Samantha folded her arms. “A family?”
“You know nothing about your mother and me,” Fulton snapped.
Leda waved for quiet again. “Tell you what, when you’re all reunited, you can have a huge three-way fight. But let’s find Joanne first, all right?”
Both of them turned to Leda, as though remembering she was there. They scowled at her, and then gave grudging nods.
Fulton’s lack of knowledge disconcerted Leda a little. She’d hoped the demon would have some insight on how Samantha’s mother had been magicked away. Now she had nothing to go on except that Joanne had fought hard against and had been overwhelmed by a being who could enter the house through locked doors and very strong witch wards.
That narrowed the possibilities to something like a highly powerful demon, but Leda had no clue why one would want Samantha’s mother. Plus, at the house, Leda had felt nowhere near the strength of the demon that had attacked the island. On the other hand, the counter-spell to Leda’s locator spell had been fierce. No lesser demon had done that.
Leda wished Hunter hadn’t run off so quickly. She needed his magic and his knowledge of demons to figure out what was going on. She’d have to put aside her anger at him and his annoyance at her to solve this problem. As she’d berated Samantha and Fulton, they needed to figure out the answer first and have their big fight later.
“Let me call Hunter,” she said. “Whatever could do this, he’d know. And if it’s our big bad demon, we need to know that too.”
Fulton gave her a nod. “Why don’t you run along and do that? I’ll stay here, not that I have a choice.”
“With Mukasa.” Leda smiled sweetly. “We’ll be right back.”
She went back up the drive with Samantha following in heavy silence.
Kelly, still waiting at the window, agreed to call Septimus for Leda. She dialed his direct number, greeting her lover with evident pleasure. Then Kelly lost her smile, looked quickly at Leda, and held out the phone.
“What?” Leda asked, heart thumping hard. She pressed the phone to her ear. “Septimus?”
“Hunter is gone,” the vampire said crisply. “He vanished somewhere between Adrian’s house and here. My driver swears by his blood Hunter never got out, and that he never stopped the car. Adrian tells me Hunter can’t create a portal by himself, so someone must have come in and taken him.”
Chapter Fourteen
“This is the lamest dungeon I’ve ever seen,” Hunter called out to no one.
He stood against a stone wall that could only be called dank, his hands pinned behind him by rope he could break and a spell he could not.
He knew this wasn’t a real dungeon—it was an illusion, and a stupid one at that. It looked and felt real, from the slime-coated stone walls to the clammy air, from the empty manacles on the walls to the cage suspended from the ceiling by a heavy chain. It also smelled like a dungeon—damp, disgusting, putrid.
“You’ve been watching too many movies,” Hunter shouted.
Apart from himself, the room was empty. He’d blacked out in the portal to awaken here, bound and annoyed.
Hunter reached across the room with his magic and ripped the cage from the ceiling, slamming it to the floor. He twisted the empty manacle cuffs around and around until they shattered, but as much as he tried, he couldn’t unbind himself. The spell that held him in place was stronger than chains.
He had no clue where he was. This could be an ordinary building in Los Angeles that the demon had made over into her personal dungeon, or Hunter could be in a dimension hidden behind the ripple of reality he kept sensing. Wherever it was, he could destroy the details but not the place itself.
“I’m getting bored,” Hunter said in a loud voice.
He wanted to see the demon front and center, because if the demon was with him, she couldn’t be out hurting or killing Leda. Leda had grown angry when Hunter told her not to die for him, but she’d misunderstood. He should have said, “Don’t die because of me.”
His wife, a warrior in her tribe, had taken up a sword to defend him, and the Old demon they’d fought had mowed her down. Then the demon had turned around and killed Hunter’s babies just to prove he could.
Hunter had fought him like a madman, until the demon had escaped into some hell dimension. In his grief and frustration, Hunter had, without remorse, wiped out the other demons who’d been attacking the tribe, down to the last one. They’d never known what hit them.
Grief had been a new sensation for Hunter. Sadness he’d experienced before, sorrow for other people’s loss. But as Tain had reminded him, Hunter had pulled at his chest, trying to rip out the intense pain, then he’d lain in a stupor for days, not wanting to live and knowing he couldn’t die.
He’d been saved, not by his brothers or the goddesses, but by a mother terrified for a child who’d been stolen by efreets. Efreets were nasty creatures who haunted the mountains and lived on blood, but unlike vampires, they had no memory of their humanity.
Hunter had taken up his sword and searched for the child, going seven days and seven nights without sleep or food before finding the boy in a remote valley in the Transylvanian mountains. He’d destroyed the enclave of efreets with a blast of white magic, then carried the half-dead child back to his mother, keeping the boy warm and alive through the journey.
The child’s innocent trust in Hunter and the mother’s stunned gratitude had given Hunter his reason to live. Never again, he’d ground out to himself. What happened to them will never happen again.
Hunter had known he couldn’t possibly police the entire world all the time, and that plenty of women and children would die undefended. But none would when he was nearby. He’d be a champion to the weak, and defend them until their enemies were dead. Hunter took reckless risks, and people called him crazy, but he’d never let anyone down who needed him.
He wouldn’t let Leda down now.
He enjoyed himself destroying bits of the dungeon, pulling the manacles out of the walls, ripping the grates and various pieces of stone from the floor. By the time his arms and legs began cramping from remaining in one place for so long, he heard the grating of a key in a lock and the screech of an un-oiled door.
He rolled his eyes at the theatrical touch as the demonness strolled into the room dressed in full dominatrix gear—shiny black vinyl corset, thigh-high boots, full-length gloves, whip. She still looked like Leda, her honey-gold hair curling around her shoulders, except for her eyes, which were completely black.
She sauntered across the room, the door closing behind her, minus the screech this time. “Most men go rock hard when they see me,” she said.
“Most men obviously need more to do,” Hunter returned.
“But I fulfill their darkest fantasies. You’d give anything to see your witch like this, wouldn’t you? Or would you prefer her submitting to you?”
The demon lowered her head and peeped up at him from the corners of her eyes, holding the whip level in both hands and offering it to him. Goddess, she looked like Leda, smiling shyly but with excited anticipation.
“You suck at reading fantasies,” Hunter said.
The demon lifted her head and gave him a wide smile. “You lie to me and yourself. You want her, any and every way you can have her. You will kill her with your wanting because she’s human, and therefore can never sate you.”
The demon couldn’t begin to understand what Hunter longed for with Leda, and Hunter wasn’t about to enlighten her. “This is why demons are stupid. Everything is about sex to you.”
“I have watched you over the years, Immortal. You and your brothers, but especially you. You are protective of the weak humans and your animals, but when you choose a bedmate, you use her quickly then walk away. You think you’re being kind to these women, not wearing them out before you discard them. This one you want more than the others, but you will hurt her if you keep at her.” The demon stepped to him, the smell of perfume and vinyl cloying. “But you can use me. I w
ill look like Leda for you, and you can have her all you want. I never get tired, and I can match you hour for hour. We can go on for centuries.”
“Even stupider,” Hunter said softly.
She put her lips close to his jaw. “I will have you, Hunter. I’m trying to make it nice for you.”
“Yeah? And here I thought you were trying to make me sick.”
Her smile became fixed. “You like to banter. I find that adorable in Immortals. Tain used to like it too. I think I’ve finally broken him of the habit.”
Hunter thought of his vision of Tain last night, of looking into Tain’s crazed eyes and seeing the spark of sanity trying to pierce his madness. Hunter’s anger rose. “I am so looking forward to killing you.”
“And I am looking forward to hearing you scream. It will stop that snotty tone of yours.”
“Huh. I thought you liked my banter.”
The demon licked the line of his jaw. “I like screaming better. Either that or you begging for me to hurt you.”
Hunter hid his revulsion at the wet heat of her tongue. “You don’t understand anything about why people want sex.”
“I understand everything. Desires hidden in shame, the human need to master one another, the struggle with their need to submit.”
“Back to bondage, are you? You’re obsessed with it.”
She drew back, smiling Leda’s smile. “It’s all you can think of, isn’t it? Leda kneeling to you, wanting you to master her. You want it but you’re afraid to admit it. With me, you can live the fantasy.” She knelt before him, once again raising the whip in offering. “Do to me what you secretly want to do to her. You can have her the way you want her, for eternity. I’ll be your Leda-slave.”
Hunter’s rage surged. This demon sparked an anger he kept buried deep inside, the kind that came forth rarely, the anger that had once slain a hundred efreets in a flash. Kehksut could torture Hunter all she wanted, but she wouldn’t use Leda to do it.
Hunter couldn’t break his spelled restraints, but he could reach out with his magic and rip the illusion of Leda from the demon’s form. The demon shimmered, blurring between male and female before settling down into female again. She still wore the corset and boots, but her hair was straight and black, her face narrow, no longer Leda’s.
She pouted. “You’re no fun.”
“You can’t read minds worth shit.”
Hunter hadn’t been dreaming of Leda as his absolute slave. Playing bed games with her, yes; but what he wanted with Leda went far beyond that. He wanted to see her face light up when she saw him, as it had when he’d walked into Septimus’s office to meet her. She hadn’t realized she’d looked happy to see him, but she had.
He wanted Leda sleeping next to him, her breathing deep and even, her body snuggled into his. Hunter had spent hours watching her sleep last night, never tiring of it. He wanted to see Leda glaring at him over the breakfast table about some argument they’d had. And he wanted to see her holding his child.
The demon couldn’t pick out what Hunter really wanted, because she didn’t understand the concept of love. Lust, greed, and desires, yes. Love and comfort, no.
The demon leaned forward and licked Hunter’s bare nipple, the movement tight and practiced. Hunter jerked in reaction.
“I’m tired of this,” he said. “Tell me why you want to play bondage games with Immortals.”
“Go with it, Hunter.” Tain’s voice rolled out of the darkness, and Tain himself walked into the circle of light a moment later. It made Hunter wonder what was in the shadows—the backs of flats like on a theatre set?
“You’ll enjoy it,” Tain said.
Hunter tried to look straight into Tain’s eyes, but Tain kept his gaze averted. “Right,” Hunter drawled. “The crazy man tells me I’ll like the torture.”
“It hurts at first.” Tain moved to Hunter’s side and leaned against the wall next to him. He wore medieval dress today, a chain-mail shirt covered with a surcoat, his broad shoulders stretching the tiny linked rings. His red hair spilled to his shoulders, unbound, the pentacle tattoo on his cheek sharp on his tanned skin.
The demon lifted her fingers to caress Tain’s face, but Hunter noticed she very carefully didn’t touch the tattoo. Tain turned his head and kissed her palm. His eyes closed, but not before Hunter saw again the spark of loathing.
“Tain,” Hunter said. He sent a tendril of white magic toward him.
The demon snapped the tendril as soon as it touched Tain, and Tain frowned. The whip in the demon’s hand shimmered and turned into a long, hooked knife.
“Not for you, my pet,” the demon said. She turned to Hunter. “He needs to learn.”
Hunter thought of the scarring he’d glimpsed on Tain’s body the night before. Tain’s hands and face were unblemished, but his chest bore rows of scars. Hunter wondered how much of Tain’s body was marked.
“I made a mistake with Adrian,” the demon said conversationally. “I tried to break him too fast, and his foolish witch ruined everything. I should have tamed him slowly, as I did my beloved.”
She smiled and watched Tain trail his fingers down Hunter’s torso, tracing a line. Marking the first cut?
Tain’s fingertips stopped an inch below Hunter’s navel, brushing the edges of his pentacle tattoo. Hunter saw a flash—so fast he couldn’t be certain—and sudden pain stung him, as though Hunter’s tattoo had just turned into a searing brand. Tain flinched and jerked his hand back, his fingers going to the tattoo on his cheek. The brief sanity flashed in his eyes and then vanished.
The demon noticed nothing. She had the tip of the blade on Hunter’s neck and was staring at it hungrily. Hunter felt the bite of the knife and a trickle of blood, which the demon leaned forward and licked.
“I thought only vampires liked blood,” Hunter said, keeping his voice steady.
“There are many things about demons you don’t know,” she said. “But I will let you find out. I can’t wait to teach you everything.”
She cut. Hunter gritted his teeth. Not that bad, he told himself. I’ve been hurt much worse than this.
The next cut was not that bad either, or the next, but putting them all together smarted like hell. Hunter found his head banging back against the wall, his teeth clenching so he wouldn’t cry out. Hunter’s own hair stung his raw flesh as did the tears that leaked unheeded from his eyes.
“It is a beginning,” the demon said. She licked the knife with a long tongue, her shiny corset spattered with blood. She turned a smile on Tain. “Do you want me, my love?”
“Yes.” Tain said the word with longing, even with the spark of loathing in his eyes.
“Aw, please don’t,” Hunter said, his voice ragged. “Skinning me is one thing, but making me watch you—that’s just cruel.”
Tain was so far gone, he never heard what Hunter said. He swept the demon up into his arms and headed for the shadows. After a moment, Hunter heard the sound of a door slamming, and found himself alone.
The pain was nauseating, even if his Immortal body immediately tried to heal him. Hunter closed his eyes tightly against the agony. To keep himself from screaming, he started to sing.
Leda recruited Fulton, who had an SUV waiting halfway down the road, to drive them to Septimus’s club. Kelly had offered her car and driver, but Leda wanted not only to keep an eye on Fulton but thought that maybe, as a demon, he could help figure out what had happened to Hunter. She wanted him with them.
Fulton stared in horror as Mukasa wedged his head through the back door of the SUV and put one paw on the seat. “What is he doing?”
“Open the back,” Leda said. To Fulton’s stubborn glare she said, “Are you going to argue with a lion? Samantha can’t hold him on her lap. Open the back.”
Fulton sighed and touched a button on his dash to pop open the rear door. Mukasa loped around to the back, leaping readily inside. The truck rocked with his weight.
Fulton drove them through a Los Angeles more chaotic than usu
al to Septimus’s, Kelly following in her sedate limo. The vampire club looked derelict when they pulled in front of it, the flat black-painted doors closed, a metal grate pulled over them. The rest of the building was bare brick with no windows—vampires lived there. The street lay empty, scattered trash moving in the breeze.
Leda got out of the car, Mukasa jumping out of the back as soon as Fulton released the latch. The black eye of a camera above the door trained on them, then the grates began to roll upward.
Kelly emerged from her own car as gracefully as a socialite arriving at a soiree. She pushed open the club’s door with the ease of one accustomed to entering this place any time she wanted and walked inside.
“Septimus?” she called.
The club looked much different than it had when open, chairs stacked on tables, dim fluorescent bulbs throwing a chill light over the place. Everything was tidy, the floor polished. The club looked more like an ordinary restaurant with a meticulous owner than a haven for people who wanted to indulge themselves with vampires.
Septimus stepped quickly out of the shadows to Kelly and took her hands, pressing a brief kiss on her upturned lips. He glanced at the others, raising brows when he saw Fulton.
“Samantha’s father,” Leda said. “Long story.”
Septimus’s elegant brows rose another notch, but he led them all back into his office.
The human driver waited there, his face as pale as any vampire’s. He had two red puncture wounds on his neck, though he was still alive and radiating fear.
“Tell us what happened,” Leda said before Septimus could speak. She tried to sound reassuring, but the man paled further.
“He doesn’t know,” Septimus said in disgust. “He swears he picked up Hunter and drove straight here, making no stops. Hunter never got out of the car, he claims, and no one got in.”
“If the door opens, the dash lights up,” the driver said, stammering a little. “And there’s a buzzer. Has to be, for the safety of the passengers. Some people like to party in Septimus’s limos—they get so drunk they hang out of the car or try to jump out. So I control the doors from the front.”
The Gathering Page 15