Chapter Twenty-Five

“No!” I shouted. “If you want my cooperation, you’ll leave him be.”

The demon studied me for a moment as two other demons ran into the courtyard. They slowed in jerky movements when they saw the dead littering the ground.

“What of Tensess?” the red demon asked the others, not looking away from me.

“It killed our ambassador,” one of the demons answered. “It wants your head.”

“Does it, now? That isn’t very friendly.” The red demon paused for a moment, considering. “Send someone to attend to the Great Master. Take him gifts. Try to keep him put, and unaware of our activities until we have Tensess’s head. Release our full arsenal. Tensess has no idea what it has unleashed.”

“Yes, conspector.” They turned and ran.

“I have been at odds with our neighboring sect for centuries. They are always under my skin.” The demon turned and walked through the door. We followed it through the air as helplessly as kites on a string.

Can you get us out of this? Darius thought.

I closed my eyes and felt the magic around me. Solely ice magic but so expertly woven, and backed by so much power, it almost seemed like an inanimate object. Even hacking at it with fire wouldn’t disturb it. This demon was out of my league.

Miserably, I shook my head. We were in a fix here, and I wasn’t sure how to get us out of it.

Two floors up, the red demon opened a wooden door and poked its head in. “Call the Five. I have important business to discuss. It cannot wait. And have them bring in that sniveling Agnon. We need all enlightened parties in one place.”

That would have been good news if I’d had a hope in Hades of breaking out of this hold.

An affirmation had the red demon pulling back and shutting the door.

“What’s with the getup?” I asked.

The red demon entered something like an elevator shaft that had no elevator. We drifted in beside it like balloons.

“This, you mean?” It ran its hand in front of its chest. Its tail flicked.

“Yeah. It’s a little cartoony for the leader of a sect this close to Lucifer.”

Its smile pulled at its cheeks, showing a mouthful of rotten, brown, pointed teeth. At least, they looked rotten. The demon was probably hamming it up for my benefit. What a sweetie.

“You call him by his real name,” it said. “Amazing. Either you have no fear, and are therefore stupid, or you are playing games. I wonder which it is.”

“I can’t really get a reading on you. Was that rhetorical?”

We rose through the air, up through the spacious shaft. This thing was its own elevator. I hated how cool that was.

“And you speak our language. More amazing still. That will make things so much easier. Tell me, who taught it to you?”

“Oh no.” I shook my head. “This isn’t some one-sided Q&A. If you want answers, you have to give them. I’m still waiting for your reasons for looking so ridiculous.”

“Stupid, then. I see.” We reached the very top floor. I looked down and my stomach threatened to revolt. There was a void of empty space below us. A lot of it. And we were totally under this demon’s control—we would go splat if it wanted us to.

Darius had been right, though. The most powerful thing in the sect (hopefully) made its…office? Hall?…on the highest floor.

I mentally checked in with the vampire, and was absolutely astounded to realize his heart was beating regularly, strong and slow. Either he was going dormant until he had an opening to revolt, or he thought I would come up with a way to save the day.

I hoped it was the former. No ideas were coming to me as of yet—all I could think to do was study that magic and hope something came to me.

We drifted after the demon into a large rectangular room with huge rugs covering the stone floor. In the first half of the room couches and chairs were clustered together for easy conversation. The second half seemed like a king’s chamber, with a large wooden chair at the front and smaller chairs lining the walls leading up to it.

The red demon took the chair at the front while Darius and I were forced to split up, each controlled by a different surge of air. I was brought to a stop front and center, facing the demon, while Darius was put off to the side.

“So.” The demon crossed an ankle over a knee and leaned back, reminding me of a human. I wondered how much time it had spent in the Brink. “You have come to me.”

“Surprise!” I said.

“You realize your worth, I take it.”

“To you? Yes. To my father?” I hesitated.

“Maybe you are not so stupid after all. There is some debate that he won’t be as thrilled to discover he has an heir as we had previously thought. He has been let down in the past. But so far, you are holding up just fine. Look at you. Not even the hint of the death rattle humans always seem to develop in this airless part of our world. That bodes well. Then there is your mother.”

I couldn’t help the shock of longing that came over me, something that aways seemed to happen when she was mentioned out of the blue.

“Yes. We know who your mother is. Why do you think we had to grow those accursed flowers along our walls?” The demon snorted. “She loved natural beauty, so I hear. The Great Master has decided we should incorporate more of that within the kingdom. All of us should, not just the insufferable love seekers and sex worshipers. What are we, elves?”

Warmth welled up inside of me. My father didn’t just remember my mother, he had incorporated one of her loves into his home—and not just in some glen for weary travelers, in the whole kingdom. That was sweet, even if it was probably a short-term situation. Darius was right; for an immortal, the twenty five years he’d been away from her was a blink of an eye. At least his affection for her had been genuine. That was nice to hear.

Shuffling sounded behind me. I craned my head, but I couldn’t get a good look at the moving shapes I saw out of the corner of my eye. That was, until they filed in and took seats.

Six of them in all, and five the expected knobby, bony, or otherwise gross form of a demon. The last was a tall, skinny thing that reminded me of an elf. It skulked in behind the others, bent and broken.

My old friend Agnon. It needed more time to heal, because it looked pretty miserable. Or maybe that was as good as it was going to get.

“What is this?” one of the demons asked.

“We are needed elsewhere. We do not have time for captives, however strange,” another said.

“For those of you who doubted, it seems Agnon was telling us the truth all along. This is the heir.” The red demon gestured toward me grandly.

“This is the heir?” one of the demons asked, rising. It stalked up to give me the ole once over. “It is but a human.”

“It is part human, as Agnon has said.” The red demon uncrossed his leg. “Agnon was also correct about her magic. She has both types. I saw her use them together, but it seems she hasn’t yet fused them. She is in her infancy.”

“Clearly.” Another stood and walked around me. “What is she, a hundred human years? She knows nothing.”

“A hundred? Really?” I glowered at the demon that had said that.

“So it is the heir. So what?” said one of the demons that hadn’t bothered to get up. “If we present her to the Great Master now, we might risk his displeasure. We are not sure he still values an heir. Not after the son died.”

“And if he does?” the red demon asked. “Then we are holding an invaluable prize.”

“We can always test the waters before presenting her,” said the one standing in front of me. “If he seems favorable to the possibility, we go ahead as planned. If not, we kill her and be done with it.”

“In the meantime, we can train her,” another said. “Use her.”

“Because I’m going to be on board with being used.” I shook my head. “You guys need to take a lesson from the vampires on how to properly manipulate someone.” Hisses filled the room. “Not a fan of vampires then?”

“We are in agreement,” the red demon said, ignoring the vampire comment. And Darius. “We must take her elsewhere to train her. We cannot have her so close to the castle, nor can we risk knowledge of her getting out until we are sure she is ready. And wanted.”