It’d do her family no good to get dusted before she saved them. But after that, she’d have to figure out how to tell the Circle to take this damn position and suck it.
Rarely did she have to engage in physical fighting, and she hated unnecessary killing. But she was damn good at it. She could spin in midair and take out two targets, each one with a kick to the head. She could flip and twist, breaking bones and ultimately her target’s will. She healed so quickly that if her adversary had a weapon, it was a minor inconvenience.
Xera was even better than her in a physical fight.
Xan still couldn’t make sense of how Spaeth had caught Xera. The only thing that made any sense was Xoda. Spaeth must’ve gotten hold of her niece and coerced Xera the same way he had Xan.
Her search for Quution’s weakness would kill two scavenger beetles with one heel stomp. He gave her a valid reason to hunt the underworld without Spaeth realizing she was stalking him too.
She slowed as she reached Hypna’s old lair. Dying vines hung on the walls, and the floor was crusted over with old blood. Xan didn’t have to be a total empath to shudder at the terror seeped into the walls. If this room were in the human world, it’d have all those paranormal hunters camped out inside. Bad vibes to say the least. Hypna had tormented several demons in this space.
Xan waited a moment as if information were going to jump out at her. There was plenty of fear stamped into the walls, but it was a jumbled mess. Other emotions, probably lust and greed, and of course terror, clogged the fear.
Frustrated, Xan stomped into the room. Hypna had been up to more than simple torture for pleasure in her chamber. The vampires had hunted her down for a reason and not just to keep Stryke from her toxic clutches.
Carvings caught her eye.
Xan knelt at one wall and cleared away the vines, which crackled and disintegrated like a withered bouquet. The wall wasn’t smooth. Chunks had been gouged out. Epic tantrum, or a victim trying to escape?
Xan shrugged. Neither one helped her. She went to the other wall. Bits of old leaves flittered to the floor as she tugged vegetation out of her way. She crinkled her nose at the musty smell that rose when she handled the dying shrubbery.
The third wall was a bust. Same with the fourth.
Dammit.
She spun, her foot catching in old vines that pulled away from a rock, revealing a squiggly line beneath. Xan crept closer.
“Gross.” Shards of fingernails and claws littered the floor and had collected in the corner over time. Hypna hadn’t been a fan of housecleaning. She peered closer. They weren’t all from the same being. She studied the dried twines with a different eye.
Bindings. Hypna had imprisoned her victims until she’d been done playing with them.
She turned her attention back to the squiggly line. It was so low to the floor. Given the homemade restraints Hypna had been capable of summoning, the line had to be from one of her unfortunate dates and not her. The longer Xan looked, the more squiggles she found—and the more deliberate they seemed. At one end was a stick figure with long horns—Hypna, obviously—and she held a small stick bundle over her head. The bundle, too, had tiny horns. Hypna with a baby? Hypna with someone else’s baby?
Xan traced the line with her finger. A path. The rounded turns resembled the maze of the underworld. It wasn’t pointing to any one place. It was just some poor, suffering being’s last chance to imprint themself on the realm. This demon had been mapping the underworld when it landed him or her in Hypna’s clutches.
Using her forefinger to pierce her skin, she dipped her stout claw into the wound. She healed too quickly to carve the path into her arm, but blood became ink as she lined her arm with a copy of the wall map. There was one area of the drawing that called to her, a section of the underworld she’d never been to. Maybe it had to do with Quution, maybe not. Maybe it’d get her closer to finding her sister, maybe not.
Either way, it was her next stop.
Quution adjusted his position. He was sitting in a black SUV on the outer edges of the vampires’ compound. To travel to the human realm in his own form, he had to be bonded to a being from this realm. Since he refused to sacrifice his precious bond in order to make travel between realms easier, he used human hosts instead.
Thanks to his energy abilities, he was able to choose hosts susceptible to his possession instead of convincing or tricking them into being a host via a series of incantations.
Why had he picked a host with a small bladder? He had to keep stopping his meeting with Demetrius every ten minutes to take a piss.
It was bad enough he kept distracting himself. If he didn’t deliberately concentrate on Demetrius, his mind wandered back to Xan and how she’d rimmed the tip of the scroll with one elegant finger. Regressing back to his formative years, he let his imagination turn the scroll into his dick.
“Q? Dude?” Demetrius snapped his fingers. “You gotta take another leak?”
Quution smiled tightly, vowing never to use this middle-aged host again. “Apologies. I don’t believe this host realizes he has developed diabetes.” The illness was what had made the host an easy target, but disappearing into the tree line to whiz was a pain. He hopped out and found a place to do his business.
Refusing to let the delay go to waste, Quution spread out his senses, dulled as they were in a host. He listened for a change in the energy vibes around him. Strongly suspecting the compound was under surveillance, he never let his guard down when he came here.
But if they were being watched, no one was close. They certainly couldn’t hear him discuss plans with Demetrius.
He treaded back to the SUV and got in. Demetrius handed him a bottle of sanitizer. The male had been around Quution long enough to know his quirks. Not washing his hands after peeing with someone else’s genitals gave him hives.
“The Synod is on board,” Demetrius explained. He was only one of the government panel that oversaw vampires and shifters, but he was also the only one Quution did business with. Bastian was a backup, but the fewer ears that heard plans spoken out loud, the better. “They want to know the spells that will erect the wards and seal off the underworld. They’re too far removed from this type of power to trust the underworld with it.” What Demetrius didn’t say was that the Synod didn’t entirely trust Quution with that power either.
“I’m still researching how the incantations and wards would work. And the know-how must be limited to me—for now,” he added when Demetrius’s gaze grew weary from being tugged in too many directions.
“Not even a loose outline?” Demetrius asked hopefully.
Quution shook his head. “They already want to kill me just because I’m me and it’s the underworld. If this gets out…” He’d be hunted until the all-too-soon end of his days. Then who would the Synod get to do their dirty work in the underworld? Stryke and Melody were the only other options, and they had mates who would stand with them until the bloody end.
No, this was for Quution to do alone. He wasn’t above duping his own kind for the sake of the human realm. Demons weren’t born to work together.
“Worst-case scenario,” Demetrius said. “All hell breaks loose, literally. The Circle finds out that you plan to eternally anchor them to the underworld. Then what?”
Then I die and that’s the end of it.
“Some of the half-breeds will see the need, but I doubt they could overpower the rest of the greedy realm. Sure, maybe Stryke could do it, but then you’re risking Zoey. And Melody can’t, though she’d try. Then you’re also adding Creed into the mix. Either risk me, or risk four others. Thus the need for secrecy. I just need to find the missing part of the binding spell.” To ensure he could bind himself to this realm, or he’d be as imprisoned as the rest of them.
“I’ll get them to understand,” Demetrius said. “One way or another. My entire team trusts you, and that’s the only reason they aren’t waiting outside of this vehicle.”
The Synod would just have to be patient.
“The problems in this realm, they are getting worse?”
Demetrius’s eyes darkened and he nodded. “It’s ugly. We’ve found whole houses of vampires slaughtered; we suspect because they refused to host demons. Creed has set up surveillance on every rich vampire’s home, we’re sweeping the streets where half-breeds infect destitute humans like lice, and…we’re fucking losing ground. They’re insidious at best, outright homicidal at worst.”
Right, time was of the essence. “I’d better return this body.” After grabbing a bit to eat. The host’s blood sugar was dropping and the nausea and spinning head wouldn’t make further discussion comprehensible.
Demetrius handed over a vial and started the SUV. To keep the spotlight off Quution, he’d been tasked with collecting hair or blood from Melody. A curly blond hair was coiled inside the container. Perfect.
Quution should’ve collected a drop of blood from Xan when she’d fought for her spot on the Circle, but he’d been mesmerized. She’d been a graceful fighter, and only one of her competitors had managed to shed blood. The droplet had been just as unique as the female, incandescent purple, and once dried it had resembled mother of pearl—just like the gemstone Xan was. But it’d gotten mingled in all the other blood and grit on the ground. He’d missed his chance. He couldn’t miss another.
Except, he had. Turning her down may not have worked in his favor, but it had helped his sanity.
Exiting Demetrius’s vehicle, Quution returned to the one he’d used to meet with the male. The drive back to Freemont was uneventful. Quution stared out the window and watched people go about their evening. Some walked arm in arm. His host lived in the suburbs and it was still early enough to see kids running inside from some unknown errand.
Quution envied them. What would it be like to live in ignorance, to have a demon drive right by and not know, not even think it was possible?
He’d leave his host and go back to his own dismal home. The human he’d possessed would find himself parked in a gas station parking lot, not remembering much of the last several hours. Most hosts knew they were being possessed, but Quution was able to hide himself and take over so completely he could save the humans any angst.
Quution parked at a gas station, went inside, and bought a package of trail mix. Back in the car, he munched on the snack as he sifted through his host’s memories.
He had a wife. Kids. Feared for his health. Wanted to do better for them.
Quution popped a cashew in his mouth. Were they so much different? Quution wanted to do better for future generations of his kind, but most days it was hopeless. Cruelty was bred into them. There was a reason demons had been driven to a different realm. He couldn’t allow that kind of mentality into the human realm. They already fought their own inner demons; they didn’t need real demons too.
Chapter 5
The gruesome sight before her was…
Xan’s jaw was hanging open. She closed her mouth and held the torch up, all while wanting to extinguish it and run away from this place.
Skeletons. Little ones. Piles of them.
Acid clawed at her stomach lining. This was one of those places that would get her killed just for knowing about it.
The picture from Hypna’s cave of the demon holding the little bundle was of a sacrifice. Xan couldn’t read the writing on the wall, but the power and despair roiling through the chamber was clear.
Xan threaded through the piles and around makeshift alters. Claw marks marred the surface. Gouges from blades.
Did Quution know about this place?
He had to. Hypna hadn’t been killed because she’d been trying to stop this practice. That female had been evil to the marrow. Sacrifices like this had probably been her idea of a Sunday fun day.
Did Spaeth know about this?
If he did, would it change her situation? Probably not. This chamber was sealed so securely she could barely squirm through the wards. Getting into Quution’s chambers hadn’t been nearly as hard as getting inside here. These wards had been disrupted at some point, then patched up with even more juice. But her sense of weakness wasn’t only for living beings, but also for their powers. A quirk she’d developed after Mama’s death—perhaps if it had appeared earlier, she might not have gotten kicked out. Though, as she toed a tiny finger bone aside, at least her mother hadn’t done this.
Sacrificing babies. Xan could extrapolate from there about the whys and hows. Her half-breed kind was still enslaved, though not as badly now that Melody had flaunted her way on to the Circle and halflings like Xan had seized vacated seats.
But even so, pure demons continued to enslave their own half-breeds, considering them disposable. Could some of them be turning her kind into baby factories, using the babies to harvest power? She blew out a breath and skimmed her hand over her scalp. Was Spaeth using her sister like this?
The demon who had scrawled the map on Hypna’s wall must’ve found this place and either been discovered by her or turned over to her. Was the map on the wall a last “fuck you” to Hypna? It’d been scratched in a hidden spot. Perhaps a desperate attempt to out the evil practice? Whatever the reason, she was grateful.
There were no clues as to Xera’s whereabouts and Xan didn’t detect her presence, despite scouring this part of the underworld for it. But this hell was never-ending.
She shook her head. If only this place were the worst she’d seen. Had whatever Quution and his brother done to Hypna stopped these heinous acts? Just delayed them, most likely.
Xan wiggled her way out of the chamber. Anyone who happened upon her would think she was a contortionist. It helped to move through the wards where power was the lowest, and sometimes that required acrobatics. The rest was just simple manipulation, which she’d worked hard to master.
Once clear, she didn’t return to her own place. On the way to the hidden altar room, she’d sensed the subtle vibration of wards echoing down the chamber. Traces of her sister weren’t in them, but Xan seemed to have a special receptor for Quution’s powers.
She grabbed her torch and followed the path.
Lingering fear tickled along her skin. Definitely Quution’s touch.
She shivered. A moan almost slipped out. Every time she was around him, he got better looking and she didn’t think those words had ever been used to describe him. But his horns were a resplendent model of a summer sunset, the oranges gradually fading into his dark hair. And his eyes. So much depth holding back those delicious secrets.
The lips behind his garish fangs were lush, and damn if the fullness of his lower lip didn’t give his mouth the shape of a heart.
His even shoulders were hitched, but they were broad. Something a girl could really hang on to.
She shook herself. Her infatuation with the demon was perplexing. He was a job; he couldn’t be more.
He didn’t want to be more.
Doing what she did best, she followed his lingering trail, pieces of himself he’d left behind that evidenced his weakness. They called to her power. The vibrations got stronger as she advanced.
Massive orgies or birthday parties could’ve been held here, but without the stench of fear, this passage would be nothing but empty to her stunted senses. The happy times experienced here would be lost on her. But after a few centuries, Xan had finely honed her skills despite her lack of the full range of empathic abilities.
Xan sensed fear around her as easily as she breathed, and it didn’t matter where she was. If she’d ever interacted with the being the fear belonged to, she already knew their scent and could sift through it to look for causes, motives, and, most importantly, what in the world they would give to be rid of their fear.
She stalled. This space made him vulnerable. The wards were run-of-the-mill and wouldn’t stop her anyway, but what she’d sensed from him earlier, combined with the hints of weakness in the wards—this place hurt him. Scared him. Had made him seal it against prying eyes. And she was so good at prying.
Following the maze, she came u
p against a rock wall.
“What the hell.” She did not come all this way to hit a dead end.
She spun around, casting light on all the walls. Nothing.
But there was something. A place that was so dark her light couldn’t penetrate. A smug smile curved her lips. At the bottom of the dead end, concealed where the darkness was the thickest, was a small opening.
She anchored her torch, wishing she hadn’t used one, and let her vision grow accustomed to the darkness. But she heard nothing and sensed less.
Wedging into the opening, she wormed her way inside. It angled downward. Skittering in the walls surrounded her, faint but persistent. Ugh, the bugs were everywhere down here.
Which made any place in the underworld inhabitable. Even this dank space had a significant food source.
She slithered until the passage angled downward sharp enough to send her sliding.
Clawing for purchase, she failed and fell at least eight feet down. Her torchlight wouldn’t reach down here.
Blinking, she waited for her night vision to strengthen. Shapes emerged. One large shape.
Bars, but carved from a single stone to make the gate of a prison cell.
Was Xera being held in a place like this?
And Xoda. Xan missed her laugh. So much like her sister, it was like a young Xera wandering around.
She couldn’t sense her family or Spaeth. But Quution’s fear ran rampant in this place. Xan soaked it in.
So much fear. But why?
Well, it was a prison. Had he been the prisoner? Her eyes finally adjusted to the dim space, but it was like looking at a world painted in dark grays. She slipped inside the cell.
The feeling of Quution surrounded her. He’d lived here. He had to have. Not even his current chamber resonated with so much of him.
She stepped back, her heel landing on a brittle bone. A scream stuck in her throat. She refused to let the sound out. She was not a demon who got rattled.
Demon Q: New Vampire Disorder, Book 8 Page 4