“What about the demon?”
“What about Travis?” Amalia burst out, glaring at her father.
I swallowed painfully. “I d-don’t know. I … I never saw Travis. The circle was empty when I came in.”
Swearing, Uncle Jack stormed across the room. “Those backstabbing bastards! They stole my demon! How did they get it to agree to a contract? Travis is in league with them, I know it.”
“Or he’s missing because he’s in danger!” Amalia cut in loudly. She lifted her arm off me, her nose wrinkling. “You’re drenched in blood, Robin. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
I peeked at my inner elbow. Dried blood coated my skin, and barely visible fingerprints smudged the gore where a hand had gripped my arm. I couldn’t see the wounds from Vince’s knife.
Amalia was watching me anxiously, so I stammered, “I—I guess I fell in the … the …”
Determinedly looking away from the bodies, she muttered, “Come on.”
She helped me stand, keeping a firm grip on my elbow. The hem of her pretty purple dress was stained red.
“Where do you think you’re taking her?” Uncle Jack stalked toward us, blowing air through his nose. “I want answers! I want—”
“No one cares what you want!” Amalia shouted. “I can’t believe you! Kathy is upstairs in hysterics, trying to find her missing son, and all you care about is the demon!” She hauled me past him and spat over her shoulder, “I’m taking Robin upstairs. Do something useful while I’m gone.”
Uncle Jack swore at her. As we left, I stared at my feet, unwilling to risk glimpsing the bodies.
Amalia steered me directly to my bedroom. “You should clean up. I’ll check on you in a few minutes. You … you sure you’re okay?”
When I nodded weakly, she retreated into the hallway and closed the door. I stood there, numb and shivering, then looked down. My white t-shirt was drenched in crimson that had dried to brown at the edges. Blood everywhere.
My stomach jumped. I bolted into the bathroom just in time to throw up in the toilet. Panting, I washed out my mouth, then stripped off my shirt and wet a towel in the sink. I vigorously scrubbed my arm, then paused. Lowering the towel, I stared at my inner elbow.
Three pink scars marked my skin where Vince had cut me. I prodded one, surprised it didn’t hurt. Healing sorcery could close wounds but it took intensive work … and no healers had been present in that basement.
A visceral memory hit me in the gut: Zylas leaning over me, a hand on my chest, another on my injured arm, red magic crawling over the floor and sliding into my body. My stomach twitched threateningly and I grabbed the sink, breathing fast. Demon magic. He had healed me with his demonic magic.
My eyes fluttered closed. “Protect me,” I had said.
“What will you give me?” he had asked.
An exchange. A trade. That’s how demons worked. I’d asked him to protect me, and in return … I’d set him free. I hadn’t realized that’s what I was agreeing to, and a violent shudder shook me from head to toe. I’d set a demon loose in the city. He was so fast, so deadly. Where was he now? How many people had he killed already?
Gulping down my nausea, I finished cleaning the blood off my torso, then unbuttoned my jeans and shoved them off my hips. As they slid down my legs, something fell out of the back pocket and hit the floor with a clang. A flat, circular pendant on a silver chain lay across the tiles, its surface smeared with blood like everything else. Warily, I picked it up.
Zylas crushed the pendant between our hands. “Now seal it.”
I rubbed my thumb across its rune-etched surface. It was an infernus—the key to a demon contract, Amalia had said. The demon’s will and spirit were bound to the infernus, and through it, the contractor could control the demon.
That was a real contract, though. Whatever weird bargain Zylas and I had made didn’t come close … did it? He’d already fulfilled his end, even going a step further to heal my injuries—not merely repairing my arm, but a full healing. Though I should’ve been lightheaded and woozy from blood loss, I was simply tired—and parched with thirst. I turned on the faucet and drank from the flow, gulping down water until my stomach threatened to rebel again.
Finished with cleaning, I carried the infernus back into my room and tossed it on the bed. I needed to hide the pendant before anyone noticed I had it. That’d be hard to explain.
I pulled on clean clothes—a soft green sweater and stretchy yoga pants—then sat on my bed. Exhausted and sick with guilt and anxiety, I picked up the infernus again. My thumb traced the centermost rune—a spiky, circular sigil. I hadn’t looked closely at the one Amalia had shown me, but I would’ve remembered such a strange marking.
Flopping back onto my pillow, I swung the infernus like a pendulum. Golden beams from the setting sun streaked through the window, illuminating floating dust motes and sparkling across the silver disc. How long had it been since Travis led me into the basement, since those men had nearly killed me? Where was Zylas now?
Red light sparked in the infernus’s center.
The scarlet glow burst out of it in bounding streaks. They pooled and condensed, solidifying into a humanoid shape. Weight settled on my waist, and the light dispersed with a final shimmer.
Zylas grinned down at me, crimson eyes glowing and his pointed canines on full display.
For an eternity, I could neither move nor breathe. Gasping in blind panic, I shoved away from him—but he was straddling my hips, his weight pressing me into the bed. All I managed to do was writhe pathetically.
“Payilas,” he crooned.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded breathlessly, fighting my panic. “I thought you’d left!”
“Left?” He canted his head, then flicked the infernus I still held in the air, sending it swinging. “I am bound to this, payilas. So are you.”
“What?” I dropped the infernus like it was contaminated with a deadly disease. “No.”
Bracing his hands on either side of my head, he leaned down. I pushed back into my pillow. “Are you not pleased? I have obeyed our terms.”
I gulped, my mind spinning frantically. Bound to the infernus. Obeying the terms. A terrifying new understanding dawned, followed by the urge to howl in denial.
“You mean by protecting me?” I stammered.
“Protect.” He seemed to taste the word, his eyes gleaming dangerously. “What does this word mean, na?”
He lowered his face until all I could see were his glowing eyes. Fresh adrenaline surged through my veins. A demon was pinning me down. He could kill me before I could draw breath to scream.
“What does it mean, payilas?” he whispered, his breath warm on my lips.
“It—it means you can’t hurt me.”
“Is that all?”
“And … and you won’t let anyone else hurt me.” I wanted to close my eyes but I was afraid to look away from him. “Would you move?”
“That is your meaning?” His wolfish grin returned. “You did not tell me this when we made our contract.”
“Contract?” I mouthed silently, terrified by the word—by the confirmation of my new worst fear.
“So,” he concluded with vicious delight, “your meaning does not matter.”
No. No no no. This wasn’t happening. “Zylas, get off me!”
With a husky laugh, he slid off the bed. I leaped off it after him, my shaking knees barely holding me up—but now we were standing in the whole five square feet of floor space between the bed and dresser. It wasn’t nearly enough room.
I planted my feet and lifted my chin, fighting the urge to cower as he circled me. His movements were smooth and fluid, and the sunlight flashed on the armor that shielded his left shoulder, forearm, and a small square of his chest. Where metal or fabric didn’t cover him—meaning most of his abdomen and half his right arm—powerful muscles rippled and flexed beneath his reddish-toffee skin.
He stopped behind me and my panic spiked again.
&n
bsp; “You agreed to protect me,” I said shrilly. “So you have to—”
“You did not explain your meaning.” His fingers caught a lock of my hair and tugged. “So I get to decide what protect means.”
That answer was significantly worse than I’d been imagining.
He let the lock slip between his fingers—then suddenly slid both hands into my hair. “Why are you so soft?”
I jerked away, tearing my hair free, and spun to face him. “Keep your hands off me!”
“Na? But payilas.” He stepped closer and I retreated. My back hit the dresser. “Protect … does not mean obey.”
I recoiled into the dresser as he leaned over me. He was of average height for a man—a human one, at least—which meant he towered over half a foot above my diminutive frame. With mocking deliberateness, he sank his hands into my hair again, cupping my head. He leaned into me, his body hard and heavy and warm. Terrifyingly solid. Strong. Dominating.
Suppressing the urge to shove him away, I let my arms hang at my sides. That’s what this was. Domination. He was stronger, he could do whatever he wanted, and he was proving it.
What a bully.
“Must I keep you from all hurt?” he mused, as though there’d been no pause in our terse exchange. “Or only keep you alive?”
There was a distressingly large difference between those two interpretations.
His taunting smile returned. “You did not explain your promise either.”
My promise? I hadn’t promised him anything. “You don’t get my soul. I didn’t agree to that.”
An edge sharpened his smile—angry displeasure. New fear skittered up my spine, but he didn’t attack. Though he could show off his superior strength, I was guessing—or rather, desperately hoping—that whatever his interpretation of “protect” was, it didn’t allow him to hurt me.
But what had I agreed to? I only remembered refusing to give him my soul. Since I hadn’t promised to get him out of the circle, that couldn’t be what he meant, and I didn’t recall offering him anything else in exchange for …
My eyes popped wide as my fuzzy memory handed me the answer.
“Cookies?” I blurted shrilly. “That—that’s what you agreed to?”
In my befuddled terror, that was the only offer I’d made. If I hadn’t been half out of my mind, I never would’ve suggested something so ridiculously worthless.
“Why on earth would you agree to that?” I added, too flabbergasted to think before speaking.
His lips peeled back, flashing his canines, and his narrowed eyes sparked like angry flames. Yes, he’d agreed to my cheapskate offer, and he was pissed.
I might have gotten the better end of our deal, but he hadn’t walked away with nothing. He’d escaped the circle without enslaving himself. Though he wasn’t completely free—he was still bound to the infernus—he had survived a death sentence while keeping his mind and will intact.
Because, as he’d said, protect didn’t mean obey.
Amalia’s voice echoed from the main level as she called something to Kathy. Zylas’s head turned toward the sound. His fingers flexed, then began to withdraw from my hair.
I grabbed his wrists.
“You promised to protect me,” I hissed urgently, “so you need to know this: if anyone—I mean anyone—discovers we have a contract, I’ll be put to death. Do you understand? The MPD—the organization that rules over mythics—will kill me. They’ll kill you too. We’ll both be executed. You can’t protect me from them. No demon is that strong.”
He listened, his expression inscrutable.
“The only way to protect us both is to stay hidden. You can’t let anyone see you or hear you or—or anything. We can’t let them find the infernus. We can’t draw attention to ourselves or we’re dead!”
His eyes squinched. “Attention?”
“That means we can’t—”
“I know what it means.”
He leaned close again, pressing me back into the dresser. I’d never felt so small and powerless—exactly what he wanted. I dug my fingernails into the back of his hands, but my nails couldn’t pierce his skin. He didn’t acknowledge my attempt to wound him.
“No attention,” he pondered. “That is a problem.”
“What? Why? Has anyone seen you?”
“Not a hh’ainun.” Abruptly releasing me, he stepped back. “We should leave this place.”
“You did something!” I realized with a gasp. “What did you do?”
He opened his mouth to answer—and magic exploded somewhere outside my window, the detonation shaking the mansion walls.
Chapter Fifteen
“What the hell!” Amalia’s frightened yelp rang out from the stairs.
“Zylas!” I grabbed his arm. “What did you do?”
He shook me off like I was a kitten clinging to his sleeve. “We should leave now.”
“Not until you tell me—”
Feet thudded up the stairs. Someone was coming.
I dove for the bed and grabbed the infernus. “Get back in this thing!”
His face twisted with contempt.
“Hurry! Before she sees you!”
The disgust on his face intensified. The pendant heated on my palm, then red light ignited over his hands and feet. As his body dissolved into luminescence, the swirling glow sucked into the infernus and it vibrated before cooling. That fast, the demon was gone.
“Whoa,” I whispered, holding up the pendant. Zylas was inside this thing? How did that even work?
A second explosion rocked the house. I staggered sideways and caught myself on the dresser. Dropping the infernus around my neck, I tucked it under my sweater with one hand as I threw my door open.
Amalia was picking herself off the floor. White showed all the way around her eyes as she spotted me. Her terror sent mine skyrocketing.
“Amalia, what—”
“The other demon is loose!” she shrieked. “It got out!”
“What?”
Slamming through her bedroom door, she shouted over her shoulder, “It blew the greenhouse sky high and now it’s starting on the house. We have to get out of here!”
I gawked as she disappeared into her room, then I bolted back to mine. I tore my clothes off the hangers, rammed them into my suitcase, threw my books in on top, grabbed my phone, and zipped the bag up. Hauling it by the handle, I launched back into the hallway.
Amalia burst out of her room ahead of me, a backpack over her shoulder, and I chased her down the stairs. Another detonation shuddered the floor and my heart pummeled my ribcage. I remembered the huge winged beast, its magma-like eyes radiating bloodlust. It was out there. It was coming for us.
Amalia tore outside but I skidded to a stop to grab my runners from the closet. I stuffed my feet into them, then extended the handle of my suitcase to pull it. What about my mother’s grimoire? It was probably in the house. I couldn’t leave it behind when—
A fourth blast shook the walls, and I hurtled through the door. Recovering the grimoire would be pointless if I died. I would worry about it later.
Outside, the evening air was crisp and chill, the final beams of the setting sun peeking over the trees at the property’s western edge. My suitcase bounced down the steps as Amalia ran across the drive toward the four-car garage.
Crimson light flashed.
A blazing orb hit the garage like an armor-piercing rocket. The building exploded, the doors rupturing and fire bursting from its interior. Amalia was flung backward and landed painfully on the concrete drive.
“Amalia!” I cried.
With a sweep of dark wings, the demon landed on the burning garage roof. Huge horns rose off its hairless head and its thick tail swung like a mace. Scarlet magic veined its forearms as it raised them. A glowing circle spiraled out of its palms, hovering vertically above the roof. Runes flickered through it, power building. Arctic cold spread out from the beast and the flames licking at its legs shrank and disappeared. Ice frosted the char
red wood.
The air throbbed with power. The flowing runes swelled and the demon barked a command.
A red beam launched from the spell and struck the house. The power ripped through the walls, tearing a ten-foot-wide hole. A cacophony of crashes and shattering glass erupted from within, then the alarming creak of breaking wood. With a groan, a section of the roof caved onto the second floor. Flames snaked through the rubble and water sprayed from broken pipes.
The demon’s glaring magma eyes swept over me and it raised its hands again. A semitransparent circle, filled with flickering runes, flashed around its wrist as it began a new spell.
Paralyzed with terror, I realized I was about to die.
The demon veered around, focusing on something behind the garage. It hurled its spell into the backyard. A crimson-striped blast boiled into the sky.
Panting and lightheaded, I rushed to Amalia and grabbed her arm. “Get up. Get up!”
She woozily pushed to her feet, her elbows bleeding from road rash. The demon on the roof summoned another explosive spell and chucked it at whatever target lay behind the garage.
“Quickly!” I dragged her down the drive. We broke into a jog, fleeing the destruction.
A pair of wrought-iron gates blocked the driveway’s entrance. Amalia punched a code into the pad and they slowly opened. The instant the gap was large enough, we squeezed through and pelted down the sidewalk.
The neighborhood, filled with walled properties and sprawling mansions, wasn’t intended for foot traffic. We had to jog the equivalent of three blocks before reaching an intersection. We stopped on the corner, wheezing. My legs shook from exertion.
In the distance, sirens wailed. Fire trucks? Police? If they approached Uncle Jack’s home, the demon would kill them. It would kill everyone in and around the house, then extend the battlefield to Uncle Jack’s hapless neighbors.
Zylas had done this. It must’ve been him. For some hideously stupid reason, he’d freed the other demon. That meant every atrocity the winged demon committed was ultimately my fault.
“Come on,” I panted. “The bus stop is just up this street.”
Taming Demons for Beginners: The Guild Codex: Demonized / One Page 11