Page 17 of The Demon's Fire
Kole approached them both, gripping behind each of their necks until they winced. “There, now. That’s more like it. Brothers in arms.Frerons.” Then he slammed their heads together. Hard.
Brak rubbed his noggin. “Hey, Comm. What gives?”
“We made nice.” Tyr shot him a wide-eyed glare.
“You did, but I feel better when I drive home a point. You are both A-holes.” When he moved toward Sabine and Ram, they backed away. “And you two morons. Since when do you allow your brothers to fight?”
Sabine looked at Ram to answer. He shrugged. “We were bored. Besides, sometimes dudes need to let off a little steam.”
Hmph. Kole grunted when the four Firebrands left the gym arm in arm, laughing. This was his life. Watching his warriors exchange blows. Escorting a frigid, uptight but gorgeous female around Scath, making nice when what he wanted was to test her out in bed. Would she melt in his arms? Or would she freeze his dick? He scrubbed a palm across his jaw. His demon was up for a shot of hot sex. It was how his breed fed. And he was long overdue.
Fun shit.
****
Thehousekeeper stood in the doorway. “Yur lordship, the phone in the room I am forbidden to enter has been ringing off the hook. Better come answer it. I don’t think the bloke is going to stop.”
Dante frowned, slapping his hands together to remove the soil from his gardening gloves. It was a sunny day in the English countryside. Since he did not want to waste the pleasant afternoon, he planted bulbs. Digging through dirt, he satisfied a need for creating beauty. Life. His daughter had preferred daffodils, perhaps because her hair had been as yellow as the flower she loved. The estate’s garden contained a multitude of these. Tall. Short. Bright. Pale. Deep gold. Then there were gladiolas. Irises. Tulips, his favorite, in patches based on color. But everywhere daffodils. He hoped she was smiling down on them.
Brushing the dirt from his trouser knees, he gazed upon the day’s work. Pleased, he walked toward the ancient house, one owned by his family for many generations. With just him in residence, it was too big. It should go the way most large estates had. No. That day would come after his death. Now, his daughter’s memories and her spirit roamed the halls of this home where she had spent most of her time when she was young. So, he would stay. If for no other reason than to give her unseen form a familiar spot to haunt.
The dutiful housekeeper left the area once he opened the door to the private study. The phone rang again. He knew who was calling. Dante picked up the receiver. “Yes?”
When a check of his pants found them clean enough, he took a seat in his well-used high-back chair, knowing the conversation would not be quick. He listened.
He ran a finger over the side table. No dust. “Sometimes these things take longer than we would like. Your men will succeed next time.” Dante twisted his neck toward the window, staring out over the garden he had been planting. He crossed a knee over his leg. “You are persistent, Cerberus. An excellent quality.”
The Englishman poured two fingers of scotch into a tumbler. With the drink in his free hand, his gaze returned to the garden. “On a more positive note, my hacker has been quite successful using the backdoor into patient files in doctors’ offices, labs, and hospitals. He’s finding more and more candidates with special markers.”
Dante set the half-empty glass on the table. He rose. “I thought the results might please you.”
Putting a log on the fire, he stared at his daughter’s picture on the mantel. Whenever he saw her photo, his heart broke, just as it had the day she died. Dante clutched the frame, rubbing a thumb across her cheek, once so rosy, once so beautiful, once so alive. She had been his princess. After her mother had died, he had raised her, sat on tiny chairs to drink tea from empty cups, arranged for her to buy her first bra, and escorted her to the father-daughter dance at school. The poshest ladies’ educational institution in all of England. Then an imposter entered, stealing her love and eventually her life. The deceptive creature would pay along with the entire realm where he hid.
The Englishman was doing what he had to do. Nonetheless, he tired of intrigue, forking over money to fund one enterprise or another, and meeting with Cerberus, the Aeternal who served his own distorted purposes. Dante’s partner contended his aim was to open portals, a move to benefit both of their business interests. But the country gentleman did not trust his co-conspirator.
To do his part, Cerberus claimed to need descendants of the Blood Coven who had created the realms fifteen hundred years ago. When Scion Firebrand Rein killed Silas, the means to find these offspring ended. But Dante’s new hacker was a genius. As he uncovered those with trace DNA marking them as mage descendants, Dante turned the contact information over to Cerberus. He had done so with a recent file.
Dante returned the picture to the mantel. No sacrifice was too great to avenge his daughter’s murder. He paced to the floor-to-ceiling window, once more admiring his gardens. “I’ll contact you with more names soon. In the meantime, good luck.”
He placed the receiver onto the hook, his lips pressed tight but his eyes betraying no feelings. After all, he was without emotion. It had left him the day a killer murdered his daughter.
****
CeleneBailey’s morning started as usual. She and Jace tidied the kitchen before beginning their exercise routine. Then, Jace fixed their breakfast, washing the dishes afterward.
Boring.
“Shall we start the next volume ofThe Path?” Jace stared at the bookcase, fingering the ancient book’s spine. “Come on. What else do we have to do?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. You read.” The stories were entertaining, a jumble of tales, mixing the history of Aeternals with a healthy dose of fiction.
With Celene on one end of the couch, Jace took the other, curling her bare feet beneath her while she leaned into the cushions. “I found the next volume ofThe Path: Words of the Warrior Ohngel. Like the first book, the Cambion transcribed it after the Karmic Schism when the Blood Coven created the three realms.” She opened to the front and began to read.
Weary from a lengthy truth-seeking journey, I, the Cambion from Wales, rested beside a late evening fire after finishing a meager repast. A nightchat flew from the trees, singing. The warbler-like bird trilled, chirped, and whistled, its raspy notes a message from Ohngel, the fire-winged assassin of the OneCreator, the male I would deem prophet and friend in the coming years.
Oft thereafter, Ohngel or the prophet-warrior’s emissary, the nightchat, emerged from the thickets to tell a tale of hope, courage, caution, or enlightenment for the Aeternals placed upon this world by the Genitrix Gahya.
Fatigued from the arduous tasks required to gather the coven and perform the schism, I idled outside the cavern in Wales that was my home, gazing upon stars as they winked in the sky. The nightchat, flaunting its bright yellow feathers, ignored my weariness, settling on the ground to relate events unknown. Here in Volume II: The Betrayal, I documented a dire warning.
