He had barred all emotion from his face, which likely meant there was a great deal turning over in his thoughts. Baal had suggested Mammon had changed. Mammon had spent many years as Akil, living on this side of the veil, living a human life. Could that existence have cultivated feelings like it had in me?
“After this is over—” I started.
“I won’t be seeing her.”
And now it was his turn to shut me down. I narrowed my eyes at the demon prince. Could he have true feelings? Was that why he was staying away. Or was this more lies? This was likely an elaborate trap, probably designed to make me see him as reasonable, when inside, he was a scheming, manipulative demon of the highest order.
“Do not ask why,” he grumbled. A muscle twitched in his cheek.
“I have no wish to know.” He was a master deceiver. But I already knew that. I would not give his lies any leverage.
Something groaned far below at the foot of the tower and trembled through the earth, sounding very much like a demon howl, but not one I recognized. Torrent had said the veil demon had been working on changing the lessers.
“Creation…” I whispered. What waited inside that tower? Evolved demons, perhaps? That wasn’t good. Where on this new demon food chain were Mammon and I? There was only one way to find out.
“Ready?” I asked.
“It has been some time since I sank my claws into a worthy beast.” Fire encircled the blacks of his eyes. “Lead on, Pride.”
The tower’s roots snaked around and over a network of streets, but the houses were gone, twisted and changed into the veil demon’s tower walls. Tunnels fed into the base. Akil and I cautiously approached. Curiously, she had stripped the beach behind us of sand, but she’d left the ocean alone to lap at naked rock.
A grumbling groan rumbled from inside the tunnel.
“Perhaps you should scout ahead as air,” Akil suggested.
Right, so whatever trap awaited could snag me while he sauntered in to save the day? I bared my teeth. “Perhaps you should turn back into your demon aspect.”
He blinked. “I do not want to reveal the king’s gift,” Akil said, but his tiny delay said more. Demons had few opportunities to play at being human in the netherworld. It must have been years since he’d spoken with a human tongue and walked with human muscles. Yet he had effortlessly slipped back into the role. Did he play at being human while in the netherworld? I couldn’t imagine it, but his act was admittedly flawless. I could begrudgingly admire another’s art, but I didn’t have to like the artist.
We entered the tunnels. Smooth walls arched over us and curved inward, restricting the view to a few meters ahead. At our presence, a subtle white light emanated from below, lighting the way. I sensed no electrical hum and could only assume the light source was organic.
I hugged my wings close, easing my element ahead. Movement nudged my senses, as did the rhythmic push and pull of breathing. “We have company.”
What emerged appeared, at first glance, to be humanoid. All the parts were in all the right places, but its smooth, perfectly white skin reminded me of the plastic box I’d been kept inside. The form was too perfect, the body hairless with no male or female genitalia. Not born, but made. Striking blue lashless eyes fixed on me and slid to Akil. Neither of us slowed, and the creature stepped aside as we passed. Another appeared ahead, standing motionless as it watched us approach.
Akil’s voice touched my mind, using the archaic princely link. “They seem docile.”
“So do some lessers until they lay their eggs inside your intestines.”
More creatures appeared, all stepping aside to let us pass. When we reached an open chamber, I’d lost count of their number. Tunnels broke off with no indication which way led to Torrent.
I turned to Akil and found him eyeing the creatures filing into the chamber behind us. They circled in, pale skin almost translucent. Were they elemental? I couldn’t sense any elemental touches. Not human, not demon, something else. The veil demon must have made them for a reason.
“Do you want to say something, or shall I?” Akil asked.
“We come in peace?” I said. One of the blue eyes approached, its attention glued to my wing rising over my shoulder. Its head cocked in a birdlike twitch, and then it reached out with its slim, smooth fingers and touched my feathers.
Akil arched an eyebrow.
The creature purred and ran its hand down my wing.
A shudder ran through me. “As much as I enjoy being stroked—”
Something hissed above. I looked up, saw white feathers and jaws filled with teeth plunging toward me, and ghosted aside. Claws swiped through the air where I had been. Mammon’s heat whooshed into the chamber. As air, I spun upward, retracting my wings and all of me, ready to lash out. But I didn’t get a chance. Mammon snatched the white-winged thing by its neck, slammed it into the ground, planted a foot on its chest, and roared. Our curious blue-eyed gang scattered in a flurry of movement too fast to track.
Don’t kill it… I thought.
Mammon’s claws came down, tearing through flesh and sinew. He stepped off the twitching corpse and gave his wings a triumphant shake.
Demons. Reforming, I frowned at the gory scene. “You just had to.”
Mammon remade Akil in seconds. Human once again, he straightened his cuffs and said, “We’re not here to make friends.”
From deep in the bowels of the tower, something large and furious screamed.
“Find Torrent,” I said and dashed for a tunnel.
Chapter 24
As I poured through tunnels and chambers, mentally mapping every corner, slope, and junction, my element touched hundreds, possibly thousands of life signs. Hundreds were human, but hundreds more differed in subtle ways. Too hot, too cold, odd breathing patterns, the too-small amount of air their bodies displaced. Too many unknowns to count. She’s building an army… The blue eyes weren’t aggressive, but the other creature had been before Mammon abruptly ended its life. What were they?
I spiraled higher, until the cool, slippery sensation of Torrent’s element pooled around the tunnel floors. Solid once more, I stepped into his chamber. Cathedral-like proportions soared overhead. Water lay motionless in circular channels surrounding a central island, and on it, with his back to me and wings held closed, knelt Torrent. I’d been gone no more than a day in netherworld time, but a week could have passed here. Torrent had made himself at home. Was he the same demon I’d left behind?
I started toward him. Water rose from the pools in glittering droplets, pulling up a curtain. When it reached halfway to the ceiling, it curled over and rippled outward: Torrent’s elemental touch, but visible. Mist hung in the air, crowding close but not touching. Was this a threat or something else?
“Torrent?”
“A test, she said,” he replied, “of my devotion.” His wings lifted as he rose to his feet and turned. “She is disappointed. Demons and humans did not evolve as she had hoped. What she’s doing, it’s not wrong. She’s correcting our mistakes. We lost our way—”
“Torrent.” He met my gaze. His eyes weren’t glassy or unfocused. He looked at me, perfectly in control. Something had happened to tilt Torrent’s mind. “Before I left, we talked about weaknesses, remember?”
I stole a step closer. The water droplets hovered away. Another step and those droplets opened, allowing me through, but they also closed in behind me. The power it took to maintain his element inside my air had to be immense, but he showed no signs of strain.
“She has no weaknesses,” he said.
I approached the first channel. Water still lay inside, dark and impenetrable. “What did she do to you?”
“My father tore away my right to rule. He confined me inside a physical cage. He trapped me inside a human mind for hundreds of years.” Not Torrent. Kar’ak. I pulled my element in close, ready for the inevitable. “And when I was freed,” Kar’ak continued, “I came here, only for the fire elemental, Vanth, to enslave me a
gain.” Now seemed like the wrong time to point out how all those unfortunate events had been of his making. Being demon, nothing that happened to him could be his fault.
He stepped off his island and walked through his heavy mist. Water collected on his partially open wings, streamed down his skin, and dripped from the trailing edges. “You princes and your Courts,” Kar’ak said. “It’s over. You are obsolete. She is the future.” He stopped a stride away, squaring up to me. There was no denying his demon prowess, but the strongest demons always kept their strength beneath the surface.
“You’re right about one thing,” I said.
He tilted his head, wet horns shimmering. “Only the o—”
My knuckles hit him square in the nose to the sound of crunching bone. His mist collapsed, splashing across the floor and sloshing back into its channels. Pain shocked up my arm, but it had been worth it. Kar’ak fell backward and hit the floor with all the grace of a felled tree. He had been so focused on controlling his element and me that he hadn’t expected a fist to the face. Few demons did.
I shook out my throbbing hand. “You’re obsolete. I, however, am absolutely on trend.”
That hadn’t gone as planned. Now I had an unconscious demon prince to manage and an all-powerful deity to avoid. Wonderful.
A howl sounded deep within the tower and rattled through its tunnels. The blue eyes and their vicious companion weren’t the only creatures here, and I had no desire to introduce myself to them until I knew what I was dealing with.
I scooped up Kar’ak’s slippery body and hefted him over my shoulder, wings loose and uncontrollable. With a sigh, I misted us out of the tower. Mammon could fend for himself. Maybe she would kill him, but I doubted I’d be so lucky.
“Well, here we are again.” Torrent regarded the marks I’d scratched into the floor around the chair he sat on. He could step across the glyphs, but he wouldn’t, not if he wanted to stay as Torrent and not turn into his sociopathic other half. “This is becoming a regular thing, Pride. I’m starting to think you like power games. Is this a demon come on?” He arched a brow, dragging a smirk with it.
I folded my arms. “Precautions. Your alter ego is a pain in my feathers.”
“At least you don’t have to listen to him prattle on inside your head.”
“Is he quiet now?”
Torrent nodded, regarded the markings once more, then slid that look toward the man leaning against a far wall, quietly watching. “Who’s the suit?” he asked.
“Unimportant,” I replied before Akil could further complicate a difficult situation.
Akil huffed at that but didn’t protest. His existence in this world was better kept concealed. Inside the glyphs, Torrent wouldn’t sense Akil’s true nature or his element. Considering how Akil and his markings might be our secret weapon, I wanted him anonymous for as long as possible.
Akil had been waiting at the cliff house when I returned with an unconscious Kar’ak. While I had secured Kar’ak inside a glyph circle to force him into his human form, Akil had silently observed from the fringes.
Torrent didn’t bother to hide his frown. He knew “the suit” was important. “I thought we were partners in this, Pride?”
“We are. It’s Kar’ak I don’t trust.”
“I can’t blame you for that…” He sighed.
“What happened?”
“What do you think happened? I started asking questions, and she got suspicious and unbound Kar’ak from my mind to remind me who holds my strings.”
Akil sauntered forward. “You allow your father’s abuse too much control. The Prince of Envy is long dead. Your current mental affliction is preventable.”
Torrent jerked his head. “He talks, huh? Although he knows jack about me and my mental affliction. What are you, some demon shrink?”
Akil’s brow tightened. “I witnessed your birth and your life at Envy’s hands. I know you better than you know yourself.”
“Pretentious much.”
Akil narrowed his eyes at Torrent, unimpressed.
I shook my head at them and rolled my shoulders, letting my wings sigh for me. “You can psychoanalyze Torrent all you like once I have LA back.”
“We have LA back,” Akil corrected.
“That’s what I said.”
“It wasn’t.”
“The City of Angels is mine. The clue is in the name.”
“You believe you’re an angel?” Akil fought a smile from his lips. “I’d forgotten how full of yourself you are, Pride. It’s a wonder you can fly at all with your ego weighing you down.”
“Who is this jerk?” Torrent cut in.
“Nobody,” I replied. To Akil, I said, “And he’ll continue to be a nobody once he goes home. Don’t get comfortable in my city.”
“Oh, I know. You do not need to remind me.” The smirk stayed.
I wished I’d punched him in the face instead of Kar’ak. It would have been far more satisfying. There would still be a chance once our agreement was over. I smirked back.
“Is he backup?” Torrent looked as disgusted as I felt.
“Weaknesses,” I reminded everyone. “She must have at least one.”
“None that I’ve seen, but when I’m around her, it’s almost impossible to think of anything but her. She…” At a loss for words, Torrent gestured at his head. “Gets inside somehow and screws up my thoughts.”
“Apparently, that’s easy to do.” That gem was from Akil.
“Will you stop?” I grumbled.
“It is a fact,” he replied. “Kar’ak, or Torrent, or whatever you call yourself, spent much of the past few centuries being mentally abused. This demon-god knows your weaknesses and exploits them to manipulate you. She is doing what any demon does naturally.”
“You believe she’s demon?”
“I do,” he admitted. “The first demon.”
My thoughts stalled. The first? “How is that possible? The king and original queen were the first.”
Akil slid his all-knowing gaze to me. “And who told us that?”
The king. “Are you suggesting Baal lied?”
“A dishonest demon. Shocking, I know,” he drawled.
“Why would he lie?”
Akil sighed. “Have you really forgotten how to be demon while you’ve been prancing around this city?”
I recoiled. “Prancing?”
“Pride,” Torrent snapped. “Listen to the suit.”
Swallowing a retort, I nodded for Akil to continue.
“He lied to conceal the source of all power. Had we known about her, we would have tried to exploit her. The Court has something of a reputation for destroying what it gets its claws into. He chose to lie to keep the source safe, to hide her as I hid him from rampaging princes after the death of the original queen.”
“And you know this for a fact?”
“No,” he admitted. “But it is what I would have done.”
“You aren’t the king.”
“And have no desire to be.”
“You never could be.”
“You’d be surprised at what I can do.”
Ugh, where was Christian? Shoot me up with PC80 now. “No, I really wouldn’t.”
Torrent rocked back in his chair and whistled low. “Are you sure you two aren’t romantically involved? You could cut the sexual tension with a knife.”
I growled, low and deadly. “The tension is born of abhorrence and loathing. If we are to assume she is the First demon, then she must have a weakness. She is elemental like we are.”
“She has a weakness,” Akil said matter-of-factly.
When he didn’t elaborate, I asked, “Will you share this weakness or keep it all to yourself like your name suggests?”
“Me.”
Would Baal mind if I sent him home in pieces? I pinched the bridge of my nose and bowed my head. No more. At this stage, I was proud of myself for not yet trying to kill him.
I moved to the open section of wall where there had once b
een windows. The tower had risen so high it now collected a crown of clouds. Behind them, an unusual red hue seeped through, giving the changed land a pinkish hue. I wasn’t sure there was anything left of LA to save, but there were people in that tower. Buildings could be replaced, but not people.
Behind me, Torrent asked Akil, “All right, I’ll bite. How do you know you’re her weakness?”
“Because I saw her, but she did not see me.”
The glyphs the king had given him—that had to be why she hadn’t seen Akil. He really was her weakness.
“Did you feel her push on your thoughts?” I asked, keeping my back to him.
“No.”
“What was she doing when you saw her?”
“She was…”
When he delayed too long, I turned.
Akil was frowning. He gave his head a shake and gestured, grasping at words. “She was creating.”
“How?” I demanded.
“I… It is difficult to explain. She pulled the elements from around her and worked them together, as though she were a maestro directing her orchestra. It was mesmerizing.”
If Mammon was our weapon and her weakness, then I needed his allegiances clear. That look of admiration in his dark fire-touched human eyes was not comforting.
“It gives us something to work with,” I said. “It also means you can get close to her and perhaps wield the elemental blade?”
He considered it and agreed with a nod. “As a last resort. If the blade fails, I’ll be exposed. We need a better plan than brute force and the element of surprise. What happens when you get close?”
I drew in a breath and caught Torrent’s downward glance. “She gets inside my thoughts. I suspect Torrent’s father’s ability to mold minds began with this veil demon.”
“If that’s the case,” Akil thought aloud, “perhaps she exhibits all our traits. Envy, greed, pride, and so on.”
“That doesn’t bode well for a deity.”
“No,” he agreed, “it does not.”
“Torrent, you’ve spent more time with her than any other demon. Is there anything more you can add?”
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