Chase the Dark (Steel & Stone Book 1)

by Annette Marie

  Piper dragged herself to her feet. “It was a real riddle,” she panted, one hand against the stitch in her side. “The answer was the rope. It’s silk, comes from bugs . . . rope burn and whatever . . . and it helped me win and you lose.” Sphinxes might not be obsessed with riddles, exactly, but they were fatally curious. Stupid cat had to hear the whole riddle. Thank God the bimbo had been so easy to distract.

  The sphinx slowly rolled over on her stomach, holding her throat with one hand. She was down but she wouldn’t be staying that way. Time to go.

  Piper ran for the door. Right as she was wondering desperately how to singlehandedly carry Lyre out of the house, the incubus opened the door and casually leaned one shoulder against the frame. He looked over at the stunned sphinx.

  “Personally,” he said, “I prefer a little less hair.”

  She stumbled right into him, shaking her head wordlessly. “Can we go now? Please?”

  “Sure thing, gorgeous.”

  He wrapped an arm around her waist and hurried her back down the hall.

  “How’d you wake up so fast?” Piper asked as they came to the T-shaped intersection of halls.

  “It was the wrong dose for a dae—shit.”

  “There they are,” the skinny haemon from the office yelled. Casanova was right behind him at the end of hall, along with the haemons Piper had already roughed up.

  “This way,” Lyre said, yanking Piper in the opposite direction. She tried to run but her legs had turned to Jell-O in the aftermath of too much adrenaline. The haemons barreled down the hall toward them, closing fast.

  As they reached the hallway intersection, the sphinx appeared from the third branch of the hallway, spitting with fury and still clutching her throat. The whole group of haemons squealed as they plowed into her. A horrible cat screech filled the hall and magic blasted.

  “Um,” Lyre said. “Shall we continue on then?”

  “Sure,” Piper said faintly. A wall exploded as someone’s spell missed. “Quickly?”

  They jogged to the front door and let themselves out. Piper waited in the trees while Lyre collected their packs of clothes, the briefcase, and his tote of food. Together they hauled their bounty into the dark trees. Ten minutes of walking and Piper recognized the little clearing where they’d hidden the car. She eagerly strode forward, shoving past a thorny bush.

  The car was no longer covered in branches. All four doors hung open like the vehicle had been ransacked. The seats were empty.

  Ash was gone.

  . . .

  Piper would’ve liked to say they didn’t panic, but she and Lyre both flipped out for a solid five minutes—searching the obviously empty car, running around the nearby woods, swearing a lot. Then Zwi showed up and led them three dozen yards into the trees where Ash was camped out on a branch. Apparently, the three haemon goons who’d burst into the kitchen at the worst possible moment for Piper and Lyre had been returning from searching their car. Luckily, Ash had been awake—wondering why the hell he was alone in an unfamiliar car in the middle of a forest—and had been able to ditch the car before the goons found him.

  Reunited, they rushed back to the car, threw their things into the backseat, and drove for the next two hours. While Piper filled him in on what he’d missed, Ash alternated between yawning and eating, devouring half the food Lyre had packed before falling asleep again.

  As they drove, she held the briefcase on her lap and resisted the urge to open it. She would mix up the files trying to read them in the car and she couldn’t risk sabotaging her only chance to find out who’d kidnapped her father. Well, her second chance, because she’d already blown her first chance.

  Now that she was away from the Consulate and its “guests,” she couldn’t believe how much of an idiot she was. She hadn’t thought about it at the time, more concerned with staying un-kidnapped and alive, but those haemons had to be part of the plot that had resulted in her uncle being terribly injured, Piper being blamed for stealing the Sahar, and for her father being kidnapped. They knew where her father was.

  Why hadn’t she made them tell her? Why hadn’t she at least tried to get some clues out of them as to their identities? Failing that, she could have gone with them. That would have been the fastest way to find Quinn—but then she would have been delivering the Sahar right into their hands and putting herself at their mercy. Maybe not a good idea.

  Either way, she hadn’t done any of that. She hadn’t found out a single useful bit of information about her attackers. When they’d first mentioned her father, she’d been determined to find out the truth, but then the head-to-wall collision had happened. Nothing like a concussion to make you lose your train of thought.

  Why had they tried to capture her? Who cared about her? Her only importance in this whole mess was being the true possessor of the Sahar but only Quinn knew that for sure. Somehow he had kept that secret, though she couldn’t imagine how if they’d drugged him. Drugs, magic, and a little time could make anyone spill any secret.

  Her hands clenched. She needed to find Quinn. Quickly. Not only because he was in danger and being held prisoner, but also because she had to get to him before they made him reveal she had the Sahar. No one could know the truth. They didn’t even have a plan yet. If it got out they had the Stone, they were screwed.

  Lyre eventually drove them to a block of rundown apartments where a daemon friend of his rented a flat. Said friend was currently in the Underworld, which meant the place was empty. As the sky began to lighten with dawn, they crept into the apartment building and Lyre used a touch of magic to pop the lock. Once inside, they barricaded the door just in case.

  Stumbling with fatigue, Lyre headed straight for the shower. Piper hadn’t found out until after the fact, but the sphinx hadn’t been the only daemon spying on the Consulate. Lyre had been ambushed outside the building and barely managed to win a fight for his life. Incubi were lovers, not fighters, but it seemed Lyre could deal some punishment if properly motivated.

  Piper could have used a shower too but she headed straight for the dusty kitchen table. Ash sat in a rickety chair as she carefully unclasped the briefcase and lifted the lid. The pile of files looked even bigger crammed in the tiny square.

  “What the hell?” Ash muttered. It was probably the fifth time he’d spoken since waking. The normally quiet daemon had gone emo-worthy reticent since his near-death injury. If she hadn’t had bigger problems, she might have been concerned.

  “There was a lot of stuff in the safe,” she said defensively as she eased the first three folders off the top. “I didn’t have time to go through it.”

  He grunted and accepted the first stack of folders. She took three and sat beside him.

  “I think we should skim through the folders to get an idea of what each is about,” she told him. “Then we can shortlist the ones most likely to have answers and read those in detail.”

  Ash nodded and opened the first folder. He glanced down the first page, flipped through a couple more, then closed it again. “Financial records for the Consulate,” he explained as he pushed that one to the left side of the table.

  She opened her first folder. It was a list of suppliers for the Consulate: persons and businesses that could be relied on to supply all the necessities the Consulate needed to function. She closed the folder and dropped it on top of the financial folder. Her next folder was huge and contained a list of daemons banned from Consulates across the continent, with a short description of them and what they’d done to get banned. She hesitated over it, then pushed it to the other side of the table. Revenge could make people—and daemons—do crazy things.

  By the time Lyre joined them again, she and Ash were two-thirds of the way through the briefcase. Most of the folders were obvious non-candidates. With Lyre’s help, they made it through the last ten files in a quarter hour. Twenty-four were in the unlikely pile. Six were in the short list.

  One was the list of banned daemons. One was a list of current and former C
onsuls from across the continent. The Head Consul was the top authority and managed 300 other Consulates, so that was a huge folder too. Another one contained profile pages of daemons considered “high risk” that were known to frequent the Consulate’s district: daemons branded as aggressive, violent, and unconcerned with law.

  The last three files were case studies of groups the Consulate needed to keep an eye on. One was a group of Overworld daemons who wanted to rule the world, or, as their recruitment speech went, “engender a new earth where peace, tolerance, and high quality of life are enjoyed by human and daemon alike as guided by the generous and fair hands of a central ruling council of Overworld leaders”. They called themselves the Saviors, which Piper thought was likely to get them shot. For the most part, the Saviors were harmless, mainly because their “peace for all” mantra hadn’t attracted any powerful daemons to their cause. Therefore, no one paid them any attention.

  Another was about a human establishment that offered free services to daemons—services of a personal nature. All the daemons had to do was “forget” any kind of protection and never bother coming back to check if any little haemons resulted. It was essentially a haemon breeding service. Seriously messed up. Even more messed up because, according to the file, it was pretty popular with daemons and human parents-to-be. There were certain concerns that the facility might be trying to create a haemon army.

  The last file was about a sect of haemons who opposed daemon interference on earth. Called the Gaians, they wanted to eject all daemons from earth and allow them to visit only under extremely controlled circumstances. Publicly, they claimed to be fighting for human rights; they protected humans from daemon “milkers” who “stole human energy without consent,” and vehemently protested against daemon trickery, bullying, attacks, blah blah blah.

  Behind closed doors, their real agenda was more nefarious; by removing daemons from the picture, haemons would become the most powerful beings on Earth—the perfect opportunity to take control. The Gaian haemons were almost as arrogant as most daemons, thinking their magic made them superior to humans and, therefore, humanity’s logical rulers. Their group was dangerously popular among haemons. They easily attracted followers because being a haemon wasn’t fun most of the time; humans who knew what you were didn’t want anything to do with you, but daemons didn’t like haemons either. A lot of haemons would see the chance to not only boot out the daemons, but also make a place for themselves in the world, as a well-worthy cause.

  She finished reading the file and set it on the table. Lyre tapped his fingers on the back of the file about the Saviors while Ash watched her.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “These Saviors.” Disgust lined Lyre’s voice. “They haven’t gotten anywhere because they have no power to back them up. The Sahar would solve that problem.”

  “The breeding facility,” Ash put in with the same tone of aversion, “if it is in fact aiming to generate a fighting force, would likely seek the Sahar as well.”

  She looked at the file lying innocently in front of her. The Gaians—the name was painfully familiar.

  “I think it’s the Gaians,” she whispered.

  Lyre frowned. Ash stared like he was trying to see her thoughts through her skull.

  “They have the resources,” she explained. “They’re the largest group and they have chapters all over the continent. And they have a history of violent stunts, like burning down that Consulate two years ago.”

  Lyre nodded slowly. Ash’s expression was indecipherable.

  “Plus,” she added, “as the largest group, they’d have enough people to station those haemons at the Consulate to wait for us.”

  “For you,” Ash corrected softly.

  She pressed her lips together; she’d already told them everything her haemon attackers had said, but they were stumped too as to why the haemons had been after her specifically.

  “I think we can discount the Saviors,” Ash mused. “The presence of the haemons in the Consulate makes them the least likely.”

  “Maybe either the breeders or the Gaians were trying to recruit Piper,” Lyre suggested.

  “Why?” she asked bitterly. “I don’t have any power to add to their ranks.”

  “Not magic,” Ash murmured, “but you have knowledge.”

  “Knowledge?”

  “About us. Daemons.”

  She blinked. “I do?”

  Lyre smirked. “So modest.” His expression morphed into a wicked grin. “Well, modest about some things. Not modest when it comes to—”

  “Lyre,” she hissed.

  “What? I’m just saying you’re no blushing—”

  “Lyre!”

  He laughed. Ash looked between them, his eyebrows inching upward.

  She cleared her throat loudly. “As I was saying, the Gaians are our best bet.”

  “Is that what you said?” Lyre asked. “I thought we were still discussing it.”

  “I . . .” She scowled at the folder. “This is the kind of thing the Gaians would do.”

  Ash leaned forward. “You know about them?”

  “Only a little.”

  “How?”

  She scowled deeper, refusing to look up. “My mother had . . . Gaian sympathies. She talked to me about them sometimes. Before she left.” And then died.

  Lyre winced. “That must not have gone over well with your dad.”

  She’d suspected for years her mother’s attitude toward the Gaians had probably been at the root of the argument that had driven her mom out of her life forever.

  Ash tapped the Gaian folder. “The breeders are localized and self-focused. The Gaians are more widespread and aggressive in their ambitions.”

  Lyre nodded. “Sounds like the Gaians are our best bet. What next?”

  No one spoke.

  “We need proof they were the ones who attacked the Consulate,” Piper said. “And if they did do it, then they have my father too.”

  “So we need to find them,” Lyre said. “Once we find your dad, he’ll know what to do next.”

  She nodded. “The file didn’t say where they are. I think they operate like a—like a club, almost. Or a military reserve. They live normal lives except for certain meeting times.”

  “I don’t imagine they meet in any kind of pattern that could be tracked,” Ash said. “They probably change times and locations each meeting.”

  “Then how do we find them?”

  “We could go back to the Consulate and kidnap one of them,” Lyre suggested.

  “I doubt they’ll still be there,” Ash said. “Now that Piper knows to expect them, she wouldn’t go back.”

  Lyre sighed. “Yeah, and once the rumors about us being there get out, all our Stone-stealing pals will head straight for the Consulate. Not my thing. I like small, intimate get-togethers, not huge, bloodbath parties.”

  Ash shrugged like either worked for him.

  “So what then?” she asked. She turned to Ash. “Do you know anyone we could ask?” When he didn’t answer, she made an impatient sound. “I know your reputation, Ash. Don’t pretend.”

  He frowned and leaned back in his chair. “There is one person I could ask,” he admitted. “It would be a risk. Anyone who knows me will know I supposedly have the Sahar.”

  Lyre’s brow pinched with worry. “Who are you thinking?”

  “Lilith.”

  “No way,” the incubus groaned. “You want to take Piper to the Styx?”

  “Why not?” she interjected dryly. “A visit to the mythical river of the Underworld sounds like a great vacation from all this fleeing for our lives.”

  “It’s a nightclub,” Ash explained shortly. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “Lilith is the only daemon I know with no interest in the Sahar.”

  Piper tapped her bottom lip with one finger. “Why is this Lilith different?”

  “Because she has everything she wants already.” He looked ready to go back to sleep as he adde
d, “Lilith is a succubus.”

  “Yeah,” Lyre grumped. “The happiest succubus on the planet.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she owns a dance club full of sex-crazy humans.”

  Okaaay. Someone was a little jealous. Incubi and succubi had something of a rivalry going over who was better at seduction.

  “What makes you think Lilith will know about the Gaians?”

  When she spoke, Ash started slightly like he’d drifted off. “She knows something about everything. I’ll go tonight and see what she can tell me.”

  “We’ll go tonight,” she corrected firmly.

  “No.”

  “Bad idea, Piper,” Lyre said. “Ash will be able to work better alone.”

  “Forget it,” she snapped. “This is my father’s life hanging on what we find out, not to mention my life. Besides,” she said to Ash, “are you going to leave me alone with the Sahar? What if I’m attacked again?”

  Lyre pouted. “What am I? A piece of furniture?”

  Ash frowned at her. She met his steely stare and didn’t flinch. There was no way he was going without her. No. Freaking. Way.

  He read the determination in her face. With a sigh, he leaned back again. “Fine. Come. If you don’t like what you see, that’s your own fault.”

  “Fine,” she snapped. Did he think she didn’t know what nightclubs were like? Not that she’d ever been to one . . . and a nightclub run by a succubus was bound to be . . . but still. She could handle it.

  Ash and Lyre decided to share the double bed in the bedroom, leaving Piper with the sofa. Her head was buzzing with the information from the file and anger burned in her gut. She couldn’t wait to find the Gaians and teach them what it meant to mess with her family. She had no idea how she would sleep with the next phase of their plan to come at nightfall, but the moment she lay down, sleep crashed over her.

  . . .

  Piper sat at the kitchen table and listened to the silence.