I made the decision in an instant. Now that I wasn’t suffering the aftereffects of the smoke-and-fire, I didn’t see a reason to keep the secret. A small thing I didn’t have to lie about.
“Does he have black hair and grey eyes?”
“Uh huh,” Benn mumbled. The duh he didn’t actually say out loud was clear in his tone.
“I think, maybe it was him and two Hammers in the shop earlier.”
He stopped, moved as if he was going to grab my arm, but changed his mind at the last second. He put his hands on his hips instead, tapping his fingers.
“You said they were all Hammers.”
“How was I supposed to know?” I asked, not wanting Benn angry with me. “Hammers are all-American-boy handsome. So is Grayson. It’s an easy mistake.”
“Ha,” Benn let his hands fall from his hips and smiled. “I’m camping out in your shop for the next week. All day, every day. Get used to this face, kid.”
Shaking my head, I said, “Someday you’ll explain why they fascinate you so much.”
We strolled the remaining block in silence. I saw the unfamiliar car parked in front of The Bookstore with the hood propped up when we turned the corner around my building. Benn looked like he was devising his plans to “run into” the Tempter advisor and didn’t notice the car until we got much closer, and the woman’s face became visible.
The beautiful blonde smiled as she saw us approaching. There was something predatory about it, but I couldn’t figure out why I felt that way. She appeared to be nothing but a rosy skinned human with bright hazel eyes and soft blonde hair. Her red trench coat clung to curves that proved her face wasn’t the only perfectly built part of her.
“Excuse me,” the blonde said, her voice saccharine and infectious. No doubt perfected during her privileged life, that voice paired with her looks probably got her anything she desired. “Do one of you have a cell phone I could borrow? Mine went dead.”
Benn wasn’t the type of guy to be rendered speechless by a pretty woman. But when I looked over at him, his mouth was hanging open.
“That look’s not going to impress her,” I whispered, and Benn shut his mouth, never taking his eyes off the blonde.
Pulling his phone from his back pocket, Benn managed to find his voice. “Sure. No problem.”
She placed her hand on his forearm as he leaned closer to offer his cell phone. “Thanks, cutie.”
What happened next happened so quickly, and so unexpectedly, it wasn’t until Benn was face down on the sidewalk that I realized what the blonde had done. The billy club clutched in her right hand glinted off a streetlight on its downward swing.
She gave me that predatory smile again as I began to understand what happened. I wondered if I should flee, but kneeled to check on Benn instead.
As a dark van came barreling around the corner the next second, and the woman slammed the hood of the car she’d lured us in with, I considered my options. There weren’t many. Leaving him wasn’t going to happen, so I chose to play this out. Whatever this was.
“Get the guy,” the blonde barked to a man as he exited from the driver’s side and unlatched the rear door. She turned to me, “In.”
Her face was twisted with disdain making smoke-and-fire flicker in my mind. Images of kicking her in the mouth, messing up that pretty, perfect, predatory smile she had struck me. This time, my demon instinct had the right idea. But as the man tossed Benn into the back of the van, I knew my urge to fight was pointless. I wasn’t going to put him in even more danger so I climbed in behind them.
Seconds after the door closed, the driver sped off with a squeal of the tires and a violent jerk, sending me face first into the cold, metal van floor.
Whoever drove had no concern for me and Benn not being strapped in. Maybe that was the reason for the insane driving. We rolled around, banged into the walls, and the driver didn’t ease up no matter what.
I was worried about Benn. His fragile human skull wasn’t made to take the beating it was taking, and the erratic movement of the van definitely wasn’t improving the situation.
Mustering all the strength my body could manage, I stripped off my gloves, fought against the jerking of the moving vehicle and crawled over to Benn, digging my fingernails into the metal floor. Benn’s safety was my only concern.
When I reached him, I wrapped my arms around his neck, careful not to block his airway and braced us using my legs against the side of the van. It was awkward—both the position I was lying in and the extended physical contact—but at least his head wasn’t smashing into the metal walls anymore.
“You’re really pretty under all that ugly, aren’t you, half-caste.”
I didn’t look up. I wouldn’t give the horrible blonde woman who hit Benn the satisfaction of my attention. I had to squash down the white hot desire to mutilate her that smelled of smoke-and-fire in my mind. Now might actually be a good time to lose control, but I had to fend it off. I didn’t know what would happen if I lost it, and I wouldn’t put Benn at risk.
“Don’t engage, Holly. You’ll only rile it up.”
The male’s voice was accented in a slow drawl twang of the South. And he called me an it. Like I was a thing. The people who thought demons were abominations weren’t exactly secretive about their feelings. But I’d never felt the prejudice firsthand before. Not for being a half-caste anyway. No one ever knew to harass me about it.
Which made me wonder, how did these humans know what I was? How had Dmitri and the three demons earlier, for that matter?
Playing dumb made sense. The decision to test what they knew was made only a second before the words left my mouth.
“You must think I’m someone else. I’m not a demon,” I said, my words smooth and unconcerned. A human would be frightened, would be squeaky, sweaty, shaky. I realized my mistake too late.
The humans laughed and I tightened my hold on Benn as we went around another curve, tossing the meager contents of the floor of the van against the left wall.
“Your name is Savannah Cole,” the woman said, making me look up at her. Hazel eyes reflected down at me through the rearview mirror, and I held her gaze. The male sat in the passenger’s seat.
Not breaking eye contact with me, Holly said, “you’re a half-caste Destroyer whose been raised in St. Louis by your human father, Victor. And you’re going to take us to your mother.”
I should be worried. I wasn’t going to be able to take them to my mother. Apparently that was the one thing they didn’t know.
“All right, you have the right person. But I don’t know…”
I stopped myself, realizing admitting I couldn’t do what they wanted wasn’t the best tactic. My life at The Bookstore didn’t exactly prepare me for hostile negotiations.
“What do you want with my mother?”
The male turned around in his seat, staring down at me. He was attractive in a rough, human way, with dirty blonde hair in a buzz cut. He carried himself like a police officer. Arrogant, in charge, and menacing.
“Your mother has taken over the Underrealm from the Devil Nikolai,” he said in that slow, Southern twang. “Iliana is now Royal. That, half-caste, makes you Scion, in case you don’t know how it works down there.”
I knew how it worked. Leadership was shared across familial generations. The Royal and Scion traditionally ruled the Underrealm together. If the human equivalent of the demon Royal was a king or queen, then Scion meant prince or princess. And he was saying I was the only offspring of the Royal.
But I wasn’t concerned. I was sure it was a lie.
Even though it made the demons’ actions today make a little more sense.
The Royal Nikolai and his Scion son, Noah were Sorcerer demons. Some humans still called them Devils, just as they sometimes still called my caste Destroyers. Sorcerers ruled the Underrealm for centuries. No one was strong enough to overthrow them. And these humans wanted me to believe my mother had?
“Let my friend go, and I’ll…try to
help.”
Holly laughed again. “If we let him go, we’ll have no leverage to make you do what we want. Consider him—”
“Motivation,” the male whose name I had yet to learn finished her sentence. “So you behave.”
“He isn’t part of this. He doesn’t even know what I am. Let him go, or I’ll refuse to help.”
“We never make deals with demons, half-caste,” the male replied, making what I was sound like a true slur.
Flames exploded in my mind and I could almost smell the sulfur. The acrid, metallic taste of rage coated my tongue and as seconds passed, as the two humans laughed with each other, and at me, I almost lost it. I almost released my caged control, and let my Razer half do as she wished.
If I could just get Benn to a safe spot…
Tires squealed.
Then, like it was plucked from the air, the van just stopped moving.
For a heartbeat, everything was still. Long enough for me to lift my head in an attempt to see what was going on.
That was when the impact hit.
As Benn and I smashed into the back of the human’s seats, all the air was brutally knocked from my lungs.
Metal scraped against metal. Growls and snarls filled the air.
It felt like the van was being shaken from side to side. My left hip and shoulder smashed against metal, then my right, and I did everything I could to keep hold of Benn, to not choke him while still protecting his fragile head.
“Humans should be forced to wear helmets at all times,” I said to his unconscious face.
When the van began to move again, Benn and I were rolling. Wall, ceiling, wall, floor, wall, ceiling.
Floor.
We crumbled in a heap, limbs twisted and tangled together after the freefall.
Sharp explosions sounded. Probably a gun. Holly screamed for her Southern companion. Jake was his name, but there were no male voices yelling.
Abruptly, the screams of the woman, the crunching of metal on cement, the sounds of clipped gunshots all stopped.
I checked my best friend’s pulse, then his head for injuries. There was a lump but no blood, and his pulse was strong and steady. He was still out cold though.
Silent seconds ticked by. The moment I started looking for a door, the battered wall opposite where Benn and I were sprawled was ripped clean off like a tin can lid.
“Knock, knock,” the demon said, this time aloud, with a sly twist of his lips that bugged me for reasons I couldn’t explain.
“Grayson,” I said evenly, but steeled my grip on Benn’s body. I didn’t trust the Tempter. There was nothing I could do to stop him from doing whatever it was he wanted.
“Savannah,” my name was sweet nectar from his lips. “Have you been injured?”
Looking down at myself, I couldn’t tell. Pain never processed through my brain like it should. No sensations did. Once, a tornado ripped through town and a tree fell, breaking a window of the grade school classroom I’d been in. A shard of glass stuck into my left shoulder, but I hadn’t known until someone freaked out about it.
There didn’t seem to be any blood on me now. Though I felt somewhat disoriented, I didn’t think I was hurt.
“I’m fine,” I finally replied.
Grayson’s two Hammers casually climbed into the hole in the van wall as if it were something they did every day. The one with dark hair yanked Benn from my arms. I began to protest, but was thrown over the blonde Hammer demon’s broad shoulder in one, swift motion. The surprise shut down my defenses. I couldn’t function enough to even consider trying to fight my way free.
All I could think was my rear end was right next to a Hammer’s face. His hand that could tear a grown man’s head off his neck was wrapped around the back of my left knee. My view of his well-muscled back clothed in a tight fitting, baby blue sweater wasn’t the worst I’d ever had. I could even feel the sweater’s material. Cashmere caressed my hands, the only part of my body that was touching his without my clothing getting in the way.
As he trudged, I felt his muscles flex with every move. I let my hands slide down, indulging in the soft feel of the cashmere countered with the flexing, hard muscle underneath.
I blinked. Confused by my own actions, I snapped my hands away.
The next instant, he flung me to my feet, pushing me headfirst into the back of a car.
Stunned from being manhandled, it took a few moments to understand where I was. The car he’d stuffed me into was a very luxurious, very long limousine.
I’d never been in one before.
Benn was placed beside me seconds later. His body, wilted and pathetic, slumped across the leather seats. He’d been unconscious for maybe five minutes. Shouldn’t he have woken up by now?
After two of the three demons were in the long car on the far end from where Benn and I sat, we started to move. Neither male even feigned interest in looking at me.
“Was that necessary?” Grayson said to his blonde Hammer friend, but there was poorly masked amusement in his tone.
“I’ve never seen a female so uninterested in you, Gray. It’s refreshing.” The blonde Hammer’s voice was deep and smoky. Though his head was turned and I couldn’t see his face from the far end of the limo, I could hear the smile in his words.
The Tempter grunted, turned his head to stare out the window.
“Maybe it’s because she’s so very unattractive,” the blonde demon said, but there was no cruelty to the statement, which was surprising.
They didn’t seem to realize I could hear them. My hearing was only slightly above a normal human level, but I heard every word from the back row of the limo.
“Rowan, my friend,” Grayson finally said, his voice like a roaring fire and a silk covered bed. “I’ll put money on you regretting that statement within the next few days.”
He knew. Grayson the Tempter demon knew about my glamour.
Or was I jumping to conclusions? Was he just messing with his friend?
He whispered something I couldn’t make out. But I read one word on his lips that explained it all. Why he was here. Why he had come for me. Why he didn’t look at me like I was a troll.
Mother.
Why hadn’t I considered it before? These three demons worked for my mother. She must have told Grayson how to find me. She must have filled him in.
The blonde Hammer, Rowan, said nothing more.
“Grayson,” I said, confident my voice sounded even and sure just as before. The humans saw my inappropriate calm as inhuman, but these demons surely would see it as strength. “Let my friend go. He isn’t part of this.”
The Tempter’s expression didn’t change. His eyes locked on me for several seconds before a wisp of silver danced around his irises. Rowan nodded.
It took them less than a minute to pull the limo over, unload a still unconscious Benn onto a bus stop bench and get onto the road again.
I was speechless.
A second later, I was fuming.
“What are you doing? You can’t leave him out there unconscious in the middle of—”
Grayson put up his hand and I was so puzzled by it, I bit my tongue snapping my mouth shut.
“I was holding your human male unconscious. The moment we pulled away, he awoke with the urge to go inform your father of your whereabouts.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. Opened it again, then closed it again. I didn’t know what to say. Thank you? No, I couldn’t thank this demon. I didn’t know him and he was holding me hostage in the back of a limousine.
So I kept my mouth shut the entire drive. Even as we pulled into an abandoned warehouse. As Rowan dragged me from the back of the limo, threw me once again over his well-muscled shoulder, then locked me in a dark room, he didn’t once look me in the face.
Guess I couldn’t blame him.
CHAPTER 4
When I was younger, I obsessed over how my dad met my Razer mother, let alone ended up sleeping with and conceiving a child with her. Any mother w
ho would do something like she did to her own offspring couldn’t have been a good person.
I used to think I’d never do that to a child of mine.
But there were no quarter-castes, other percentages of demon and human hybrids other than half. Though some demon castes could procreate with humans, demons couldn’t have offspring with demons outside of their caste.
And half-castes, no matter which caste, couldn’t reproduce. We were all infertile.
It made a preadolescent me kind of sad, knowing I’d never even have the possibility to have a child, to be the mother my mother never was. It seemed wrong to lose that choice so completely to a kid who didn’t know she’d never develop those kinds of feelings.
Yet, even now, I thought if I had started out with any purity, any innocence in me, finding out I was born incomplete would have terminated any virtue I may have had.
Locked in a warehouse with three very male demons, for some reason, was making me think about those long forgotten, sad things.
Which was strange. I had nothing to offer a male. It wasn’t like they could use me for anything.
Maybe it was just feeling trapped, and so out of control. I couldn’t fight them. Would they listen to a half-caste nobody if I tried to reason with them? I was good at that sort of thing. Not caring what people thought of me and being blunt were qualities I possessed.
There had to be a way out of here.
A few minutes later, which I spent planning my defense, the lock snicked and the door opened.
The moment I saw him, whatever defense I might have come up with disintegrated.
The average-looking, unaffecting, grey-eyed image of what I thought was Grayson’s usual glamour was gone. It wasn’t that he looked all that different, but he did in indescribable ways. It was as if this other glamour was a bigger, better version of the first.
Where his average glamour was believable in looks, height, and lean muscle, this Holy Crap glamour was a little too tall, a little too well muscled, and far far too beautiful. Those slightly dull, grey eyes sparkled now with crystal clear light blue, they looked like cut diamonds. His irritating grin was now a smile so bright I was instantly convinced it was created to unfailingly destroy female’s rational brains and replace them with malleable marshmallow fluff.
Defying Instinct (Demon Instinct Series) Page 3