The demon lurched forward.
Greyston pulled the blade free. “Neco, Ana, let’s drag this bastard home!”
The pain inflicted by the Cairngorm ore would only cripple the demon for seconds. For good measure, Greyston plunged his sword into the demon’s back and twisted while Neco and Ana each took an arm and hauled.
“The rune is active,” Lily said, her hand going to the vial of Kelan’s blood she kept on a chain around her neck.
She wasn’t even breathing hard.
Greyston sent her a grin as he kicked the demon into the circular pattern engraved into the ground. “You were amazing.”
“I was terrified,” she countered with a ragged laugh.
Greyston didn’t believe that. Her eyes gleamed with a victorious glint and she looked as if she could go another round. But when he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, he felt her trembling.
TWELVE
Lily’s exhilaration lasted until they boarded the Red Hawk. One down, but they weren’t done yet.
When she reached into her demon glass, she found two tunnels instead of three. She glanced at the swirling canvas on the far right, but she didn’t dare distract herself with what the other demon was up to. Evelyn was her priority.
Dread folded around her as she stepped into the whirlwind. As much as common sense dictated that no demon could breach Kelan’s runes, she half expected to find Agares sipping tea across from Evelyn in the Harchings morning room. Or worse.
Agares walked a tight circle, around and around. The stylish overcoat had been discarded, leaving her adorned in a midnight blue velvet habit that accentuated her figure. A waterfall of blond curls hung down to the small of her back.
“Finally,” Agares exclaimed, spinning about. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten about me.”
Lily didn’t immediately see who the demon spoke to. Her gaze swept over the burnt-out shell of what had clearly once been a spacious farmhouse kitchen. The charred oak table still stood in the middle. Every beam in the room was blackened, the stone walls covered in soot. The pots strewn on the floor were an off-white colour, as if the metal had instantly oxidised.
Lily’s eyes landed on the ragged form crouched into a corner and her heart slammed into her throat.
“There you are,” Agares called out, turning quickly.
Lily pulled her gaze from Georgina to the demon. Was Agares speaking to her? There was something vacant about the demon’s eyes, as if she were looking straight through Lily.
“Come now,” Agares taunted. “Don’t be shy, dyanle. Your scent is weak, but as familiar to me as my own. Did you really think you could sneak by me?”
A whimper jerked Lily’s attention back to Georgina. Her hair hung in limp streaks, soot and ash smeared her face. Her eyes were huge, frozen, but thank the Lord she was alive.
“Ah, that’s how it is,” Agares said. “You want to maintain the façade for our little friend over there. Very well, Lady Perth, Lily McAllister, Lady Lily… Why do humans insist on having so many names?” She gave a cackling laugh. “To make up for their many, miserable failings, no doubt.”
Lily’s head whipped back to the demon. “You know I’m here?”
The demon’s gaze shot to her, but again seemed to look past her instead of at her. “Since our very first time, dyanle.” She laughed again, less of a cackle, more of a hoarse chuckle. “Where was it now? Ah, yes, the farmhouse, right after poor Saloese departed. I knew you were there. How could I not? Your scent followed me all the way home.”
Lily moved, intending to get closer to Georgina. But she noticed that Agares’ gaze didn’t follow. Agares could scent her, hear her, Lily realised, but not see her.
“That was unfortunate,” Agares went on, still looking in the wrong spot. “I quite enjoyed my life as Mrs. Winterberry, I must say. But as loathe as I was to let it go, I couldn’t trust you with my whereabouts and identity, now could I?”
The pit of Lily’s stomach stewed. For once, she didn’t know if it was the demon poison or Agares’ words. The Winterberry household! And now it was confirmed. She was the reason that Agares had frozen the manor house and everyone inside.
“What do you want?” Lily bit out.
Agares turned in her direction. “I’ll never get used to that screechy voice. My poor dyanle, what you have endured.” Her voice took on a manic edge. “All in the name of greed.”
Sour rot curdled Lily’s stomach and started pushing into her veins. Perhaps that was why Agares no longer made much sense. Then Lily remembered. Demons took on a human form. They couldn’t actually possess a human body. Agares didn’t know that Lily’s blood was merely tainted with that of the demon Raimlas. She thought that Lily was in fact Raimlas, posing as a human girl for all these years.
She didn’t have much time left, but she had to know why Agares kept referring to her, or Raimlas, in this way. “Dyanle?”
“Old habits die hard,” Agares snorted. “But don’t read too much into my terms of endearment. I assure you, my use of dyanle is entirely ironic.”
And pathetic, Lily thought, but didn’t press the issue.
“What do you want?” she demanded again, her eyes flashing to Georgina. Why was she still alive?
Understanding hit at the same time as a bout of dry heaving.
“You want to trade,” she said, swallowing a cough that scraped her throat raw. “Me in exchange for Georgina Bonnington.”
“You know me so well, dyanle,” Agares said.
Lily didn’t need to think about it.
“I need time to get there,” she said. “A couple of hours.”
She looked around again with a frown. She suspected this was the farm Greyston had mentioned, which meant it belonged to Georgina’s uncle. “Where is her uncle?”
Agares threw her hands up in feigned regret. “I’m afraid the poor man didn’t fare as well as his niece.”
Lily’s lungs constricted painfully. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on Georgina.”
“My, my, aren’t you the picture of compassion and concern,” Agares sneered. “You almost have me fooled.”
“I mean it! There’ll be no trade if she’s harmed in any manner whatsoever.”
Agares held a hand up, examining her fingernails in bored contemplation. “You always did like to play out each detail ad nauseam.”
Lily fought another fit of dry heaving. She needed to get out of the demon glass fast, but not without a guarantee of Georgina’s safety.
“Fine,” Agares sighed loudly. “If you insist.”
“I do,” Lily gasped, and it would have to do. Shadows crept along the edges of her consciousness. She was out of time.
THIRTEEN
Lily carefully refrained from comment when Greyston cursed a blue streak at her delusions. If she thought she was giving herself over to Agares, apparently she needed to think again.
The pipes of the Red Hawk’s circulatory system rumbled ominously. “Greyston,” she warned gently, “perhaps we should slow down.”
“She can handle it,” he muttered.
In less than thirty minutes, they’d sailed over the border and into forbidden England Aether. Lily didn’t object, but she felt the need to confirm, “We’re putting down in the grounds of Harchings Castle?”
Greyston gave a curt nod. “Georgina’s farm is half a mile from there.”
They sailed in silence for a further hour. A foreign sense of calm had folded over Lily while she’d explained the situation to Greyston. Perhaps in direct contrast to his mounting anxiety. Perhaps she’d reached her personal limit and something inside her had broken. She didn’t particularly care to examine the why and wherefore, she only hoped it lasted. She checked her demon glass at regular intervals, just a quick peep to reassure herself of Georgina’s wellbeing, not long enough to engage Agares.
She was just wondering if Greyston had had enough time to return to reason, when he let out another string of curses.
Followed by, “
I’ll tear Agares apart with my bare hands.”
“If that’s your grand plan,” she murmured, “then both you and Georgina will end up dead.”
He practically snarled at her. “Dammit, Lily, I will never agree to trade your life, not for Georgina, not for anyone!”
“You give me too much credit.”
“What?” He scowled at her.
“I’m not a martyr, Greyston. I may be willing to fight to the death, but I’m not saintly enough to just hand my life over.”
The storm clouding his features lifted. Finally, he was in a mood to listen.
“We try this my way,” she told him. “If we fail, you rewind time and then we wait for Kelan.”
“Do you think Agares’ patience will stretch that far?”
“Let’s worry about that if we fail.”
“Lily, I don’t know…” He scrubbed his jaw, his gaze moving to the Aether streaming past the ship’s nose.
“There’s something else,” Lily told him. “I’m not sure Agares wants me dead.”
The look Greyston turned on her suggested she’d lost her mind. “Agares now knows you’re the McAllister demon sniffer. You foiled her guise as Winterberry. You’re our proverbial spy on her wall of grand designs. Of course she wants you dead.”
Lily cleared her throat. She’d deliberately glossed over a pertinent fact earlier, deciding Greyston had more than enough to deal with. He’d never accepted his demon-tainted blood, believing instead that it was a stain on his soul. He’d said as much to her, that day they’d first learnt of how the McAllisters had experimented on them. You took whatever you were born into and spun it into light. Inside me, it turned into a curse.
Lily stood, moving closer to the glass shield that curved around the pilot console on her side. She pressed a palm to the glass, peering down at the smeared track of green and brown far below, wishing she didn’t have to say anything. But how could she not?
“I got the distinct impression that Agares believes I am actually Raimlas. That this…” She waved a hand over the length of her body as she looked at Greyston “…is not me at all, but the human form of a girl he took, a life he has been fabricating for all these years.”
“Married to Kelan?” Greyston said dubiously. “Even if you could hoodwink the Meister of all things demon-related, how would that work? The McAllister homes are all protected to keep demons out.”
Lily hadn’t thought of that. Now she did, and the conclusion she drew only cemented her conviction. “Saloese. The farmhouse demon I told you about, the one in Glasgow. Apparently Kelan bartered with him, some deal that gave Saloese a claim to part of Kelan’s heart. The demon’s essence clung to Kelan even after he was banished, allowing Saloese to pass through the protection runes.”
“That seems far-fetched.”
“My demon glass took me to a scene inside Cragloden, into the library that was occupied only with Kelan and his father,” Lily said. “Kelan’s father was dead a short while later. I don’t know the details or how any of this is possible, but Kelan believed that to be the truth.”
“So, what?” Greyston ground out. “Kelan bartered the same deal with you years ago, allowing you to wheedle yourself into his heart and home? Christ, Lily, we’re putting our lives on the line and he’s flitting about bartering deals with the bastards.”
“It was only the one deal.” Or so she prayed. “And obviously I’m not Raimlas. I’m just throwing a theory out, one explanation as to how Agares might be convinced I am both Kelan’s wife and Raimlas. Clearly, it is not impossible.”
Greyston’s jaw tensed as he digested that.
“You may be right.” His disgust took the form of slapping a curled palm around the throttle and slamming up another lever. “I sensed the same from that ostrich demon, Flavith, when we thought we had her trapped. She said I was weak, that I’d been hiding for a long time. I remember that, the way she spoke, as if she were speaking to Raimlas.”
“We both share Raimlas’s blood.”
The thrumming vibrations inside the cabin changed, quieter, less strained.
Lily glanced down at the world below again, surprised to see the L-spread view of Harchings Castle already looming. “If Agares and Flavith communicated better, they’d realise something else was at play. For now, Agares thinks I’m a demon—”
“—and demons can’t be killed.”
Lily thought it was rather more than that, some intimate dynamic between Raimlas and Agares, but she wasn’t in the mood to delve into the romantic relationships of demons.
“That doesn’t mean she won’t try,” Greyston muttered.
Lily couldn’t disagree. Another change of gears seemed to stall the engine, then Lily realised they were hovering, preparing to set down on the croquet lawn.
A man strode around the corner of the library with so much purpose and composure, Lily surmised it could only be the Duke himself.
“Don’t say anything about Georgina until I’ve spoken to Evelyn,” she warned Greyston. “I intend to enlist her aid in leashing Devon. We can’t afford to have him charging into the hornet’s nest in some vain rescue attempt. And, oh,” she thought to clarify, fixing a concerned look on Greyston, “you do realise you cannot strangle Devon, right?”
“I’m not going to kill the man,” Greyston said roughly. “But don’t expect me to be civil.”
Lily pressed her forehead to the glass shield, watching Devon’s features take shape beneath their rapid descent. He’d stopped at the edge of the lawn, his spine straight, arms hanging at his sides. He didn’t look skyward, not once, as if refusing to dignify this illegal berthing by gawking.
Her thoughts went to Greyston and her heart ached for him. Georgina had deceived them all, but she was just a puppet. Devon was the puppet master.
“I don’t,” she assured Greyston softly. “And I don’t expect I’ll be civil, either.”
Neco lowered the hull door the moment they touched down.
Greyston took one look at the Duke and turned to Neco. “I don’t like the smug look on the bastard’s face. Stay here and guard the Red Hawk. You have my permission to use whatever force is necessary.”
“No one will get past us,” Ana said, moving in beside Neco.
Shaking her head, Lily disembarked first, but Greyston was only a step behind.
Devon’s gaze flew over her head to Greyston. “If you think you can flaunt England’s laws without consequence,” he pronounced, his voice ringing with disdain, “you’ve made a grave mistake, Adair. I finally have the grounds to confiscate the Red Hawk and detain her Captain.”
“You’re welcome to try,” Greyston threw out as he strode down the ramp and straight past Devon without any attempt to tear the man apart.
Lily was feeling less docile.
“Is it true?” she demanded, pausing before Devon to deliver a hard glare. His demeanour was as cold as his ice-blond hair and stone-dead eyes. “Is Georgina Bonnington in your pay?”
Devon didn’t flinch. “I cannot discuss matters of the crown.”
He inclined his head. She looked for a trace of regret in his grimace and saw none. How can Evelyn love this man? She’d always thought him distant and detached, and now she knew without a doubt that it wasn’t just a façade.
“Lily!” trilled a gaily-lit feminine voice.
Lily gave the Duke her shoulder and hurriedly crossed to where Evelyn stood with Greyston in the pebbled courtyard. She walked into Evelyn’s arms and sank into the hug for a long moment, her heart smiling for the first time in days.
“I missed you, Evie,” she said, pulling out of their embrace.
“And you may well have just saved my life,” Evelyn declared. “Another day and I swear I’d have been dead from utter boredom.”
“I’m afraid we’ve arrived under rather unfortunate circumstances,” Lily told her.
Greyston snorted.
“I suspected as much,” Evelyn said, arching a brow at him, “given your dramatic entra
nce.”
“Speaking of which…” Lily sneaked a glance at Devon, who was walking up to them. “I don’t suppose you could convince your husband to not hand us over to the authorities?”
“Leave it to me!” Evelyn stepped into his path. “Devon, darling, isn’t this a wonderful surprise? Why, I only sent the message to Lily yesterday and here she is.”
She placed a hand on his arm, looking up at him with such angelic grace, Lily almost laughed.
“I have an awful confession to make,” Evelyn went on. “I’ve been plagued by nightmares and haven’t slept peacefully in weeks. One moment I fear the babe will arrive too early, the next I fear it will never come.”
Devon brushed the back of his fingers down her cheek and under her chin. “You should have said something.”
“You’re such a worrywart, darling, and I know how fertile my imagination is. Lily, on the other hand, is so thoroughly pragmatic and sensible. I wanted her to visit so desperately, I may have exaggerated my condition slightly.” She slid an apologetic smile in Lily’s direction. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you into rushing to my aid as if it were a dire emergency.”
While Lily had complete faith in Evelyn’s ability to manage her husband, she couldn’t quite believe he’d fall for this embellished tale. Devon was an astute, intelligent man. There must be some limits to how gullible love could make him.
She felt Greyston stiffen beside her. No doubt he didn’t appreciate Evelyn doing battle for him, but thankfully he said nothing. They had far bigger concerns to deal with.
Evelyn turned her face back up to Devon. “I would feel terrible, absolutely wretched, darling, if Lily or Greyston are in any trouble because of what they did to help me and our unborn babe.”
The Dark Matters Quartet Page 78