Demon's Cradle (Devany Miller Book 3)

by Ponce, Jen

  Before he could even get started, I turned in his arms and put my hand on his chest. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  His dark eyes burned into mine. “Washing off the blood.”

  “I didn’t say I would have sex with you.”

  “It wouldn’t be sex, Devany. Not with you.”

  I slid my palms over his chest, enjoying the play of muscle and skin under my hands. He didn’t have any hair at all on his body. I peeked. Nope. Nothing below. He was one happy guy, though. “Not sex, huh? Then what would it be? Recreational exercise?”

  “It would be destiny.” His lips took mine in one of those kisses that set off a nuclear meltdown inside me. A part of my mind grabbed onto the destiny bit. Weird to say that, wasn’t it? Destiny? I stepped away from him, my hand and my newfound strength keeping him at bay.

  “No.”

  He didn’t argue. Didn’t speak. Just burned with desire for me. Why? What did it gain him to have sex with me? Now that I didn’t have those pesky emotions to deal with I could think clearly about him. I also could put myself in his shoes and when I did, I saw that having sex with me could very well cement his place by my side. It would benefit him but what would it do for me? What indeed.

  “Not yet. Not now. Maybe not ever. I’m soulless not stupid.” I fumbled for a towel then realized I could probably air myself dry using magic. I tried it, my access to the magic almost instantaneous. No more picturing what I wanted, at least not right now. I thought it and it happened.

  I was dry in seconds and pulling on my clothes before Tytan tempted me into fucking him. “I have shit I have to do. Shit that doesn’t involve torture or sex.”

  He hadn’t spoken still and I finally studied his face more closely. His lips were flat and tight, his eyes hard, burning coals in his head, though when he saw me really looking, the tension drained away into a lazy smile. “As my lady wishes.”

  TWELVE

  It felt like months had passed, but since I’d been in the Slip, nothing had changed on Earth or Midia, not unless I went back through Amara’s Rend and I didn’t want to do that.

  As we walked back to the stairs, we passed the cage where Harrison lay in misery. “What about him?”

  “I have a use for him.” His hand pressed on my back and a shudder went through me. Something like guilt—maybe its ghostly cousin—flitted in my chest and was gone.

  He deserved it, I told myself. After what Tytan had shown me, I believed Harrison deserved all he’d gotten and more.

  My soul, if I could get it back, might not agree.

  Tytan grabbed Harrison from the cage and flipped him casually over his shoulder. It had to hurt. I hoped it did, guilt or not.

  Upstairs, Nex was hovering around a dazed looking Formless One. It still didn’t look like Jasper—the features were too plastic and stiff. He didn’t seem to know who I was and it disappointed me. “Is he ever going to be okay?”

  Tytan shrugged. “It takes time for souls to adjust to a blank.”

  With Ellison banished to Midia, Jasper should have been safe in the Slip. I wouldn’t put it past Amara, however, to bring him here, so I said, “Is there some place besides the swamp where I can hide him?” I squatted in front of Jasper and studied him.

  “Temporarily, yes. However, I have another idea that might make your Amara problem disappear.” He dumped Harrison to the floor.

  To Jasper, I said, “Do you remember me?”

  His head jerked as he tried to focus on me, his eyes out of sync with one another. His mouth moved but he couldn’t get any words out.

  I had wanted to ask him if he thought I was damned for my act of evil. It didn’t worry me but I knew it should. Unfortunately, he held no answers and after a minute, I stood, annoyed and impatient of a sudden. “So, what’s your use for him?” I nudged Harrison with my shoe and he spit at me, mucous and blood splatting inches from my shoe.

  “Amara’s downfall.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Do tell.”

  “Why did she take your soul?”

  I shrugged. I’d been wondering that myself. Surely without one I was no longer vulnerable.

  “Without your soul you become more like her. When that happens, she hopes her spawn will no longer talk of dissent and defection.”

  “Too late.”

  Tytan laughed. Harrison struggled to gain his feet and I kicked his arms out from under him. The approving grin on Tytan’s face made me warm. “Exactly. You have her power. She’s weak. Now’s the time to eliminate her.”

  Hence Harrison and the soul I’d need to kill her. Tytan didn’t know exactly how I’d killed Ravana but he’d sent me in with a witch and I came back without her. He put two and two together and came up with the right answer, even if he wasn’t quite sure how he got to it. “What if she kills me?”

  He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. “She can’t. She doesn’t know how.”

  “Lucky break?”

  He shrugged. “She won’t be expecting you to strike so soon. And think what a message that will send to the rest of them.”

  Yeah, “There’s that bitch who killed our fellow Originators and has been stealing our spawn. I’m sure I’ll garner lots of good feelings.”

  “You will make them afraid to cross you. You are already more powerful than any of them.”

  “Together, though? What if they decide to gang up on me?”

  He scoffed. “Originators, pairing up? Never happen.”

  I studied Tytan, the struggling Jasper on the floor, and Nex, who hadn’t said a word this whole time. “What do you think, Nex?”

  His black eyes gleamed. “As a king, I always sought more power. More power brings safety.”

  No voice of reason there. And I knew what Neutria would say even without asking her.

  More power is a good thing.

  ‘Thanks for the news flash.’ I sighed, knowing I would regret this in some way. My body felt deliciously full from the power I’d already absorbed from Amara’s mutinied spawn. “Do you know where she is?”

  He gave me another look.

  I sighed again. “The Rend? I do not want to go back in time again. I’ve had enough of that shit to last a lifetime.”

  “As long as you exit the way you go in, you’ll be fine.”

  “I remember where I hooked from when I went through the Rend to save you. If I hook to that spot instead of going through the rip, will I avoid the time travel?” I didn’t relish another trip through the black space between the entrance to the Rend and Amara’s lair, and hoped I could skip it. I was such a cheater.

  “As I said, as long as you leave from the same place ...”

  “Okay. But if I get fucked up, I’m so kicking your ass.”

  He laughed. On the floor at his feet, Harrison spat again. “You think you’re getting away with this? I’ll kill you both.”

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet? You’re in Hell, Harrison, and rightly so.” I tipped my head, studying him. “Even if you had a thousand years, you couldn’t kill me. But I have a thousand years to make you wish you were dead. You want that?”

  “I want you bleeding on the floor, bitch.”

  Tytan reached out and snatched the man by his throat as casually as another man might pick up a teacup. “Let’s not piss off the Originator, shall we?”

  Choking, Harrison couldn’t respond.

  “Don’t kill him before we get there,” I said, stepping close to form the hook.

  Tytan’s grin sent shivers down my spine—that they were shivers of pleasure, I didn’t deny.

  “I managed to keep Harrison alive quite nicely, and through things no human would ever live through on Earth.”

  I stepped through before I could risk my sanity in replying.

  ***

  It looked the same as it had the first time I’d visited. A dormant caldera, evidence of eruptions-past in the smooth walls, the glimmering obsidian that decorated the ground, peeping around the greenest blades of grass I’d ever se
en.

  Amara screamed when she saw me and then her remaining Skriven attacked. Without a soul, I truly was an Originator, which meant I didn’t need to worry I would die. With the removal of my soul, I was also supremely unconcerned by worry over the outcome of this battle. I batted the Skriven away as easily as I might tennis balls being lobbed at me from an opponent across the court. I pictured Amara in a tennis skirt and laughed at the image. That only served to piss her off more and she began tossing magic our direction.

  “Put him in a bubble so she doesn’t accidentally kill him,” I told Ty without looking over my shoulder. To Amara, I said, “Your time has come to an end. Your Skriven are mine. Your life will soon be mine as well.” I deflected a volley of energy with a flick of my hand and then had her by the throat. “Why did you do it? You had to know it would make me stronger.”

  She snarled and spat at me, not saying anything that made sense. I squeezed harder, knowing it wouldn’t hurt her. She clawed at my hands until I dropped her to the ground. “Removing your soul should have killed you,” she rasped.

  “No. I’m an Originator. Removing my soul made me invulnerable.”

  She shook her head. “No. You aren’t an Originator. Never were you a human, either. Ravana made—” Whatever she was going to say was abruptly cut off when Harrison landed at my feet, bleeding from his throat.

  “What the hell, Ty?” I asked, shooting him a glare over my shoulder.

  “He tried to kill himself. Might be a good time to end this, Devany, before he bleeds out.” He nodded to the blood pouring down Harrison’s shirt front.

  Amara lunged for Harrison, knowing he was the key to her death. I hooked in and grabbed his soul as she jumped him—it was as filthy as I’d imagined it to be—and hooked it into Amara.

  Her eyes widened. Her mouth gaped, her cheeks bulged as if she were going to expel a demon. Then she shuddered, a low, agonized wail spilling from her. “What have you done?”

  “Paved the way to your death. Ty? You want to do the honors, since she tortured you?”

  I didn’t have to ask him twice. He used his knife to end her existence, drawing the blade across her throat, opening a gaping red mouth in her flesh. She didn’t even try to stem the blood; she didn’t know how to die because her kind had never had to worry about it. So she left the world without even knowing how to save herself.

  Her blood pooled at my feet and I admired the red against the shiny black of the volcano’s leftover eruption.

  “What do you think she was going to say about Ravana?

  Tytan wiped his knife on her clothing and didn’t look around at me. “I haven’t any idea and I frankly don’t care. She’s dead. Amara’s dead and you, Devany, are victorious, which is all that matters.”

  “Ah.” I didn’t know what to say to him, so I pushed it away in favor of a hopeless cast about for my soul. “You don’t think she sent it back to the Source, do you?”

  Ty rose. “I doubt it. She was too wily by half and would have thought it good fodder for blackmail. Wherever it is, it’s still intact.”

  Which meant I might also get Tom’s soul, if she hadn’t gobbled him down or returned him to the Source. “Where?”

  He shrugged. “Where she kept her souls, perhaps.”

  “That doesn’t help!”

  “We will find it. I promise you.” He stood too close, looking too damaged. One of those traumatized bad boys yearning to be loved that proliferated in romance books. “Until then, forgive me if I enjoy the new you.”

  Never going to happen, buddy, I said in my head. I knew he heard me because his lips quirked, but he said no more.

  ***

  “Where to next?”

  I considered. I needed to find and kill Leon. It really was the biggest thing on my to do list. I could work on getting my soul back but honestly, if I were smart I would wait until the Rider threat was eliminated. I couldn’t be killed unless someone added a soul to me and I would be less likely to flinch at what needed to be done if I didn’t have my conscience. Well, not my conscience, not exactly. More my emotional moral compass. I had a lot more possibilities now. Possibilities that were out of my reach when I had a moral compass. Possibilities that were out of my reach when I could still be killed.

  Leon was in for a world of hurt now.

  We hooked back to the Slip in order to keep the time from moving forward on Earth and picked up Nex. Jasper we left in the care of Vasili, who looked entirely too pleased at my new soulless state. “How can everyone tell so damn fast?” I asked Ty after we’d left.

  “You burn like the sun in a black sky.”

  Oh.

  I shot him a look but his face held none of the anger I’d seen in it after denying him sex. It was something to watch for, though. There was a game afoot and he was the author of it, I had no doubt. Until I could ferret out his motives I would have to be on alert.

  “Killing Leon will kill the rest of the Carnicus,” I told Ty after hooking to the edge of the Wilds, as close as I could get us to the vast plain where magic didn’t work predictably. Banishwinds was a smudge on the horizon, and I could see the Carnicus on the move, wagons and blue oxen churning up dust.

  “Does it matter that they die?” Tytan asked. “If it ends this threat, then it would be worth the collateral damage.”

  “I can’t kill them all,” I protested, without that horror that might have accompanied it before. “It would be wrong, even if the thought of it doesn’t bother me at the moment. I’ll have to figure something else out. Nex? Can I ask the question of you?”

  Nex inclined his head, regal as always. “Of course.”

  I hesitated. “If I ask this of you, will the Rider be warned? Can it hear your thoughts?”

  “This I am not sure of. My new status as your Archaeon Tezryo has afforded me protection from its invasion of my mind; however, I do not know if it keeps my thoughts hidden.”

  “Shit. Okay. Without officially asking, what do you think I can do?” We were walking behind the wagons, far behind, but I kept my eye on them because if they hit a backroad, they’d vanish in an instant. “Any ideas at all?”

  He didn’t answer and I let him think while I pondered on my own. What about the pieces bit? Sharps had pieced herself thin. What did that even mean? And now she was in and out of consciousness. If Leon combusted because Sharps was in a coma, he would kill them all anyway. Maybe Tytan was right. Maybe I just needed to end it, damn the rest.

  “He pukes out magic, right? If they are dependent on him, then they must be powered by his magic. We need to find them an alternate source.” Ty grinned. “And then kill the motherfucker, as you would so eloquently say.”

  I rolled my eyes but considered his idea. It had merit. Sharps had said she absorbed his magic. I’d seen the crazy, out-of-control nature of it myself. “Where would they get that much magic?”

  “Devany.”

  The word held a lot of unspoken words. “Me? No. I can’t take in a troop of performers.” I didn’t even feel the smallest desire to help them. Then I thought of my son. My son. The remembered emotions were there, if not in truth, and I knew I had to do whatever it took. “Where would I keep them? I mean, come on. A mermaid on Earth?”

  He shrugged. “What else, then?”

  I considered. Remembered the goddess in all her crazy glory. Eyed Tytan, because if I took the Carnicus there, I could kill three birds with one stone: kill Leon, keep the Carnicus alive, and return Tytan to his mom. “I might have another idea.”

  His eyes gleamed. “Do tell.”

  ***

  We hooked to the Carnicus after I’d explained part of my plan. I wasn’t sure why I hesitated in telling him about the goddess and his soul but I did. He didn’t need to know, in case it distracted him from what we were about to do.

  Alton noticed us first and he whistled sharply. One by one the wagons stopped and I only had to wait a moment before I heard Leon bellow.

  I widened my stance, put my fists on my hips
, and waited. ‘Neutria? Can you smell the Rider on him? I mean, when he gets close?’ She shifted inside me, raising her awareness. The scents filled my nose and then …

  Yes. I smell it. It’s coming.

  The golden ringmaster of the Carnicus strode through the painted wagons, his gait eating up the distance as he spoke. “You are no longer welcome in my Carnicus. I warned you and now you will die.”

  He flicked out his hand and static-crackling energy exploded in front of me. Someone screamed. My new status as Originator in truth served me well: I gobbled it and smiled.

  His crazy gold eyes narrowed and then he ran at me. I called on Neutria’s fighting instincts and ducked away at the last moment, his meaty fist cutting through the air my head had occupied seconds before. He didn’t stop but came at me with the single-mindedness of a robot. Each time Neutria, drawing on my power, got me out of the way. I did not return the punches, did not offer resistance other than to not stand still and get hit.

  He stood panting, sniffing, sweat dripping from his forehead and hate in his eyes. “What are you?”

  I was about to say something clever but the words dried up in my throat as Sharps staggered in to view, her pale face a study in bruises. “Don’t.”

  “I have to.”

  She shook her head and then her brother was on her, a leather-handled bowie at her throat. He grinned at me, digging in the knife to make her bleed. That didn’t make me flinch, but the all too knowing look in her eyes echoed in my non-existent soul.

  “Why do you even care? She’s used up. Won’t be much good for nothing but a bit of pleasuring me before she gives up.” His eyes flicked over my body and the one emotion I could feel, that burned bright inside me, was hate.

  Scenarios played out in my head. Me hooking to him and ripping out his soul. Did he even have a soul? I wasn’t sure he did. Hooking inside him, taking over control, but I wasn’t confident the wild magic would let me.