Chapter 5
The blurred shape thundered into view, a brown mass of movement pounding the desert floor. It was nearly upon them before they could make out the pools of spilled ink glinting from the disfigured muzzle of a war horse. Steam escaped flaring nostrils, drawing attention to the jagged fangs bared. Torn flesh roped across its face, cutting across one black eye to destroy an entire ear. That same gash slashed down its long neck beneath a wild tangle of mane the same rich brown as its coat.
Seated atop its saddle, a cloaked rider snapped at the reins. The horse pounded the earth with four massive camel hooves.
It reached them in record speed. The rider jerked on the reigns and the horse reared to a halt. The rider peered down at them from a face fully wrapped in dull, gray robes that looped over their head and across their face, leaving only thin slits for their eyes. Hands that gripped the reins were twisted in white gauze, as though they’d sustained a burn. In all, their gender was impossible to decipher.
“The heatwave is coming!” came a muffled voice from the other side of the thick fabric. “You can’t outrun it.” The rider jerked a hand over their shoulder. “Get on!”
It took Magnus a second to realize they were talking about the sand sled hitched to the back of the horse. The wagon itself was already full of crates, but also the still bodies of the two Chinyu warriors, and Nobu, who clung to the wooden benches built along the sides. Unlike his warriors, he had only sustained minor injuries, a cut lip and a black eye. His warriors were a mess of claw marks. One of them, Magnus was fairly certain was dead, or about to be.
“Are they dead?” Reggie asked.
The rider shook their head. “They were being attacked by a Janko demon.”
“You saved them?” Magnus asked.
The rider nodded.
“Why?” Magnus pressed, not in the habit of trusting the kindness of strangers.
The horse pawed the ground, growing anxious as the air thickened with the approaching wave.
“Are you going to get on or not?” the rider asked instead.
He was tempted to say no, but even he wasn’t that stubborn. Plus, he had Reggie to think about.
He motioned for his brother to climb in. He followed once Reggie had found a spot on a crate.
Dante flicked his tail, every sinewy muscle braced for the command to eat rider and horse.
“Dante, karos.”
Still in his beast state, Dante followed after them, even when the rider cracked the reins and sent them sprinting through the desert.
It was impossible to outrun a heatwave as it was to outrun a sandstorm. Nature always had a way of being faster. But the horse stayed just out of reach. Magnus wasn’t sure how long he could keep that pace, but he showed no signs of tiring, nor did Dante.
“The oasis is east!” Magnus shouted over the thunder of horse hooves and the sharp whistle of the wind.
“Too far!” the rider shouted back, still bent over the horse’s neck.
“We need to go east!” he said.
“Then get off!” the rider replied.
Magnus tried to determine where they were being taken, tried to keep their bearings, but the horse veered off course and dove south, a direction he wasn’t wholly familiar with. That knowledge tensed the muscles on his arms, which reflexively tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword. His gaze flicked to Reggie and was met with the same apprehension.
“There is five of us, one of him,” Nobu pointed out, speaking for the first time.
“There is two of us,” Magnus corrected. “You and your men are too injured to do anything.”
Nobu’s good eye narrowed. “Perhaps if you had not run away like a coward—”
His words died as the sled gave a jolt and arched through the open of a cave. Cool darkness enveloped them. The rider pushed them deep into the catacombs, too far for the blistering fingers of heat to reach them. They didn’t stop until the narrow path broke into a wide chamber.
The horse slowed to a stop. The rider dismounted. Magnus, Reggie, and Nobu did the same.
“Where are we?” Magnus demanded.
“Safe,” the rider said, pulling the reins over the horse’s large head. “You can wait out the heat here.”
Here was an enormous opening that was transformed into a living space. Mounds of fur were piled into one corner. A flat rock was place by a fire pit next to a tripod cooking rack. The rest was a maze of crates stacked beneath miles of fabric.
It all appeared safe, but it wasn’t enough to lower Magnus’s guard.
“Do you have any water?” Reggie asked.
The rider pointed with a bandaged hand in the direction Magnus had assumed was a wall of shadows. “Through there. The stream comes from the oasis so the water is clean.”
Reggie set off.
Nobu followed.
“Dante, partu zetum kare don tra Reggie grun.”
The hound immediately hurried after Reggie.
“You don’t see many Hellhounds around here,” the rider remarked, yanking on the saddle straps. “Not such loyal ones, anyway.”
Magnus ignore that. “Who are you and why did you save us?”
The saddle came undone and the rider peeled it off the horse’s back.
“Would you have liked me to leave you there?” They carried the saddle to a nearby crate and set it down. “I don’t recall a thank you.”
“That’s because I didn’t give it,” Magnus retorted. “I’m not in the habit of trusting masked strangers.”
The rider turned their head slightly in his direction. It was the movements of a bird, quick and curious. Then wrapped hands lifted and the robes were undone. The yards of fabric were tossed down over the saddle and the rider faced him.
They was a she. A girl with a shiny plait of black twisted down her back and eyes the slitted yellow of a cat. Her round face still held the lingering remains of childhood and the faded blotches of overexposure to the sun.
But it was the intertwined markings along her temples, the symbols burned along her neck that had Magnus whipping out his blades. It was the fine, white scars cut into eighteen even nicks along the tanned skin of her jawline that punched a hole in his chest.
“You.”
The single word aborted his lips in a shredded snarl of loathing and surprise. It rang around them in the hollow space with serrated edges that ripped into the silence.
The girl blinked. Her confusion pulled dark eyebrows together in a knot between her eyes, eyes that were so painfully familiar.
It had been centuries since he’d seen her kind, had looked into the eyes of a true monster and watched as the life faded from them. Yet, despite the years separating him from that night, the memories haunted him. They devoured his sanity.
He lunged, blinded by the red haze of madness. The all-consuming rage drove his momentum and he was screaming. The sound ripped through him, shattered against the walls, and still sounded a million miles away. His hand closed around the smooth column of her throat before she could suck in her next breath and his blade sank into her abdomen, ripping through fabric and flesh as easily as a hot knife through butter.
Her cat eyes bulged, but it was too late; her life was spilling over his hand, a hot, sticky spray that burned his skin.
“Why…?”
“Because you’re a monster and I will not let you take anyone else from me,” he snarled into her horrified expression. “I ended your miserable line once. I will do it again. Starting with you.”
She made a choking sound of pain with the twisting of his wrist driving the blade deeper.
“Magnus!”
Hands grabbed him, grabbed her. One of them was pulled free, but he couldn’t tell which. All he knew was that the dagger was still in his hand, slick with her blood … and she was still breathing.
She was alive.
“No!” He dove for her again, needing to rip the heart from her chest. “She can’t be allowed to live!”
“Magnus!” He was shoved into the wall. “Magnus, stop!”
“Get off me!” his roar boomed through the chamber. The hold on him tightened. “She’s a murderer! She killed them!”
Those three words rang in a loop, over and over again, resonating through the room.
Through his brain.
Through his soul.
They echoed and repeated until it was a chant he couldn’t stop saying, even as the rage abandoned him, leaving him shattered and devastated in his brother’s hold. He slumped forward, bloody hands falling to his knees as he gasped for some shred of his sanity. Tears blurred the world from him. They choked every breath. His heart slammed against the walls of his skull, a broken sound of defeat and pain.
He dropped to his knees.
She killed them.
Not her, exactly. She hadn’t even been born yet, but it may as well have been her.
“Mag?” Reggie knelt in front of him.
“She killed them,” he whispered in a hoarse rasp to his knees. “She killed them.”
“Who?”
Rather than answer, he pushed to his feet and marched from the room. He ignored Reggie’s shout to stop, to come back.
He couldn’t.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t think.
The world was closing in on him and he was sure he was about to die of asphyxiation, but he couldn’t leave, not without burning to a crisp.
Trapped.
Surrounded.
Buried alive.
Christ, he was buried alive.
He couldn’t breathe!
His heart screamed in his chest, wailing with the panic tying a noose around his neck.
“Magnus!” Reggie caught up to him, brown eyes wide with concern.
Magnus threw up the nothing he’d eaten the last two days. It tore out of him in dry, empty heaves that ripped his stomach lining. Bile, bitter and thick clogged his throat and he hit the ground on all fours as he retched.
When there was nothing left but the burn of tears and the echoing hollowness deep in his soul, he slumped against the wall.
Reggie crouched down next to him. “What’s going on?”
Magnus considered ignoring him, but knew it would do no good. “Nothing. Just need a minute.”
“Bullshit!” Reggie snapped before he could finish. “You just stabbed the person who saved us.”
“She’s a demon,” was all the justification he could give the other man.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Reggie squinted at him with a mixture of disgust and outrage. “Did she attack you? Did she say something? Because, otherwise, what you did—”
“Let it go, Reg.” He squeezed his eyes closed and dropped his head back against the sharp rocks.
“No! I’m not going to let it go. This isn’t like you.”
Magnus pried one eyelid open and peered at him. “Isn’t it?”
Reggie hesitated, backpedaled. “Not entirely like you,” he corrected. “You don’t kill people just because, and you said she killed someone. Who did she kill? Do you know her?”
He shut the question out with the reclosing of his eyes. “No.”
“Then who did she kill?” Reggie pressed when Magnus said nothing else.
“Let it go, Reggie.”
He could hear the warning creeping into each word. If Reggie heard it, he ignored it.
“I won’t! How can I when you’re sitting here, covered in vomit and blood, looking like someone just slaughtered your entire family.”
The world pressed down on him with the weight of those words. He could feel his chest tightening, crushing his ribs into his lungs and heart until he was suffocating for air all over again.
“Let. It. Go,” he bit out around the lump of air lodged in his throat. “Let it go!” he screamed when Reggie opened his mouth. “Get the fuck out of here. Now. Now!” He shoved the other man hard enough to send him flying backwards and sliding two feet.
Somewhere at the back of his mind, he was dimly aware of Dante hovering in the dark. His uncertainty kept him at a distance, but he was there, guarding Reggie, just like Magnus had told him to.
When Reggie hit the ground, Dante lunged forward. He planted his large, black body between them. His red eyes bore into Magnus, pleading and concerned. Magnus knew the hound would stop him if he went after Reggie, but the beast didn’t want to.
He patted the dog’s head, his anger dissolving into exhaustion. “It’s all right, boy.”
Tension melted and Dante head butted him, sending the back of Magnus’s skull cracking into the wall. Then all two hundred pounds of him dropped into Magnus’s lap, crushing and pinning him to the spot.
“Christ, you’re not a lapdog!” Magnus wheezed, trying to shove the beast off and failing miserably.
He got a long, wet tongue to the face for his efforts.
They stayed the night. It had been Reggie’s idea, saying they needed to make sure the girl would be all right. Nobu had done his best to stitch up the wound and make her comfortable on the mound of pelts. But Magnus secretly hoped she would die. He knew his mother would be appalled if she ever found out her son had stabbed an unarmed girl who had just saved his life. But it didn’t change anything. Her act of kindness meant nothing to him. And it was only because Reggie refused to leave her side that saved her from Magnus finishing the job.
“Are you going to tell me now?”
It was just the two of them facing the fire Magnus had started in the pit. Nobu had kept away from them since the incident. Maybe he was afraid Magnus might stab him if he got too close, but whatever it was, Magnus was grateful for it. He was too tired for another altercation. Between keeping watch all the previous night, the long walk through the desert, and nearly killing someone, Magnus was ready for the longest nap in history.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
Reggie turned his head to peer at Magnus. “Do you know how crazy you’re coming off right now? I’d blame it on the heat, but that was a level of cray-cray even I’m not comfortable with.”
“Then go away,” Magnus muttered.
Dante raised his head off his folded paws and raised his muzzle into the air. His wet nostrils flared, no doubt testing the air for tension.
Reggie softened his voice. “Come on. Talk to me.”
“She’s a Creewel,” Magnus mumbled before he could stop himself. “She’s part of a tribe not far from here.”
Reggie shrugged when he said no more. “So?”
A speck of ember flew from the pit and landed between Magnus’s feet. The bud glowed a beautiful red in the sand, tempting him to touch before fading to a sad, useless speck of ash.
“They’re monsters.”
Reggie frowned. “That doesn’t mean she was. She helped us. She didn’t have to, but she did.”
Magnus shook his head. “She was going to take us to her people to be sacrificed.”
“You don’t know that.”
But he did. He knew it for a fact.
“You can’t trust anyone here, Reg. There are no decent people. There is no good.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Anger blazed as white hot as the flames licking at the coals. “I know this place. I’ve lived here.” He paused, catching himself before he said too much, and pushed to his feet. Dante scrambled up after him, but remained firmly next to Reggie’s shoulder, even when his entire body vibrated with the need to follow. “I’m going to bed. Keep watch.”
He stalked to a corner away from the girl, away from Nobu and his men, and away from Reggie. He dropped to the ground and stuffed his bag under his head.
Sleep came much too quickly. It swooped down on him with serrated talons and thrust him deep into unwanted memories. Each one flickered to life with the vividness of a fresh wound and he was powerless to do more than lie there and take the assault.
Her body was a warm glove around the hard length of him. It gripped him with possessive desire as she took her pleasure. Hair the perfect shade of spun gold bounced around her shoulders, down her back, and when she bent to take his mouth in a hungry claim, formed a heavy curtain around their faces.
Magnus allowed it. Allowed the jagged gashes her nails opened down his chest. Allowed the blood she drew when she nipped his lip. Allowed the bits of fabric she had fastened around his wrists to keep him from touching. He allowed it because watching her was a sight more precious, more priceless than all the gems in the world. Hearing her greedy little gasps as she reached her climax brought him to the brink of destruction. But it was watching her body bow back, flushed and exposed to the early morning light that brought him the greatest pleasure. The rosy tips of her breasts hardened beneath her teasing fingers. She was a woman who knew what her body needed, how it needed it, and how to get it.
“Magnus…”
With a final cry of rapture, she dropped forward, spent and sated. Her walls pulsed around his shaft with the aftershocks of her release. The heat of her core rushed over his balls to stain the already ruined pelts. But neither cared.
“Stay.” The word was murmured into the curve of his shoulder. He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right until her head lifted and yellow, slitted eyes peered at him from a face men had gone to war for. “Stay,” she repeated.
Twenty-five little marks decorated her delicate jawline, each one immortalizing the summers since her birth. But it was the overlapping symbols of her people burned into the smooth skin of her neck that always caught his attention. The collapsing spheres cut into four triangles by a cross fascinated him.
He traced it with the one finger from his bound hands while carefully selecting his response. “And what would your mother say to that?”
A pale shoulder lifted. “I will claim you as mine. I have that right.”
He let his finger lazily slip down the plane of her chest and over the rise of her left breast to circle a taut nipple. She sucked in a breath. Her channel clenched around him.
“What will you do to persuade me?”
“Anything.”
He pinched the tip between his thumb and index, and tugged just hard enough to make her cry out. “Show me.”
“Magnus…”
“Magnus!”
Magnus came awake with a rocking jolt. The plunge from bright morning to the dull gloom of a cave barely lit by the dying fire momentarily disorientated him. As did the lack of woman to sooth the aching throb between his legs.
Standing over him, Reggie arched a brow. “It’s morning.”
He pushed up and scrubbed a hand over his face, hard enough to agitate the burns on his nose, cheeks and brow. The area was tender and blazed with a new glory of pain under his assault. His fingers lingered a split second longer on his scars before slipping away completely.
He dropped his hand and shoved to his feet. He grabbed his bag and shuffled to the wagon where Nobu was checking the wounds on his only remaining comrade; the other one had passed during the night from the looks of the empty place on the flatbed. Magnus didn’t ask what had happened to the body. He really didn’t care. At least now, they were evenly matched if the bastard decided to try anything.
“Leave him there,” he told Nobu when he started to help his warrior up. “We’re taking the horse and wagon.”
“What?” Reggie hurried over. “But what about—”
“I really don’t give a shit,” Magnus answered, voice still gruff from sleep. “Believe me, she’ll be fine.” Tossing his bag to the ground by the sled’s runners, he hoisted himself up, careful to avoid the half mummy, half warrior swaddled in white wrap. “Help me unload all this crap.”
Reggie didn’t. He stood defiantly aside, but Nobu leaped onto the flatbed without being asked and helped Magnus dump the crates. Reggie still didn’t move when Magnus saddled the horse and fastened him to the sled.
“This is wrong,” he told Magnus tartly.
Nobu didn’t seem to share Reggie’s sentiments. Maybe, like Magnus, he understood the importance of assuring one’s own survival before the survival of another. Maybe he was just anxious to get out of there and back to a place where the temperature was reasonable. Frankly, Magnus didn’t give a shit what the man’s reasons were so long as the job got done.
“She’s hurt.” Reggie planted his entire body in Magnus’s path. “You hurt her. Demon or not, we’re not leaving her here to die after she risked her life to save ours.”
There was no getting around it. Reggie was too much like their mother, too good, too willing to risk everything to help another person, even the enemy. It was an irritating trait Magnus abhorred.
“She’s a scout.” Magnus turned to him. “They lure men back to places like this, drug them, and take them to their village. It’s a rite of passage. That is what Creewel women do when they turn eighteen, and judging from the marks on her jaw, we’re her mission.”
Reggie’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
It was tempting to just hit the guy, toss him into the wagon and leave, but he knew his brother too well. Reggie would not let it go.
“Because the women can’t have boys and they need men to reproduce.”
“Well, we could have refused,” Reggie argued. “It’s not like she could have forced us.”
“She would have.” His arms folded. “It’s worse if you refuse.”
“Worse? Worse how—?”
Magnus had already turned away. “We’re wasting daylight.”
They took a crate of food, another of water, and several of the pelts. Reggie didn’t fight him, nor did he seem pleased, but once they were back out in the stifling desert, it was too hot to hold a grudge.
“We’ll be at our destination point in two hours,” Magnus informed the group. “Keep your eyes open. We’re not in the clear.”
It was faster on horseback with Dante galloping alongside the cart. The hours it would have taken them to walk was shortened drastically. They reached the third oasis before the heatwave even came into existence and stopped to water the horse and cool down.
Magnus washed his hands in the lake. The girl’s blood was still caked beneath his nails and stained his clothes. He thought about her lying in her cave, biding her time until she was well enough to lure men into the clutches of those animals. He thought of all the men she had already taken captive and wished again he’d killed her.
But it would have made no difference. Her absence would not have been missed. They would have simply sent someone else to take her place and the cycle would have continued without interruption. By now, he had no doubt the hunters of the pack had already found her. They would have gone to check and see if she’d made any progress. They’d find the girl, dead or alive, and report back to their chief.
It was only a matter of time before they fanned out to find the people responsible.
Dante nudged Magnus’s elbow with his bulbous head, jostling him back to the present and the next leg of their journey.
“Hey.” He rubbed the dog’s flank. “Who’s a good boy?”
Dante’s tongue unfurled from his massive maw like a thick, red sash. His tail thumped wildly against the sand, creating a small sandstorm of excitement.
Magnus chuckled. “Ready to get home yet?”
As if recognizing that word, his tail stopped wagging. His mouth closed, and he stared at Magnus with sad, crimson eyes. With a low whimpering whine, he crawled into Magnus’s lap, crushing thigh muscles in his attempts until he was curled up against Magnus’s chest.
“You’re really not a lapdog,” Magnus choked, struggling not to get smothered by the bulk.
Dante’s response was another whine and the nestle of his head under Magnus’s chin.
Magnus sighed. “I get it,” he muttered, stroking the beast’s side. “I don’t want you to go back to the crates either, but Mom would kill us both if I brought you home.”
“Not to mention he’d try to eat Riley.” Reggie trudged over to join them, dripping from his dunk in the water. “Oh, and all our patrons.”
“No, he wouldn’t.” Magnus scratched behind Dante’s ear. “He’s misunderstood.”
Reggie lifted an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“I trained him,” Magnus reminded the man. “He listens to me. If I tell him not to eat people, he won’t eat people. He’s smarter than half the idiots I know.”
Arms folded. “Should I take offense to that?”
Magnus shrugged. “Probably.”
Reggie kicked a spray of sand at Magnus. It wasn’t high enough to reach his face, but it joined all the other bits clinging to his clothes.
Dante took it as a game and lunged at Reggie’s ankle. The impact of the enormous dog sent Reggie flailing backwards and landing sprawled. His wet clothes immediately became caked.
“Damn it!” he muttered with no heat.
Dante leaped on him. Four of his six paws clamped down on Reggie’s chest, holding him down.
“No!” Reggie warned, flailing like a spider stuck on his back, but Dante didn’t understand no.
His tongue covered the whole of Reggie’s entire face in a single sweep. The slobber coated him from chin to brow and spiked his bangs into sharp points.
“Get him off!” Reggie garbled around tightly closed lips as Dante went in for another taste. “Magnus!”
Magnus pushed to his feet, dusted the small mountain of sand off his clothes and reached into his bag for his canteen. He left his brother fighting for freedom and trudged down to the water’s edges.
Their destination was a series of tents pitched in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing, but sand. There were five in a perfect circle around a pit. Each tent was a worn triangle made of green felt and flapped noisily with the wind. A wagon, much bigger and fancier than theirs, was parked around the back, already hitched to a massive horse the liquid black of tar. But the thing that coaxed Magnus to pull to a halt was the lack of life otherwise.
The camp seemed empty.
“Stay here,” he told the others as he dismounted the horse and started forward.
Dante started to follow, but stayed with a motion of Magnus’s hand.
The light sliced off the fine point of his angelic blade as it was unsheathed from his pocket. The hilt felt unnaturally cool against his clammy grip. Magnus was about to accept they were either too late, or too early when one of the flaps flew open and a raisin wobbled out. It took one look at Dante, squeaked and darted back out of sight.
“Hey!” Magnus called. “We’re looking for a Sorta demon named Clou.”
The raisin poked his head out. “Yes.”
He wasn’t a raisin, but his entire body was all wrong. His head sat precociously atop of a twig that might have passed for a neck, which was attached to a pair of a body with legs. Most of his face was hidden behind round glasses and he had a tiny mouth that was no more than a thin slit. His skin was the color of pea soup that looked odd with the tufts of white that protruded from the sides of his head. And when he lifted a hand to adjust his glasses, Magnus noticed he only had three, long fingers on each hand.
“I’m Magnus,” Magnus said. “Are you Clou?”
The raisin fidgeted with his glasses again. “Not today.”
There was an abruptness to his voice, one that always seemed to end in a sort of confusion, but not a question.
“Is Clou here?” Magnus pressed when the demon continued to stand there and stare at him.
“Yes,” the raisin said with a definite jerk of his head that sent his glasses sliding down his noseless face. He shoved them back into place.
“Can I talk to him?”
“Yes!” The raisin motioned Magnus to follow him to one of the other tents. “There.”
Before Magnus could even decide what to do next, the tent flaps flew open and another demon trotted out. He was thin and short and half buried behind the scroll shoved up to his face.
“This way!” he called, scurrying past Magnus. “Time is wasting.”
“Are you Clou?” Magnus called after him and his trailing scroll.
“Today, yes.”
A blooming thrum had begun at Magnus’s temple, one that was making the backs of his eyes hurt and his temper prickle to life. But he followed the retreating back of the possible Clou.
Reggie and Nobu had joined the camp and stood just on the outskirts when the possible Clou trotted past.
They were led to the wagon with its beautiful hand painted mural, a twisting knot of vines and blooms against a rich, wood finish. It ran beneath the stained windows and ended in an elegant calligraphy around the wooden door. Magnus hadn’t seen a gypsy wagon in ages and never one so … well kept. He would have guessed it was new, but the paint was fading and the wagon itself looked used and weather worn.
“There,” Clou said, lowering the scroll long enough to squint at the wagon.
“That’s the shipment?” Reggie asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, at least it’s something we can haul,” Reggie decided. “Let’s get it and get going.”
He started forward only to be stopped by Clou’s three fingered hand. “No.” He blinked at his scroll. “Not you.”
He rolled up his scroll, stuffed it into the front pocket of his little, green trousers and faced the horse with both arms raised over his head. The demon barely came to the animal’s belly. His fingers just grazed the saddle. No one could fathom how he was supposed to get on.
“Up!” he directed, hands open and closing like a child’s.
For several seconds, no one moved. Gazes were exchanged, but the situation was so bizarre, that none of them knew how to proceed.
“Up?” Clou peeked over his shoulder.
Magnus relented. He stepped forward, gripped the demon by the tiny waist, and hoisted him up onto the saddle.
“Good.” Clou took the reins. “Go.”
He didn’t wait for them. With a flick of his frail wrists, he sent the stallion galloping. The wagon jerked, then creaked along after him. Magnus scrambled back, narrowly avoiding getting clipped by the corner. His head snapped up to one of the passing windows. The light from the sun gleamed along the thin web of silver woven around each cut of colored glass. But there was also a glint from within, a waver of fire that could have been a lit candle.
Then it was gone and Clou was shrinking into the distance.
Magnus and the others hurried to their own cart and horse. Magnus took the driver’s seat as Reggie and Nobu climbed into the back. He snapped the reins and the horse lurched forward. The sled creaked and groaned. The runners squeaked. But it was all drowned out by the rumble of the coach ahead.
Magnus watched the massive wheels rolling seamlessly over crumbling and shifting sands and wondered how it was possible. The narrow loops of wood shouldn’t have been able to move so easily, not with all the weight settled on top of them. The sled they’d taken from the Creewel demon had no wheels. Like most desert transportations, it had flat beams of wood curved up at the front end. It helped move quickly and seamlessly over sand.
But Clou’s wagon had actual wheels.
There were many who called the desert home, many creatures with many types of abilities. In his two years of residency, Magnus had heard of Sorta demons only in passing. They were never spoken of in fear or even curiosity. There wasn’t much known about them at all, except that—for the right price—they would move things.
Magnus’s gaze went to the coach.
It was dangerous to wonder. Wondering leads to curiosity, which leads to obsession, which leads to doing something stupid. Whatever was in that wagon meant nothing to him.
It was a job.
The means to a greater end.