Page 6 of Thane's Demon
I had hidden it away in the safe in my wall. The safe would only be revealed and could only be opened with my blood. It was supernatural engineering at its best, and thanks to my only friend.
Janie.
She was one of the rare few like me. A demon born into a royal bloodline, though, luckily for her, her demon wasn’t as powerful or as volatile as mine. She learned long ago how to control hers, how to coexist with the thing inside her without being torn apart by it. I always envied that. Or maybe admired it. The first night I met her years ago, I saw something in her that mirrored something broken in me. The same restless edge. The same quiet rage. The same sense of being an outcast, even among our own kind. She understood what it was like to stand in a room full of people and still feel wrong, feel other.
And despite every reason she had to stay clear of me, she didn’t. She kept in contact over the years, popping in and out of my life like a ghost with sharp teeth and sharper instincts. Whenever I needed intel or help acquiring a target, she was the one I called. Her tech skills were borderline terrifying, and she enjoyed reminding me that without her, I’d probably be dead, imprisoned, or still trying to figure out how to unlock a cheap burner phone.
Of course, our friendship, if that’s what you called two demons tolerating each other instead of tearing each other apart, had consequences. Mainly in the form of Theo. Mybrother. The golden child, as I liked to call him. He never said the words, but his jealousy was loud enough to choke on. More than once, he’d shown his irritation whenever Janie’s name came up, as if the idea of her choosing to spend more time with me than with him offended the universe itself. He could keep his opinions. I didn’t get along with him, anyway, never had and never would.
My sister was easier to tolerate, though only barely. I didn’t know much about her beyond the fact that she was married to the Vampire King. A detail that should have meant something to me, but it didn’t. We weren’t close. We weren’t anything. A family by blood and history, not by choice.
Janie was the exception. She was the only one I trusted, the only one who had ever looked at me without flinching, the only one who didn’t pretend I was something I wasn’t.
And now her creation, the lock she’d designed, the security she’d built, was the only thing standing between the rest of the world and the artifact that could destroy everything.
As for the Seal, it called to me in the back of my skull, humming like a live wire. I made it back to my apartment on instinct more than awareness, climbing the stairs slowly as the weight of the night pressed down on me. The building breathed around me, full of anger and resentment, yet still none of it fed me the way it should have.
Nothing could cut through the aftertaste of the Seal.
Once inside my apartment, I lay down on the mattress and closed my eyes, hoping for a moment of silence. But it came instead like a whisper running through the cracks of my mind, a voice that was not mine yet felt somehow familiar. It curled around my thoughts with the slow, deliberate touch of something that understood my monster better than I did.
‘Find me.
Feed me.
I belong to you.
And you belong to me.’
I jerked upright with a gasp, my chest tight, sweat beading across my skin. My demon purred at the echo of that voice, pleased, hungry, wanting more.
Tonight had barely ended.
Yet for some reason, I could feel something out there waiting for me, and strangely, it had nothing to do with the Seal.
No, because this time…
It felt more like Fate.
3
THE TRIAD’S DEVIL
The next night, I received a summons from a burner phone I kept for such occasions. The pull of the Seal was finally starting to calm, although I wasn’t sure how long the reprieve would last. At the very least, a new job would give me something else to focus on until I received word from Dominic about the plan for the Seal. As for now, I was merely to be called its keeper.
Shanghai’s night pressed close around me as I approached the nightclub, the heavy neon glow bleeding across the street like a bruise spreading beneath the skin. People queued near the main entrance, their voices rising and falling with the forced excitement of those pretending they belonged here. Although everyone else instinctively gave the building a wide berth, as if they sensed the violence woven into its walls.
I slipped through the side entrance instead, a grimy metal door guarded by two men who straightened at my presence, their eyes sliding away from mine as they stepped aside without a word. They pretended they did not fear me, but their shoulders tightened and their breathing hitched, betraying them completely. My demon snarled with glee as it tasted what they tried to hide.
The inside of the club hit me like a blow to the senses. Smoke curled in thick grey ribbons through the dim air while spotlights pulsed over bodies. Silhouettes grinded on the dance floor, chasing shadows across walls that had seen more blood than anyone here dared to count.
The heavy bass vibrated through the floorboards. Doing so in deep, steady tremors, shaking up through my boots and into my bones until it felt like I was walking across the living heartbeat of something feral. My demon inhaled deeply, savoring the layered scents of sweat, lust, spilled alcohol, chemical drugs, and the metallic undertone of fear that clung to this place like humidity.
This was Xue Long’s kingdom. The club operated as a front. The Triad influence subtle but unmistakable. One woven through with the kind of quiet, confident brutality that only came from men who believed they owned the streets beneath their feet. Xue acted as if he controlled everything here, as if he was the one the underworld whispered about, but we both knew the truth. They feared him, they respected him, but they haunted themselves with stories of me.
Hei Mo.
The Black Demon.
