by Jenny McKane
So, when old fire-pants demon himself asked her if she wanted to get a turnabout the foyer, Sunny reluctantly agreed, as it would be the only chance she would have to have an excuse to walk past Azrael's table and in front of Gideon.
The evening's entertainment was sword dancing demons who looked a lot like belly dancers with sharp objects. Lucky for Sunny, mostly every eye in the room was upon them when they walked in front of Gideon. Nobody seemed to notice when she squeezed her palm and dropped the bright red liquid into his goblet.
Vitaly was the last one seated at the table, and just when Sunny thought she had gotten away scot-free, his arm snaked out and snatched her bicep in a strong grip. She let out a gasp, and when the fire demon beside her looked back in anger at who would dare touch Sunny while she was in his company, he practically shrank away when he saw it was Azrael's older son.
Sunny met Vitaly's eyes in a quiet challenge. While she wasn't trying to come to blows with the annoying, overbearing demon, Sunny was adequately annoyed at being grabbed in public like she was a piece of property.
“Do you need something?” she asked, and edge in her voice.
“I need some alone time with you later,” he had a smirk on his face, having zero shame in his game, despite two of his three wives sitting two tables over.
“When it comes to you, I'm busy until the end of time,” Sunny whispered.
She knew it was a gamble, but she was out of options. If she played the flirtatious game with this maniac, it would blow up in her face and she’d end up chained to his bedpost. She shuddered, and not in the good way, at the thought. She had tried to be polite, but it hadn’t worked yet. So now she would be blunt.
“I can make you change your mind,” he whispered with a wink.
Azrael was now watching them, but he was far enough away that he could not hear what they were saying. Sunny plastered a fake smile on her face, in case anybody worried that she was about to murder the crown prince.
“When it comes to you, your highness,” she said demurely. “There isn't enough alcohol in hell to change my mind.”
With that, she gave her arm a yank and rejoined a now confused-looking fire demon.
Glancing behind her, she looked at a wrathful Vitaly and skipped over him when she noticed that Gideon had watched the entire thing. His face was a little unreadable, but his eyes were locked on her and he had seen the entire thing.
Interesting. In the first few days since they’d seen each other in the realm, he not only didn’t recognize her, he hadn’t even been interested enough to look at Sunny. Did she dare hope that Plaxo’s antivenom was working? Even just a little?
Beside her, the fire demon was trying to strike up a conversation about how much gold he had saved up in caves in the fire realm. She tuned him out as they made their way to the foyer, but thundering footsteps behind them made Sunny glance over her shoulder just in time to see Vitaly barreling towards her, murder in his eyes.
Shit.
She’d gone and stepped in it now.
“You,” he pointed at the fire demon. “Leave. Now. Don't come back if you value your life.”
Mr. Fire Demon needed no more incentive than that and made himself scarce. Vitaly had his talons dug into her arm once again as he dragged her towards a hallway off to the right. Sunny dug her heels in and resisted, knowing nothing good was going to happen if he hauled her all the way up into some private place. Just as they reached the hallway, she shot her hand out and grabbed the corner of the wall and yanked herself of Vitaly's grip--for a second time that night.
“You're playing a dangerous game, my lady,” Vitaly said.
He was irate. It was obvious in his expression and in the tone of his voice. Sunny had obviously pushed too far and the pampered, overindulged heir apparent of the shadow realm was angry.
“Haven't you ever heard the saying no means no?”
He was angry and dangerous, but hell, Sunny was pretty pissed off herself by this point and she was sick of this asshole digging his claws into her skin every time he got offended.
“Another very human thing to say to me,” Vitaly said. “I feel like you need lessons on how to be a demon again. To learn how a demon responds to pressure and pain, and how a demon knows its master.”
She saw red at that one. Not only was he a psychopath, but he had serious boundary issues and hell only knew how many other females had been victimized by this jerk.
“You are not my master,” Sunny said between clenched teeth. “Not in a million years. Not in your wildest dreams. So, you ought to get whatever notion that I belong to you or want anything to do with you whatsoever out of your head before this gets out of hand. Someone could get hurt.”
The threat had been directed at him, but it backfired when he only smiled at her. She hated his smile. Truly hated the way his face was both handsome, deplorable, and evil at the same time.
“That's what I'm promising you, my lady,” he said with a sneer. “Pain and obedience. You learn one with the help of the other and I am a master teacher.”
“Your brain is obviously malfunctioning today, your highness,” she said. She was annunciating that your highness part slowly in case he wasn't understanding who she was talking to. “I want nothing to do with you.”
“Funny,” he said, his hands trapping her on both sides by placing his forearms beside her head. His body leaned toward hers and pressed her against the wall, sealing her in. He smelled like alcohol and burned souls. Literally--tonight he smelled like death and flames. It was the oddest thing and it took a great effort not to retch.
What the hell had he been eating? Imbibing? Ingesting?
She turned her cheek because the reek was too intense and just as she was squeezing her eyes shut, Vitaly took the opportunity to run his tongue from underneath her jaw, up over her cheek, along her temple and a few inches into her hairline.
She gagged before she was able to recover.
“Did you just fucking lick me, you asshole?”
Sunny turned to face him and when he gave her a self-satisfied smirk, as though there was nothing she could do about it, she did something about it. With considerable effort, given that he was basically dry humping her against a wall, she brought her hands against his chest and gave him a short shove away from her and while she did that, she brought her knee up as hard as she could, landing it squarely in Vitaly’s balls.
She hoped and prayed that male demon anatomy was just as delicate and tender as male human anatomy. When he nearly buckled in half and wheezed, she considered it a good guess. But Vitaly didn’t crumble as easily as most human men would have and if she hadn’t been paying attention, she would have missed the right hook he launched at her head and the rage on his face.
Holy hell, the fucker was mad.
“You’ll pay for that,” he said in a breathless rage.
She brought her forearm up just in time to catch most of the strike from landing, but the impact was forceful, and it knocked her a little silly. Silly enough to be pissed that he’d been manhandling her since they met and now he was not only threatening her, but licking her face, too.
“Put it on my tab,” she said as she shoved away from him.
Vitaly wasn’t done, though. He rose to his full height and looked like a rampaging bull coming straight for her.
Razzle dazzle, her brain screamed, remind her what Eli had drilled into her head. Footwork, footwork, footwork.
She moved, so when Vitaly got to her, she was already ducking underneath him. More than anything, she wished she could double down on the attack and pull out her blade, but it wasn’t the right time.
Her footwork had worked, but her hair had failed her. It was left down around her shoulders that evening because she’d overslept and hadn’t had time to allow any of the maids to do it. She felt Vitaly’s fingers make contact with it and close around the strands. With a yank, he forced her head back and knocked Sunny off balance enough to close his second hand around her throat.
“You’re going to break for me,” he whispered softly as he leaned down and placed his lips on her forehead in some sort of psychotic, chaste promise of a kiss. “Through blood, pain, and fear, I will break you and turn you into one of my most enviable concubines, Lady Layla.”
Despite the pain of no oxygen, Sunny forced a smile.
“You’ll break first,” she said, her voice pained and weak.
He was about to reply when a voice cleared its throat.
“Your Highness,” Alder said, appearing out of nowhere in the opening of the hallway. “Your father requests your presence.”
Vitaly gave Layla one last, lingering look before releasing her throat and standing.
“The Lady fell,” Vitaly said as he straightened his coat and fixed his tie.
“Of course, sire,” Alder said, blandly, disappearing without a glance over his shoulder to see if Sunny was okay.
With a groan, she pushed herself to a seated position and rubbed her raw throat.
He was going to pay, she promised herself. The son of a bitch was going to pay.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Big risks, big rewards. Big risk, big rewards.
Sunny repeated the mantra to herself over and over as she descended down the staircase that led to the bottom floor of Azrael's keep.
Another four days had passed since her little tussle with Vitaly in the hallway, and Sunny was desperate to get something happening that could shake loose some better outcomes. She had been diligent both in feeding Gideon the antidote, though she was down to one small dose a day thanks to her new guards, while at the same time dosing up the demon tree with that disgusting silver liquid Azrael fed his guests.
But it still wasn't enough. The clock was ticking towards Gideon and Selah’s wedding, and Sunny needed to make things happen. Beyond that, Vitaly had taken his pursuit of Sunny, despite her protests, to a whole new level. He pinched her whenever she was close enough for him to reach. He grabbed her ass if she was even closer, not giving a single damn who saw. He even got away with licking her face when her attention was on his father one evening.
Because everyone was assembled in the foyer, Sunny hadn't been able to deliver a solid knee to the gut like she had wanted to. It was all a big game to Vitaly, but Sunny wasn't enjoying it anymore. Hell, she’d never enjoyed it and she had things to do, a mortal realm to save, and a few chains around Gideon’s very existence to break.
Gideon had looked more haunted and weak than ever and her heart was breaking as she witnessed them turning him into a shell of his former, badass self. He was a big reason she was pushing for more drastic action and why she’d been more insistent than ever to have Plaxo help her.
Gideon still hadn’t seemed to recognize her, despite the antidote she was delivering, and that was even more soul crushing and depressing. Sure, he’d catch her eye now and then with an odd, vacant stare--but she reasoned he was likely suffering from psychosis by now. Whatever they were doing to him behind closed doors was much stronger than the paltry amounts of anti-poison she was delivering.
The chances were high that once they cleared the demon realm, curing Gideon was going to be a long, hard, heartbreaking road and there was a significant chance that she’d never get back the man she knew. The thought tortured Sunny at night and it was all she could do not to cry herself to sleep each time her head hit the pillow.
Because he had essentially been banned from the castle, Plaxo kept a low profile. But after a few days of nothing happening, Sunny had pleaded with him to use his magic to help her investigate and search for any answers that might help them.
The weight of what Eli had told her during their short visit was also weighing on her. What was happening in the human realm? Were the archangels losing ground? Were her friends safe?
Plaxo, stuck in the castle with her, was unable to reach Eli in his dream scape anymore. It did not bode well for what might be happening on the other side of the portal. So yes, Sunny was very nervous about that, also. It was part of the reason she decided to ramp up her efforts to get things moving on her end, as it seemed their friends needed them to return sooner rather than later.
With Plaxo’s help, she had decided to investigate the bottom floor. He was going to shield her enough so that she went unnoticed as she moved through the bottom floor. It wasn't exactly an invisibility spell, more like Plaxo would accompany her and cloak her from anybody who might see her. He would mess with the reality of what the observer thought they saw.
“It all sounds very complicated,” Sunny had said when Plaxo tried to explain what he was going to do.
Plaxo nodded in agreement. “It took Plaxo nearly 200 years to understand how to truly cloak himself,” he said. “And another 200 to cloak somebody else.”
“How old are you, father time?”
She had called Gideon the same nickname, which he had not appreciated. Gideon was not immortal, but because he was part demon, he did not age while in the demon realm. So that meant Gideon had spent quite a long time in the demon realm when he had been chained to Seumat’s side. The very thought of the oversexed succubus made Sunny very happy she was dead.
Plaxo, on the other hand, was full demon and full immortal as long as he was not killed. He would not age out of life.
“What will Lady Hunter do with the answers she finds?”
It was obvious that Plaxo was nervous. The turn of recent events had him questioning the sanity of what they were attempting to do. More than once, he had tried to talk Sunny into escaping to the nearest portal.
“Plaxo can get Lady Hunter out of the keep without being seen,” Plaxo had pleaded. “There can be another time to retrieve the Half-Breed. There can be another time to fight him.”
By him, the dream demon meant Azrael. But Sunny had simply shaken her head.
“You heard Eli,” Sunny replied. “You heard Azrael, too. There's a war opening up between demons and angels, and if we don't stop it quickly, it could be catastrophic. And Azrael hinted at weaponry. That can't mean anything good, and if there's a chance that we can stop it early, we need to. Your race and mine depend on us right now, Plaxo.”
And more than anything, Sunny worried that if they didn’t get Gideon out now, there wouldn’t be anything left of him to rescue if they returned.
There hadn't been any argument to her reasoning after that. Plaxo had reluctantly agreed to go along with whatever she needed to do. He agreed to help her however he could, no matter how silly he thought her plan was. And he had thought her idea to go into the basement of Azrael's keep, where nobody went in and nobody went out under pain of death, was insanity defined.
But like the good little concrete-soldier-dream-demon that he was, Plaxo helped her flesh out a plan that might actually work. Maybe. Small chance.
Whatever, Sunny had said. She would take it.
So, in the middle of the night after another round of feeding the disgusting death-demon-tree with the blood of his dinner guests, Azrael and his family had ascended to their rooms for whatever round of debauchery was next. For once, Vitaly looked mildly interested in at least one of his wives, maybe two, and had ordered them to follow him upstairs. They didn't exactly look thrilled, actually, and Sunny felt a small pang of sympathy for them.
She watched Gideon being led away by Alder, after Selah planted a very large, very theatrical kiss that she was certain Sunny had witnessed. More than ever, the obsidian blade against her torso burned with a desire to be thrown right between Selah’s eyes. She tamped down on it, however, and had stayed as professional as she could.
I have a job to do. I have a job to do. I have a job to do.
Like some self-help guru, Sunny had taken up repeating mantras
to stay focused on her goal and to not completely freak out when she saw things that would normally turn her stomach. She was getting good at the whole mantra thing, and she considered even going on a speaking tour if and when she survived this entire ordeal. Imagine how easy public speaking would be after surviving an ordeal like nearly a month in Hell?
So, there they were. Creeping down the stairs like a couple of poorly equipped ninjas. Plaxo was forced to accompany Sunny because he needed to be present for his cloaking ability to work. She was glad of it, too. Sunny was scared out of her mind, truth be told. And from what she could see of the little dream demon shaking beside her as they made their way to the staircase that led below, Plaxo was pretty damn scared, too.
Slowly, they crept down the stairs, doing their best not to make any noise. It was difficult, though, because the staircase was wooden and wooden staircases had a tendency to be loud and creaky. Plaxo disappeared into thin air so that his small, yet compact, body would not create extra stress on the wooden planks. Sunny pressed her body against the wall and clung to the railing trying to take some of her weight off her feet.
The stairs wound down two floors and were dimly-lit by a few small wall sconces with old fashioned candles burning. Definitely not the top-flight decor of the second floor where the guests resided, Sunny thought.
Just as they reached the bottom of the landing, Sunny stopped.
“Ready?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. The darkness should have been a comfort to her, as it kept her cloaked in case anybody was around to see her, but she found the inky darkness terrifying suddenly. So much unknown lay ahead.
“Lady Hunter is invisible,” Plaxo’s disembodied voice said from right behind her. She took a deep breath, before stepping onto the landing off of the stairs. Thankfully, there were no doorways or heavy doors to push through to make noise. It was simply a long hallway lit by even more candles.
She pushed along in the darkness, with nothing to see except dark, cold, and wet bricks all around her. It was claustrophobic and stuffy, and Sunny had a difficult time drawing a full breath as the odors in the air we're both unfamiliar and awful. It was like a disgusting mix of magic and medicinal smells, neither the good kind.