Is he mad? At both of us? She sounded lost. I knew then that she idolized my father.
He was very disappointed when I burned down a bar in Veshtul. He said as much, too. That's why I was sent to Earth to serve five years punishment.
You burned down a bar? Why?
You really don't know? My eyes bored into hers.
Oh. That. She turned away and hunched her shoulders.
A few seconds later, I barely caught her mental whisper.
I'm so sorry.
Chapter 5
Lexsi
Things were strained between Kory and me the rest of the day. I never expected him to react that way; I'd hoped he'd think the same as I did—that neither of us wanted a marriage to someone we hadn't met.
I never dreamed he'd get in trouble for venting his anger after I, well, there wasn't any other way to put it. I'd left him standing at the altar. Left him to explain to family members and guests that I didn't want any part of him.
The worst part?
The five-year sentence he was serving on Earth in the past. As I said, I had no idea.
None.
He was prevented from going home for at least five years.
I had to depend on Aunt Bree to get me away if things became too difficult. Would she? Or were Kory and I stuck here forever, until someone powerful enough took pity on us?
What if we died here? Kory had almost been taken down in a vineyard outside San Francisco. What if we weren't so lucky next time?
Fuck.
It was my gran's favorite curse word.
It could become mine as well.
Fuck.
Holy. Fucking. Hell.
* * *
Kordevik
I shouldn't have told her. The fault was mine for burning down that fucking bar, not hers. Yes, she'd been afraid. Afraid to meet me at the altar, because she didn't know me. I could have been the worst person in the universes, for all she knew.
Now, she was shouldering the blame for my five-year sentence.
Well, four and small change, now.
If I were my father, I'd march right in to King Jaydevik's throne room and demand that arranged marriages be outlawed. That High Demons be allowed to meet those deemed worthy of a High Demon female. Let her have a hand in the choosing.
Yes, I wanted Lexsi more than anything. Loved her more than anything. I'd be damned if another High Demon took my place. I hoped she felt the same way about me, if I were honest.
After all, how many times had she said it—when she thought I couldn't hear? That she wanted me. Wanted to go to bed with me. Wanted to undress while I watched.
Fuck.
I needed a cold shower; Lexsi was upset and I had nobody to blame except myself.
* * *
Lexsi
I studied the photograph while Opal told me about him. "His name is Vic Malone and he's considered one of the worst criminals in the country," Opal informed me as we walked toward a waiting van. The van would transport us to the prison, where I'd question the inmates. "Vic has ties to drug lords outside the country, as well as a multitude of others inside it. He's been acting strangely for weeks, and it won't hurt to check." Opal followed her statement with a shrug.
"He's the only one here?" Kory asked. I didn't turn to look at him. I felt too guilty to do so.
"The only one reported, yes," Opal replied. "If the real Vic Malone is running loose, we have a problem. He likes killing, although he doesn't discriminate between male and female."
"You mean he'd fit right in with Loftin Qualls?" I asked.
"Like a brother," Opal muttered and pulled her leather jacket closer about her. Fall was coming swiftly to the East Coast. I felt it to a lesser degree; High Demons aren't affected by cold temperatures as much as humans or many shifters are. It made me wonder (again) what sort of shifter Opal was.
Being cold wasn't the reason my arms were crossed tightly over my chest; it was because I felt uncomfortable. I wished Kory had waited to tell me what he had. I could interview prisoners while remaining oblivious for a little while longer.
How many times could I apologize?
Probably not enough to make it better.
For either of us.
Kory scooted into the van beside me and shut the door. Kell sat in the row of seats ahead of us with Opal, while Jorden sat in the front with our driver. The drive took half an hour, during which neither Kory nor I spoke. I leaned toward the window to peer up at the high, gray walls of the prison when we drove up to it, where razor wire curled about the top like a deadly embellishment. Lowering my eyes, I allowed them to settle on the armed guard stationed at the gate.
He didn't look pleased.
"It looks starker than the one in Colorado," I whispered.
"Built earlier," Opal replied. "It was designed as a deterrent to crime, in and of itself."
"I wouldn't want to live here," Kory mumbled, leaning in to look out my window. His breath was warm on my neck as he studied the structure. I shivered involuntarily at his closeness.
Baby, we'll talk when this is over, he promised in mindspeech.
I wasn't sure I wanted to talk. I felt bad enough—and guilty enough—as it was.
* * *
Kordevik
The inside of the prison reflected the outside. Nothing there felt welcoming. Even family photographs on the warden's desk did nothing to lighten the heaviness that oppressed as well as incarcerated.
"Vic's posse on the inside have had to defend him several times from attacks from other inmates," Warden Greene said. "Yes, that's usually reversed," he held up a hand when Opal started to say something. "We do our best to maintain a balance, but you understand, they outnumber us. We don't want a replay of what happened in Colorado, either."
"How did you know we were there?" Kell asked.
"Word gets around," the Warden lowered his eyes. I doubted he wanted to tangle with Kell, who was more than ready to defend Opal. I could see it in the tension that gripped his body the moment we walked inside the prison.
"What did you hear, exactly?" Compulsion filled Kell's voice as he spoke.
"We heard that the Director of the Joint NSA and Homeland Security Department sent several agents to the facility in Colorado, and then a riot broke out. I'm still not sure that what I heard about ten prisoners is true."
"What's that?"
"That somehow, ten innocent people replaced ten drug lords from South America. We've heard rumors that a devil witch and her demon are involved." Warden Greene couldn't look Kell in the eye any longer; Kell's eyes were dark and hard.
"That information will no longer trouble you," Kell gritted. "You will not recall it after we leave this day."
Opal could only shake her head. Somehow, the enemy in Peru was already spreading stories and lies about us, taking what little they knew and expanding on it. I marveled at how closely they'd come to the truth, however.
Lexsi had Karathian blood, through her grandmother. The enemy had no knowledge of that—how could they? Lexsi's grandmother wouldn't take the throne of Le-Ath Veronis for nearly three hundred years.
They'd invented stories to frighten the gullible on Earth, and managed to get close to the truth as a result.
Like Kell, I wanted to defend Lexsi. She was only twenty-three, for fuck's sake, and barely considered an adult according to High Demon law. While she behaved in a manner beyond her years, there were so many things she hadn't experienced for herself, yet.
I worried about her because of that.
Keep your mouth shut—it already bothers her, I berated myself.
"We're ready to see the prisoner," Opal said, interrupting my thoughts.
Yes, I wanted out of this hellhole already. Lexsi was upset enough as it was.
* * *
Lexsi
Four guards stood outside the room that held Vic Malone.
At least they thought it was Vic Malone. Warden Green swiped his badge across a reader to open the door for us.
/> Once inside, he closed the door and locked it behind us with the same badge. Across the room, sitting at a single desk with wrists and ankles shackled to bolts in the floor, sat Vic Malone.
Kory and I were still far enough away that any spell would still be active. "I'll go first," Kory said and strode forward. We all knew it the moment Kory came close enough to disable a spell.
Vic's features changed. Warden Greene stifled a gasp. The man—a hapless victim forced to take Vic's place, blinked helplessly at us.
* * *
"Fingerprints and blood type match our missing guard," Warden Green tossed a tablet onto his desk, rattling the photographs sitting there. "DNA will take a few days, but it'll probably match, too, goddammit."
"How long has he been missing?" Opal asked.
"About as long as Vic has been acting strangely," the warden admitted. "The guard disappeared while he was off during a weekend. Went camping, according to his sister, and never came home. Fucking hell." Fingers raked through the warden's thinning dark hair as he shook his head in disbelief. "How?" He raised his eyes to Kell, begging for an explanation.
"We cannot say at this time; we are still investigating it ourselves and have no accurate information," Kell replied smoothly. "What we now know for certain, however, is that Vic Malone is no longer incarcerated. We must add him to the list of escapees that we seek."
"Yeah." The warden blew out a breath and sat heavily on his desk chair. "How many?" he turned to Opal. "How many of these prisoners are we going to find aren't really the ones we locked away? How long has this been going on?"
"I don't have solid answers, and I don't wish to speculate. You'll be kept in the loop as far as Vic Malone is concerned."
"I appreciate that. I don't understand, but I appreciate any information you're willing to share."
My arms were crossed tightly over my chest again; Kell had been forced to use compulsion on the warden a second time after I'd taken the imprisoned guard into my mist to destroy the duplication spell.
He recalled who he was, then, and began to weep. All of it was very sad, but at least he was released from his chains and taken to the infirmary afterward, with Kell and Kory as additional guards to make sure nothing happened to him along the way.
As Warden Greene had said, we didn't want a repeat of what happened in Colorado. Kell made sure that the victim was placed in an ambulance and carried safely away from the prison before we regrouped in the Warden's office.
"What happens now?" Warden Greene asked, his eyes meeting Opal's for mere seconds before dropping again.
"This isn't your fault, or the fault of your guards," Opal said. "Neither you nor they could have prevented it with the resources you currently have. For now, we place Vic on the most wanted list again, but as you can probably guess, he may no longer look like himself."
"I don't understand how this is possible," the warden moaned, covering his face with both hands.
"As I said, not your fault. Stop beating yourself up about it. We'll keep you informed."
Warden Greene walked out with us and watched as we loaded into our van. Jorden had waited with the driver at the vehicle, just to make sure it wasn't approached or compromised while we were gone.
The prison in Virginia took five hours, when it was scheduled to take only one. We were far behind schedule when we climbed into the van to go back to the airport.
* * *
The sun was setting by the time we arrived at the prison in New York. Opal spent most of the trip by plane getting in touch with the Secretaries of Defense and State, in addition to the President, the FBI and the CIA.
Her conversations took place by cell phone at the back of the plane; that was fine with me—I didn't want to hear any part of it. Kory remained silent at my side; he'd refused to sit anywhere except in the seat next to mine.
How could he do that, knowing I'd caused him five years' worth of trouble?
We'd found another van and driver waiting for us when we landed, and he drove us to the prison in New York while the rest of us took our usual seating arrangement.
Jorden looked worried when we left him and the driver with the van like before. "Here," Opal handed him a communicator, which he immediately placed in his ear. "Anything goes wrong, you know what to do."
"Yes, Ma'am," he nodded.
Was she expecting trouble already? That ramped up my worry to a new level. So far, the day had sucked, as Gran said. Could it get any worse?
Kory's hand dropped onto my shoulder. It felt warm and comforting as we walked along an ugly, tiled corridor toward the Warden's office.
* * *
Kell
This warden wasn't as accommodating as Warden Greene. This one acted guilty from the moment we walked into his office. I wanted to begin questioning him then, but held off. We would see the three prisoners first, and then I would ask questions.
I should have asked questions at the beginning.
"Follow me," he said, his voice clipped and words short as he lifted a badge from a desk drawer and brushed past us on his way to the door.
We were led down two more corridors that smelled of antiseptic and hopelessness, until we arrived at another secure room. Like Greene, Warden Brackett swiped the badge to let us in and waited by the door until I stepped into the room.
The door was slammed shut the moment I was inside, the portal was locked on the outside and an alarm began to sound throughout the prison. Three prisoners were chained to chairs at the center of the room, but to our surprise, on the far side, four others appeared, as if walking out of the painted, concrete walls.
Two were Sirenali in their scaled forms; the other two were warlocks. That was easy enough to see.
The warlocks' first blasts toward us were nullified by Kordevik and Lexsi.
The Sirenali, without power of that sort, pulled out weapons and began to shoot. Kordevik changed immediately and with flames licking his black scales, he stalked them while they continued to fire.
Opal fought me when I attempted to shove her body behind mine; I turned us both to mist when she refused to cooperate. Lexsi screamed when the fire net was dropped over Kory's Thifilathi; he screamed, too, when the net began to burn through his scales.
Without thinking of herself, Lexsi changed to Thifilatha and dived toward Kory, grabbing the net in her silver-scaled hands to pull it away while the fools in the corner ran behind the firing Sirenali.
Kell, get us to the Sirenali, Opal snapped in mindspeech.
She was right—they'd caused this trouble. Now it was time for them to die.
* * *
Lexsi
Tears of flame dripped down my cheeks—tears for Kory and for me. The net burned my hands whenever I touched it, but I couldn't let it harm him any more than it already had. Kory's wings, with burn-holes between ribs, beat to help me get the net off him. That's how I missed the events surrounding the four who'd attacked us—Kell and Opal went after them.
Kory screamed as the net sunk farther into sections of his back—it was designed to burn flesh until it had completely passed through whoever it was dropped on. I shook my hands to rid myself of the wad of net I held to reach for the part that was burning Kory so badly.
I felt as if it took hours to clear the net off him and then knock it from my own hands. Likely, it was minutes at most. Otherwise, it could have killed both of us. Burns sunk to the bones in my hands, but I was determined not to pay attention to that. I had to remove the net from Kory, first.
Once the net was off and piled near the door, Kory and I limped toward the corner where the warlocks were, only to discover they'd gone to hide behind the Sirenali. Likely, it was because Kory and I together neutralized their ability to fold space out of the prison.
Had anyone told them that might happen? Were they expendable, to disable or kill Kory with a fire net?
How the hell had they gotten a fire net to begin with?
Fire nets were terrible things, used only on the worst High Demo
n criminals to subdue them. They were taken off immediately, once the High Demon was subdued, lest it kill them. It normally took very little time to subdue someone with a fire net—that's how badly it would burn a High Demon. It would continue to burn until the victim died if it weren't removed.
Kory's back, sides, arms, legs and face were scored with net burns. My hands, arms, and chest were also scored, because I'd pulled the net to me to get it off him. Together, we were a burned, bloody mess.
I couldn't look at my hands. Instead, I lifted my gaze to see what happened to Kell and Opal.
With eyes that merely recorded instead of analyzing, I watched as Kell, his claws extended, appeared from mist, Opal with him. In less time that it took to blink, he had the heads off our four attackers, while three shackled prisoners screamed and shouted from their chairs at the center of the room.
Kell shook blood and gore from his claws and retracted them. Opal bent down to examine all four bodies, searching for identification.
Eventually, the prisoners realized it was over and quieted. When Jorden and a mass of other agents broke into the room, it was almost peaceful inside.
* * *
Opal
"Pain medication doesn't have much of an effect on High Demons—you'd have to give them a massive dose just for it to touch their pain," I said.
Kell ended up misting Kory's Thifilathi and Lexsi's Thifilatha to a nearby safe house; if they changed to humanoid, the severity of the burns and the subsequent pain could kill them.
They needed to heal as they were if they were to survive.
"We need a fucking pool," I swore softly as I watched them breathe with difficulty as they lay on the tiled floor of the safe house.
"Then we will find a fucking pool," Kell snapped. "I will place compulsion if I must. The young one weeps in pain when she wakes. Kory's injuries may be worse and I am terrified for him."
"Hold on," I said, pulling my cell phone from a pocket and hitting the Secretary of Defense's private number.
"Colonel Hunter," he said when he answered.
"Colonel Hunter," I said, "I need a very private residence with a swimming pool, and no questions asked."
"I'll get one for you," he responded. I heard him barking commands at an underling. In less than thirty seconds, he rattled off an address roughly five miles away.
A Demon's Work Is Never Done: Latter Day Demons, Book 2 Page 7