My voice was slurred and thick.
“He’s determined, all right,” the guard said.
“Shall I finish him off?” the other one asked.
“No. We weren’t paid for that.”
Their blades…There was something on their blades, and they’d cut me. It was inside me. Inside Conah. I…
The lights went out.
Chapter Fifteen
Mal
It’s not the demon’s fault I can’t get it up. She’s beautiful, with creamy brown skin and huge innocent eyes and a mouth that was made to swallow, but she isn’t Fee, and my cock refuses to stand to attention.
I lay back on the bed as she straddles my legs with her mouth working my cock, and will my mind to shut down so my body can take over, but my fucking dick is adamant it’s going to lie there like an epic slug getting a tongue bath.
I sit up. “Well, this is embarrassing.”
She isn’t quick enough to mask the relief on her face. “Is it me?”
Ah, sweet of her to offer the copout. I stroke her cheek, not as soft as Fee’s peach velvet skin.
Not Fee.
Still, ten out of ten for effort. “No. You did good. Great job on all the sucking.”
“You want me to fuck you in the ass?” She looks hopeful. “I have a strap-on.”
I look down at my crotch. Not even a fucking twitch. “Tempting, but no.”
She looks worried. Probably thinking she won’t get paid. I’m not a jerk…Well, not all the time. I hand over double the price of her services and pull my pants back up. My body feels weak as I stand. If I don’t sort this shit out and feed the curse soon, I won’t be able to get out of bed by the end of the week, and that would suck.
Just fuck Fee.
That is the more desirable option, but I’ll be fucking her in more ways than one if I take what I need from her. No, this is my problem to fix, and like they say, you can’t keep a hungry cock down for long. I just need time to get her out of my system.
This is a minor setback. Nothing more.
Leaving the whore house, I make my way back to the edge of town where the tavern awaits. Time to put on an act. Got to make her think I fucked someone else. Have to hurt her to protect her. I feel sick, but I can’t let her see that.
There’s commotion outside the tavern as I draw closer. People are being evicted. Cursing and excitement saturate the air. My gaze goes to the carriage and the drakes. I head over and find it empty.
“We’re closed. Go now. Go away!” a female voice cries.
Foreboding skitters across my scalp, and then I’m striding toward the shitty structure because they have to be in the crowd somewhere. Conah said to meet here. The crowd parts to let me through, and wary eyes burn me, making my hand tingle with the threat of summoning my scythe.
I focus to calm the urge. I need to get to Conah and Fee, not scare the shit out of the locals. They’re not in the crowd, though. They have to be inside.
The doorway to the tavern is blocked by a female daemon wearing a scarf across the lower half of her face, and her angry eyes bore into me.
“No more.” Her voice is an angry rasp. “You do enough already.”
“I think you have me confused with someone else.”
Her eyes narrow. “That’s what the golden one said… You are with them? Two demons, one golden-haired, the other silver-haired and blue-eyed?”
“My companions, yes. Do you know where they are? Are they inside?”
The daemon blinks at me, and her posture relaxes. “The queen’s guards attacked your companions. They took your golden-haired friend. The other one is hurt and unconscious.”
Guards? Wait, what? I can’t keep the sneer off my face. “The queen’s guards wouldn’t attack us. We’re nobles from Lilith’s court.”
“They didn’t seem to care. They take our money. They terrorize the village, and now they attack members of the queen’s court. They do what they want.”
Guards would never attack Conah. Not unless… “Fuck. Take me to my friend. Please.”
She steps aside to let me into the tavern and then slams the door closed behind us.
The place is trashed. Tables overturned and several broken chairs, but my gaze zeros in on a dark spot on the wooden floor.
Blood.
Chapter Sixteen
Fee
I came to with a start. “Conah!”
Hands pressed me back down to the bed. “No, it’s Mal. I can’t fucking leave you alone for one minute, can I?”
Mal…Mal was here. I blinked up at the hard lines of his face. “They took Conah.”
“I know.”
I sat up slowly, and this time he didn’t stop me. We were in a small neat bedroom bathed in the orange light of a dying sun. How long had I been unconscious, and why did my mouth taste like licorice. Yuck. I fucking hated licorice.
“What happened, Fee?” Mal asked. “Tell me what happened.”
“Demons dressed in guard cloaks attacked us. They had knives coated in a drug. It knocked Conah out when they stabbed him.” I shook my head. “So much for the only threat to us being from mouths and dread. What the fuck was on those knives?”
He sucked in his cheeks in thought. “Not many drugs can knock out a Dominus, and only two that I know of can achieve it for any length of time.” He looked pained. “Both are manufactured in Imperium.”
“No. Those guards weren’t real. I know it. Besides, why would the queen want Conah dead? He’s the link to form a treaty that can stop a war. He’s her bloodline.”
“I don’t know.” Mal’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “But we can worry about that once we’ve saved Conah.” He scanned my face. “You can’t fight with the amulet on.”
My hand went to my neck to find the amulet gone. “Where is it?”
He held it up. “You weren’t healing, so I took it off and voilà, you were conscious in ten minutes once your Loup metabolism got to work and burned through the drug. Wounds knitted too.”
“It suppresses my Loup and the scythe.” He was right, I was useless in a fight with that damn thing on.
“Yes, and you’re going to need both to help me get Conah back…” He trailed off, and I knew what he was thinking.
“No. He’s alive. I heard the guy say they weren’t paid to kill him.”
“Just to delay him then.” Mal’s jaw ticked. “Delay him until the auspicious hour for the union has passed.”
“What?”
“The wedding takes place at a specific time ordained by the Oracle.” At the confused look on my face, he clarified. “The Oracle is a supercomputer that holds the consciousness of a daemon who could see the future, the past, and the present. It only gives out certain information, though, because knowing the future can disrupt the balance of the present. It picked the date for the wedding, and once it passes, the next window will be in a decade. If Conah misses it…”
“No wedding.”
“No treaty.” Mal’s eyes were hard.
“The queen wouldn’t…Would she? I thought she wanted peace.”
“So did I. Fuck. There are many factions who don’t want this alliance to happen. That’s probably why Earnest plotted this obscure route for us. Someone knew, though. Whether it’s the queen or a spy we won’t know until we question those bastards.” He ran a hand over his face. “Problem is, they could be anywhere by now…”
“Not anywhere.” The daemon female stepped out from the wall, and I let out a squeal.
There was a door in the wall, built in so seamlessly we hadn’t even noticed.
Her slanted cat’s eyes were fixed on me. “I knew you were more than met the eye.”
Oh shit. She was seeing me in my full female form.
Mal turned to glare at her. “You promised privacy. I want my gold back.”
Her eyes smiled coldly. “But I wager you want the location of your companion even more.”
“You know where he is?”
“I know where they may have taken him. Unlike my spineless husband, I keep tabs on the threats in this village. Those bastard guards have been extorting money from us for months now.”
I frowned. “I doubt they’re real guards.”
“It doesn’t matter what they are,” Mal said. “We need to get Conah back before they change their minds and decide to use more of the drug to incapacitate and then kill him.”
I implored the daemon with my eyes. “Please, tell us what you know.”
Her gaze fell to the amulet. “For a price.”
Shit.
“No,” Mal said. “Not this. Pick something else.”
“Is that trinket more important than the Dominus’s life?”
“If it means giving up another life, yes,” Mal said. “Pick something else.”
She made a sound of exasperation that rumbled through me. “The amulet or nothing.”
I stared into her eyes and caught the flash of desperation and the darkness of despair before she masked it.
“Why? Why do you want it so bad?”
For a moment, I thought she’d tell me where to shove it, but then she reached up and unhooked the scarf from behind her ear, letting it fall to expose the lower half of her face.
I bit back a scream at the sight of the bone gleaming through the gapes in her cheeks and her twisted, lopsided mouth. The bottom half of her nose was also gone, and then her face rippled, and it was smooth and so beautiful it took my breath away.
“This was me,” she said through perfect pouty lips that begged to be kissed.
And then her face morphed again, but this time into something frightening and hideous with serrated teeth and a wide mouth.
“And this is what I am to the world now.” The illusion melted, leaving bone and lopsided flesh, and she pinned the scarf back in place with trembling hands. “So now you know my secret.”
“You’re not a Conari daemon,” Mal said.