by Sadie Sears
My demon grew more interested, and things shifted inside me as he pushed himself to the front. “What do they do?” I didn’t want to ask the question, and I really didn’t want to know the answer if the high-pitched laugh in my head was any clue.
“They infuse you through a demon sigil. Essentially, it’s a brand. Not unlike our runes for marking what’s ours, but it burns into your skin and allows the essence to penetrate into your body.” She shuddered. “I heard that part really hurts, like being boiled alive.”
A memory flashed through my mind. “My dad had three tattoos that I could remember and getting one of those had seemed to make him meaner than before.” I didn’t even complete the thought before she jumped in.
“I bet at least one of them was a sigil. They reinforce your demon side and strengthen the control of your demon.”
I shook my head as I let what she’d said sink in. “There was a demon in the woods after Mae a week or so ago. Looked human, though. She’d seen him before.”
“Demons can smell potential dragon mates. I bet even your demon can smell the humans who could mate with dragon shifters. That glamored demon could have been after either one of you.”
“I took care of him.” I said the words without emotion or inflection, but the memory of the pain that action had caused clutched my chest.
I hadn’t fully understood all of the pain my demon was directing my way until now, although the correlation between good thoughts and deeds hadn’t escaped me, but with Chloe saying it was a battle for control, it made more sense.
“Luckily, your scent disguises hers, so while the two of you are close, she’s safe.” Chloe glanced at me as she continued her cleaning behind the bar.
I nodded and filed that useful piece of information away for later before bringing the subject back around to what interested me most. “So…” I hardly wanted to ask. “How do you think Mae can hurt me?” I couldn’t imagine that she ever would. Not with the way she looked at me.
Chloe took a deep breath, one that lifted her shoulders. “By not accepting your claim.”
“I don’t think I need to worry about that.”
My dragon approved of my confidence and my chest rumbled with agreement.
Chloe’s eyes widened. “I see how you both feel but it’s really not an easy path to walk. Your demon won’t make it easy for you. Eventually, the pain will increase, and your body will change as the struggle for control becomes more desperate. And if you go through all that and she still rejects you, you’re gonna lose your soul to hell for good. There’ll be no coming back from that.”
I shrugged. My dragon and I were united, prepared to take a chance. “I’m not sure I actually have a choice.”
She half smiled. “Fate is funny like that. But I can’t let you go ahead without a warning.”
“I could lose myself either way.” I couldn’t hide the bitterness in my voice.
Her smile turned sympathetic. “Yeah, and neither is without pain. But trying to claim your mate is going to be really hard in lots of ways.” She sighed. “Look, I’m going to be real here. Doing good to claim you mate, or because you’ve met your mate, doesn’t always work out. One, there is no return to normal after you start down that path. You’ll never go back to what you were three days ago or last week.” She sighed. “You’ve already started changing in too many small ways.”
I nodded, unsure how that idea actually made me feel.
“Okay, now I need to tell you a story.”
The fire crackled loudly as I hid my grin at Chloe interrupting herself and her talk to tell me a story.
She tilted her head. “I guess it’s a cautionary tale, really. I had a friend who tried to redeem himself by doing good deeds so he was a good enough man to claim his mate—he knew my dad had managed to save his soul, so my friend thought it worth the risk. But his mate rejected him. He’d driven his demon half mad with all the good deeds, and…” She shrugged, seemingly at a loss. “His soul went to hell. I think that’s what happened anyway. I haven’t seen him since. He’s still out there somewhere, as far as I know, but empty without a soul. His demon will be in complete control now.”
“You’re really selling this to me, Chloe.” Horror clawed at my throat and I swallowed it away.
She laughed, the sudden sound a surprise. “I’m not trying to put you off. I know I can’t. I just think you deserve to know all the shit you’re about to take on. My point is, my friend tried to force his bond with a human female mate.”
“But she was his mate… Why would he need to force that?” Fate just happened, so what Chloe said didn’t make any sense at all.
She laughed again, but there was no joy in it. It sounded almost hollow. “Oh, Draven.” She shook her head. “Fate offers you a match, but you both have to feel the same. And if you force a claim on your mate when she isn’t ready, it’s a quick trip to hell for your soul. There is still some free will in fate, you know? And for that reason, you need to ask her permission, or receive her permission, before you can claim her, too. And, interestingly, not all human females with the potential to be mates will ever realize that potential. Some of them will go on to have perfectly ordinary lives with perfectly ordinary men.”
I opened my mouth to ask if it was really just a matter of taking my time before I asked Mae anything about claiming her, so I could be completely sure I wasn’t just taking the fast lane to my own destruction, but before I could speak, she pressed her finger to her lips and turned her attention to a small TV behind the bar. It was tuned to a news station, and she grabbed the remote control to turn the volume up.
She listened for a few moments, and I watched the pictures of soldiers and civil unrest somewhere in the world before she returned her attention to me.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “Conflict is increasing, and I just kind of like to keep a watch on it. The chaos never strikes me as entirely random, you know?”
I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure why something on the other side of the world was important to Chloe.
My demon cackled, and I shifted, suddenly uncomfortable.
“It’s like the local women,” she muttered, but she was no longer talking to me, and I allowed my thoughts to drift to Mae.
She wouldn’t let me lose my soul to hell, to work under the complete control of my demon. If she did, I’d be like Saul. The idea brought a stab of pain and a roil of nausea, and I lurched forward, steadying myself against the bar.
“You okay?” Chloe lifted the Jack to pour me another shot, but I raised my hand.
“No thanks. I might metabolize it fast, but I’ll want to remember this whole conversation.”
She screwed the cap back onto the bottle and put it by the mirrored back wall of the bar. “You got any questions?”
I shook my head, but I did have questions, although they probably weren’t any that Chloe could answer.
“Out with it.” Her tone brooked no nonsense. “No moping in my pub.”
I glanced at the guy in the back again, but she waved her hand dismissively. “He’s not moping, either.”
I shrugged. Didn’t matter to me either way if he was moping or plotting to kill someone. His glower could have gone either way.
“So, if Mae does accept me.” I began hesitantly, the words slow. “If she saves my soul or whatever, what kind of husband and father would I be?” The words left me almost as a plea, and I clamped my lips together to prevent any more vulnerability seeping out.
Chloe shook her head. “That really is a question I can’t answer, and believe me, those are rare around these parts.”
I chuckled. It figured that the answer that meant most to me was one she didn’t have.
“But that answer lies within you, Draven. You have the free will to be whatever you want. Well, you will have if you get this first part right.” She winked
I grinned out of habit, but my thoughts were still racing. What kind of guy was I? Was I even good enough for Mae? Hell, I only ever went where t
he money was. I did assignments and raked in the cash, always looking to claw myself further away from the poverty I’d dragged myself up in—because I hadn’t been brought up. Oh, no. The fact I was still here was almost one of life’s happy accidents.
And now I had a garage full of enough cars to keep my dragon happy until I saw another one. And my demon was happy because the assignments created the right kind of chaos… But what about me? What did a man need to be happy? That thought was probably too deep to figure out at the pub, and I opened my mouth to thank Chloe for being so open with me, but before I could speak, the door slammed open and Ash hurried in.
When he saw me, he smiled. “There you are,” he called like he’d already looked all over the rest of Port Lair.
“Here I am,” I responded, and Chloe offered me a small wave as she headed to the other end of the bar and began to unload the glasswasher.
Before Ash approached me, he walked over to the moody guy. “Keir!” He greeted him in a loud voice but only received a half-hearted fist bump and a nod in response.
As Ash engaged him in quiet conversation, the guy adjusted how he was sitting, and the glow from the fire lit up the wicked scar across his left cheek. It was jagged and stretched from his temple to the corner of his mouth, giving him the eerie illusion of a permanent half smile splashed across his entire face. My curiosity attracted his attention, though, and his brown eyes blazed hot as coal as he directed a glare my way.
I turned my back on them and waited for Ash to finish, picking up a coaster and fiddling with one of the corners where it was starting to pull apart into layers.
“Dude.”
I didn’t even look up as Ash gave me his customary greeting.
“Hey, Chlo. Looking good today, sweetheart.” He slid onto the stool next to me then slipped off again and left a space between us. “I like you, man, but I don’t intend to plaster my thigh up against yours.” Then he raised his voice. “Chlo, we need these seats appropriately guy distanced. Manly room, you get me?”
She glanced up and rolled her eyes.
I chuckled. “Thanks for the additional space, I guess.” I silently willed him to get to the point. When he didn’t, I spoke again. “You were looking for me?”
“Yeah.” He reached inside his leather jacket and produced a folded buff-colored envelope. It wasn’t very thick, but it rustled as he moved it. “There’s not a whole lot out there to find. I got inside every system I could think of. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Until I found this.”
I reached for the paperwork, but he drew it away at the last minute.
“You need to be very sure. You can’t unsee this.”
I nodded, unused to this more serious side of Ash.
“He’s a dangerous guy, Draven.” He drew his brows down. “You need to know what you’re getting into. He kills indiscriminately. He’s the worst of our kind.”
As I began to agree with him, pain shot through my chest, and I huffed a harsh breath instead. I turned it in to a cough, then a laugh and jerked my thumb toward Keir, still nursing his one glass in the shadows. “Even worse than that guy?”
I’d meant it to be amusing, to deflect Ash’s attention from Saul, but Ash frowned. “Not cool, Dray. Back in the day, Keir was like my brother. I’m glad he turned up, that Chloe collected him in that way she has. The guy looks like he needs help.” He flashed a quick, appraising glance across the pub. “The scar’s new since I last saw him.”
We sat in silence for a moment, and I hovered between wanting to apologize to my friend and not wanting to apologize for a throwaway remark to take the heat off me.
Ash shoved the envelope toward me, and I wrapped my fingers around it. “Think about it before you rip it open.”
But he was too late. I’d already sliced the seal undone with the tip of my claw. A barely there, half-shift came in useful when no one really cared about scales or claws. I pulled out three sheets of paper and looked questioningly at Ash.
“This is it?”
He shrugged. “I told you. There wasn’t much. I mean, I can get you more of the same if you think it’d be useful but take a look at that first.”
I skimmed my gaze over the first sheet. “A death announcement?” I murmured the words of the obituary as I read it. “What do I need to know about the short life of Peter Richards for?”
“Look at the photograph.” Ash spoke from barely open lips, and I flicked my glance back to the blurry copy of a picture from some local paper.
“Holy shit.” The words burst from my mouth, and I glanced around, but Keir hadn’t moved an inch. I lowered my voice. “I mean, that’s Saul.”
Ash nodded. “Yep. And I’m telling you, man, no one fakes their own death for any good reason. I did a little bit more digging, and it turned out there were women going missing from local cities and towns right before this guy died.” He shrugged as I flipped to the next page. “It could be coincidence.”
“Holy shit!” I cringed as I did it again. I read the reports Ash had put together a second time. “There are women going missing from Port Lair, too?” I almost hissed the words in my haste to keep my emphatic voice low.
Chloe glanced at us and narrowed her eyes, and I drew in a sharp breath. She’d mentioned local women, too. Did she know something? Or perhaps it was like she said, and she just kept an eye on local news.
Either way, I had a new direction to take Mae’s research, although it might not do us any good.
I folded the envelope back up and slipped it inside my jacket. “Speaking of Saul, I need to head his way to report in on my assignment.”
My demon clamored inside me as I thought about Mae and the lies I was going to need to tell.
“Hey, uh, thanks for this. Like, for real. And, you know, holy shit, dude.” My words were repetitive, but it was easier to make it seem like my thoughts had gotten stuck on what I’d just read. “Let me know if you come up with anything else.” I looked at Ash as I spoke.
He was the closest thing I had to a friend, and I’d always thought of myself as not needing anyone, but perhaps I’d been wrong. And maybe I could do some more research so I could understand what Mae was getting herself into.
“Sure. See you later.”
I left the bar and climbed onto my bike to retrace my journey back to the bluff.
As I swept around the curve to Saul’s gates, a woman leaning against a parked car flagged me down.
I stopped, resting my feet on the ground as I allowed my engine to idle. “Yes? Can I help you?” Suspicion wound tendrils and ugly knots in my thoughts. There was something about her that made my dragon restless and excited my demon.
My nostrils flared. There was something about her scent…
But I liked to think I recognized law enforcement when I saw it. I’d always been careful, never on the wrong side of them—to their knowledge, anyway, but yeah. That was probably because I could recognize who to spill my guts to, and more importantly, who to avoid.
This lady, who sent cold chills down my spine, was definitely one to avoid.
She smiled, the slight stretch of her lips cold and thin, and it didn’t reach her eyes. “Detective Jo Orozco, Port Lair PD. I’m here investigating a—” She paused and eyed the gates for a moment. “A disturbance.”
“Oh.” I met her piercing blue eyes but didn’t give her any information. She’d have to work for it.
“Who are you, and why are you here?” Apparently, she was perfectly happy to work for information, and she jumped right in with two questions as she paced a slow walk in front of me.
I fought my usual defensiveness, because that would just look suspicious, and flashed her a smile that matched hers for coldness. My senses were all screaming that I needed to get away from her, but that was illogical. I was a demon-dragon. Nothing scared me. Maybe I needed to kill her instead—except I couldn’t tell what my demon wanted me to do.
“I do odd jobs for the owner here, and you’re making me late for a meeting with him by delaying m
e unnecessarily outside his property.” My words were stiff and formal, and told her precisely nothing.
She nodded smartly, but her gaze hardened. “I see.” She seemed to take a longer inhale than necessary, soft but definitely considering something.
And I didn’t know what she thought she’d just seen in my words, but I wasn’t in any rush to clarify things for her.
She peered closer at me. “Have you heard anything about a woman screaming in this area?”
I shook my head, but thoughts were flipping rapidly through my head as I considered the reports about missing women that Ash had found for me. It took all of my strength not to pat them where they sat in my pocket.
Because that wouldn’t look at all suspicious.
“I haven’t heard anything like that.” Although I wouldn’t hear anything happening at Saul’s place from mine, not that she needed to know just how close by I lived. “It’s actually the first time I’ve stopped by here in a couple of weeks.”
That was also true, so hopefully I could get out from under her scrutiny with a handful of carefully selected truths.
She nodded. “I see.”
Fucking. Hell.
What could this woman see when I was simply telling her the truth? Irritation flickered in my chest as my demon grew restless. He had a few ideas to fix this unexpected law enforcement problem.
My dragon also twitched like it was flicking its tail defensively, and it was up to me to try not to fidget along with their movements.
After a short stand-off, where I tried to look unaffected by her continued scrutiny of me, she reached into her pocket and withdrew a business card. “Give me a call if you hear anything.” But the look on her face suggested she didn’t think I’d do any such thing.
I nodded anyway, even though the gesture was pointless. We both knew I wouldn’t call her.