He dropped my hand, stepping away. “Relax. I was just curious to see how you’d react.”
In the V of his shirt collar, I caught a glimpse of the lethal-looking tattoos that snaked over his skin.
I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. I needed to find out exactly what powers he had in his arsenal. If he could read people’s minds, I was screwed. If he could read people’s minds and compel them to act, I was particularly screwed. “Why do you need to test me?” I asked. “I thought angels like you could just read minds and control bodies.”
He smiled slyly. “Is that what you’ve heard?”
“Is it true?”
His smile faded. “Not entirely. I can sense things. Emotions. I can’t hear your thoughts.”
Thank the gods. “And can you compel people to do what you want?”
He shrugged. “If I tried really hard, but what fun would that be? Better to watch people scramble around desperately of their own free will.”
“So is that why you’ve come to Earth—to watch humans and demons scramble around desperately while they try to survive?”
“Ruby, it almost sounds like you disapprove.” Candlelight danced over the masculine planes of his face as he towered over me. “It’s time for a purification. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I would put this knife through your twisted heart right now, if I could.
Still, I had to put on a good show. “I suppose. When I was born, fewer than a hundred million people lived on the Earth.” The words of a succubus tasted bitter on my tongue. “That’s when humans knew how much they needed us, their gods, their demons. That’s when they worshipped us in temples, when they quaked in fear. Now they live crammed together like rats, forgetting all about us.”
So, this was going well. Adonis liked to toy with people, and he could potentially compel me to do whatever he wanted. Worse, it seemed he could see straight through my dress to everything underneath—the knife, my black lace underwear. I might as well be sitting here naked before him. In fact, when I glanced down at myself, I saw that the moonlight streaming into the room gave the dress a translucent quality.
Thanks, Susie. If you want someone to conceal a weapon on their body, make sure you give them a choice of fabrics a bit thicker than tissue paper.
Adonis nodded at the curly-haired woman, who scuttled over and pulled out a chair for me. As she moved, I was finally able to put my finger on what it was that unsettled me about the humans. It wasn’t just the woman’s fear.
They were glamoured, and I was the only one here who’d know. Only a fae who’d spent years honing the fine art of glamour would notice the faint shimmer of that particular magic. Even another fae, like Elan, would be clueless.
As I took a seat at the table, I looked at the servants a little more closely. Were they fae, like me?
Maybe not. Another fae could have glamoured them. They could be anything.
Right now, I had no idea what it meant, but I knew better than to share my observations with the Dark Lord. It was a small mercy he couldn’t simply pluck the thoughts from my skull.
I picked up my glass of wine. “Why have you invited me to dinner?”
Adonis sat across from me, leaning back in his chair. As he did, shadows slid through his eyes. “It’s important to know whom you’re living with, wouldn’t you agree? And I’m not entirely sure you are who you say you are.”
Shit. The room chilled around me, and shadows seemed to slide over my skin.
Adonis leaned closer, studying me like he was trying to read a book. “In fact, I’m pretty damned certain you’re not who you pretend to be, Ruby.”
He reached for me, gently stroking my cheek, his touch feather-light. His dark magic thrummed through my chest, his eyes burning like stars. “I can feel your loneliness. Your grief. I can feel the guilt that threatens to crush you.” Intensity laced his words. “You play a part, Ruby, and it’s not the real you.”
I swallowed hard. Why did I get the feeling that he wasn’t just talking about me? I pulled his hand from my cheek, still gripping it lightly, and took a wild stab in the dark. “I’m not the only one, though, am I? What do you feel guilty for?”
He ripped his hand from mine as if I’d burned him.
Bingo. I’d hit a mark, and I pushed on. “Did you kill someone you regret killing? Are you capable of love, Dark Lord?”
For a brief instant, his mask slipped, and I caught a glimpse of something else there—an expression that looked acutely agonized. For just a moment, a look of intense vulnerability gleamed in his eyes.
Then he breathed in deeply, his lips curling in another sly smile as he composed himself. “I feel guilty for nothing. And like I said, I just wanted to learn more about who we’ve invited into our castle.”
A flicker of movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. A black, scaly thing was creeping in the shadows. Shuddering, I pointed at it with my fork. “What exactly is that creature?”
He turned to look. “Ah. Drakon. My pet. Careful you don’t get on his bad side. I understand shadow demons don’t react well to fire.”
“You have a pet dragon. Of course.” I shuddered. I hated dragons.
“Merely a dragonile. He won’t get any larger than he is now.”
Adonis nodded at the female servant, and her footsteps echoed off the ceiling as she crossed to us. She began serving food onto our plates: slices of duck and roast potatoes. Her face had entirely drained of color.
As she poured Adonis’s wine, her hands were shaking so hard she spilled some of it onto the table.
“I’m so sorry,” she stammered, clutching the bottle tightly.
“Relax,” he said quietly.
The servant slinked away, and I picked up my own wineglass to gulp it. I still didn’t quite understand why he’d wanted me here alone.
“So you’ve invited me here to find out if I’m a threat,” I ventured.
He met my gaze. “Oh, I’m not afraid of you, Ruby. But the rabble out there must be controlled. How do I know you’re not here to tell them our secrets?”
I curled my lip, just as a succubus would. “Humans? Do you really think I would conspire with humans? I feed from them. They worship me. I don’t treat them as equals. And you must know that succubi are solitary demons. We always have been.”
“Mmm. Perhaps.” He pulled a single grape from a bunch on the table.
His raw, dark power skimmed over my bare skin, sending my pulse racing.
Act normal, Ruby. I cut into the roast duck, taking a bite. The rich meat seemed to melt on my tongue, and I practically moaned. Even sitting across from the death angel, a fae like me couldn’t ignore true pleasure. Then I washed it down with a sip of the red wine.
“So tell me, Dark Lord, if you’re worried I might pass on information to the rabble outside, does that imply that you’re afraid of them?”
A hint of disdain shone on his features. “Afraid, no. They’re an inconvenience. Humans and demons are working against us. Their very existence is at stake, and they don’t even understand how much worse it could be. The humans don’t concern me at all. They break so easily. But the demons—in high enough numbers—they’re harder to ignore.”
Now this was interesting. “And you think the demons may be coming for you?”
He shrugged. “They’re annoyed that we’ve been killing their food. And the earthly gods, of course, are furious. We’re stealing souls from them.”
I let the fruity wine roll over my tongue. “The gods.” I injected a bit of venom into my voice. “Do they honestly still believe they can return to the heavens if only they collect enough souls?”
He smirked. “You and I both know they’ll never be released from their torment. They gave the Angelic language to the humans, and they must pay the price. Forever.”
“Is that why you’ve come to Earth?” I probed. “Still pissed off that humans are abusing your Angelic language?”
The faint smile had left his lips. “Something
like that.”
Don’t push too hard, Ruby.
“Nyxobas is raising an army of demons,” he continued. “Along with the fire goddess. It seems the threat of angels is the one thing that can unite the gods of shadow and light.”
I swallowed another mouthful of duck. “Maybe my calculations are a bit off, but if you’ve got several gods raising armies against you, and… How many angels are there on earth? Is it just the three of you?”
“As far as you know.”
I swallowed hard. I knew from Yasmin that there weren’t many angels on Earth—that London was their central headquarters. But I couldn’t give away that knowledge. “Well, I haven’t seen many angels. Aren’t you a bit outnumbered?”
He leaned back in his chair, unperturbed. “They’d have a hard time getting beyond our defenses, and they don’t know how to kill us.”
“And what about the Heavenly Host? That sounds like an army.”
“I don’t know where you heard that term.”
I kept my tone bored, my expression disinterested. “From Kratos. I wasn’t really listening. It just sounded like an army of angels or something.”
He sipped his wine lazily, pinning me with his gaze. “The Heavenly Host are far worse than we are. That’s all you need to know. If they come to Earth, the ground will rumble with the shifting of mountains; the sun will turn black, and the rivers will turn to blood. Meteors will rain down on the Earth. So you’d better hope that we do our jobs here, and that you never have to learn anything more about them.”
A shudder danced up my spine, and I snatched my wine from the table. “And what exactly are the chances they will wind up here on Earth?”
He shrugged. “As long as Kratos, Johnny, and I can achieve our goals, they won’t come to Earth at all.”
Oh. Shit. So… if I believed this angel, they were actually killing a smaller number of people to save a greater number of people? Was that really possible?
Adonis twirled his wineglass. “I can see I’ve rattled you. You’ve lived for thousands of years, and you’re reluctant to depart from all those centuries of pleasure with a final death.”
“No one wants to die.”
For just a moment, I caught a flash of that agonized look again before he composed his features. “Is that quite so? In any case, the most pressing issue right now is your allegiance. Considering you’re a shadow demon of the night realm, and considering we are under the threat of attack by the night god, I need to hear from you what you think of him. And Ruby, I can tell if you’re lying.”
I believed that he could tell if I was lying. Luckily, I didn’t need to lie. “I have no allegiance to Nyxobas whatsoever, and no connections to other shadow demons.”
He studied me for a moment, the candlelight glinting in his stormy eyes. “And why is that?”
I’d have to be careful to phrase my words in a way that I knew to the be the truth. “Shadow demons never accepted the succubi. Succubi are the outcasts of the night realm. Nyxobas, the night god, is an ascetic. Even his own son and grandson—the incubi—are considered whores. And that’s one of the reasons succubi are in perpetual danger.”
“Ruby.” The faint smile on his lips was heartbreakingly beautiful and terrifying at the same time. “If you don’t cross me, I’ll protect you.”
I didn’t believe him for a second.
Gripping my wineglass, I tapped the edge of it thoughtfully. “If shadow demons attacked, I’d be as much a target as you.” That was the truth.
So Adonis had interrogated me, and now crucial questions whirled through my mind. Where do you come from? What have you been doing all this time on Earth? And most important of all—the one question that rang loudest and clearest above the rest—why must all of this happen?
Out of the river of questions, I chose one carefully. “You said you’ve been living on Earth for thousands of years. Like me. Where were you born?”
“Afeka,” he said simply.
I blinked. I had a sense this was an ancient name for a city, but I couldn’t ask where. After all, I was supposed to be a four-thousand-year-old succubus from Mesopotamia, and I had a hunch Afeka was somewhere in that vicinity. “Afeka,” I repeated. “A beautiful place.”
He cocked his head. “You know it?”
“Of course. Beautiful blue skies.”
It was as safe a bet as any. Every city had a sky above it, and only the British Isles had really shitty skies.
I cursed myself for not having stumbled into an easier disguise. A vampire, perhaps, born in the nineties, wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
“In my garden in Afeka—” he began, but stopped short. “Anyway, that was a long time ago.”
I was going to press on, to ask another question, but a whoosh of air and the glint of metal rushing past my head stopped me short.
With a lighting-fast reflex, Adonis’s hand shot into the air, and he caught the hilt of a knife. I recognized the pale gleam of Nyxobian silver.
His eyes turned to black, but before he could react, ropes of dark magic coiled around him.
I whipped my head around at the humans—who, of course, no longer looked human. Not even the curly-haired woman.
They’d dropped their glamour, revealing themselves as four towering, brutish shadow demons.
Among them, a horned demon with ivory-white skin shot a stream of shadowy magic at Adonis.
His eyes, two inky black pools, met mine. “Succubus…” he hissed. “Whore.”
Chapter 20
Wrapped in shadow magic, Adonis still managed to look unfazed. “If there was ever a good time to reach between your thighs, succubus, it’s now.”
I was already one step ahead of him, grabbing for my knife. Adrenaline blazed through my nerve endings. Just as I pulled it from its holster, a wave of icy shadow magic slammed into me, knocking me to the ground. Shadowy tendrils coiled around me, the texture like slick vines, coiling around my calves, my thighs, my waist…
But Nyxobian silver could cut through anything.
I sliced through the magic, the blade sliding easily through the shadow coils, taking care not to cut my skin. When I reached my calves, the horned demon lunged for me. His enormous body pressed on top of me, fangs glinting in the candlelight, and he pinned my wrists to the ground.
There was something deeply unholy about his skin, the color of sour milk.
When he leaned in closer to me, the scent of rot wafted around us. “Whore,” he growled. “Traitor. You’re supposed to be one of us. I can’t wait to hear your screams when I pull your body apart, piece by piece.”
I gritted my teeth. “I don’t take kindly to my meals being interrupted.”
He nudged his leg between my knees, making it clear that he wanted to dominate me completely, and revulsion rose in my throat. Still, I gripped hard onto the knife in my hand, refusing to let go even though it seemed as if he was about to crush my bones into dust.
I couldn’t lift my wrist high enough to stab him. What weapons did I have at my disposal?
Glamour—that was it.
Fucking glamour.
And yet… as long as Adonis couldn’t see me from this angle, I could use it. I searched for Adonis. Where we lay below the table, he didn’t have a view of me.
As the shadow demon leaned in closer, I tried to focus, tried to block out the fact that he was extending a long, thick tongue to lick my neck.
I closed my eyes, summoning my glamour—I only needed it for a second—just a quick flash to get him to release his grip on me. While he pressed his knee further between my thighs, I magic tingled over my body as the glamour took hold.
“Oh shadow demon…” I cooed.
He looked into my face, shock registering on his features. He was staring at a mirror image of his own face, but one haggard and worn by age, his cheekbones gaunt. His milky skin paled even further.
The shock of it forced him to relax his grip on my wrists, just enough for me to yank my knife hand free. I let th
e disguise drop, then slammed my knife into the demon’s back, plunging it straight through to his heart. His hot blood spurted onto me, and I pushed his enormous body off of me with a grunt.
Dripping in demon blood, I rose, ready for the next attack. But when I stood, the room had gone completely silent. A dark, electrical magic crackled in the air, sparking over my skin. Adonis stood on his dais, where shadows seemed to spill around him like ink through water.
For a moment, I wondered if he could have seen my little glamour trick, but his arctic gaze was on the other side of the room. I followed his line of sight. There, I found the rest of the humans and demons—or at least what was left of them. Each had been torn in two at the chest, each exsanguinating in glistening pools of gore.
I swallowed down my revulsion. When I glanced at Adonis again, his eyes were on me. Unlike me, the man had not a single drop of blood on him. “There may be more coming.”
“You didn’t have any idea that demons had infiltrated your servants?”
“No. A fae must have glamoured them.” The way he said the word “fae” sent icy fingers of dread up my spine. “And the humans clearly helped them. Our response will be swift and brutal. We’re not done killing tonight.”
I swallowed hard, trying to stay in character. “When this is all over, I’d like a warm—”
Frantic shouting in the hallway stopped me short.
Johnny burst into the room, his gray wings trailing behind him. He practically stumbled over the corpses at his feet.
“Adonis!” he bellowed, unnecessarily loudly, considering we were the only ones in here. “The servants are attacking all over the place. There’s a stream of them climbing up from the lower levels now. Filthy fucking shadow demons.” His lip curled and he stalked toward me. “Funny that this happened after we let a shadow demon into our midst, isn’t it? Not ha-ha funny, but weird funny—”
“Where are they?” Adonis interrupted him.
“Headed for the Great Hall, but they’ll be up here next. They’re searching for us.”
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