Before Cera could respond, the lift pinged, and the brass doors rolled open. Zee stepped out, standing over Ursula. “What are you doing in New York? You were supposed to be in the Shadow Realm. It’s not safe for you here.”
“Safe?” said Ursula. “Bael and I were instructed to slaughter each other in an arena while thousands of bloodthirsty shadow demons looked on. A demigod and several immortal demons want to slaughter us. I wouldn’t call that the safe option. And perhaps you’ve noticed that Bael is bleeding to death right now. How can we get him a doctor?”
Zee glanced down at the naked body of the shadow demon. One of her eyebrows twitched slightly. “But he’s one of Nyxobas’s brethren—”
“He is the lord of Abelda manor,” Cera interjected.
“And he saved my life in the Shadow Realm,” said Ursula. She wasn’t going to go into the whole betrothed thing. Not now.
Zee shook her head. “Like I said, you aren’t safe here. After the dragons attacked, everything went to shit.”
“Dragons?” said Ursula and Cera simultaneously.
“A whole clan of them showed up just after you left. Why don’t you know this?”
“I’ve been on the moon.”
Zee nodded. “Right. Well, they’ve razed most of lower Manhattan. Every night they destroy more of the city.”
“Bloody hell,” said Ursula. “When we were first flying to the Shadow Realm we were attacked by one, but I didn’t think they wanted to slaughter the whole city.”
“They don’t. That part is incidental.” Zee looked stricken. “They’re hunting for you.”
Ursula felt like she’d been kicked in the gut. “What are you taking about? How do they know who I am? I don’t even know who I am.”
“I have no idea, but they definitely want you. Come with me.”
Ursula looked down at Bael, the gauze already stained red. “Cera, keep applying pressure to his wound.”
Cera nodded.
“Come on, Ursula!” Zee shouted, beckoning her down the hall. “It’s nearly noon. The news is coming on, and you need to see this.”
“So a doctor is out of the question?” said Ursula as she followed Zee into the living room, practically running to keep up.
When she stepped into the living room, Zee was already pointing a remote at the TV. “Just watch.”
The TV screen flickered to life, and a grave-faced news anchor, his black hair perfectly coiffed, spoke in hushed tones. “We can see movement by the door of the pedestal.” The screen changed to a view of a granite doorway. A gorgeous blonde woman stepped out. Her makeup was immaculate, and she wore a glimmering golden dress that hugged her figure. She stopped at a low table, and appeared to be speaking, but there was no sound.
“What the hell?” asked Ursula.
Zee held up a hand, and the video changed to what appeared to be a raw internet feed. The woman looked the camera while reading slowly from a piece of paper, her hands shaking uncontrollably.
“Citizens of New York,” she stammered. “It has been one hundred twenty-four days and still you have not delivered the woman to us. We will continue to be a scourge upon your island until you return her.”
Her eyes terrified, the blonde held up a slightly faded piece of news print. The title of the article read, “Mystery Girl Dead.”
Ursula’s mouth went dry. An old school picture of her stared out from the page—a photo from when she was fifteen, with frizzy hair and a fuller face. Thank the gods they didn’t have a more recent photo, or the guards would have recognized her. What. The. Fuck.
The blonde looked down at the note again. “Deliver the girl and we will release the hostages.” Trembling, the woman stared into the camera, and then the feed cut. Zee lowered the volume, but images of destruction still flickered over the screen.
Ursula’s stomach flipped. “I don’t understand. Why would they want me?”
“Every day at noon,” said Zee, “the dragons repeat their demands. I don’t know why. I don’t know what they want with a hellhound who has no magic.”
Ursula shook her head, her legacy as the ‘Mystery Girl’ rearing its ugly head again. “That woman was a hostage, I take it?”
“That was Gabby Rousseau. She’s a model,” said Zee. “Or she was, before she was abducted by the dragons.”
Nausea climbed up Ursula’s throat. “Why the hell would dragons want me?”
Zee shrugged. “Honestly, no one knows, but as soon as the dragons took the first hostages, they began demanding that we find you. Every day, they send out a hostage to ask for you.” Zee held up a finger. The anchor was speaking with a white-haired man in a dark suit, and Zee turned up the volume again.
“Senator Ranulf,” asked the anchor, “has your team had any luck finding the girl?”
The senator frowned. “We are asking the public to be our eyes and ears on the ground. If you see or hear something, call the police. We believe this woman is dangerous. Very, very dangerous to humankind.”
“And the reward—”
The senator brightened. “We have raised it to ten million dollars for information on her whereabouts.”
Zee turned to her. “That’s why I had to run downstairs. If the guards had recognized you, the entire city would drag you from the building. Or at least, what’s left of the city. I had to glamour the guards in case they were doing their jobs.”
Cera appeared at the door, her hands stained with blood. “Ursula,” she said her voice cracking. “It’s Bael. I think he’s dying.”
Chapter 3
Ursula’s heart climbed into her throat, and she rushed back into the hall. Cera had somehow shifted him, and he now lay on the wood floor, a bloodstained towel over his lower half. Brutal, thorny tattoos snaked over the deep golden skin of his muscled torso. Ursula suspected each one of those dark slashes told a story, and she couldn’t let him die before she knew what they were.
She knelt by his side, touching his neck, and his chest spasmed as he gasped for air. His pulse drummed lightly against the tips of her fingers, his skin velvety smooth.
“Why don’t you heal him with magic?” asked Zee.
“I can’t. They stripped me of magic when I went into the Shadow Realm. Right now, I’m just an ordinary human. And, even if I had it, healing him would prevent him from ever reattaching his wings. He’d be devastated.” A pit opened in her stomach. “We need an ambulance.”
“There are no ambulances,” said Zee. “Hang on. Who exactly is he? If he’s a demon from the Shadow Realm, aren’t you supposed to be trying to kill him and stuff?”
“Actually, a lot—”
Cera interrupted. “He claimed her! He is a lord of the Shadow Realm, and Ursula is his betrothed.”
Zee’s mouth fell open. “What?”
“No, it’s not like that,” said Ursula. “Look, it doesn’t matter right now. How do we heal him?”
Zee rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know. Healing is not in my skill set. I mostly just manipulate people.”
Ursula looked down at Bael, her breath catching in her throat at his beauty: the straight, dark eyebrows, the thick sweep of his black eyelashes formed into wet peaks, his strong jaw, the droplets of water resting on his flawless golden skin. Even half-dead, his beauty was godlike. If she managed to heal him and coaxed him to open his eyes again, she’d be greeted by the most stunning gray—the color of the stormy Mediterranean sky.
Ursula put her hand back to his neck, feeling for his pulse again, fainter now. She had an overwhelming desire to see him open his eyes. “His pulse is fading. We need to do something.”
Zee cocked her head. “If he’s really your Shadow Lord boyfriend, and if you’re really human, I suppose there is always the old way. I mean, sharing bodily fluids is a little gross, but if you’re banging him anyway—”
“No!” said Cera sharply. “That way is forbidden.”
Zee scowled at Cera. “Who are you? Who are these people you’ve brought home?”
Ursula pointed. “That’s Cera. Oneiroi. Friend. This is Bael. Lord of Abelda. Now tell me what you said again. What’s the old way?”
Cera shook her head. “No, Ursula, we cannot do what your friend is suggesting. It is an abomination. I forbid it.”
Surely Cera would do anything to save Bael’s life. What was so terrible that she’d let him die? Ursula rose, her throat tightening. Bael had saved her life in the Shadow Realm, and she wasn’t going to let him bleed out on the floor, far from his home. “Explain to me what you’re both talking about. I will decide. He is, after all, my fiancé.”
Zee narrowed her eyes at Bael, studying him closely. “I can see why you’d be desperate to save this one. He’s gorgeous. Have you tried him out?”
“Zee!” Ursula shouted. “Focus.”
Zee snapped to attention. “Right. All of Nyxobas’s brethren can feed on the blood of humans. It strengthens them, gives them power. But it also kinda makes them insane and full of sadistic bloodlust, blah blah. I’m sure it’ll be fine though.”
Cera shook her head. “For ancient demons such as Bael, it completely robs them of their senses. He would never agree to it. It is ikkibu—completely forbidden. He would revert to a primal form, devoid of all humanity, driven by nothing but the lust for human blood.”
“But like, he’d get better,” said Zee.
Ursula’s fingers tightened into fists. Maybe this was ikkibu in the Shadow Realm, but what else could they do? They’d run out of time. And at least he’d be alive. They’d just have to fix the whole sanity thing later. Living and breathing was surely better than death, even if he was devoid of humanity. “So I just have to give Bael some blood? Like a vampire?”
“Exactly,” said Zee. “Vampires are undead. For them, blood is their only source of nourishment. It must sustain all their bodily functions. But for an ancient demon, already corrupted by thousands of years of Nyxobas’s magic, the power of the blood can be all-consuming. On the other hand, he won’t die.”
Cera gripped Ursula’s arm. “Don’t do this, Ursula. He will become a monster. There must be another way. A doctor, like you said.”
Zee cocked a hip. “I already told you. There are no doctors anywhere near us. People have been literally dying in the streets, and no one gives a shit. Right now, this extremely hot man is about to draw his last breath. If you don’t want him to give up the ghost forever, we have to fix this here.”
Ursula stared at Cera. “Have you seen this happen before?”
Cera’s eyes glistened. “Do you remember my brother?”
An image of Cera’s brother flashed in Ursula’s mind: wild-eyed, lunging for Bael’s throat. How could she forget?
“It’s like that,” said Cera. “Only a thousand times worse. He would become uncontrollable, driven only by an obsessive desire to consume more blood. He’d slaughter all of us. And if he recovers, he would hate himself forever. He’s been burdened with enough self-loathing, don’t you think?”
Zee shrugged. “Okay, that’s obviously the worst-case scenario. If you only let him feed enough to strengthen himself, he’ll just be a little aggressive for a few days. We can lock him in a room. It’ll wear off. Not a big deal.”
Ursula didn’t have a ton of options, and she’d just have to trust Zee. “I’ll just give him a tiny bit to see what happens.” But Ursula paused. There had been something in the way Zee said ‘the old way’ that raised the hair on the back of her neck. “Why do they call it the old way?”
Zee blinked. “Because before Nyxobas called his lords to the Shadow Realm, his brethren lived by the blood. They were a scourge upon the earth, and they nearly destroyed the entire human race before they were banished to the Shadow Realm.”
An icy shiver snaked up Ursula’s spine. “Oh. Right. Well, let’s see how it goes.”
Ursula knelt by Bael again, her chest aching for him. He had quieted now, no longer fighting the inevitable, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Around him, dark blood spread across the floor.
“Cera,” she said quietly. “We have no other options.”
When Cera didn’t respond, Ursula took that as silent assent. Even if it meant doing something forbidden, Cera would do anything to save Bael’s life.
Ursula turned her palm over and stared at the veins in her wrist. All she had to do was slice one open, and let a little blood drip into Bael’s mouth. Bael gasped and his entire body arched against the wood. He was dying. There was no more time for dillydallying.
She jumped up and raced down the hall into the large wood-walled arsenal and yanked a dagger from the weapon rack. As she rushed back to the atrium, her bare feet pounding the floor, she was already drawing the blade across her forearm, blocking out the sharp pain.
Kneeling again, she pressed her wrist to Bael’s mouth. For a moment, she just knelt there, her heart thrumming, blood dripping over his lips. Nothing happened. Then his tongue brushed against the wound, flicking over it. A strange wave of pleasure rippled through her body, from her wrist up into her arm. Bael’s eyes fluttered, and he grazed his teeth over her skin. Ursula stared at the pulse in his neck, now throbbing faster, his body almost glowing with a pale light. His eyes snapped open, dark as caves. They were locked on her, and yet she knew he wasn’t seeing her, that some primal part of his mind had taken over completely. Then, he opened his mouth wider, teeth flashing, and his canines pierced her skin—hard.
Pain mingled with pleasure, the sensation overwhelming. Dizzy, Ursula clamped her eyes shut. And when she opened them again, she found she was no longer in her apartment, and the pain in her wrist had dissipated. Now she stood in a field of golden-flowered shrubs spreading out over a vast landscape of tawny, rocky earth. She stood below a stormy gray sky—the color of Bael’s eyes. Here, the air was dry and clean, and the honeyed rays of the morning sun pierced a cloud, gilding the earth around her. To her right, rolling hills curved around the field, covered in juniper trees and grapevines. To her left, a vast city of ruddy stone towered over the fields.
What the fuck?
She sniffed the air. Whispering over the hills, the breeze carried a rich, briny scent, and traces of sandalwood—Bael. She couldn’t see the ocean from where she stood, but it was near. Just on the other side of the hills, she thought, so close she could almost hear the waves. She tried to walk, but her body wouldn’t move. Her pulse raced.
What had happened to New York? Where was Bael?
In the distance, a rooster crowed. At the sound, her body began to move, but not at her command. Her eyes were locked on a thin plume of smoke rising from behind the city walls, her feet pounding the ruddy fields.
A sword’s scabbard bounced at her hip, and when she glanced down, she caught a glimpse of leather sandals, a short tunic, and powerful golden legs—a man’s legs. From behind the city walls, a scream rent the air, and she sped up, kicking up dust as she ran, until she arrived at the towering city gate, its imposing columns capped by lion carvings, sunlight gleaming off the buildings. She sprinted onto a stone road and as she moved further into the city, people were fleeing past her, screaming, eyes wild with fear.
The narrow road curved up a hill, lined on either side with stone buildings. Smoke wound through the street, curling into her nostrils, and her lungs burned.
She wanted to stop, to catch her breath, but her legs kept pushing, moving toward the smoke. Something was terribly wrong.
Distant shouts pulled her away from the vision.
“Get him away from her!” A frantic voice pierced the air.
Slowly, Ursula opened her eyes. Her vision swam as someone pulled at her, yanking her onto the cold, marble floor. “What’s going—” She tried to speak, but her tongue was heavy in her mouth, her words slurring. Someone was tugging at her legs, and her mind whirled with visions of juniper trees and ruddy stone, a marine breeze caressing her skin. But she wasn’t there anymore, in the field and the ancient, burning city. Above her, warm lights were flickering. The chandelier. She was back in N
ew York.
“I’m trying!” Zee’s voiced echoed in the hall.
Slowly, the lights of the chandelier receded as someone pulled her away. “Where are you taking me?” she managed.
“I told you what would happen if you gave him your blood,” said Cera.
It came back to her in a flash. Bael had been feeding from her—Bael, who smelled of sandalwood and the ocean. Had she been in his mind? Her mouth was dry, and she tried to lick her lips. “How is Bael?”
“He’s alive,” said Cera in a voice tinged with fear, dragging Ursula down the hall.
Ursula tried to stand, but vertigo over took her.
“Don’t move,” said Cera as she dragged Ursula into the library, closing the door behind her. “You lost a lot of blood.”
Ursula swallowed hard. “He was only supposed to drink a little bit.”
“We tried to pull you away, but he is too strong. He would have drained you if Zee hadn’t glamoured him.”
Down the hall, Zee was shouting in Russian. A bellowing roar answered her.
Ursula blinked. “Is Zee okay?”
“I think so,” said Cera. “She manacled him in some sort of golden handcuffs.”
As Cera pulled Ursula into the living room, an enormous crash echoed down the hall. “Stop.”
Ursula pushed up to her elbows, then tried to stand again, but her head swam as soon as she lifted it from the floor. Cera was right. Bael had drank a lot of blood.
“Wait there,” Cera barked, as if Ursula had any other option. “I must go check on the lord.”
Before Ursula could respond, Cera slipped back into the hallway. Ursula’s eyes drifted closed again, her mind echoing with those terrible screams from that sun-kissed city.
When Ursula opened her eyes again, Zee and Cera were standing in the doorway. Zee looked exhausted, her blond hair disheveled, a red welt bulging on the side of her face. Cera stood next to her, staring at the floor.
“How is Bael?” asked Ursula.
Shadows & Flame Complete Boxed Set: Demons of Fire and Night Novels Page 50
