Page 10 of Thane's Demon
‘Mine.’
5
A DEMON’S CHANGE
The night hung heavy along the narrow backstreets of Shanghai, a thick, humid blanket pressing against my skin as I tracked the target from above. I moved quickly and silently along the rooftops as the moon smudged behind clouds. The building beneath my boots shuddered with the distant grind of traffic, and every vibration thrummed through my body like an anthem the demon recognized instinctively. The city breathed, alive and restless, its darkness deep and familiar, a darkness that belonged more to me than any crown or kingdom my father had ever claimed.
My father… a title I seemed to be using more and more since his visit. An inner confession I wasn’t sure I was happy about or comfortable with, but it was a truth I couldn’t ignore, regardless.
My target moved with the kind of arrogance only wicked men possessed, sliding through the alley with confident steps, his coat shifting around him like oily smoke. Even from this height, I could sense the rot inside him. The greed, the cruelty, the stench of someone who made his living off the suffering of others and slept each night believing he would never pay for it. Men likehim were easy to kill. They always thought they were smarter than the shadows.
But tonight the air felt wrong.
Not dangerous.
Not hostile.
Just wrong.
Something was shifting beneath the surface, something that made the demon restless inside me, pacing back and forth like a caged animal sensing a storm on the horizon.
Then I saw her.
A girl. A young woman. One I didn’t recognize, but I felt like I knew her, and what’s more, I felt like I knew herintimately.
She entered the mouth of the alley with an unguarded ease that made the shadows seem almost offended by her presence. Each movement was taken with the soft weightlessness of someone who had never learned to fear the dark. Her pastel sweater glowed under the lone streetlamp in a way that made her look misplaced, as though she had stepped out of a gentler world and wandered blindly into this one.
She walked with a light, rhythmic grace, her steps brushing the pavement rather than striking it. Her attention turned inward like she was listening to a melody only she could hear. And the more I watched her, the more something inside me tightened with a suspicion I could not quite name. Because people did not walk through alleys like this unless they were looking to die, or unless they were bait… or insanely naive.
My demon stopped.
Not slowed, not startled, but it stopped entirely. Freezing inside me with such unnatural stillness that it sent a shockwave through my chest, stealing the air from my lungs as if some invisible thread had been tied from her to me without my permission. She was too soft for this place, too bright, too unaware of the teeth hidden in the shadows around her. And thefact that she seemed untouched by fear made my jaw pulse with irritation.
The demon pressed forward, sniffing the air, and its confusion rolled through me in a low, restless thrum. I felt it trying to understand her in the same breath that suspicion clawed up my spine, making me wonder if this was some kind of trick. A spell, a lure designed by someone clever enough to know that I rarely hesitated for anything.
‘What is that?
Who is she?
Why does she pull us closer?’
She hummed softly as she moved deeper into the alley, her voice a faint, delicate thread in the darkness. The sound scraped against every sharp edge inside me, stirring something I did not want stirred. She was smiling, a slight, peaceful curve of her lips that made my irritation twist into something harsher, because smiles didn’t belong here, not in a place designed to swallow hope whole.
Fuck, but now my target noticed her too.
Of course he did, no doubt those dirty cogs in his vile mind were already turning. Another easy victim to snatch off the streets, adding to his catalogue of flesh to sell. The thought made me more murderous than I have ever felt in my life, and I didn’t give a fuck about questioning why in that moment.
I saw the shift in his posture, the greedy roll of his shoulders, the way his eyes slid over her like she was something he had already claimed. His hand extended toward her wrist, as if taking her was as simple as reaching out and closing his fingers, and the moment he touched her…gods, but something inside me shattered.
It snapped with such ferocity that I didn’t register moving until the rooftop vanished beneath my feet. I dropped into the alley, doing so with enough force to crack the ground, the soundexploding through the narrow space like a thunderclap. The sound of her frightened scream, one that started with him and continued because of my appearance, had my demon pulsing with anger. She gasped and spun, wide-eyed and startled. But I was already on him. My hand locked around his throat as I slammed him into the brick wall hard enough to rattle the mortar. A gun slipped from his grasp, telling me he intended to use it against her, to force her compliance without damaging the goods. The thought enraged me further. The demon surging with violent hunger. Not because it knew her. Not because it recognized something in her. But because the bastard had laid a hand on what instinct told it to protect. The roar inside my skull drowned out the man’s strangled pleas as his feet kicked uselessly against the wall.
‘He touched her.
End him.
Break him.’
The man’s windpipe gave beneath my fingers with a wet, collapsing crack. His pulse frantically skittered against my palm until it stuttered and failed. When I let go, his body dropped in a lifeless heap at my feet. Silence swallowed the alley in the aftermath, heavy and absolute, broken only by the trembling breath of the girl. One who stood a few feet away, staring at me with wide eyes that should have been filled with terror.
