From it, Clades stepped forward.
Not all Infernari appeared like humans did. Clades was one such example.
When he stepped into the clearing, I saw his hooves first. Coarse fur covered his calves. His legs tapered from animal to man above the knee, though the tan skin of his thighs were mostly covered by the loincloth he wore. He’d come from the tribes of the far south and kept the customs of his lost people.
His chest and arms were all human, but his blood-red eyes had horizontal pupils, and his nose was more stag than man—and the bull’s horns that spread out from his head . . . well, those were all beast.
Necklaces of bones jangled against his chest as he stepped forward. More bones decorated his wrists and ankles, as well as the leather throng that tied his loincloth around his waist. Strapped around his body were two holstered sabers. I’d seen firsthand just how quickly he could draw those two blades. How ruthless he was to his enemies, how loyal he was to his comrades.
You see, Clades and I were friends.
“Lana Malesuis,” he said, his voice pitched deeper than most Infernari, “you dishonor me with your plea, you who have been marked for death.”
I swallowed delicately. Deathmarked.
I stared up at him from where I knelt.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Please, as my friend, tell me why the primus has ordered me to die.”
Clades came closer. Around us, the swarm still buzzed, enclosing us in our own room of sorts. “You’ve failed to kill Jame Asher, the one who seeks to destroy our kind, and now you help him?”
I felt my nostrils flare. “I was his prisoner. And I—I tried to kill him, but . . .” I swallowed. “I couldn’t do it.” I looked up at Clades, letting him see my shame. “I’ve never been able to,” I whispered.
Clades knew this, that being a healer made killing nearly impossible for me.
The Infernarus stared back at me unflinchingly, and I couldn’t read his expression.
“When Azazel came for Asher,” I continued, “I got caught in the crossfire. He saved my life. Now I’m oathbound to protect him.”
Clades came forward, kneeling before me. He placed a warm palm on the side of my face. “He cannot live, Lana. So long as he does, and so long as you protect him, you both will be deathmarked.” His gaze was sad. Because he knew the lengths I would go to—the lengths I must go to—to save Asher’s life.
I felt my eyes well. “I know,” I whispered.
I couldn’t kill Clades to defend Asher either. I had already sworn an oath to protect my race. I now found myself in the same situation countless other Infernari had found themselves in. Bound by contradicting oaths. Forced to die with honor. I thought I had avoided this fate entirely by healing rather than fighting.
“What must I do, brother?” I asked.
“You must surrender and step aside. Return to Abyssos on your own. We will spare you then.”
“I can’t,” I pleaded. “If I step aside, you’ll kill him, Azazel will kill him . . . I’m supposed to protect him.”
“Then he must surrender,” Clades said. “He must kneel before us and pledge his loyalty to our kind. That’s the only way he lives. He’s a predator. One way or another, he has to be defanged.”
I nodded, my throat dry. I had pieced together as much myself. “I’ll get him to surrender,” I said firmly, my voice much surer than I felt. “Just give me some time . . . time to convince him.”
Clades studied me, his eyes grieving like he had already lost me. “He cannot be changed, Lana. If we give him time, he will only kill more Infernari, he will destroy more portals, he will destroy you.” Hand still resting on my cheek, the bringer of blight lowered his voice. “But you are dear to me. I won’t let this hunter be the death of you. There are ways.”
The back of my neck prickled. Ways that involved sidestepping oaths and a formal plea for mercy.
What he was proposing, if I understood him correctly, was dishonorable. It was so very human.
I eyed him suspiciously. “Clades . . .”
The Infernarus dropped his palm and stood. He grabbed the hilts of his two sabers and unsheathed them, his expression grim. “I will make this as painless as possible. When you wake, we will be back.”
I had understood him correctly. He was going to incapacitate me. And while I was unconscious, he would execute Asher.
I rose to my feet, my hair beginning to snap around me. “Brother, no.”
“The primus dominus will spare you when he hears your story.” Clades began stalking toward me then.
“Don’t make me fight you,” I said softly. “I won’t let you kill him.”
Clades raised his sabers.
The gun blast took me by surprise.
The sound shattered the silence, and I screamed as the tan skin of Clades’ torso exploded open like overripe fruit.
Asher stepped through the rapidly thinning swarm of bugs, his gun smoking. “Like I said before, demons are going to keep dying unless they learn.”
I could only spare a moment to stare at Asher in horror before I lunged for my friend, falling to my knees. I pulled his upper body onto me and cradled his head in my arms.
I could hear his wheezy breaths.
“Take the blood, Lana,” Clades breathed, his body twitching in pain.
Blood for magic.
I needed it. Desperately so. I could use it to heal him.
“It’ll curse you,” I argued weakly.
“Take it,” he repeated.
I could sense Asher approaching, gun still raised, the end of it trained on Clades. I ignored him long enough to move my hand over the Infernarus’s stomach. He winced as his blood began to sizzle on his skin, going up into luminous flames that flickered in every shade of the spectrum. My veins filled with the magic. I sighed as I felt it collect within me.
And then, pressing my hand to Clades’ stomach and murmuring in the old tongue, I began to heal him.
Asher stepped up to us.
“Move aside, Lana,” he commanded.
My spine stiffened. I shook my head, continuing to chant.
“Last time, Lana—move.”
I heard a click, the sound of metal rubbing against metal.
“No.” I spread my body over Clades. I couldn’t let Asher die, but I couldn’t let my people die either. “If you’re going to kill him,” I said, “you’ll have to kill us both.”
Asher grabbed my upper arm and yanked me up enough to aim. I made a desperate attempt to dive back down, but the hunter had been prepared for that. The second deafening shot hit Clades in the heart.
And now I fought like a mad woman.
Squaring his jaw, Asher began to drag me back to the car, even as I scratched up his arms and kicked at his ankles, feral in my attempt to get back to Clades.
He tossed me into the driver’s seat, then followed me in, trapping my body beneath his.
He cranked the engine on.
Mother above, we were leaving.
I made a pained attempt to squeeze my body out from under his.
He laid on the gas and the tires squealed as the car shot forward.
I let out a cry, bucking beneath him. I managed to get part of my leg out.
“Goddamnit, Lana, stop fighting me!”
“I need to save him!”
“He’s just going to kill you!” Asher yelled at me.
“He’s my friend!” I shouted back at him. I could feel the hot burn of tears in my eyes. I fought the urge to hiss at him.
With a cry, I managed to finally extricate my body from under his.
I crawled over to the front passenger seat, pressing my face to the window. I couldn’t see Clades.
Damn these metal machines!
A whine moved up and out of my throat, and the hand of mine that was plastered against the glass now curled into a fist. I fell back into my seat, closing my eyes. I would just have to heal him at a distance.
“If you heal him, he’ll only try to kill us again,” Asher’s annoying voice filtered in.
I was breathing heavy. “I cannot not heal him,” I snapped.
“Try.”
I opened my eyes. “You want me to go against everything that I am. Jame Asher, you are mad.”
“Listen to me, Lana,” he said slowly, carefully. “I know you can heal from a distance. I am asking you to give us long enough to get away before you do that.”
“You’re not asking me anything, Asher. That is a plea, and pleas are for the weak.”
“It’s not a fucking plea,” he said. “I’m giving you a choice. You can either wait to use your magic, or I can knock you out and we wait for as long as I deem appropriate.”
“You savage,” I spat.
He had the nerve to smile for a split-second before it evaporated back into the scowl he usually wore. “I don’t want to knock you out, Lana.”
I glared at him.
“Will you wait?” he asked.
“It depends on how long you want me to wait.”
“Three hours.”
An eternity.
Asher
It bothered me.
Lana had warned me of that cicada swarm . . . why?
She was my hostage. It would have been her perfect chance to escape.
No, she had given her word she wouldn’t try to escape.
Again, why? Why would she make a deal like that?
Here I was, threatening to end her kind, and still she helped me.
Plus I could have sworn that demon back there had drawn his sabers like he’d been about to execute her.
Something wasn’t adding up.
As I mulled it over, we drove west on Interstate 40 across Tennessee and into Alabama. My goal was to make it to Texas by tonight. We’d reach the Mexican border tomorrow.
I’d chosen the route that would take us via Interstate 10 right past New Orleans, another potential demon hotspot, in case we came up with any leads along the way. Since we’d gotten dick so far, I wasn’t hopeful. Damn me, I should have steered clear of that haunted city. I was probably driving right into an ambush.
We’d get there late this afternoon, and I was starting to get nervous.
Hemmed in by thick trees on either side, the uninterrupted highway stretched out under a blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds. It had that eerie still feeling, like the calm before a storm. It had me on guard.
What wasn’t Lana telling me?
We drove in silence for a while before I finally brought it up.
“I think it’s time we talked about your . . . status among demons,” I said. “That’s the second time a demon’s attacked me without regard for your life . . . and the second time you’ve chosen to escape with me rather than be rescued. I’m noticing a pattern here.”
“First of all,” Lana said sullenly, “they didn’t come to rescue me—”
“Clearly.”
“—they came only to kill you. And I didn’t choose to escape with you the first time. I was unconscious, and you came back for me.”
I peered sideways at her, but she wasn’t meeting my gaze. “And?”
“So I didn’t have a choice. I’m your prisoner.”
“At the gas station yesterday, you chose to stay with me.”
“I need to get to the portal so I can go home, and you’re the only way I’m going to get there. We made a deal, remember?”
I studied her, a nervous tic in her cheek betraying that she was lying.
“Nuh-uh,” I said. “I don’t buy it. Smart thing to do would have been to let them kill me, then go back with them. Cut and run. You have no loyalty to me. But you warned me of that fucker’s attack—that bringer of blight or whatever.”
“Clades,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She peeled up one sleeve of her jumpsuit and scratched absently at the inside of her arm.
“If you hadn’t,” I continued, “I might be dead. Both of us, in fact. Sure looked like he was about to kill you, too.”
Her eyes were anguished. “He wouldn’t have killed me, but . . . in my world, warriors don’t have much regard for life,” she said softly. “It’s not their fault. And I’m . . . behaving badly as an Infernarus right now.”
She continued to scrape her fingernail back and forth along her arm, back and forth.
I raised an eyebrow. “I thought Dominus wanted you back?” I said.
“He does. He did. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I mean, he does . . . but you’re even more important. Dead.”
“Maybe,” I mused, rubbing my jaw. My valuable prisoner was starting to seem not quite so valuable. “Or maybe, they never gave a shit about you in the first place.”
She stiffened at my words.
“Lana, what is this about?”
Her lower lip trembled, then all at once, her expression crumpled. She buried her face in her hands. “I betrayed them,” she moaned. “When I couldn’t kill you, I betrayed them. Now they see me as a betrayer.”
Ah.
“So make it right. Step aside so they can kill me.”
“I can’t,” she grumbled into her palms. “When you saved my life, you bound our fates . . . I’m now honor-bound to protect you.”
I frowned. “So whatever, just break it.”
“Break my oath?” She stared at me in disbelief. “I’m an Infernarus. I can’t.”
“Hmm.” I nodded grimly, not liking where this was going.
“And an Infernarus who’s honor-bound to protect a human—and you, of all humans—I’m already dead to them, and I’m only going to keep betraying them to save you, because I have no choice. That’s why they don’t care if they kill me along with you. In fact, now they’re trying to.”
“You do realize I’m trying to annihilate your species?” I said.
“Yes, and I hate you for it. And I wish you would die. And you will answer for your crimes. But not with death.”
“Ah, so you’re going to bring me back to Abyssos with you, and there they will torture and imprison me, but as long as I don’t die, you’ve fulfilled your oath and protected your kind.”
She pressed her lips together.
I’d just guessed her plan.
“It doesn’t matter to you that I would kill you in a heartbeat?”
“Unlike you, Asher, I am honorable. And you wouldn’t. You didn’t.”
I would, but I didn’t press the point.
Suddenly, I felt bad for her.
She was hated by all humans, and now she was being hunted by demons . . . and here she was, sworn to protect the very man who’d gotten her into this shit in the first place, who also wanted to kill her. We made an unlikely team. But a team nonetheless.
Anyone who was universally hated by demons, I would stand by.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I glanced over to see her still scratching at the veins on her wrist, a motion she had done so much she had left red welts.
A nervous habit of hers.
“Stop that,” I said, pulling her hand away.
She flinched, only then realizing what she’d been doing, and tugged her sleeves back down.
“You demons have some twisted notions about honor,” I muttered.
She pulled her legs up onto the seat and hugged her knees. “Why do you think we had such a brutal civil war? The delicate web of loyalties and blood oaths became so twisted it finally collapsed under its own weight. Infernari were sworn to protect enemies, they
had no choice but to betray their own families, their own mothers and fathers, their children. Brothers slayed brothers to repay debts. Mates were bound by oath to slaughter each other, and many chose instead to die in each other’s arms. The war shattered our kind, it broke us, and we’ve been ghosts ever sense.” She pressed her face to the window. “And now I am sworn to protect Jame Asher, the one who will slay my gods and carve out my own heart . . . so my treachery is the most terrible of all.”
I gripped the steering wheel tighter, working my jaw back and forth as I sucked in a strained breath through my nostrils. Next to me, Lana radiated sadness. Her body seemed to deflate while her hair wept a melancholy green. Such a pitiful, dejected creature.
Sworn to protect me.
I didn’t know how to feel about that. For most of my life, demons had wanted to kill me. But a demon who wanted to save me?
I should dump her. Get rid of her. She was everything I didn’t want to associate with demons—beautiful, helpless, innocent, protective.
I needed to hate her, not pity her. Not feel for her. Not care about her.
Or else I would begin to doubt. I would begin to stumble, when I needed to be surefooted. I would hesitate, when I needed to be focused. I would waver, when I needed to be lethal.
Doubt would only make it harder when I finally did it.
When I finally killed her.
I pushed the thought from my mind.
Absently, Lana rolled up her sleeve again and picked at the vein in the crook of her elbow, right where the skin was softest, where a heroin addict would shoot up. The sight made me oddly dismayed. As I watched her scratching, picking, her movements twitchy and compulsive, a lump settled in my throat. She was itching to draw blood.
I seized her wrist, startling her again.
“Stop it. Stop doing that to yourself.”
“I’m just scratching,” she muttered, folding her arms tightly across her chest.
“So if I save a demon’s life,” I said, steering our conversation away from emotional territory, “they’re honor-bound to protect me? So what if I just saved a bunch of demons as a strategy? Then they can’t kill me, right?”
Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1) Page 14