Fawzi shook his head, his gold earrings slapping against his neck. “Yes, but you are a lesser—”
“Hey,” Shiloh protested.
“You know what I mean. You are not a favorite and I am not a favorite . . .”
Yes, well they didn’t have time to debate. “Can you sense it?” she asked Damien.
He’d drawn a switch star. Lovely. “It’s around here somewhere,” he said, moving like a predator.
She turned to Fawzi. “Where’s Napthulo’s portal?”
The ifrit gave her a bug-eyed look.
“We need to stay away,” she lied.
“Yes.” Fawzi scanned the room, his large copper-cuffed arms crossed over his chest. “Stay away from the mirrors on the ceiling of the bedroom. Do not even look at them.”
Damien nodded.
“The bedroom is through that gold door,” she told him. “The one with the Mongol invasion of Poland.”
Fawzi grew as large as a bulldozer, his head touching the ceiling of the audience chamber. “Stop,” he commanded, his voice echoing.
Damien took cover behind the door and drew a switch star.
Fire shot out of the ifrit’s fingertips. “I will smite you.”
Shiloh wanted to smack her bodyguard. They didn’t have time for this. “Do it and I go in there, Fawzi.” She meant it. They were in too far to back out now.
She thought the ifrit was going to faint as Damien gave her a wicked grin and ducked into the bedroom.
This was madness. Fawzi wasn’t going to cooperate. She was only making him suffer. Maybe if she could explain, but there was no time.
And so now, she’d end his suffering.
“Fawzi,” she said, making her way to the ornate bar at the far end of the audience chamber.
“You are headed in the wrong direction.” He hit his head on a chandelier and shrank back to normal size as he trailed after her. “We must leave.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “We must.” She brushed past the top label alcohol, past the jars of eyeballs, innards and other intimate parts of Napthulo’s enemies, and grabbed a gold ice bucket.
She caught the ifrit’s tail. “I command thee enter.”
Shiloh grimaced at the shock and anger on her friend’s face as he was sucked down into the ice bucket. “I’m sorry,” she said, placing the lid on top. “This is for your own good.”
Fawzi didn’t deserve to get mixed up in this drama. This way, if they were caught and Napthulo took his vengeance, her bodyguard would be blameless. And this way, she could get him out. Fawzi had never been real big on change. The ifrit hadn’t even left the casino since it had been built. He needed a modern makeover too.
She carried the bucket under one arm and went to go find Damien. He was meditating.
“Hurry,” she urged. “Napthulo will be able to sense you since you left my side. I’m not saying he’s paying a lot of attention.” Demons were notoriously cocky and Napthulo would have no reason to suspect a succubus would betray him. Still, the quicker they finished with this, the better.
“Got it.” Damien climbed onto the bed. “You have to aim before shooting, or . . .” He trailed off.
Shiloh knew. Or he’d miss. She didn’t even want to think of what would happen then.
Shiloh set down the ice bucket and followed Damien onto the bed, tamping down lustful thoughts as she admired his firm backside.
“Go. It will take me about five minutes to raise the power level.” He gave her a steady look. “Run fast. I don’t want you caught up in this.” He raised his arms and she felt his power vibrate through the room.
She nodded, backing away, realizing she’d never asked him how he planned to get out.
“Run,” he ordered. She saw the light then, pure and white as it radiated from his hands.
She fought for breath. Rufus stood next to her, barking.
Damien’s arms began to shake. Something was wrong.
“Shiloh.” It was both a demand and a good-bye. She saw it in his eyes. Something was terribly wrong.
A dull lump formed in her chest. This was it. The final stand. Even if he survived, she knew she’d never see him again. Tears threatened. Run. Don’t look back.
She grabbed Fawzi from the floor and took Rufus by the collar. “Come on. Let’s go.”
She’d been ready to take down her boss, and it was nothing to her, but leaving Damien felt like a betrayal.
In a few minutes, it would all be over.
She stopped just short of the throne as she heard the front door locks slide open. Then she felt the overwhelming presence of the demon.
Damien.
The demon slayer’s power swirled around her. He hadn’t had enough time. The demon would find him and kill him. She fought her way back into the bedroom.
Wind whipped through the room. “What are you still doing here?” he demanded.
She slammed the door behind her. “Damien, he’s back!”
He didn’t question her. He didn’t argue. Shiloh watched as he wound his power back into himself. Damien dropped to his hands and knees on the bed, his chest heaving.
Shiloh scrambled toward him. “We have to get you out of here.”
Hope mixed with the cold reality of defeat. “Is there another way?” he asked, clutching his chest.
“No,” she said, her heart sinking as she shielded him. It was a temporary measure at best. Napthulo had entered the audience chamber. He’d sense Damien at any minute, if he hadn’t already.
“Shiloh,” the demon uttered. “Show yourself.”
She swallowed hard. “I’m waiting for you in the bedroom,” she said, trying her desperate best to sound breezy and seductive.
Damien gave her a pained look.
What did he expect? She was a succu
bus. She only hoped the demon would buy it.
The demon snorted. “I don’t lie with your kind.”
And she was grateful for that. Despite her heritage, demons had always creeped her out. There was something about having a direct line to hell that Shiloh wanted no part of.
The demon approached. She could hear his footsteps and smell the overwhelming stench of sulfur.
Rufus growled and began barking.
The footsteps halted. “What is it, beast?”
The hellhound’s barking grew more insistent, moving away from Shiloh. Oh Rufus! Her hope swelled as the front door opened and Rufus took off down the hallway barking.
Damien stood half bent over at her side. He encased her hand in his. “Did the demon follow?” he asked.
Worry tugged at her. “I don’t know.” But it was the only chance they had. “Come on.”
Shiloh led him out through the audience chamber, and after a quick glance, down the hallway to the right. They turned the corner and she pushed open the door to the back staircase.
“Damn.” He flinched behind her.
“Sorry.” It was warded, but they didn’t have a choice. She gripped his hand tightly, offering what protection she could as they ran.
She’d never raced down so many stairs in her life. She barely felt them as they took each circular level. Sixty-nine, sixty-eight, sixty-seven, lower and lower until they reached a back service exit.
“One last ward,” she warned, clutching Damien’s hand tightly and feeling the sizzle on her skin as they burst out into the moonlight pooling behind the hotel.
They’d been inside longer than she realized. She was momentarily disoriented, confused.
She fought for breath, her pulse pounding in her head. She tasted blood at the back of her throat.
“This way,” he said as he grabbed her hand and dragged her along the outside of the massive hotel parking garage. He threw open the door to a black Jaguar parked in the alley. She slid into the passenger seat and with a hard jerk and a squeal of tires, they sped off into the night.
She choked back a sob as the lights of Vegas whizzed past her window. They’d failed. Worse yet, she’d lost Rufus. And she’d left poor Fawzi locked in an ice bucket in the main audience chamber.
She’d never get him out now. Napthulo was surely onto her. Her friends were in worse danger than before. And a part of her heart had broken. It was all her fault.
Chapter Seven
Shiloh shoved her head back against the plush leather seat and stared at the ceiling of the black Jaguar. “We failed. I trusted you and we failed.”
Jaw clenched, Damien focused on the road ahead. “We can go back in.”
“Are you kidding?” Once was a risk. Twice was suicide. “We broke in his door. We left Fawzi in an ice bucket.” Her voice cracked. “You created a firestorm in his bedroom.”
Damien glanced at her. “You broke in his door.”
“Hades have mercy.” She buried her head in her hands.
Damien returned his focus to the road ahead. “He’s not going to suspect a problem with a succubus in his bedroom.”
She straightened at that. “Yes, well he’s going to have an issue with all kinds of demon slayer powers flying around. What were you doing in there anyway?”
His power had surrounded him in a riot of blue. It was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen. Probably the most deadly too.
“I was reversing the portal. It’s not pretty.” His fingers gripped the steering wheel, then loosened. “I basically had to pit my power against the demon’s. I was using my strength to neutralize his and create a vacuum.”
She’d heard of that kind of power, but had never seen it. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
He gave her a look like she had to be kidding.
Undeterred, Shiloh shifted in her seat. “What I mean is that you were trying to neutralize Napthulo’s strength by using your own.” They drove in silence for a moment while she thought and he acted like a big brick wall. “You’re not stronger than Napthulo,” she finally said. He couldn’t be.
“No.” He wasn’t going to make this easy.
The truth of it seeped over her. “You were going to kill yourself.”
This brave, smart, powerful man was going to end his existence to destroy a creature like Napthulo. What a waste. Napthulo would live. In hell, of course. But it wouldn’t be the end of the demon, only the slayer.
Damien kept his eyes on the road. “What do you care?”
Shiloh wanted to say she didn’t, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to be that cruel.
She settled on a half-truth instead. “Well, if you don’t get them all, it would be nice to have someone to hide behind as Napthulo blasts my butt.”
He leveled a stern gaze at her. “I told you to run.”
She’d wanted to. She still wanted to. Shiloh would love nothing more than to run and keep going.
“How close were you?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I was ready to reverse the portal, but something was blocking me.”
“What?” she demanded.
He looked worried. “I don’t know.”
Lovely. He might not even be able to pull this off. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking. Napthulo was too powerful to be bested by a demon slayer.
Shiloh was screwed either way. If Damien created the portal, he’d most likely kill himself and leave her alone to pick up the pieces. If he failed and survived, Napthulo would take them both out.
She gazed out the car window. They’d reached the end of The Strip. The desert lay beyond. Worry niggled at her. “Where are you taking me?” She’d assumed they’d hole up in his hotel room.
His lips curved. “Trust me.”
Hades help her, she did. Damien had proven that he’d do what he could to keep her safe. But she wasn’t so sure she trusted him to keep himself out of trouble. More and more, she was seeing that this drive to take down Napthulo could turn into a suicide mission for the slayer. She didn’t understand it.
Shiloh stared out at the shadows of scrub brush and cacti in the blackened desert. “Do you want to die?” She shouldn’t care, but she did.
A tense silence stretched between them. “Of course not.”
It was harder to gauge his reaction now that they’d left behind the lights of the city. The inside of the car was awash in darkness. “Then why?” she asked.
“Sacrifice yourself,” he said simply. “It’s one of the three truths of the demon slayers.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “It’s a wonder you’re still alive.”
He shot her a look. “You must sacrifice yourself, step outside who you think you should be, or you’ll never truly live.” He paused for a moment, with an intent look about him, as if he’d made some kind of discovery himself. “Demon slayers can’t hold back,” he said, almost to himself.
Shiloh shifted in her seat. “Well, it’s a dumb rule.”
He made a hard left down a bumpy dirt road. “Why? What rules do you live by, Shiloh?”
Apprehension snaked through her. “I do what pleases me.”
“No, you don’t,” he said. “Does it please you to be a virtual slave to a demon? Does it please you to be used every night?”
What did he care? “Stop it.”
He took another hairpin turn down a winding path through a canopy of prickly bushes that reached out, clawing at the car. Branches scraped the windows. Shiloh felt trapped. Damien refused to let her hide. “Does it please you to have no life of your own? No other way of living?”
The car ground to a halt. He turned to her then, intent in the darkness. “You’re better than that, Shiloh.”
She didn’t know where she was. What to think. She felt completely removed from her world and everyone in it. “Am I? What makes you think you know anything about me?”
He reached out to her. “I know enough.”
She drew back. “Where are we?�
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He clicked open his door, allowing her distance. “This is a safe house,” he said, getting out. “I don’t trust the hotel. Not after what we tried to pull.”
She tried to see it through the window, but could only make out spindly bushes and blackness. “What is this, like a secret demon slayer base or something?”
He opened her door for her. “Yes,” he said, looking down at her.
“And you’re bringing me?”
“You’re not like them, Shiloh.”
As she emerged from the car, she could see a small stone house that seemed to be built into the desert itself. It was covered in desert scrub and, she imagined, invisible until you were right up on it.
She watched Damien work a silver padlock on the door, then say a few incantations before turning the weathered door handle.
He was bringing her into his inner sanctum.
If she wanted, she could tell Napthulo. She could deliver him a demon slayer, and his hideout. Who knew what kinds of weapons Damien had stored in here? The intelligence information alone could be priceless.
Her stomach quivered. But where would betrayal get her? A lifetime of service to the demon. She already had that. She’d always wanted something more. Yet wanting and doing were two vastly different things. Taking that step frightened her more than she’d ever imagined.
“Shiloh?” He stood in the rectangular entry way. “It’s okay.”
She shivered in the darkness. It wasn’t okay. None of this was okay.
She crossed her arms to stay warm. “Are you sure going inside won’t blast me to hell or something?”
“I’m sure,” he said, wrapping a comforting arm around her. A smile played across his features. “Come on,” he said, picking her up and carrying her across the threshold like a newlywed.
She laughed, bracing herself for a zap like the one she got every time she went to work at the casino. Instead, all she could feel was his warmth against her. It was strange.
“What do we do now?” she asked as he set her down gently. She was like a fish out of water, a half-demon in a demon slayer’s lair.
He switched on a single overhead bulb to reveal a small square room with a table and chairs near the door and a futon in the back. There was a dirt floor and stacked white stones forming the walls. It smelled like a cave. “We wait for our chance to go back in. We save your friends.”
So I Married A Demon Slayer Page 14
