Lock & Portal (My Demon Bound Book 1)
Page 4
And I hesitate.
Because it’s one thing to slice ineffectually at ghosts, and another to wreak a blood-stained path of retribution around the witch I’ve hidden my true nature from for so long.
“Daerek,” her voice interrupts my indecision, weaker than it should be, and her eyes are no longer pale with magic.
She collapses.
I don’t think, I just act. Soldier after soldier charges at her prone body, and I slice them down with bloody satisfaction. When the threat has eased, I grab Stacey around the waist, propel us upwards, and fly as fast as I can into the darkness.
Below us, the demon king watches our escape and does nothing.
The gate disappears as I climb higher and higher. There’s no point flying too high; I can sense from the currents in the air that this place is little more than a magical wind tunnel. I’d guess the only way in is via the portal, its lingering magic creating the eddies and whorls that allow me to drift without trouble. Since the portal is closed, I won’t waste my energy exploring further.
Although, I can almost sense a different energy behind the cliff-face—spaces hidden within its walls, perhaps. A mystery to investigate later.
An outcrop of rock appears above us, and I direct our path towards it. Stacey grasps me tighter to her, one leg wrapping around my waist even though she’s perfectly secure without it.
Before we land, I might entertain a moment or two of imagining what it would be like to slide an inch to the left and thrust against her. I’m already hard, having her so close, feeling the pulse of her heartbeat against my side.
Her body reacts to the adrenaline same as any would, it doesn’t mean anything.
Huddled on the lip of rock, we stare down at the swirling mass of gray. It remains on the ground, and after a long while I begin to relax.
I shed my demonic visage with a wave of my hand, turning human once again.
It’s only when I look at Stacey that I realize the dark smear of blood across my chest isn’t my own.
Five
Stacey
The blood is mine, but there’s no wound to match it. How fun is that?
“There has to be a wound,” Daerek says, staring down at me with his arms folded, back pressed against the rocky cliff-face behind us.
“Absolutely nothing.” I wipe my hand across the blood on my stomach and waggle crimson-soaked fingers at him. “But it just keeps coming. Do you think it’s a curse?”
Daerek mumbles something that sounds an awful lot like I think you’re a curse, which I valiantly ignore.
A disconcerting wave of nausea rolls over me, but I keep it from showing on my face with no trouble. Years of practice. When I was eight, I had a broken ankle for two days before I slipped up in front of my parents and they took me to the hospital.
Daerek’s brow creases, and he tilts his head. “What’s with the face?”
“I’d point out how rude that is, but at this stage I think you’d just take it as a compliment.”
Reaching forward, Daerek hauls me closer to him, angling my chin up into the light. His eyes glint in the dim purple glow of whatever illuminates this pit. I think it might be some kind of firefly, but they keep to the center of the drop and I can’t tell.
“You can feel the wound,” Daerek says decisively after turning my head this way and that like a prize cow at auction. “Even if it’s not there, you can feel it.”
“Easy, MacGyver,” I snap, pulling out of his reach. “It’s just nausea. Last I checked, no one’s stomach bled from a little upchuck.”
The nausea hits me again, and I double up, bracing myself against the wall.
A horn sounds from below us.
Daerek snaps to attention, sending tingles throughout my body. My heart thuds as his stance alters from bored prep to… something I can’t identify. Something that looks closer to the battle-hardened ghosts we just fought, even if that image is impossible to reconcile against his tight jeans and henley.
He crouches at the edge and peers over.
“The ghosts have changed back.”
“Changed back into what?”
He glances at me, expression unreadable in the shadows. “You don’t know?”
“Of course I know, this is just a pop quiz for you.” I roll my eyes. “Why would I ask if I didn’t know? What aren’t you telling me?”
Daerek stands slowly, hands tucking into his pockets as he regards me with careful silence. “You resurrected them. Maybe into zombies, maybe fully into life—I couldn’t get a close enough look. But they were flesh.” He jerks his chin at the pit, ignoring my stunned silence. “Didn’t last though, so they’re back to being a menace to fight.”
I gape at him. “What do you mean I resurrected them?”
The thought tugs at me, like a drunken memory from the middle of a blackout. Which I guess is what happened before I collapsed, except…
…except I don’t think that’s the memory I’m sensing.
This memory feels older.
Daerek shrugs. “You tell me, princess.”
I bristle, arms folded as I drag myself up to my full, pathetic height. “Why do you call me that?”
That nickname sucks.
Daerek’s eyebrows lift in surprise. He laughs, incredulous. “Your parents mail you a blank check every time there’s an academy fundraiser, and a second one so you can get a little something for yourself. I’m only calling a spade a spade, love.”
He throws this at me like it’s an answer, and I suddenly lack even the slightest amount of energy to argue it. I turn away, but not before I see the look of genuine confusion on his face. Like he actually thinks I want that crap.
“What was the horn for?” I ask, peering over the edge, but the question trails off as I discover the answer for myself.
The ghosts are searching for us. Rising into the air, spiralling in ever increasing circles as they hunt for the intruders who dared disturb their eternal rest. Or whatever it is dramatic ghostly bastards do when they’re guarding ancient gates in hell.
Daerek might be able to fly, but with nowhere to fly to, we’re already toast.
The horn sounds again, the squadron spreading out further, and the drunken memory within me stirs.
“Passage,” I murmur, watching the way the ghosts trail in and out in a steady sweep, eyes fixed to the ground, to the walls. Ghostly swords methodically cutting into rock. “They aren’t searching for us, they’re searching for a passage.”
Silence falls between us, loaded with questions as Daerek shifts to study me with narrowed eyes, but I barely notice him. Instead, I notice how the ledge we’re standing on is familiar, how my feet fit the grooves within it like a well-worn path.
Turning, I trace my fingers along the wall behind us, searching for a memory I can’t quite find.
One patch of the rock is warmer than the rest, and I press into it until it clicks.
How’s that for a spoiled, useless princess?
Daerek’s sucked-in breath of surprise is more validating than sex.
I give him a smug smile. “I think we should go this way.” And then I step into the darkness, completely ignoring the foreboding knowledge that, if all signs are correct, I apparently know my way around hell.
Several thousand years ago.
Talk about world’s biggest hypocrite, after the shit I gave Daerek.
The tunnel looms ahead of us, silent and impenetrable. Daerek’s hand lands on my shoulder, and we pause while I mutter the spell for the green flame to guide us.
As we edge down the narrow crevice, I can’t help but get the feeling I’m being led somewhere I’ve been before. Like everything that’s happened since we fell—the key, the blood, this passage—is a reunion tour to a time I’ve completely forgotten.
The tunnel widens, but it’s a dead end filled with rock, rock, and more rock. Except… one of these rocks is not like the other.
My eyes land on the tombstone, and I know instantly that it is mine.
I whack him on the shoulder. His lips twitch into a smile, but then he’s crowding me back against the rock, quicker than I can move. He stops with one hand braced above my head, the other pressed against the slow drip of blood on my stomach.
“I wonder if you can tell me,” he drawls slowly, “how a witch remembers hell? There are no witches in hell. Trust me. I know.”
His breath skims my face, and I can’t help the way my own hitches in response. “I’ve no idea. I just know I’ve been here before.”
“Yes, I got that.” The hand covered in my blood comes up and hovers beside my cheek, almost caressing the air between us. “I think you’ve more than just been here.” His eyes flick to the tombstone. “I think you died here.”
I, very carefully, do not breathe.
Daerek searches my face and smirks at whatever he finds there. “But you already knew that.” He leans in, voice hardly more than a breath against my ear. “What else aren’t you telling me?”
“Just following the advice on the tombstone,” I whisper, struggling not to react to the heat of his body or the fire in his eyes. It isn’t the good kind of fire, no matter what my body tells me. “Who said gossips can’t reform?”
A flicker of amusement crosses his face, though he disguises it almost immediately. “Does it hurt?” His hand drops once more to the blood on my stomach, but he doesn’t touch it this time.
I shake my head, but the motion makes me dizzy. It might not hurt, but the effects of blood loss can’t be escaped. My knees dip, and as I squeeze my eyes shut and clutch at the wall behind me for balance, it’s the strong hands holding me upright that keep the world from tipping sideways.
If I stay like this, I can pretend he’s someone else, someone who cares about me more than they care about what I can do for them. I can pretend it isn’t Daerek.
I don’t want to pretend.
My eyes open, and it’s almost too much, the way he’s watching me. A slow drip of water somewhere in the tunnel with us is the only noise apart from our breath, and my uselessly distracted mind marvels that there is apparently water in hell.
Sense memory crashes over me, and I hear the steady torrent of that water drip on rock for what feels like a thousand years, like it’s beating down upon my grave.
I can’t hide from the obvious any longer; I died here. I died, and thousands of years later, I came back.
Something must show on my face, because Daerek falters, and for the first time I see uncertainty in his gaze. It might be because we’re so close together for once, or perhaps he’s given up hiding where there’s no one but me to hide from. For whatever reason, it’s real.
He shows me something real.
My breath hitches, and I open my mouth to ask him what he’s seeing in me to make him respond like that, but what comes out is: “please don’t call me princess.”
He’s so close, it’s impossible to miss the shock that crosses his face. But instead of arguing, instead of throwing what I say back at me in the most flippant manner he can, Daerek simple nods.
“I’ll stop,” he murmurs, and my heart surges with unexpected warmth.
Our magic shivers in the air, warm like Daerek’s breath against my skin. It rises with my joy and the instinctive way Daerek feeds on it, cocooning us in pure energy. I’m holding my breath, though I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I just know it’s coming.
Maybe if he weren’t a joy demon it wouldn’t happen. Maybe we wouldn’t feel so giddy.
Maybe it’s useless asking why.
Drunk on the energy surging between us, Daerek’s eyes darken, lips parting in surprise, and before I know what’s happening, he kisses me. It isn’t the gentle kiss of a demon trying to bring me joy—it’s hard, demanding. I can’t breathe, can’t think, can only melt into him as he shoves me against the wall and takes what he wants.
Searing heat burns through me, but it doesn’t hurt; without looking, I know the blood on my stomach has gone. Healed by this strange magic between us.
It shouldn’t be like this. I shouldn’t feel joy from this fighting disguised as kissing, but the way our energy surges is undeniable. A different kind of heat throbs between my thighs, and I clench my hands against his chest to dull the need to push into him. It doesn’t work, my hips moving of their own accord, seeking the hard ridge of his thigh.
He lets out a groan I’ve only ever imagined in my dreams, and then the hand that’s beside my head drops lower, fingers clenching into my waist as he grinds forward into me. There’s no mistaking the hardness between us, and I think I’m finally getting everything I want when he leans back and gives me something better.
Fingers slipping beneath my skirts, he brushes against my pussy and bites my lip at the same time.
“I think our magic likes this,” Daerek says conversationally, pressing a little closer to me.
He toys with the band of my underwear, and our bond sings in appreciation. Our eyes are fixed together, green on blue, before he dips lower and slides one finger inside me.
I can’t help gasping, pushing forward into the thumb that circles my clit.
The reminder he only wants this for his magic hurts like hell, but I don’t care anymore. This might be the only way I can have him, and I want him all the same. If Violet gets to have her grungy punkass demon, I can have my Calvin Klein goth.
And he isn’t wrong; our bond loves this.
But before I can do anything more than moan shamelessly, he pauses, staring at something beside me. He wets his lips and says—voice still rough, but with the cautious tension of someone trying to keep things under control—“Do you know you’re leaning on about a hundred keys?”
“Say what?” I sit up, not sure how many more cockblocking keys I can take, and stare at the rock behind my tombstone.
He’s right, but there’s no way these were here before. They hang from the wall, suspended on thin chains against the outcrops of rock, and spill over onto the floor. Those ones crunch beneath my feet, biting the skin of my calves, where before the surface was smooth stone.
What the hell is going on?
Daerek looks up at me, but then his eyes slide to the side and he frowns at the tombstone beside us.
“Now I know someone’s fucking with us,” he murmurs.
He isn’t wrong; there’s a hundred or so locks carved into the tomb.
“There’s no way they were there before,” I say, tapping on the closest one to work out if it’s real. It is. I glance down at the keys. “Are we meant to use them here or the gate?”
“And will they vanish again when we get close?” Daerek sifts through them. “We need to find one that stays real.”
“Maybe this is a test?” I suggest, holding up one key and discarding it immediately because it looks nothing like the first. Although I suppose there’s no guarantee that one was right. “We check the keys in the locks before trying them in the gate?”
“We’d be here a hundred years if we checked every key in every lock,” Daerek says drily. “It’d be quicker to dump the pile on the ground and take the one that doesn’t vanish.”
I hum thoughtfully. There’s probably a catch, but the straightforward route is tempting. “Why would they give us a pile of keys and a wall of locks?”
Daerek shakes his head and rifles through the pile. He pulls out a key that looks roughly like the first one we had. “Does this fit anywhere?”
I take the key and search the tombstone for a lock that might match.
They all, shockingly, just look like locks.
I pick one at random and turn it inside. With a hissing sound like water running down a cliff, every lock and almost every key disappears.
“Well I hope that was the right one,” I say, staring down at the final key, hooked over my finger.
“Because it’s the only one we’ve got, now.”
“Stacey,” Daerek says quietly, pointing to the tombstone.
Writing appears on the slate, the message about secrets replaced by a message about dreams.
A physical dream begins with an illusion.
What the hell? That sounds like succubi lore.
Long minutes pass before I finally say, “if the riddle grave is telling me this key is also an illusion, I’m going to scream.”
Daerek remains unhelpfully quiet, frowning at the key in my hand like he expects that’s exactly what it means.
I sigh. “You think that’s what it’s saying, don’t you?”
“I think it’s asking us to consider how we can turn an illusion into something real.”
That sobers me, my witty comeback disappearing as I glare down at the ticking time bomb in my hand. “Will it stay real long enough to get it to the gate?”
I wait for him to say some ridiculous platitude designed to comfort me and boost my joy, but instead he just grimaces and says, “Doubtful.”
For some reason, the word comes to rest with ease in my thoughts, soothing me in a way the most beautiful lie in the world never could. “Then we solve the riddle. But we can’t do that in here.”
“You want to go back down there?” An unreadable expression crosses Daerek’s face.
I nod, and after a second he swallows and says tightly, “What if we can’t fight them? He could kill you.”
Smearing my fingers through the drying blood stain, I mutter, “I think he might have done that once before, and I’m not begging for an encore.”
Daerek’s brows crease, his gaze landing on my injury. “Has it stopped?”
“I think the boosted hocus pocus healed it.” I tap experimentally against the blood, but it’s already crusty, and the wooziness has almost passed. “And maybe something about the grave.”
My eyes slide to the tomb, somehow recalling the cold press of earth as it fills my ears and mouth. The keyhole remains in the center of the stone, the prophetic words etched below. It led me here, I’m sure of that. I hope I’ve received the message correctly.