Taming Demons for Beginners: The Guild Codex: Demonized / One

by Marie, Annette

  “You’re making the biggest mistake of what will be your very short life.”

  “Red Rum will either give me a name or pay me enough to buy one.” He checked his phone. “I’m sorry, Robin. I never meant for you to get hurt or any of this shit. Just give up the demon and you’ll be fine.”

  I widened my eyes in answer, a high-pitched noise screeching from my throat.

  “She’s laughing at how stupid you are,” Amalia interpreted. “A few days ago, they were ready to feed her to that damn demon. They won’t let her waltz off into the sunset so she can report them to MagiPol.”

  I hadn’t been laughing—more like squealing in horror—but I liked Amalia’s interpretation better.

  “Besides,” Amalia went on harshly, “demon contracts are for life. You can’t just give away your—”

  “Actually, you can,” Travis interrupted. “MPD has it all hushed up, but Red Rum has a special ritual where the contractor and demon can surrender their existing contract and negotiate a new one.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it. If it were that easy, contractors would be swapping demons like—”

  “Just shut up, Amalia.”

  He nervously paced a circle around us, then halted when metal clanged loudly. The far wall swung open, letting in a blaze of sunlight, and I realized the room was an empty shipping container.

  A cold breeze smelling of sea water wafted inside as a small group entered. Karlson, Uncle Jack’s client and the man who’d overseen my near death in the library, stopped to study me. New cronies flanked him, one with a sword sheathed at his hip and the other with an infernus resting on his chest.

  “You’re here,” Travis said nervously. “I have the girl, so—”

  Karlson flipped his hand toward Travis in a silencing gesture. “Where’s the demon?”

  “In the infernus. I put the confusion spell on her, like you said. She can’t call the demon.”

  A spell? That was the reason for the noise in my head? I vaguely recalled reading about thought-inhibiting Arcana at some point, but I couldn’t dredge up any details.

  “And where is the infernus?” Karlson demanded.

  “Uh …” Travis strode over to me and felt around my neck, his fingers cold and rough. “It’s … right …”

  Realizing my neck was devoid of an infernus chain, he pawed urgently at my chest and stomach, then yanked my shirt up, flashing my mauve bra to the room. When he didn’t find the pendant, he grabbed at the front and back pockets of my jeans.

  “Where—where—” he panted desperately.

  Karlson’s expression was colder than a subzero storm. “At no point in the last four hours did you confirm she had her infernus?”

  “What contractor would go anywhere without it?” Travis muttered frantically. He grabbed the duct tape and ripped it off my face. “Where’s your infernus, Robin?”

  I gasped, tears stinging my eyes.

  “Where’s your infernus?” His shout blared through the metal room.

  Cowering back, I stammered confusedly, but I couldn’t string together a coherent sentence.

  “Where is it?”

  Karlson folded his arms. “You put a confusion spell on her. She can’t answer.”

  Travis stumblingly faced his employer. “If she didn’t bring it to the guild, then she left it at the motel. I know where their room is. I can—”

  “You have proven yourself exceptionally incompetent,” Karlson cut in. “I lent you two good men to capture her and her demon off the streets, and you couldn’t even manage that.”

  My head buzzed. Capture us off the streets. The voices Zylas and I had heard. The sorcerer who’d shot a spell at me.

  “Send Bartoli to her motel room to get the infernus,” Karlson told the man with the sword. “We’re heading back. The girls come with us.”

  The swordsman nodded, and the room brightened as he opened the door. My head spun and crackled, and the next thing I knew, a stranger was cutting the zip ties on my wrists. He seized the back of my sweater and hauled me out of the shipping container.

  I squinted painfully. Heavy clouds shrouded the sun and I couldn’t guess the time—anywhere from mid-morning to mid-afternoon.

  The man holding my sweater shoved me forward. Behind us, Amalia swore at someone. Nearly a dozen men were waiting—Karlson, plus an assortment of contractors and champions. So many. Hopelessness dragged at my distorted thoughts but Travis’s confusion spell drowned out my fear.

  “We’re not fighting this demon after all?” a contractor grumbled. “Damn, I was looking forward to it.”

  “Young Travis failed to ensure the girl had the infernus with her.” Karlson checked his phone, then slipped it into the pocket of his suit jacket. “It isn’t a complete loss, however.”

  My captor steered me across the uneven pavement of a wide lot that bordered the ocean. A concrete pier stuck into the dark gray waves, and across the harbor, gargantuan cargo ships were docked along the coast. Abandoned shipping containers, truck beds, and old tractor-trailers edged the lot, and to our left rose a huge gray building—a factory or manufacturing plant.

  Moored at the short pier was a shiny white boat large enough to transport fifteen people. Panic cut through the noise in my head, and I could see my fate clearly: kidnapped by the worst and most powerful criminal guild on the west coast, put on a boat, carried into international waters … and never seen again.

  If I’d kept the infernus, would this have happened? Would Zylas have saved me back at the Grand Grimoire? Would he have rescued me while Travis held me and Amalia captive in the shipping container? But I’d left him behind, afraid to take responsibility for the creature I had unleashed.

  “Hurry up and get them on the boat,” Karlson barked. “I want to—”

  A flicker of red—and the boat exploded.

  The boom hit my eardrums like stabbing knives. A crimson-laced fireball roared upward, belching black smoke. The men staggered in shock, then one yelled in terrified agony. As the rogues whirled toward the sound, another man screamed. Blood misted the air and a mythic collapsed.

  A dark blur shot away from him, red magic streaking from phantom claws.

  “Demon!” someone roared.

  Chaos erupted—contractors grabbing their pendants, champions drawing weapons. Zylas skidded on the concrete, tail snapping out, and he leaped onto the back of a contractor, snapped his neck, and sprang off the falling man. He landed on the next mythic’s shoulders, his six-inch crimson talons disappearing into the man’s throat.

  Red magic blazed as demons materialized around us.

  Zylas jumped off the collapsing man, slid aside from a swinging sword—which hit another demon instead—and launched straight at me.

  He hit me and my captor. We went down in a tangle of limbs, then I was whirling through the air, a band of steel across my chest. The world came to a dizzying halt. Zylas held me against his torso as he angled toward the street.

  “Ori impello potissime!” a sorcerer shouted.

  An invisible force hit us like a battering ram. Everything spun wildly again, and I slammed into the concrete, the impact jarring through my back. I jolted up as two demons charged Zylas, who’d landed nearby.

  He dove, skidding under a demon’s long legs, and reappeared behind it. Another swift leap—and a man died beneath his talons. The contractor’s demon dissolved into crimson light.

  I shoved myself to my feet, trembling and weak but with my head miraculously clear. Getting hit by more Arcana had broken Travis’s confusion spell. Or something. I whirled, searching for Amalia—

  Charging in out of nowhere, Travis grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. A cold, sharp edge pressed against my throat.

  “Stop or I’ll kill her!” he yelled.

  Zylas sprang off the shoulders of a heavyset man with an infernus on his chest, landed on the pavement in a crouch, and turned glowing crimson eyes on Travis. His final victim crumpled in a heap, head lolling on his broken neck
. Another demon melted into a red haze, swept into the corpse, and faded.

  Everything was suddenly still, the silence broken only by the choking gurgles of a man bleeding out a few yards away. Half the Red Rum mythics were dead. That fast, Zylas had killed half of them.

  Travis held the knife to my throat, the edge slicing the first layers of my skin. A wet tickle ran down my neck. My pulse hammered desperately as I stared at Zylas, elated that he’d come, terrified that he was far too late.

  His face, normally so humanlike, was hard and cold, his canines flashing, his hunger for violence rolling off him in waves.

  “Why did the demon stop?” Karlson asked, his tone low and cautious.

  “Her contract,” Travis replied, breathing hard, “requires that the demon protect her. If it moves, I’ll kill her, so it can’t do anything.”

  Panic churned in my head. How did he know that? The only people who knew the details of our contract were me, Zylas, and—

  My gaze darted to Amalia, several long steps away. A tall, lanky man had his arm locked around her throat. At Travis’s declaration, horror widened her eyes and she shot me a guilt-stricken look. How much had she told him? Did he know Zylas and I had no Banishment Clause?

  Pacing to my side, Karlson took in Zylas like an artist studying his latest painting—critical, assessing, appreciative. And beneath that, lusty greed burned in the man’s narrow face and dark eyes.

  “Well,” the man murmured, “this makes things easier. We can proceed immediately with the contract substitution.”

  Zylas didn’t react, still crouched and motionless. He wouldn’t move—the contract’s magic didn’t allow him to put my life in danger. As long as I was helpless, he was helpless too.

  Karlson glanced across his remaining men, blind to the bodies. “Leonard, are you ready to take on this demon?”

  Another mythic stepped forward—thickly muscled, a beard bristling over his jaw as he grinned. “I’m more than ready. This fiend may be small, but with speed like that, the possibilities are endless.”

  “A perfect assassin,” Karlson agreed. “Demon, you will submit to a new contract with Leonard, and whatever terms we stipulate, or the girl will die.”

  Zylas’s eyes flared with power, twin spots of churning lava. Rage deeper and more coldly vicious than anything I’d seen before twisted his face, and the breeze chilled. The temperature dropped below freezing, ice frosting the pavement around his feet.

  I shuddered in horrified denial. Zylas had sworn to never submit to humans. He’d prefer to die than be enslaved, and he’d only agreed to a contract with me because he could retain his autonomy. But now he would lose it. Because of me, because he was bound to protect me, he would surrender his mind and body to Red Rum. The magic of the contract would force him to submit.

  Karlson’s murky stare found mine. “Robin Page, you will give up your contract with this demon.”

  I stared hard at Zylas, thinking loud and clear in my thoughts. They won’t kill me. They want you and they think I promised you my soul.

  His crimson eyes narrowed but he didn’t move. My assurance must not be enough. As long as the knife was at my throat, our fates were solely in my hands. Terror flooded me, weakening my legs, but I forced a single whispered word past my numb lips.

  “No.”

  Karlson rocked back on his heels. “What did you say?”

  I swallowed painfully. “No. I won’t give you my contract.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  But I did. I couldn’t surrender him to these men. I couldn’t throw him into his worst nightmare, the fate he most feared.

  “Robin,” Travis whispered, moving the knife off my neck but keeping the blade close, “just give up the demon. You didn’t even want this contract. You can go back to your normal life.”

  I clenched my jaw and held my silence.

  Karlson released a harsh, angry breath. “It won’t take much to break her. Leonard?”

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “Start slow. Keep the blood to a minimum.”

  The man strolled over to me, and my heart sped up with each step he took. He grabbed my right hand. I flinched and Travis’s fist tightened in my hair. Leonard stroked my fingers as though reassuring me, then took my pinky finger and started bending it backward. Pain tore through it. My breath whistled through my gritted teeth.

  He bent it further. Then further still. My arm spasmed, trying to tear my hand free. He bent it past a right angle and the joint gave way with a pop.

  I screamed.

  Zylas bared his teeth and his tail lashed once, the motion swiftly stifled.

  “Give up the demon,” Karlson ordered.

  “No,” I panted.

  “This is just a warmup, girl,” Leonard warned. “It’ll only get worse.”

  I knew that, but it changed nothing.

  He grasped my ring finger. Bent it back. I was already screaming when it dislocated.

  “Give up the demon,” Karlson commanded again, “and we’ll let you go.”

  “No.”

  When Leonard popped my middle finger out of joint, I couldn’t hold back my shaking sobs. Travis shifted the knife further from my throat before I gouged myself.

  “Give up the demon.”

  “No!” I shrieked, my breath catching on an agonized sob. I wouldn’t. Zylas had been willing to die to escape enslavement. How could I give away his autonomy? I didn’t know what would happen, what they would do to me, but I couldn’t betray him.

  Through tear-blurred vision, I found his glowing eyes and anchored myself as the torturer grasped my index finger.

  Kill them all, I thought as clearly as I could. The first chance you get.

  His tail twitched, his stare boring into mine. The connection between us burned hot, an invisible thread that bound our fates together. Crimson light glowed across his fingers and the semi-transparent talons that tipped them. His tail slid slowly across the pavement. The twenty yards between us yawned even wider.

  My torturer wrenched my finger back and another scream tore from my throat.

  Zylas launched off the concrete, a dark blur.

  “Stop!” Travis bellowed. “Stop or—”

  Karlson grabbed Travis’s hand and shoved his knife toward me. Zylas flashed across the final yards, magic blazing up his arms.

  He slammed into me and power ruptured the world around us.

  As his spell hurled the mythics backward, his hands closed around me. He leaped clear of the humans, landed lightly, and sprinted away, the wind tearing at us. Shouts, outcries. Flashing magic. Racing steps, dizzying momentum, then the light dimmed. A metal door slammed and red power flared.

  My back hit a hard floor. Zylas knelt over me, his face filling my vision. His hands were on my throat, squeezing.

  “Hold on, payilas,” he whispered.

  I couldn’t move. My limbs had gone weak, my head was spinning, and my heart thundered louder than I’d ever heard it.

  Scarlet magic reflected off the metal walls. Hot power suffused my skin beneath his hands. It veined his arms in shifting lines, and concentration tightened his jaw. His gaze darted across my throat and his lips moved with words I couldn’t hear.

  All I could hear was my racing, booming heart. My stuttering, faltering pulse.

  Red light flared. Agony lanced my throat, the torment building into an inferno. I convulsed, limbs flailing violently, and Zylas dropped down, pinning my body to the floor with his, still crushing my throat in his powerful hands. The excruciating burn rushed down my neck and into my chest where it lit a new fire. I screamed as my bones turned to magma inside me, scorching my innards.

  Then it was over. I lay panting, hurting everywhere as my nerves gradually reset. The only agony that persisted was my throbbing right hand. I swallowed, my throat flexing against his fingers.

  Lying on top of me, his weight heavy and warm, he cautiously released my neck. Blood coated his fingers and drenched his palms, drips plopping
steadily onto the metal floor. My hand crept up. Fingertips sliding across slick blood, I found the thin ridge, two inches long, where the knife had sliced my throat. Where Karlson had shoved the blade when Travis had failed to do it.

  He’d thought killing me would stop Zylas. That my death, and the Banishment Clause, would save them from Zylas’s wrath.

  “They will not survive my wrath,” Zylas growled quietly.

  “I told you to stay out of my head.”

  A metallic boom reverberated through the dark space and I looked past him. We were back in the shipping container, the doors closed and glowing with a demonic rune-filled circle. Another powerful blow hit the steel.

  “Why did you leave me, payilas?”

  My attention snapped back to him, his face hovering above mine. He was braced on his elbows, his weight pressing me down, our noses inches apart. With those crimson eyes locked on mine, I couldn’t hide the truth—not from him or myself.

  I didn’t know what to say, how to explain myself. Then again, there was only one explanation.

  “Because I’m zh’ūltis,” I muttered resignedly.

  A corner of his mouth pulled up. “I have been telling you that.”

  “Yes.”

  “You keep disagreeing.”

  “I did, but you were right all along.”

  His gaze slid across my features as though reassessing them, then he pushed himself up, straddling my hips. He found my right wrist and lifted it. My gut clenched at the sight of my fingers. Bent backward. Contorted. Unmoving.

  Tightening his grip on my hand, he took hold of my index finger. “Close your teeth, payilas, so you do not bite your tongue.”

  I snapped my jaw shut a second before he pulled my finger straight. I screeched through my gritted teeth. Another boom struck the container, shaking the floor, but Zylas ignored it as he straightened my fingers one by one.

  Breathing fast, I waited for the pain to subside. He cradled my hand, lightly pressing on the joints to ensure my bones were properly aligned. I peeked at him, my vision blurred with fresh tears. The loudest bang yet shook the entire container. The spell Zylas had cast on the doors shuddered under the impact, and I clamped down on a new surge of fear.