Veiled Threat (19 page)

The mini demons broke apart and flocked toward us, hissing and chittering, a steady stream of words barely intelligible, but I understood.

“Blood and bones, fresh to eat, we love our meat, sweet, sweet, sweet.”

Yup, not sticking around for that. “Run!”

Alex and I bolted from the horde of mini demons spewing their twisted poetry. Another corner and we ran smack into a large form and for a brief second I thought it was Orion, felt the chill of the possibility nearly take me to my knees.

But no, it was just a regular ass demon. I screamed one of the words Erik taught me, “
Dabine!”
As I thrust my sword forward into his right eye, surprising him. Or maybe it was a her; I had no idea and didn’t care. Alex snarled and took the demon out at the legs and then we were jumping over the body and dashing down the hall.

Behind us the chittering continued, the bugs singing away as they drew closer and closer, completely ignoring the fallen body. Apparently they only wanted us.

There were no doors to go through, no getting away from these things and they moved fast, like water rushing down a river.

“A door, a door would be fucking well nice,” I breathed out as we ran, my eyes searching and then … shit, a door ahead shimmered into existence. I didn’t question it, though a part of my brain said I probably should.

No time.

I grabbed the handle and swung the door open, Alex and I falling through before we slammed it behind us. This room was darker than the others. Darker and it smelled like
shit.
I stood and gagged, unable to keep my gorge from rising.

“Damn stinky,” Alex grumped, heaving beside me. In the near dark, I barely saw him. Not that it mattered.

A shuffle in the room, a whisper of cloth, a sharp intake of breath neither mine nor Alex’s. The bugs slammed into the door, and their chittering climbed into a higher pitch.

“Sweet meat, sweet meat, sweet meat. We love to eat sweet meat.”

A rock and a hard place had never sounded so good as in that moment. Easier than the choices that faced us right then. “Alex. Stay close.”

Somehow we had to go down. And if we couldn’t find a stairway, I’d make one.

“Do you know who I am?” A voice, raspy with disuse, called from the darkest shadows of the room.

“Nope and we aren’t making any fucking introductions. Come any closer and the only hello you’ll get will be from the tip of my sword.” I backed away, Alex with me.

“Little Tracker, little Rylee. Don’t you want to see me, don’t you want to know what your fate will be if you keep on this path of destruction? If you wish to finally face Orion, you need to know what he will do to you. What he does to all demon slayers.”

That voice, it pulled at me, made me stop thinking about finding Milly or Pamela. For a moment, I forgot about the thousands of demon bugs waiting for us on the other side of the door, though they hadn’t stopped their sing song of death.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

He shuffled closer. “Do you not know your own flesh and blood?”

A light bloomed and his face came into view.

Erik’s face.

I stumbled back. “That can’t be, I left you behind. With Ophelia and Blaz.”

He let out a groan. “A doppelganger demon, one who took my face and showed you what you wanted to see. A family member, one who could teach you a little about demons, yes? Give you symbols and things that would help you stop them?”

I swallowed hard, my mind back tracking. Fuck me, how could I have not seen it? The pieces of the puzzle slid into place and I barely breathed. Erik, the one I’d left behind, and Orion had said the same thing. The same quote about the blind not wanting to see. Or what about the fact our blades only burned bright when Erik was with us? Shit, it had been him making us think there was power in his stupid freaking words and symbols. He’d even convinced me not to Track demons so I wouldn’t figure out what he was.

“Yes to all the above.”

“Words that would keep them from you? That would end their existence? Words like
dabine.
” The light around him grew stronger. “But did he say he had no real power, he was just a human, taking his brother’s place?”

I nodded, numbed to the core. “But he helped me; you aren’t telling me the truth.”

The Erik in front of me gave me a tired smile. “Did he help you?”

Again, I was forced to see that while I’d wanted the other Erik to help me, he’d always hung back—doing the minimum, really just getting in my way, slowing me down. Putting me in danger on my own.

This Erik, the one in front of me, let out a tired sigh. “In families of slayers, every member has magic running through their veins. There are no words that work against demons. It is your blood, your blood and your heart and the innate power you carry. The fact you’re Immune is proof enough. The fact that you carry a small ability to glamor, the fact that you’re a Tracker, all of those are proof that you are a Slayer to the bone.” He slumped to his knees, then fell back to his ass. It was then that I saw the chains, heavy black links that held him tight to the wall and allowing no more than a few feet in each direction.

“Ophelia vouched for him. Why would she do that?”

While I waited for him to answer I Tracked Slayers as a whole and got a solid ping right in front of me, but nothing else, not even on the other side of the veil, not even from Alex who supposedly had demon slayer blood in him. But of course, that was a lie too.

More puzzle pieces came together. If Alex and Liam thought they could take down demons, they would leap into the fray, putting themselves into danger they couldn’t truly face.

The demon Erik had been setting us up all along, hoping to kill off my allies. They would have believed themselves safe behind the demon Erik’s silly words and symbols slashed into the air. Rage flooded my body as the real Erik spoke.

“Ophelia is broken, badly, her mind twisted when your father died. She would be very easy to convince, easy to control.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I spluttered. “Easy to control?”

“That is what happens when the bond between rider and dragon is destroyed. The rider can survive, but the dragon, their minds are too deeply ingrained with the bond. Even if they seem sane they lose their ability to deeply read someone’s mind; it burns that ability clear from them when their partner dies.”

A sudden, sinking thought, like a half ton of cement slid through me. “If I don’t have Blaz to ride into battle against Orion, what happens?”

Erik lifted his eyes to mine. “The world is done. If your dragon dies, and Ophelia dies, there are none able to carry you into the darkness. They are the only two who could do it.”

Trust your heart, Rylee. Your heart will never lead you wrong.

Your heart will get you killed one day.

Love is never wrong, and your heart knows it.

My heart said he was telling the truth. I lifted my sword and he closed his eyes.

Only one thing left to do, and no time to second guess myself.

Chapter 19

T
he blade on
the chains caused a spark, but the blade prevailed, biting through the thick chain with relative ease.

“Come on, uncle. We’re on a rescue mission. I just didn’t know we’d be taking three out of this hell hole.” He might not have been reliable in the past, according to my mother, but I didn’t think he was that way anymore. The man in front of me was a solid rock of strength; I guess being captured by a demon changed you. Besides, I needed him at my side.

A breath whooshed out of him. “How do you know I’m your uncle and not a demon taking his place?”

I shook my head. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“I Tracked Slayers as a unit. You’re the only ping I got. That and … my heart tells me you’re telling the truth. I trust that more than any words you say.”

He whispered to himself as I turned away. “Just like Elena.” That was my mother’s name. “She always led with her heart. Always.” There was a slight tremor in his voice.

“No time for crying and shit right now.” I said, ignoring the shake in my own voice. “We’ve got to find a way downstairs. Pronto.”

“There is only one way,” he said, then pointed at the doorway behind us that bulged and sagged with the weight of those fucking bugs.

“You’re shitting me.”

“I shit you not.” Erik, the real Erik, cranked the door open and swept his hand forward. The demon bugs fell back, curling in on themselves, the chittering easing off until nothing but silence.

Just that, a single sweep of his hand, and they were dying. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? He saw my wide eyes, no doubt full of disbelief.

“Wait ‘til you see what else we can do.”

A thrill rushed through me, followed quickly by dismay. Time, there would have to be enough time for him to show me. He must have caught the look on my face.

“You have to believe, Rylee. You have to put your weapons down and believe in who you are. That is when the power will come, when you will truly be a Slayer in your own right.” He strode forward and I saw the differences between him and the doppelganger. This Erik, though he’d been imprisoned for who the fucking hell knew how long, walked with purpose, with a determination I recognized in myself. He wore rags and no weapons and yet there was more danger in his one middle finger than in all of that demon who was impersonating him back home. There was no whining, puling puke afraid of his own shadow. I hoped Blaz ate the doppelganger.

I jogged to catch up to him. “Are doppelgangers easily intimidated?”

“They can be; depends on their acting skills. The tougher ones will hide behind a persona and can fake you out. But truly, once they are found, they are sniveling little shits who are only good for infiltration. They are not fighters, not really. They fear everything. You should have time to get to him before he harms the dragons.” Of course, he was assuming we got out of here first.

“So Ophelia really didn’t know it wasn’t you, because her mind had been broken?”

“Not just that, she is not my dragon, my dragon was killed. Ophelia and I … we never got along well. So we never spoke mind to mind. She wouldn’t know it wasn’t me. And with her mind so broken, she likely didn’t even try to find out.”

His dragon was killed, maybe that was what had caused some of the changes in him, the differences between what my mother had known and what I saw now. Shit, I could only imagine losing Blaz. And in the scheme of things, I barely knew the big lizard.

I thought about the zombies and the doppelganger’s reaction to them. “You ever face the undead?”

“Several times. Nasty fucking stinkers. Better than trolls though.”

Alex grunted. “Yeah, nasty fucking stinkers.”

Damn it all to hell and back, but I was liking
this
uncle more with each second. This was the uncle I needed. Not that ridiculous worm of an Erik I’d been presented with, the one I tried to trust even though my gut told me not to.

“Here.” Erik stopped in front of a section of the wall that looked no different than the others. Except for a symbol etched into it.

“Demons love to mark their shit, claim it as their own, even their captives.” He pulled the sleeve of his shirt up showing me his forearms. Up and down his arms were scars of the symbols the doppelganger had been teaching me. I shivered.

What would have happened if I’d faced Orion using his own words, his own symbols? I didn’t want to know. And now I didn’t have to.

Erik traced the symbol and the doorway opened, showing a huge wide stairwell with steps I would have to climb down, they were so far apart. Nothing for it but to get to it.

I started down the first step and Erik sat beside me. “For all that they are despicable shits, demons have a strange idea of fun.” He clapped his hands twice and the stairs flattened out into a slide.

“How do you know this shit?”

“Study, lots and lots of study. That and I caught a demon once. I kept him alive long enough to dredge information out of him.” Erik’s eyes met mine and I understood clearly. He’d tortured a demon to get information. “He told me about the slides and how to activate them. Never thought I’d actually use that tidbit.”

I spun to my back, the surface below us slick as if coated in a lubricant, yet it was smooth. Alex giggled as we slid, rolling side to side from his back to his belly and then sitting up.

Erik leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest and arched his back. In a flash, he’d shot by us. I mimicked what he’d done. “Alex, you too, we’ve got to go fast.”

Alex took one look at me, did what I asked and we were shooting down the curving, curling slide. I tried not to think how we were going to land when we hit the bottom, but there was nothing I could do about it now. All around us the walls glowed, giving off a shimmering light just enough to see by, though not clearly. Didn’t matter, we weren’t going to be there long. That’s what I told myself.

Erik was ahead of us, his hair streaming out behind him. We took a long, looping corner and something snarled from the ceiling far above us. I stared up and, in that shimmering light, a deep black set of wings detached itself from the ceiling above and swooped toward us. Long, pluming feathers like some bird from a darkened Amazon spread out around it in shades of grey and black, and it had a beak at least four feet long with fangs protruding out of it. Peachy, just fucking peachy.

Erik called up to me. “Don’t use your sword, Rylee. Use your hand. Pull your sword to fight while we slide and you’ll lose momentum.”

But how the hell did you fight without weapons? Shit, I had to roll to the side to avoid the first dive from the demon bird. Hands, hands. Fucking hell. I couldn’t do it.

I jerked my whip free (see, I could sort of listen) and snapped it out. There was only a small problem with that idea.

The whip wrapped around the bird’s feet, jerking them together, making it screech, but didn’t slow it down. Nope, it started to pull me up, off the wicked slide. It snapped its beak at me, eyes glittering with hate I could only define as bottomless.

“Rylee, let go!” Erik yelled.

“No, I can do this!” The big ass bird wasn’t going to get the better of me. Power was there if I reached for it. I didn’t need words.

Easy. Right.

I thought of the whip as a conduit, a way to transfer power Erik said was in me. The power to stop a demon.

Sweat popped out on my forehead as I sought a part of me I didn’t know existed. A part of my father, the past, the power left to me to stop Orion.

Heart, it had to do with my heart.

Just like that, the whip went stiff in my hand, gave a jerk and the bird exploded above me, black feathers drifting down for a split second and then I was sliding on my back again, breathing hard. Struggling to realize I’d done that.

All along I’d had a power in me that could stop demons. I’d just not known it.

I let out a whoop and reached behind my head, let my whip trail behind me. Alex yipped a couple of times.

“Good job, Ryleeeeeeeeee!” He grinned back at me, tongue flipping around, spit flying every which way, even hitting me in the face. I didn’t care. I’d killed a demon without my sword. Pretty damn cool.

Pretty fucking damn cool.

Pacing did him no good.

Yet there was nothing else but to move. Liam fought not to let out a long, steady growl. Rylee and Alex had been gone for over two hours. Two hours and every little piece of him felt each minute had been a year. Ten years.

“Do you not trust her to accomplish the task she faces?” Thomas asked.

Liam glanced at the necromancer sitting in a chair salvaged from the wreckage, his fingers steepled under his chin.

“I trust her. I don’t trust demons.”

Frank and Megan sat at Thomas’s feet and they shared a glance, but it was Megan who stood and drew close to his side.

“Umm. Can I talk to you?”

What the hell could a teenage girl he didn’t know want to talk to him about?

“Alone.” She bobbed her head to one side, toward the tree line.

What the hell, it wasn’t like he had anything else to do. He didn’t answer her, just started to walk. Megan jogged to catch up, her bright red hair bouncing like crazy.

At the tree line he stopped. “What?”

Her eyes flicked back to Thomas, once, just once. “He’s strong, but I don’t think he intends to open the gate, or door, or whatever that was in the same place again.”

If she had thrown a cup full of ice and water in his face he couldn’t have felt the chill rush through his body and faster. “How do you know that?” Calm, keep calm. Ask questions, throttle Thomas only if he had to.

Megan licked her lips, then tucked her hair behind her ears. “When he touched our shoulders, we saw what he planned, how he opened the door thingy. But I knew Thomas didn’t want to re-open the doorway when he said he did. And if he did, he would open it somewhere else.”

“Why, why would he do that?”

Megan stepped closer. “He’s working for someone else. Someone who wants her dead.”

This was going down hill fast, faster than he thought possible. “Then why would he ask for new apprentices? Why not just kill us with the zombies out right?”

She shrugged. “Maybe greed. Why kill you if he could get something out of you in the first place?”

Liam leaned close and drew in a deep breath. There was no deception in her, no sour scent of lies, just a heavy perfume that seemed like something every teenage girl wore. Megan frowned up at him. “Why are you smelling me?”

“To see if you’re lying.”

Her jaw dropped open, and her eyes went wide with something akin to wonder, which L
iam was not really happy with. She grabbed his arm with her tiny hand. “Frank wasn’t kidding, you really are a werewolf. That’s awesome!”

He had to get her back on track. “Listen to me, does Thomas know what you saw?”

She shook her head slowly. “No, I don’t think so.”

Liam started back toward Frank and Thomas. “I believe you, but unless you or Frank can open the veil to where Rylee went, I need Thomas. And trust me, he will do what I want.”

His eyes narrowed as he strode toward the old man. Yes, Thomas would fulfill his end of the bargain, or Liam would make sure it was the last day he spent on this earth with his body still intact.