Another hesitation locked my muscles. Pushing away my inexplicable unease, I sank to the carpet beside him, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. I was dressed for bed and the air was cool on my exposed skin.
“Tomorrow, we might get the grimoire back,” I murmured. “I don’t know how long it will take me to translate it, but … it could have answers on how to send you home.”
He said nothing.
“What’s your home like?” The curious question slipped out thoughtlessly. I expected him to ignore it, but his head tilted slightly, gaze on the city street below.
“It is very different from here.” His low, husky voice blended with the night and shivered across my skin. “There are many places we do not go where it is too hot or too cold. Where we live … the land is made of rock and sand. It is red, almost like me. The plants are darker, some red, some green.”
My eyelids slid partway closed as I imagined it. A desert landscape of burnt maroon, the sand drifting among wind-carved rock. Dark foliage sprouted in nooks and crannies, clinging to life beneath a harsh, blazing sun.
“Some places, water runs deep and wide, and trees grow tall. Other places, there is no water for endless distances and we catch the rain at night to drink.” His gaze drifted toward me. “The sun is hot in the day, but the land grows cold at night. Colder than here. You would not survive a night in my world.”
“Does the cold bother you?” I whispered. I didn’t know why I was whispering, only that I could almost see his words. I could imagine my head angled back, mouth open to the pouring rain, the liquid cool on my parched tongue.
“Only if we are weakened. During the day, we rest and recover our vīsh. At night, we hunt … or we are hunted. It is cold and very dark. The clouds come at night, and the rain. Great storms.”
Roiling clouds lit by streaking white lightning. Earth-shaking thunder and torrential rain carving rivers of mud into the sand and rock. The powerful wind sweeping against me.
“We must conserve vīsh until the sun,” he murmured. “It is a game and a hunt and a battle. Who is smartest? Who is strongest? They survive.”
Glowing eyes in the darkness. A dim but distinct outline of heat and magic, curved wings spreading wide. A slash of fear in my chest.
I gave my head a sharp shake and absently rubbed my sternum as my heart rate kicked up. “You’re hunted more because you’re a demon king, aren’t you?”
“I have always been hunted.”
“Why?”
“Because I am Vh’alyir. I am Twelfth House. We are weak.” His eyes glowed fiercely. “I have taught them to fear Vh’alyir.”
Another zing of apprehension hit me, this one triggered by the savagery sliding across his features. “How?”
“They do not fear my strength, but the strike from the darkness.” His tail lashed sideways, a quiet rustle across the carpet. “They call me nailēris, but they do not laugh at my House any longer.”
Gooseflesh prickled up my arms, compounded by the chill air. The other demons called him cowardly … but he had taught them to fear him anyway. For the first time, I saw a shadow of regal power in him, of unyielding command and ruthless authority.
“You’re talkative tonight,” I said weakly. “What were you thinking about before I came in?”
He let his head fall back, resting it against the window’s edge. I saw no sign of his wolfish smirk, his contrary antagonism, or even his dangerous but semi-playful badgering.
“Maybe I will return soon to my world.” His voice dropped, deeper and rougher, his accent thickening. “I will return not as Dīnen but as Ivaknen … the Summoned.”
The Summoned. I shivered again and rubbed my upper arms. His gaze followed the movement and he leaned forward with sudden interest. Warm hand closing over my wrist, he drew my arm up to peer at my skin.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Nothing is wrong. It’s how human skin reacts to cold.”
“It is not cold.”
“It is for me. The weather has to be much warmer than this for humans to walk around in as little clothing as you do.”
He turned my hand over and his fingertips slid across my inner wrist. “This has not changed. Is this part of you not cold?”
I opened my mouth—but couldn’t remember how to speak. He stroked the top of my forearm, exploring the texture of my skin as full-on gooseflesh made every fine hair stand on end.
He lifted my arm to his face and rubbed the lower edge of his cheek across my inner wrist. “This is smooth.”
I didn’t move, didn’t utter a sound. Only my heart reacted, pounding erratically in my chest.
He ran his hand down my forearm to my elbow, his palm hot as it passed over the scars from the first time he’d healed me. His fingers found the inner crease of my elbow, then traced up to my shoulder. My held breath rushed out between my parted lips.
His crimson eyes skimmed across me and found my bare legs—then his hand wrapped around my knee. He ran his fingers up the side of my thigh, his thumb rubbing across the slight bumps, his touch sliding higher.
Paralysis breaking, I scooted away from him. “Yes, my skin is different from yours. That’s enough of—”
He stuck his hand under the hem of my tank top. His hot fingers brushed across my waist. “You are smooth here.”
“Zylas,” I snapped. “Stop—”
He pushed away from the wall, gaze fixed on my middle, intent on the mystery of gooseflesh. I pushed backward, feet slipping on the carpet. He followed, a graceful shadow with glowing eyes. His hand slid up my side, triggering a rippling shiver along my spine and causing a fresh wave of gooseflesh to rise in the wake of his touch.
I shoved away and my head bumped against my mattress. Nowhere left to retreat. His hands were on my waist, pushing up my shirt, and undiluted panic shot through me.
I grabbed his wrists. “Zylas!”
He stilled as my nails dug into his skin. The only sound was my quick, harsh breathing.
His mouth shifted into a frown—then he released my shirt, hands pulling free from my grasp. He sat back on his heels, his frown deepening into a scowl. “I did not hurt you.”
The words were a question, a complaint, and an accusation all wrapped into one.
“No.” I gulped down air. “But that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want.”
“Ch.”
I shoved forward, glowering at him before I even realized how angry I was. “You aren’t the only one who wants their autonomy respected, Zylas!”
He recoiled from my vehemence.
“You don’t want me to use the infernus command unless absolutely necessary, and I’m respecting that. You need to respect me when I tell you to stop doing something I don’t like.”
His head tilted in a puzzled way. “You do not like it when I touch you?”
My stomach gave an odd, panicky flop. “I—I’m not …” My head spun. “Don’t touch me under my clothes.”
His nose scrunched like that was a bewildering stipulation. Heart beating uncomfortably fast, I pushed myself to my feet and tugged my shirt straight.
“I need to sleep.” I flipped my blankets back. “We have a lot to do tomorrow. Uncle Jack, the grimoire … and we have to figure out what’s happening with Zora.”
“Figure out what?” he muttered. “It is easy to fix.”
I glanced over my shoulder, eyebrows raised. “Oh really?”
“I will kill her.”
“We’re not killing her,” I scoffed, climbing into bed. “We’ve discussed this before and—”
“Drādah.”
I hadn’t heard him stand, but he was on his feet, his crimson stare fixed on me but not with the keen curiosity of a minute ago.
“She knows I am not enslaved,” he growled quietly. “She will tell others, and they will come to kill you. I must kill her first to protect you.”
Alarm buzzed across my nerves and I pushed my shoulders back, hands gr
ipping my blanket. “Do not hurt her, Zylas.”
“She knows—”
“We’ll find another way to deal with it. If you kill her, Darius will know it was you and he’ll report us to the MPD anyway.”
“I will make her disappear.”
“No!” Panic rose through me again. “She’s a guild member, she helped us, she—she’s my friend, Zylas.”
He curled his upper lip in disdain. “You will die so she can live?”
My mouth trembled and I clenched my jaw. “I won’t kill her to save myself.”
“Nailis,” he sneered.
“Cruel!” I retorted, pointing at him as tears stung my eyes. “Heartless! Barbaric! How can you even think about killing an innocent woman to save yourself?”
“To save you,” he snarled. “I bound myself to protect you.”
“We’ll find a different way.”
“What way? This is most safe. It is most easy.”
“You want to kill her because it’s easy?” My throat tightened with fear. I couldn’t stop him from doing whatever he wanted. Even if I forced him back into the infernus, he would escape as soon as I fell asleep. “If you hurt her, Zylas, if you so much as lay a finger on her, I—I won’t send you home.”
His eyes widened. “You promised!”
He could tell if I was lying—and he knew my threat was deadly serious.
“I did, but if you go behind my back and hurt her, I won’t do anything to help you.”
He stared at me as though he’d never seen me before. Rage twisted his face, lips pulling back from his pointed canines. His hands clenched and glowing veins streaked up his wrists.
“Your promises mean nothing. Your words mean nothing.”
As his furious snarl rumbled through the room, crimson power blazed across him. His body dissolved and the band of light leaped into the infernus on my bedside table. The pendant vibrated, then went still.
I flung myself onto my bed, face buried in my pillow to hide the tears streaking down my face. Zora had helped us, fought beside us, supported me—and he was perfectly fine with killing her. Perfectly willing. Perfectly remorseless.
No matter what he did, what he said … no matter how fiercely he protected me or how carefully he touched me … under the surface, he had no heart. He didn’t care, didn’t feel, didn’t love. He could kill anyone and feel nothing. He could kill me and feel nothing.
Why had I ever thought he might be anything other than a monster?
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Robin,” Amalia hollered, “would you hurry up?”
I hastily pulled the turtleneck sweater over my head, almost dislodging the small ponytail I’d forced my hair into—aided by half a pound of bobby pins. My hair was barely long enough to tie back.
My new black sweater was soft but the fabric didn’t stretch and I had to wiggle my arms into the long sleeves. It fell to the tops of my thighs, the sleeves brushing my knuckles. I did up a row of buttons that ran over the shoulder and up the neck. Buttoned, the fabric hugged my throat.
Dropping the chain of my infernus and new artifact over my head, I hurried out of the room. Amalia stood near the door, her winter coat in one hand and car keys jingling impatiently in the other. She wore a turtleneck identical to mine—black with a dizzying pattern embroidered over every inch in matching thread. The effect was subtle but quite striking.
“Finally,” she exclaimed. “How does it fit?”
I straightened the sweater’s hem in annoyance. Considering how many times I’d waited for her, she could be more patient. “It’s fine.”
She nodded. “I prefer to use a knit fabric or even a cotton poplin stretch for shirts, but those wouldn’t work with the embroidery.”
I ran a fingertip over my sleeve, tracing a familiar shape hidden in the pattern. “A shielding cantrip?”
“Yep.” She slapped her flat stomach. “The hexes cover the entire shirt. I’ve tested them with knives, though I doubt they’d stop a bullet. Still, every little bit helps, right? The effect lasts about half a minute.”
I reexamined our sweaters. She’d finished both last night and insisted we wear them today—more because she was proud of her work than because we needed them. Uncle Jack, assuming we found him, wasn’t likely to stab us.
Still, a shirt that could protect you from piercing attacks for thirty seconds was pretty amazing. The shield cantrip wasn’t one I’d have thought to use. It was mostly useless because you had to draw a ridiculously huge rune to protect anything larger than a post-it note; the smaller the cantrip, the less magic it absorbed and released.
But covering an entire shirt in small cantrips was ingenious; they’d all trigger together with a single incantation. And the craziest part was that a sewn cantrip worked at all. Cantrips were normally drawn by hand because the process of creating them imbued the symbol with power. A regular human could draw runes all day long and not one would contain a smidge of magic. Only Arcana mythics could create them.
Amalia was watching me with a raised eyebrow—waiting for my approval.
“It’s nice,” I reiterated. Hadn’t I already said it was good?
“Uh-huh. Let’s get going, then.”
I grabbed an extra sweater and followed her down to the parking lot where our rental car—which Amalia had picked up this morning—waited. I opened the dull gray door and climbed into the equally dull and gray interior. Amalia dropped into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and we were off.
Time to find my uncle and get the Athanas Grimoire back. It was finally happening.
We made it out of downtown with little trouble and drove through the disreputable Eastside for twenty minutes. Crossing the harbor, we entered the significantly greener and more spacious neighborhoods of North Vancouver.
“So,” Amalia began, “what’s your problem this morning?”
I stared through the windshield at the mountain silhouettes filling the horizon. “No problem.”
“Yeah, sure. How come I haven’t seen your demon pal all morning, even though we should have run our plan past him before getting in this crappy rental car and driving to the middle of nowhere?”
“I told him the plan. In my head. He can hear me. Also, he’s not my pal.”
“What is he, then?”
“He’s a demon.”
She cast me a questioning look, then returned her attention to the road. An irascible frown settled onto her lips as she exited the freeway and merged onto a smaller thoroughfare.
Maybe … maybe I was a bit moody today. She wasn’t the reason for my bad temperament.
“Thank you for the hex sweater,” I said, properly sincere this time. “I can’t believe you made something so beautiful and comfortable that’s also stab-proof. It’s really amazing.”
Her frown eased. “Glad you like it. You’re the first person besides me to wear one of my projects.”
My smile softened into a more natural expression. “Thank you for sharing it with me. Do you have plans to sell your work? I bet guilds would love them.”
“Maybe. I need to do more testing first. Fabrics and magic don’t mix all that well and I’m not sure how quickly the hexes will deteriorate.”
Falling silent, she concentrated on navigating a section of road construction that had closed one lane. The houses grew sparser.
“Oh, shit!” Amalia flipped on her signal light and zipped into the left lane. “This is our turn.”
We made the corner on the yellow light, and the last signs of residential neighborhood disappeared. The road, hemmed in by green spruce and hemlock, slanted upward. Though the dense forest blocked our view, I knew we were ascending the sprawling slopes of Mount Seymour. Scattered vehicles drove with us, heading toward the ski resort near the peak.
“Where exactly are we going?” I asked. “Not to the resort, right?”
“Ha, no. The property isn’t that high up the mountain. It’s on the west side.”
“And it belongs to the old
guy from the photo—Kevin, you called him?”
“Kevin and Dad were hunting buddies, and my family used to come out here every summer. I always hated it. So boring. Kathy thought so too, and she kicked up such a fuss about it that Dad quit going. He hasn’t been in almost ten years.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That sucks for your dad.”
“If he wanted to enjoy life, he shouldn’t have married Kathy.” Amalia leaned forward as though encouraging the car onward up the incline. “Ugh, why didn’t we get an SUV instead of this shit-mobile?”
“What makes you so sure your dad is out here?”
“First, Claude ruled out every possible option besides this one. And second, it’s perfect. Kevin doesn’t own this property. He borrows it from his cousin. And as far as I—or anyone else—knows, Dad and Kevin haven’t talked in years, and there’s no paper trail to tie either of them to this location. It’s private, isolated, and totally safe.”
Sounded plausible. “I hope Uncle Jack has answers.”
“Yes,” Amalia agreed fiercely. “First, I want to know why he couldn’t get a message to me. Second, I want to know what the hell is up with Claude. And third, all this weirdness with vampires.”
I pressed my lips together. “What I want is the grimoire.”
“We won’t learn anything if your demon goes berserk and kills my dad. Zylas won’t have any warm, fuzzy feelings for his summoner. You sure you’ve got him under control?”
“He won’t lay a hand on your dad,” I confirmed grimly. “I already warned him.”
“Yeah, but since when is he obedient?”
“He’ll behave. If he doesn’t, I won’t send him home.”
She steered the car around a tight bend. A few snowflakes swirled past the windows. “But you want to send him home so you can be rid of his demonic ass.”
“I do, but if he kills people …” I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m not helping him with anything if he kills people.”
“He’s a demon. Killing is what they do.” She paused. “Didn’t you promise you’d send him home?”
“I did, but—”
“And you told him you’ll rescind that promise if he doesn’t do what you want?”
Slaying Monsters for the Feeble: The Guild Codex: Demonized / Two Page 21
