He was young, in his twenties with bright blue eyes, a fine masculine form and a yen to sample elf, but Wynn hadn’t ever considered mingling of an intimate variety with fae. Still, she wasn’t entirely opposed to thinking about it when she’d had more coffee and less ale. She couldn’t remember her phone number so she handed him her phone. He’d programmed his own number into her contacts under the name, Warrick, while she hiccupped and giggled, which made him grin like a fool.
By the time they stumbled home leaning on each other and singing “Comin’ Through the Rye”, they knew that ale offers a drunk that sneaks up on you with stealth and then slams home without ever giving a hint that it’s time to stop.
CHAPTER 7
Lana fell face first onto her bed, clothes on. Fortunately, her body had a self-preservation failsafe that prompted her to turn her head so that she didn’t suffocate in her own pillow. In seconds she was in the deep sleep of drunkenness.
When she woke, however, she wasn’t in bed. As she roused and became aware, her first thoughts were that her head was pounding and the mattress was as hard as concrete. Her next thought was that she must be waking outside Hoagmire’s apartment with her head in Cal’s lap.
She groaned out loud and a voice she hadn’t heard before said, “Thank the gods. I was starting to think you would never wake up.”
She allowed her eyes to flutter open a sliver. Thankfully the light was dim. When she realized that the reason why the mattress felt as hard as concrete was because it was concrete, or something like it, she jerked awake. She started to sit up, but her head was pounding too hard to reason out where she was and how she’d gotten there.
All she could do was say, “Ow,” and reach in the direction where she thought her head might be located.
She heard a responding chuckle and felt the corresponding vibration beneath the spot where her cheek was resting. Turning her head slightly, and carefully, in that direction, she squinted toward the sound.
What came into view was a face bending over her. A decidedly masculine face with chiseled cheek-bones, sandy hair falling down in front of his forehead, and full luscious lips that moved at the corners with a hint of a smile. Even the pain in her head wasn’t motivation enough to turn away from the intensity of his stare. His eyes danced with the reflection of a fire torch and something else. Amusement maybe.
Even with the light as dim as it was, she could see that his eyes were a deep green, the color of an East Texas bayou at dusk.
“Where am I?” she whispered as quietly as she could.
“We,” he said pointedly, “are in a demon dungeon.”
“Shhhhhh,” she whispered. “No more yelling.”
He laughed softly and whispered, “Okay.”
She raised up far enough to look around. Damp? Yes. Drafty? Check. Nothing but stone blocks? Wow. He could be telling the truth.
“How did I get here? What do they want with me?” As he helped her sit up she thought better of that question. “I mean us. What do they want with us?”
“No, Beautiful. That’s not the question. The question is how do we get out of here?”
He handed her a skin of water. She looked at it with suspicion, smelled and finally drank. “Yeah. You’re right. That is a better question. Unfortunately I’m busy doing Hangover Hannah.”
“What?”
“It means… Never mind. I’m not at my best.”
“Drink some more water. They’ll be bringing food pretty soon. I mean it’s food if you don’t mind unleavened bread. Something to eat will make you feel better.”
“They?”
“Hmm?”
“You said, ‘They will be bringing food.’”
He nodded absently. “You know. The demons who own this less-than-hospitable establishment.”
“Oh.” She reached for her tear ducts to see if she’d collected sleep crusties. “Well, I have nothing against demons per se. But food? No. How about a tooth brush and a hot shower?”
He shook his head and looked as apologetic as if he was being a woefully inadequate host. “What’s your name?”
“Lana. What’s yours?”
His responding smile was so dazzling she temporarily forgot that her head was being banged with a sledgehammer from the inside out. “Well, that’s a story.”
~~~
Prince of Demons 2
The witches say that
a fear is an unrequited wish.
CHAPTER 1
With effort Lana managed to drag her eyes away from the gorgeous guy whose lap she had apparently slept in. She sat up slowly, hands involuntarily reaching for her head, and looked around.
“It’s not that I don’t want to know your name and it’s certainly not that I don’t like a good story, but where are the facilities? It’s my first time in a demon dungeon. Sooooo…”
He pointed to a hole in the floor in the corner.
“Please tell me you’re kidding.” The only way that news could be worse is if the hole was so small that she needed to be concerned about hitting the target. As was the case with that particular hole. “Oh God.”
She held her hand up to her brow. Even the dim light coming from a window far above was cause for needing to shield her eyes.
“Okay, look, if there’s really no choice, I’m about to commit a totally humiliating and unladylike public scene because I find myself at the mercy of bodily function.”
He cocked his head and smiled like she was the most entertaining thing he’d ever encountered. “You mean you have to pee.”
“Turn around.”
He pointed to himself as if to ask, “Me?”
“Yes. You. The only other person whom I might ask to turn around.”
The corners of his mouth twitched with amusement, but he obeyed and turned, if a little slow for her preference. “And put your fingers in your ears.”
He laughed out loud. “You’re making too much of this. I have a body, too, you know. I’ve suspected that everyone has to dump fluids since a young age.”
“Yes. Well, it’s the principle.”
“Are you going to be high maintenance? Because I’m not even going to attempt to include you in my escape if you are.”
“No. I’m quite sure that, after I’ve been imprisoned with you for a while, I’ll have no qualms about urinating in front of you. I probably won’t even bother with an announcement.”
“Just so long as we agree that it’s a temporary breaking-the-ice kind of request. Here you go. Thumbs plugging ears.”
Squatting over the hole and hoping to all that’s holy she was lined up right, she gave thanks for the small favor of having worn a skirt, just in case the guards decided to pay a visit mid-pee. Or if nameless gorgeous boy decided to become a spectator instead of a gentleman.
The idea of no toilet paper was not just abhorrent. It was uncivilized. She finally decided she would remain in a hover position above the hole until she’d more or less dripped dry, however long that took. Judging from the way her legs were beginning to shake, she decided that drip dry was a luxury reserved for those with Olympic skater thighs. She pulled up her panties with a sigh, wondering when she would see a clean pair again, then wrestled the tights back into place and stood, letting her skirt fall to knee length.
“Okay. Done. What’s your story?” He didn’t move. “Come on. I know you can hear me.”
She walked around in front of her cell mate and lowered herself to the floor so that she was sitting facing him. Smiling like he was enjoying a holiday, he pulled his fingers from his ears. He gave every appearance of being a person who was unconcerned about being imprisoned in a dank, dark, musty jail.
“I have questions. So let’s get this name thing out of the way. Again, what’s your name?”
“Brave.”
“Are you saying it’s brave of me to ask for your name?”
“No.” He chuckled. “I’m saying my name is Brave.”
She stared, waiting for a change in his expression. Th
ere was none. Finally she said, “Not really.”
Emotion flickered over his features. She couldn’t read him well enough to know if that look was hurt or if he’d been offended.
“What? You don’t believe I am?”
“I wouldn’t know. I just know it’s an unusual name.” She looked around. “At least it would be where I come from.”
He shrugged. “What do you think about Bruce?”
“As a name? Honestly? Meh.”
“Hmmm. Well, my name is Bruce.”
“That’s more like it.”
“I haven’t been called that in… well, in a very long time. When I was a child, they started calling me Bruce the Brave because I would play with the other boys, the demon boys, even though they were bigger and stronger. So I would always get hurt. My foster father said I was either very stupid or very brave. I guess he decided he’d rather foster a human called Bruce the Brave than Bruce the Stupid.”
“Your foster father is a demon?”
“Yeah.”
“One of them?” She motioned toward the grill door with her head.
“Yeah.”
“So you became Bruce the Brave.”
He nodded. “And eventually it got shortened to just…”
“…Brave.”
“Exactly.”
“Ah.” Lana let that sink in for a few seconds. “You were raised here? By them?”
“I was.”
“How did your shirt get ripped? And how did you end up sharing this delightful guest suite with me?”
“That’s not important right now. What is important is getting out of here.”
She studied him for a moment, trying to see the person behind the stunning good looks. “Okay. We can agree on that. So you weren’t kidding about an escape?”
He smiled and crawled toward her on hands and knees.
“I never kid about escape.”
He was wearing brown leather knee high boots on the outside of pants that were a thick cotton-looking twill and the shreds of an ivory-colored shirt made from a fabric that had the look and drape of hemp. Enough skin was exposed by the tears for her to see that his chest and abdomen were chiseled into a fantasy lesson on male anatomy. When he was close enough, he stuck out his hand.
“Let’s make a pact then. We’ll be partners.” She shook his hand, not being able to pull her eyes away from his and hoping that he couldn’t tell how much that simple casual touch affected her. ”To the death, then.”
Her brain reengaged when he withdrew his hand. “Wait. What? Nobody said anything about dying. I’m agreeing to try to escape. Nothing more. No Butch and Sundance. No Thelma and Louise.”
He grinned as he maneuvered around to sit next to her with his back against the wall, close enough that she could feel his body heat and get a whiff of magnetic masculine musk. She took that as a good sign, reasoning that he couldn’t have been there long if he still smelled that good.
“I don’t know those people, but I deduce that you don’t accept the phrase ‘ to the death’. So what words would you prefer to seal our deal?”
She thought for a moment and looked at Brave. “All for one and one for all.”
When he turned his head toward her she instantly felt that they were far too close to be talking face to face. The feeling, at least for her part, was arresting and far too intimate for dialogue with a stranger she’d just met.
“Catchy. I like it.” She was just about to tell him that she hadn’t made it up when they heard a clanking sound like keys rattling. He smiled. “Heavy bread. Incoming.”
Lana waited anxiously as she heard a metal key turn in the lock. She was waiting for the guard, or guards, to come in, but with their backs against the same wall as the cell door, she never saw a thing. No one entered. She simply saw a skin fly through the air and land in the middle of the floor with a squishy sound. That was followed by a burlap-type bag that apparently had something inside, but it landed with too much of a thud to be bread.
“Please tell me that’s not the bread.”
“Afraid so,” he said.
The door clanged shut, the key turned, and all was silent again except for the sound of them breathing.
“What do they look like?”
“The demons?” He shrugged. “Mostly like us. Taller and their skin has a little bit of an orangey cast .”
“Fangs?”
He chuckled. “No.”
“Claws?”
“No.” Shaking head.
“Hooves?”
“No.” Still smiling and shaking head more.
“Tails that end in pitchforks?”
He turned to her with a clear WTF look. “No. They don’t have tails at all.” He sounded a little horrified. “Much less tails that end in pitchforks.”
“Wait. I don’t mean pitchforks. I mean tridents. Tails that end in tridents.”
“No.” He was emphatic.
“Moving on then. How did I get here? Why am I here? What do they want with me? And there may be follow-up questions after you start talking.”
“Tell you what, when we escape and get free we can play guessing games forever if you want.”
She stared into his eyes for a beat too long before looking away. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I’ll give you that for now because I do want out of here. Moving the great escape to priority number one. What’s your plan?”
Brave raised his chin and narrowed his eyes slightly.
“You think I’m going to say I don’t have one.”
“What makes you say I’m thinking that?”
“I can tell by the way you’re talking to me.”
“How am I talking to you?”
“Like you don’t think I have a plan.”
“Do you?”
“Well, yes. Sort of.”
“I’d like to hear your sort of plan.”
“Me, too.” Her face went slack and her eyes widened. Then he said, “Just kidding. I have the beginnings of a plan. Tomorrow morning one of the guards will come with more water and bread. They’ll only send one because they’re arrogant. He’ll open the door just like before. Only we’ll be waiting for him on either side. But out of sight, like we are now.
“He’ll be relaxed and not expecting us to try anything. He’ll set the water and bread down and open up the door. It swings out toward him. After he opens, he’ll bend to pick up the bag of water. When he bends, we’ll charge him and knock him down together. Then I’ll press the skin of water to his face - cutting off air passages.”
“I thought you said they’re stronger.”
“They are, but first, there are two of us and second, they will send a male with, ah, male genitals.”
“I will grant you that most males have male genitals. What does that keen observation have to do with your sort of escape plan?”
“When I have him on the ground, I want you to stomp on his, um…”
It dawned on her why they were discussing male genitals – because they are so beautifully vulnerable. “Balls? Dick? What?”
Brave gave her a strange look. “For someone shy about taking a pee, you’re very comfortable with colloquial descriptions of sex organs.”
“We all have our quirks. So you want me to disable him by crushing his equipment while you smother him.”
Brave winced visibly when she used the word ‘crushing’ and subconsciously brought his legs a little closer together. He may have also found the aplomb with which she described the pulverizing of vital parts a little frightening.
His eyes flicked down to her shoes of their own accord. Lana had worn her fuzzy cuffed ankle boots with the big heavy soles and two inch square heels to the pub and hadn’t taken them off since. She thought they were an artsy fashion fit with tights and a skirt and, since she hadn’t planned on dancing… As it turned out, grabbing those boots may have been a providential choice. They were born to stomp balls.
“Basically.”
“How do you know they’re not listenin
g to everything we say? There could be audio equipment all over this place.”
“There isn’t.”
“How do you know that? And how do you know they’re arrogant, for that matter?”
“Told you. I grew up here. The demons don’t like technology.” He shrugged and almost sounded defensive. “They don’t trust it, since it’s mostly derived from humans using mechanical means to try and mimic what demons do naturally.”
“Sounds like this is not the first time you’ve considered that. Were you the only human around? Growing up?”
He nodded. “Yeah. The thing is, we don’t have to worry about that. They like to live simply in a more preindustrial/technological style. Luxury brought to you by non-human means.”
“You’re sure? About no listening devices?”
“Positive.”
“What’s the downside?”
“Downside?”
“The risk? What’s going to happen to us if it doesn’t work?”
He shook his head. “Not a fortune teller.”
“Fair enough.” Dropping her eyes she looked away. “What happens after you take care of the guard?”
“They won’t be expecting an escape. Like I said, they’re arrogant. Just trust me a little. I think I can get us out of here, Lana. I know every inch of this place including the best places to hide. It seems hide-and-seek games are worth something after all.”
“You know I have to say that your confidence that you can get us out of here sounds a little arrogant. Something you picked up from them?”
He grinned. “Maybe I should say that I’m cautiously optimistic.”
She laughed softly and then realized that laughter, for any reason, couldn’t be more inappropriate. What was happening, that this beautiful stranger had her laughing when she’d been captured by demons and imprisoned in a dungeon? She knew she should be beside herself with fear and worry and yet she wasn’t. She almost felt calm.
The rest of the afternoon was spent in idle small talk, getting to know each other over bread, if it could be called that, and water. In truth, the conversation centered around Lana. Whenever she tried to ask questions about Brave, he answered quickly and maneuvered the dialogue back with questions about Lana, her likes and dislikes, her work, and her friends.
Prince of Demons 1-3, Box Set Page 11