Page 4 of Deranged Demons

I cry out in surprise. I want to shield my eyes, but like Shade, my gaze remains glued to the figure who’s bent over the bed with his naked body on display, his ass cheeks bare and his pants scrunched around his ankles.

“Why is it so red?!”Shade laments, her wailing commentary filling my head.“Do you think he sat on poison ivy? Or is it some kind of allergic reaction?”

My stomach roils as I notice the red welts climbing all the way up Dad’s back.“Stop!”I plead to Shade. It’s bad enough that I have my own thoughts to deal with.

“I’m just saying. If it is?—”

I mentally block her from my mind to momentarily silence her, but it doesn’t make the situation anybetter. As Dad sees me, he curses and scrambles to the side, almost tripping as he tries to yank up his pants. The physician standing behind him moves forward like he’s going to help, but the king pushes him away, sending him flying across the room where he crashes into the wardrobe which splinters on impact.

My mouth opens and closes again as everything seems to happen at a comically slow speed.Oops. So I did misread the situation.

“Blake!” Dad shouts as he finally manages to do up his pants and rise to his full height. He’s shoved his trousers on with such force that the fine material has torn at the seams along his legs, and I give him a sheepish smile as his face continues to redden.

His bare shoulders rise and fall rapidly as he peers at me, and then he turns his attention to the open doors. I’m guessing he doesn’t notice the unconscious guards straight away, because he storms forward like he’s intent on tearing their heads off for letting me enter.

Before he can pass me, I shoot my spear out, blocking his path with the blunt side of the weapon. “It wasn’t their fault,” I say quickly. I’m all for bloodshed when needed, but I’m not about to let the guards pay for my mistake. I mean, theyhadtried to do their jobs.

King Dalton blinks like he’s only just seeing the guards on the ground, then his gaze lowers as he stares at the metal pressing lightly against his abdomen. There was a time when I wouldn’t havedared to stop my father from doing anything. When just being in his presence would have made me tremble. At seven feet tall he’s the largest demon in Seral and that’s not even counting the thick black horns that curve over his head resembling a war helmet. He’s the only ruler to finally lead the demons to victory against the witches. The only one who managed to unite the five realms against their common enemy, and the one who has fought for peace between the demon clans for more years than I’ve been alive. I can feel the physician watching us from across the room like an agitated bird wanting to fly away from here, but the doctor doesn’t move.

“You had to know they wouldn’t be able to keep me out,” I say, shrugging apologetically when Dad still doesn’t speak. Now that he realizes what’s happened, I pull the spear away. “If you left a message with them, I would have come back later. But I thought you were being assassinated.”

At that, Dad finally turns to peer at me, his black gaze finding my face. “Assassinated?” Seconds pass as he just stares at me, and then he jerks his head back and laughs. The abrasive sound rattles the walls like thunder, and slowly his anger fades, the tension leaving him like water disappearing down a crack in the pavement.

“She thought I was being assassinated!” King Dalton repeats, chuckling under his breath when his laughter dies down, and he shakes his head like the idea of him being attacked in his chambers is the mostidiotic thing he’s heard this century. Which, to be fair, it probably is.

His chuckle turns into a cough, and I narrow my eyes, watching him as he closes the doors. He’s still coughing as he beckons me to follow him and leads the way to the black circular table in the middle of the room. A robe is draped over the back of a patterned armchair, and he pulls the material across his shoulders, wrapping it around himself, but not before I get another look at the massive red welts across his arms and back.

Letting down the mental barrier, I ask Shade,“Have you seen anything like that?”From her often surprisingly knowledgeable commentary, I sometimes get the feeling she’s seen much more than she’s told me about.

She sticks her beak out as she stares at the king with beady eyes.“No. Is it possible he contracted a sickness from another realm?”

A foreign allergen had been one of my first guesses, but as far as I’m aware, Dad hasn’t left the castle in months. My gaze cuts to the physician as I follow my father to the table. As a general rule, demons don’t get sick. With natural healing abilities, there aren’t many things our bodies don’t heal from. Because of this, there are few physicians in Seral, and most are usually called to help diagnose foreign illnesses and wounds that sometimes take longer to heal.

Before I can question the doctor, Dad waves his hand, dismissing the physician who scurries from theroom like a startled mouse who’s been freed from a trap. Reaching over, the king pours himself a glass of strong liquor from the bottle on the table and lowers himself onto one of the chairs.

I open my mouth, about to question him about the welts, but I snap my lips together when he commands, “Sit, daughter.” From the tone in his voice, I know better than to argue.

Clenching my jaw, I drop onto the chair opposite him and cross one leg over the other. The back of the chair has been adjusted to accommodate my wings, and I stretch them out before folding them tightly again.

At first Dad doesn’t speak as he watches me, but then he sighs, closing his eyes and rubbing the bridge of his nose like he’s nursing a headache. “I’d planned to tell you at a more reasonable hour, but now that you’re here, and given what you’ve…seen,I guess there’s no point in waiting any longer.”

I furrow my brow and lean slightly forward as I study his body language. I’m expecting him to deny anything is wrong, but from the way his usually proud shoulders are drooping down, I can tell he’s already resigned himself to the idea that he’s going to divulge the issue. I think he’s going to tell me that there have been further setbacks with the negotiations between Seral and the royals of Rostof, realm of the giants. I expect him to explain that he caught a rash while visiting their realm in recent times, perhaps in secret, but he says, “Blake, I’m dying.”

I don’t hear him. Not really. I’m still busy thinking about the brutal Rostof royals, and his statement doesn’t immediately sink in.

He continues to study me as he speaks. “When the rash started, I thought I’d caught an illness while I was away, but I’ve had multiple physicians visit me over the past months, and their diagnosis is always the same. The disease is mimicking the patterns of the sickness that took your grandmother centuries ago. I’ve always known that the battle with the witches would one day get the better of me, and it seems my time has come.”

Seconds pass, and Shade speaks softly in my head.“Uh Blake, did you hear what he said?”

I swallow hard. “My grandmother?” It’s the only thing I manage to say as questions fire through my mind. I think back to the history of my grandparents. My grandfather, King Xeron, was said to have died before the war against the witches, but my grandmother, Queen Ophelia, was documented to have died from a rare disease the physicians named, Witch’s Burn.

During the war, the witches fought using all kinds of chemical weapons, and it’s believed that these chemicals sometimes caused a sickness that inflicts irreparable damage to a demon’s body. Once in a demon’s system, the demon could live for years, centuries even, but eventually their body would succumb and lose the battle against the poison.

Emotion clogs my throat as I struggle to believewhat I’m hearing. “You’re talking about Witch’s Burn,” I say, and when Dad nods, I protest.

“But that can’t be right. You’re over a thousand years old, and not everyone was exposed during the battle. If you had been, surely your body would have broken down by now.” Research showed that once exposed to a particular cocktail of chemicals, most demons only lived another two centuries at most. I’d foolishly believed this meant the king was fine. “It has to be something else,” I reason. I wish the physician was still with us so I could have studied his response to all of this.

King Dalton takes another drink before lowering his glass. I wait for him to crack a smile, but his brows are set into an unwavering hard line and, for once, I realize this isn’t one of his games.

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