Demon Day (45 page)

“
I missed you.” Her voice
was light, delicate, and if I was honest lovely – soothing and
husky.

But I was pissed off, and feeling a
twinge of jealousy so it came across as inappropriately breathy and
weak.

“
And you are?” I asked
icily, boring holes into the back of her small skull.

She looked at me over her shoulder
wincing daintily. She untangled herself from Tomas, and gave me a
diminutive wave. “Gwendolyn said you had a mouth on you, but Tomas
says you’re nice when you’re happy. He’s told me all about you, and
whilst Gwen is my Queen I obey him above all others.” Her head
leaned to the side and her braids fell forward. “I’m going to
excuse your unpleasantness as this is a less than hospitable
situation you’ve found yourself in.” Her calm rationale and amiable
greeting grated on my nerves. Huffing, I crossed my arms over my
chest tightly. She gave me a sincere and beautiful smile. “I’m not
your enemy, Rae.”

My tail coiled around my legs,
whipping my lower thigh in irritation. I focused on keeping my
wings snug against my back, refusing to let this girl trick me into
liking her.

Tomas moved closer to me. “Daphne is
like a sister to me,” he said reassuringly and stroked a hand down
my back.

I avoided a second stroke by taking a
hasty side step and scowled at him. Rather than ordering him not to
touch me I lashed him head to toe with my eyes, making sure disgust
seeped from my every pore.

Daphne tittered behind her hand. “My,
my is she mad at you.”

Tomas barked a laugh and pinched his
brow. I stared at him. I’d never seen him like this. He almost
seemed … happy. I turned my hateful gaze on Daphne who smiled at me
as if we were the best of blood friends.

I nodded to Devlin’s body. When it
came to telling Wasp what had happened I had no doubt the
fairy-woman would be eating out of the palm of my hand if it meant
avenging him. “Can you get rid of that?” And it was a ‘that’.
Devlin was not there anymore – not in that rotten corpse. The High
Lord was gone, and though I wished I felt grief, I felt nothing but
a vague sense of regret. Despite the fact the High Lord had not
been the patron of evil as I had once believed, he had killed my
friend, sacrificed her. Now I understood why he had needed a pure
sacrifice to invoke dark magic. He had been trying to use the
he-witches source of magic against him. Devlin had known all along
a great danger gathered power … no wonder he had pursued me so
stubbornly.

“
Of course,” Tomas replied,
breaking my maudlin thoughts, and motioned to Daphne.

She hefted the stinking thing over her
shoulder without question, and in a blink was out the door, closing
it behind her.

“
I am sorry.” Tomas did not
sound sorry at all, or particularly bothered that he sounded false.
“I didn’t know that he was in here, and I didn’t want to risk
moving you with Gwendolyn so … disquieted.”

“
What?” I began
sarcastically. “Was the appearance of Devlin not part of your
master plan?”

“
No, it was not. When I
left here I was prepared. I knew you would not want to come with
me. When I met you and realized you were so vulnerable, I thought
it would be easy to convince you to accompany me here. I never knew
you were a demon, nor someone of such importance to fairykind. I
had no idea I would find myself in the middle of a fairy uprising.
How could I? This is a mess I have not planned for.”

“
Then why didn’t you back
off?” My hands rose to fall with slaps on my thighs. “I can’t see
where you’re going with this, Tomas. It makes no sense. In fact
it’s plain stupid if you ask me. You’ve risked everything to get me
here, and for what?”

“
For them,” he barked. “I
told you we are dying out here. There is nothing to eat, and one by
one my family goes insane, devoured from the inside by their
bloodlust. They attack each other then become enraged when the
blood does not satisfy their hunger. We cannot sustain each other;
it must be the blood of another kind, or our minds
break.”

I watched him coolly. “So you
travelled all that way to snag one human? How would I have changed
anything? One human body does not hold enough blood to feed a Nest
of hundreds.”

“
Gwendolyn had a vision.
She saw bringing you here would save us. I don’t know how, but she
was certain enough for me to want to try. She is never
wrong.”

“
She’s a hatful bitch who
wants me dead. You’ve brought me here to die.” His shoulders
hunched with every word I yelled at him. “You might as well have
drained me and had done with it.” My chest heaved and I fought
tears. “Why did it have to be you? Why couldn’t it have been Daphne
or Gwendolyn that came for me? Why did you make me think you–” I
choked off and refused to finish.

Tomas spun on me, face livid. “It had
to be a male because that is what Gwen saw would sway your
sympathies. It had to be me because the other males were not sane
enough for the task. And it had to be done in secret in case Cael
found out!” The moment the words were out of his mouth he
froze.

I froze then tilted my head at him
slowly. “The he-witch? You are working for the Blackthorn
Coven?”

His shoulders slumped and his face
took on a look of the beaten. “Cael’s witchcraft has held our Nest
under his thumb for some time now.”

Scoffing a disbelieving laugh, I
pushed the hair out of my eyes and my talons scraped my circlet
reminding me of whom and what I am. “How long is ‘some
time’?”

Tomas made a dismissive gesture with
his hand. “Less than two hundred years. Cael is older than me yet
how he has managed to prolong his life and keep his youth is
unknown. Witches have a human lifespan. He is a mystery.
”

I took a step back, purely in shock. I
fumbled for the wall behind me until my fingers pressed against the
cool, damp stone. I leaned against it heavily and
groaned.

Tomas was at my side in an instant but
refrained from touching me.

“
The Rupture,” I gasped.
The leaps of understanding taking place in my mind were immense,
and the room spun. “Vampirekind didn’t start it.”

“
No. We were forced into a
corner and had no choice but to do as we were told.”

My head whipped up to pin him with a
glare. “Ana told me–”

Tomas held up his hand and his
expression rippled with what would have been on a human face mild
displeasure. Since he was vampire it looked like a nervous
twitch.

“
The white witch can tell
lies, Rae. You forget she is not fairy like you. She is a
Blackthorn, a powerful being born of Cael’s bloodline the most
influential Coven in this region. Though she’s different from her
kin the white witch will bow to his authority if he catches her in
his snare. It is their way to follow the word of the Coven Father,
instinctive. Unlike us vampires where loyalty must be earned in
blood.” He paused thoughtfully. “No doubt when she saw me coming
she would have warned Breandan and you. Even then she would have
tried to turn you against me.” He laughed without any real humor.
“The fairy and I were destined to loathe each other.”

I whimpered and pressed a hand to my
throat, feeling physically sick. Could Ana have lied to me to
protect her family? Was she swayed by a need to defend her Father
even as she tried to fight for what was right and good? She had
looked me in the eye and told me the vampires had started the
Rupture. The global event in which everyone believed the vampires
attacked the humans first and the rest of demonkind were forced to
fight since the humans turned on them too. Did she know the truth?
That they were under her Cael’s influence? I knew she had kept
things from me on Breandan’s request, but surely, he could not know
about this?

I dry heaved and bent over, resting my
hands on my knees as I fought to regain my equilibrium.

More questions with no answers to
hand. Everything I learned took me one step closer to nothing. I
was moving sideways, darting through shadows of half-truths and
lies. How was I supposed to know what I was supposed to do when I
could not trust the actions of those closest to me? Was every
action a cover for a nefarious end? No wonder Devlin had turned to
black magic in desperation, for protection. It seemed there were
daggers cloaked and waiting to spear you at every turn.

Satisfied I was not going to toss up
any nectar I said, “This changes things.” I stood and shook my hair
back. It had finally stopped growing, and reached the middle of my
back. It made my head feel heavy, but it smelt like the forest, and
was a comfort in this dank place. Tomas’ expression was curious. My
tongue burned as I added, “This makes your kind worth fighting
for.” I looked him in the eye and squashed the knee trembling
pleasure I felt when I did, afraid he would see the way he made me
feel. “Tell me everything.”

The door burst open. Daphne bolted in
and closed it behind her.

She spun and plastered herself against
it, arms flung wide. “Gwendolyn,” she whispered before the door was
flung open pushing her with it until she and the door slapped into
the wall.

The vampire Queen strutted into the
room, ringlets bouncing, bare feet slapping the dirty floor. It was
meant to be a casual entrance but it reeked of quiet desperation.
Vampires had a liquid movement that went beyond mere grace. They
didn’t strut, they glided, and so her flippant attitude looked
forced. Her hands were in the back pockets of her ragged jeans and
her collarbones jutted out painfully. Gwendolyn looked underfed.
Her eye sockets were sunken and her skin ashy pale, even for a
vampire. Though none of this diminished her breathtaking natural
beauty, and it took a great deal of will not to pull my glamour on
in a pitiful attempt to cover my scars.

Daphne grunted and slipped out from
behind the door, rubbing her cheek.

Gwendolyn took in Tomas’ closeness to
me in a lingering gaze, her thin brows rising with exaggerated
slowness even as a fire burned in the depths of her
eyes.

Rather than step away from me, Tomas
moved in front of me and cocked his head in a show of respect.
“Love?” he asked with a hint of impatience.

She smiled and held out a grubby hand
with nails bitten into ragged stumps. “We have a visitor,” she
purred.

Tomas went stiff and Daphne’s head
whipped round to stare at him. Her entire body shifted into battle
mode, even her braids appeared rigid, but with the slightest motion
of Tomas’ hand, she relaxed her stance. She sent me a sorrowful
look then looked away at the floor where Devlin’s body had
lain.

My blood ran cold. Was the he-witch
here for me already? I lifted my chin. I had faced him before and I
would again. No matter if I was tried, emotionally drained, unable
to use magic, and struggling to hold myself upright. I had faced
him before and come out alive. I ignored the voice in my head that
whispered the fear I had not hurt the he-witch, but that he had
left of his own accord with a parting message….

“
Feicfidh mé thú go luath,
deirfiúr
,” I muttered.

I didn’t know what it meant, but it
felt like he meant me to think of it – of him – until our next
meeting.

An odd slapping sound
snagged my attention. Gwendolyn scuttled back on her heels away
from me. “
Labhraíonn sí an teanga ar an
witches
?” Gwendolyn spat at Tomas.
“
Dúirt tú liom go bhfuil sí eolas
beag
.”

“
Níl sí ar Cael’s
Coven
,” Tomas replied in a soothing voice.
“
Calma síos
.”

“
You understood what I
said?” I asked them both sharply.

“
We have an alliance with
the Blackthorn Coven,” Gwendolyn said with an odd roundabout
rolling of her eyes. “Of course we speak the tongue of their
incantations.”

“
Alliance?’ I echoed.
“Tomas didn’t make it sound as voluntary as that.”

“
Because it’s not,” Daphne
confessed. “Cael’s hold over us grows stronger by the day.” She
placed a hand on her stomach, which gurgled loudly. “I don’t know
if we could survive without him if we tried. He sends us blood,
be-spelled blood that keeps us full enough to do his grunt work.
It’s the only reason we’re alive.”

Gods, it kept getting worse. My hands
fisted in anger. “Tell me what it means.” The look Gwendolyn gave
me was rude and self satisfied. This vampire Queen was somewhat
underwhelming now I had seen how insecure she was. I ground my back
teeth together, understanding why Breandan succumbed to the habit
so often. The pressure helped ease the anger and frustration
building behind the eyeballs. “It’s not that big a deal. Tell me
you demented–”

“
I will see you soon,
sister,” Daphne blurted. “That’s what it means, Rae.”

Gwendolyn slapped her.

I hissed and she snarled lurching
forward, but Daphne was already in front of me, fangs bared, eyes
flashing black.

“
Enough,” Tomas said in a
hard voice.

Daphne straightened and bowed her
head. Gwendolyn sniffed and crossed her arms, leaned back on her
heel as she fixed me with a glare.