Demon Retribution (Shadow Quest Book 3) (42 page)

When no one was around, he
couldn’t help to imagine just how he would have claimed her, if it
had been possible. Fangs at the ready, he would be buried deep
inside her, kissing her in all the places that make her melt. And
just when she was on the verge, he would have sunk his teeth into
her, increasing both of their pleasure, making her drunk with it.
Then she would be his forever.
Would
have
…Would have been his forever…if it were
possible.

Eventually the scenarios
began to plague him, repeating in his head every morning, every
night, filling him with a thirst that could never be quenched. He
would do well to strike it from his mind, for the sake of his own
sanity. But, while it was impossible to claim her, the moment she
had said she needed him, he’d vowed he would never leave her.
Though she could not be his, he was already hers. Whether it was
magic or not, somehow she had claimed
him
, because he was thoroughly and
irrevocably in love with her.

“Ugh,” she groaned. “I can’t do this.
Nothing is happening.” Her body slumped.

“There’s no need to rush. We have time yet.
The dragons are a few days out.”

Just this morning a transmission had been
received stating the Legura had garnered the help of two other
clans. They were on their way now.

“Time? They should be here in mere days.
I’ve had four hundred years.”

“It’s not surprising that in all that time
you hadn’t learned the extent of your power.” At her raised brows,
he explained, “I don’t see it as being much different than trying
to master the Edge. A daunting task, especially alone, and you
didn’t have anyone who knew what you were going through. Plus, you
had to hide among the earthlings. Don’t be so hard on
yourself.”

“It’s hard not to when so many are counting
on me.” She paused as if a thought struck her. “You were
alone?”

“In a way,” he replied. “I did have
Sebastian and Sonya with me, but they didn’t quite understand what
I was going through.” He both feared and anticipated her next
question. He’d been trying to figure out how to breach the subject
for some time.

“What were you going through?”

He took in a breath. “A version of insanity,
I suppose. You’ve heard of my past?” he asked. When she gave a slow
nod, he said, “After I was betrayed by the woman I’d considered to
be my mate, I was lost to the Edge for some time.”

“What do you mean, lost?”

“I guess trapped is a better term. Part of
me knew what was happening. You remember how I was when my eyes
would shift?” Another nod. “Imagine me that way for years, no end
in sight.”

To his surprise, she smiled. “You must have
been absolutely impossible to deal with.”

“I don’t imagine you would have had any
problem handling me,” he retorted. She tilted her head. “I don’t
have many memories of that time, but when my mind did surface, I
could see how concerned my family was for me, and it made me want
to be stronger for them. Eventually I came to be something like my
old self again, or at least I was able to pretend for their sake.
And I’ve been pretending ever since. That is, until…” He paused,
looking at her.

She must have seen something in his
expression because her breath caught. Her lips parted. “Until
what?”

He hesitated. “Velicia put me on the Edge
for a time, but you, I fear, could put me there forever.”

Brows knit, she shook her head and gazed at
him in astonishment, but before she had a chance to respond, a
noise froze them both in place. Her eyes widened with fear, while
the bottom of his mind dropped out, and he slipped instantly to the
Edge.

“Kayadon,” she gasped in a cracked
voice.

Cale shot to his feet and was to her in
seconds. His eyes had already shifted to that glowing lava red. She
could see his fangs lengthen ferociously. He jerked his head
around, as if hearing something else. Her heart lurched when more
clicking resonated. Hellhounds.

With a firm grip on her hand, Cale sprinted
away. She seemed to fly over the rocky terrain, barely able to
touch one foot to the ground before her body was propelled forward.
Her heart hammered in her chest and adrenaline fired in her blood.
He stopped and hissed at something unseen, before turning them in
another direction. A moment later he stopped again to adjust their
path.

She realized they must be surrounded. “They
had to have known we were here,” she realized.

Cale snarled, “Run back to the ship! I’ll
draw them away.”

“Like hell!”

“Damn it, go!”

The image of him huddled in pain as Kayadon
hovered over him invaded her head. He would have died then if she
hadn’t been with him. There was no way she was leaving him now. He
growled, seeing her resolution, and then once more changed their
direction, taking them down a path thick with vegetation. Low
branches smacked her shins as they ran at lightning speed.

That horrific repetitive clicking started to
grow louder, echoing all around them, followed by a network of low
snarls. The forest was working against them, hiding their attackers
from view.

Her stomach sank like a boulder when Cale
suddenly paused to take up a defensive position at her front. It
meant their only course of action was to fight. Palming the gun
Sonya had given her, she switched it to decapitation mode and
jerked her head left and right, then spun her body as scattered
noises erupted around her.

Something bit into her back, giving her a
tiny sting. She twirled around, instinctively shooting twice, but
saw nothing. Behind her, Cale cursed and yanked two darts out of
her skin. The punctures began to burn. Seconds later, her vision
blurred, and she swayed on her feet. The numbing started in her
tongue and made its way down her spine. The last thing she saw was
Cale’s bleak expression.

Then there was nothing.

Consciousness came slowly with a repetitive
thud, thud, thud, drilling in her skull, irritating her foggy mind.
Her body was inundated with a strange numbness, yet there was a
deep ache in her joints.

And still the thudding continued.

With a surprising amount of effort, she slit
her eyelids open. A thick coat of her strawberry blond hair
obstructed her sight. She tried to lift her hand to brush it away
but her limbs didn’t respond.

“Are you awake, little Faieara?” she heard a
voice say.

Then Cale growled, “Touch her and I will
rend you to pieces!” His voice sounded strange, as if he were
speaking from the other side of a wall.

“I’ve told you already, demon,” the strange
voice countered, “I’m not going to hurt her. I’m a prisoner, same
as you. Same as she.”

Finally Kyra managed a hoarse, “What’s going
on? I can’t move.”

There was a scuffling, like someone scooting
along a floor. Then the voice sounded closer. “Malachi has injected
you with an agent to temporarily paralyze your muscles.” A hand
brushed away her hair, and she was left looking straight into the
hollow white eyes of a Kayadon. “Don’t scream,” he said.

She screamed. Until her lungs burned, she
screamed. Tears blurred her vision as terror set in. She was lying
on a cold floor, unable to move, looking up at her worst nightmare.
Who in turn looked…exacerbated?

“Are you done?” he said when her screaming
was interrupted by the necessity to breathe.

“Kyra!” She heard Cale’s voice again. “Are
you okay?

She took in a few more deep breaths. The
Kayadon pulled away from her, not quite out of sight. “I can’t
move!” she called back in a panic-laced screech.

“I know. Ginn said that would happen.”

“Ginn?”

“Your cellmate.” Cale was clearly
pissed.

Her eyes—the only thing she seemed to be
able to move—shifted to the Kayadon. The monster lifted his bony
hand to wiggle his fingers at her.

“What is going on?” she demanded. “Cale, why
do you sound so muffled?”

“We’re in some sort of medical facility. I
woke up yesterday. The paralysis wore off a little afterward.”

That was good news at least. She continued
to try to take control of her body. The most she managed was to
turn her head a fraction. The ceiling of her cell was high and
backlit. Three walls were cream in color and sterile looking. The
forth was a solid clear pane.

“Why is there a Kayadon in here waving at
me?”

“Ginn,” the Kayadon exclaimed.

Cale replied, “I don’t know. He claims to be
a prisoner.”

“Test subject,” Ginn corrected in a
seemingly uncaring tone. He was relaxing against the wall now.

Test subject? The phrase sent a spike of
dread down her spine. “Is there a Kayadon with you too?” she yelled
back to Cale.

“No,” he grunted in disappointed. “They know
I would have killed it if there was.”

Ginn didn’t react to Cale’s words. With Cale
being awake for a full day, she could only imagine the verbal
crossfire that had already passed between the two.

To the Kayadon, she asked, “What do you mean
by test subject?”

“I’m in the last stages of a disease that is
killing me. Once one of us gets this far along, you either defect
or turn yourselves over to the labs for testing and
observation.”

“You’re sick?” she asked dumbly.

“Yes. All of us are.”

Kyra filed that away. “What kind of
testing?”

“Anything you can imagine,” he responded
ominously. And unfortunately her imagination was far too
seeded.

“So you’ve signed yourself up to be a lab
rat, for what, the good of Kayadon kind?” she sneered.

“No, little one, I defected long before I
reached stage five—”

Cale hollered, “Do not listen anything that
lying scum has to say.”

“I’ve no reason to lie, demon!” Ginn yelled
back, again sounding exacerbated.

Kyra waited, saying nothing.

“Are you from one of the guilds, little
Faieara?”

So, the Kayadon knew of the guilds then.

“Don’t tell him anything,” Cale ordered.

“No need to answer,” Ginn said dismissively.
“I can tell that you are. Why else would you have been found all
the way out here?”

“Why did you defect?” Kyra asked, avoiding
the question and unable to quell her curiosity.

“I lost faith in my leaders,” he said,
surprising her. “I do not agree with how they have handled our
crisis. If it is our destiny to die, then so be it. But there are
those who cannot accept it. So, here we are.”

“Why here?”

“Something about your suns slows the
process. We have been able to survive longer than anticipated.
Also, those of your kind who heal can all but stop the disease in
its tracks. Unfortunately, none, that we have found, have been able
to reverse it. Would you like me to adjust you into a more
comfortable position?”

“Keep your hands off of her!” Cale
roared.

“Your male fears I will harm you, but I
promise I will not. I’m quite curious where you found a demon, I
might add.”

“Why? Because you failed to exterminate them
all?” she accused.

“Ah, yes. Our history with the demons is
much more complicated than your mate has come to believe.”

“I’m not his mate,” she said automatically,
then regretted it.

Cale went silent.

She thought she felt one of her fingers
move, but couldn’t be sure.

Ginn paused for a long moment. “I was
sure…He acts as though you are.”

If only
…

“What happens to one of your kind when they
defect?” she asked, hoping to learn as much as possible. The surest
way to win was to know the enemy—assuming she and Cale were going
to get out of here to pass along anything they might learn.

“Repulsed by the actions of our own kind, we
resign ourselves to die, I suppose,” said Ginn. “We did not used to
be this way. We were a proud, intelligent race. Then the sickness
came and it changed us.”

“Can you tell me about the sickness?”

“We aren’t sure how it started. Many
speculate it was born in a lab, the result of ego and carelessness.
Others want to blame outsiders. My belief is that we’ll never know
for certain. Too much time has passed.” He paused. “The first to
die were the children. It swept through them quickly. The elderly
passed soon after. Not but a handful of our women still live. Only
the strongest of our kind have been able to evade death thus far.
Naturally, we sought a cure and our desperation made us
ruthless.”

Cale hissed a noise of disgust, but said
nothing. She could turn her head a little farther now, and she
caught sight of him across a narrow room. He had a cut on his face
that looked to be healing, and he watched her with such intensity
she was surprised she couldn’t feel it.