Thirty-two

Holding the night close, Zaire glided through the sky. The dark had no power to diminish his demon eyesight, and now that he could Change without fear, he appreciated the small things his forms offered. He flapped his wings, moving faster than a small plane. The van revealed in Quinn’s dream clicked a distinct rhythm among the orchestral chaos of the surrounding world, a unique vibration drawing him onward.

And that pulse was strong now, near, just beneath him. Even better, the chime identifying Caius rang equally loud. Rage burned on low, seething beneath his skin. Caius had first kidnapped and tormented Braden, now Quinn. Exterminating the centipede would be a great delight. Zaire banked and circled, his night vision piercing the gloom below.

The Hardee’s Hardware van now parked beneath an open-faced carport layered with tree branches to blend with the encircling forest. A tiny house stood off to the side, lights glowing from the windows, and an outdoor floodlight spilling over the lawn to the line of trees.

His lips stretched into a smile, and the wind sang against his razor fangs. No amount of camouflage would hide his target once he locked on. He may not be able to sense Quinn in the V’alkara-proof box, but once the Crows were out of the way, he’d find her.

He’d always find her.

Zaire landed on the roof without a sound. He cocked his head. Voices, coming from the opposite side of the house. Another swoosh of his wings and he crossed the roof. He crouched, pausing directly above the arguing voices. Not only Caius. Wicked pleasure curled through him, and he licked his lips with a black, forked tongue.

Gibson.

“An opportunity like this will never come again.” Anger trembled in Caius’s voice, a sign that whatever the argument, it wasn’t new. “Think of it, Gibson. A dreamcaster shared between us? We wouldn’t need anyone or anything else.”

Rage boiled in Zaire’s veins, but before he ripped the roof apart, Gibson answered.

“Spoken like a true Brown.” While calm, a superior sneer undercut Gibson’s tone. “We were instructed to deliver the dreamcaster whole. Don’t be fooled into believing that our leader is any less lethal than the V’alkara.” His voice dropped to a threatening hush. “Disobedience will make White’s training seem like pleasure.”

Something crashed as if Caius had thrown an object at the wall. “I joined the Crows because there are no belittling ranks, no power plays, no chains. Blindly following an order to deliver a dreamcaster for another’s exclusive use feels too close to the old ways, don’t you think?” Footsteps stomped across the floor, and the back door creaked open, followed by a slam that vibrated through Zaire’s cloven hooves.

Zaire kept still, huddled behind the sloped roof. Quinn most likely remained inside with Gibson, a safer location than alone with Caius. An enemy split made them easier to eliminate, and if he Changed now, Gibson would assume the sensation was Caius throwing a fit.

Glorious.

Dropping silently to the ground, Zaire Changed from demon to another form, one that wouldn’t strike terror in most people’s hearts, but for Caius? He held back a cruel, ancient smile. Caius wouldn’t realize what the form meant until it was too late.

On small, bare, human feet, Zaire circled the house and stalked his prey.

Caius strode into the trees, swiping at branches as he passed, cursing under his breath. The scent of pine and moist earth infused the growing darkness, and soon, the shadows swallowed everything, hiding the house from view.

Far enough. Zaire purposefully stepped on a twig.

At the sharp snap, Caius whirled, searching the gloom. His gaze landed on Zaire, and confusion lined his brow. “What are you doing here, boy?”

Taking small, timid steps, Zaire came closer. “I have something for you.” Even his voice was shy, an adolescent’s soft reply to an adult. “You left it behind. Where you kept me locked up these past weeks.”

Caius’s pale hair gleamed dully in the darkness, and his eyes narrowed. “How did you get here?” His expression hardened. “Is this some sort of Crow test? Did Gibson bring you here to taunt me?” He swiped fingers through his hair. “I bet they let me believe you escaped to slam me.” He stepped forward, his fists clenched. “I should have killed you that first day, saved myself weeks of boredom. Your uncle wouldn’t have known the difference, and the results would’ve been the same.”

Zaire waited, eyes downcast until Caius was within reach, didn’t flinch as the man raised a hand to strike him, a much weaker, much smaller boy.

Caius’s fist drove toward his face, and Zaire caught it mid-air with an iron grip.

Slowly, Zaire lifted his black-hole gaze. As doubt flickered across his enemy’s face, he gave Caius an evil, too-wide smile. “I promise you, I would have known if you killed my nephew.”

The utter horror in Caius’s expression was glorious.

He squeezed, and the fragile finger bones in his grip cracked.

Caius howled, jerking free, and the cry of pain cut out. In the man’s place, dozens of centipedes swarmed, scuttling over one another, all heading in different directions.

Zaire cursed, using a demon’s foul tongue. Only one of the centipedes carried Caius’s essence. Losing that one would mean his enemy escaped, the adversary who’d kidnapped Braden, beat him daily, and used him for blackmail. The foe who captured Quinn, hurt her, and wanted to take Zaire’s dreamcaster for himself.

Never.

Throwing out his arms, shadows erupted from his skin and snaked free, darker than the night forest floor. They slithered over pine needles and moss, beneath logs and up trees, tracking the centipedes. The shadows sharpened to blades as they reached their target. One by one, the darkness impaled the struggling insects to soil, to wood. One by one, they returned to him, carrying their prize, none of them Caius.

Zaire waited, listening, his heart beating too loudly. He could track Caius the man by his intrinsic song. Caius, the centipede, did not carry the same tune, and if he remained in that form long enough, managed to elude Zaire’s shadows…

A gasp hissed farther within the trees.

On swift, silent feet, Zaire followed the noise.

Caius writhed on his back like a hooked worm. Blood gushed from his stomach where a shadow impaled him, a black needle pinning him ruthlessly to the ground. He bared bloodstained teeth as Zaire crouched beside him. “Overlord of Shadows.” He laughed, a wet, gurgling sound. “Forgot about that one.”

“Another mistake,” Zaire said softly.

“Before I die, Demon Master, I want you to know.” Gripping the shadow-blade piercing him with both hands, Caius managed to pull himself closer. “Every hit, every bruise, every sob, every time he curled up on the floor in pain…” Breath hissed between his teeth. Shuddering, he squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, hate glittered, jewel-bright. “I enjoyed every second.”

Fury boiled through Zaire, and his knife was in his hand without even thinking it. He plunged it down, straight at Caius’s foul heart. As he did so, Caius lunged forward, sinking centipede pincers into Zaire’s forearm, a last strike before death.

Zaire jerked his arm free with a curse. Poison glistened at each puncture wound. Red veins crept from the swollen site. He flexed his fingers. Damnation. Already, they stiffened.

Awareness tingled down his neck, and he spun just as Gibson flung a blade at his back. Zaire dove aside and rolled to his feet, knives in each hand. He deflected the next thrown dagger with a quick flick of his wrist and a sneer. “Gibson,” he purred. “And I was so anticipating the thrill of hunting you down later.”

“Prince.” Gibson dipped his chin in bare acknowledgment, staying close to the protection of a tree. His gaze flicked to Caius’s corpse and back to Zaire. “Before you tear out my heart and feast on it, don’t you want to know why you were chosen to be the test subject for the Faction’s latest experiment? Why the Crows allowed it?”

Zaire approached his new enemy slowly, a predator confident of trapped prey. Shadows curled, making the darkness seethe. “Not especially. But if you tell me where you stowed my dreamcaster, I may be persuaded to accelerate your death.”

Gibson stiffened. “She’s yours?” He backed away, sidestepping a small log, his unblinking gaze locked on Zaire and his inevitable doom. “I didn’t know.”

“Now you do.” Subtly, he Changed, just enough to add another degree of fear. He lifted his hand and flicked his black tongue at one talon. The other hand he left at his side, unwilling to let Gibson know it had gone completely stiff. Hopefully, he hadn’t seen the knife when it dropped from his limp grasp. “Each second you hesitate is another minute I’ll add to ripping out your intestines, inch by inch.”

“The moment I tell you what you want, you’ll kill me.”

Zaire added a barrow-whisper to his voice. “You’re already dead.”

His throat worked. “I propose an alternative.”

“I am not open to negotiations.” With his good hand, Zaire lifted the log Gibson had stepped over seconds ago and tossed it aside. Wood exploded, shattering splinters in every direction. Like the demolished log, Gibson would meet the same fate. No matter which way he chose, there was no escape.

“That serum you were injected with was an experimental cure, Faction created, Crow leader approved.” Gibson inched past a thick fir tree, his boots soft on the soil and moss. “They wanted to see the effects it had on the Demon Master.”

Thunder rolled in Zaire’s chest at the hated name, a warning rumble before the inexorable storm.

“If the serum impacted your power or temporarily neutralized it,” Gibson continued, blindly reaching for the tree behind him, “imagine how it would affect lesser V’alkara.”

“Yes, imagine,” he hissed. He kept his approach slow and steady. The shadows slithered and gathered around his ankles, curling, caressing. “Imagine how easily the Faction would slaughter us once they perfected that cure.” He ignored the sudden chill beneath the growing heat of his rage. The first on that slaughter list would be any V’alkara-dreamcaster matches. “Where’s my dreamcaster, Gibson?”

“Don’t you want to be normal?” Gibson slipped between two trees, the house floodlight shining between the branches in a false beacon, stretching the shadows. “To sleep? To not survive on scraps of human nightmares? To stop wondering when you’ll Change and never come back?”

Once upon a nightmare, that was true. But if he were normal, he wouldn’t be the man Quinn needed. Normal no longer held the same appeal. The shadows crawled up his legs as his feet became cloven hooves.

“A war is coming, Prince.” Gibson’s pupils nearly overwhelmed his irises as he stepped beyond the trees onto the illuminated lawn. “You want to be on the winning side. I can vouch for you, smooth things over with the Crows. With you in our ranks voluntarily, we can conquer the world. But choose wrong, and you not only jeopardize your own existence, you also endanger your dreamcaster.”

It took all his strength not to fling a dagger straight into the Crow’s eye. That would be too quick, too painless. “Where.” He dragged a claw over a tree trunk, leaving a gouge, the shriek worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. “Is.” His voice emerged as the tortured snarl of several hell-bound souls. “She?”

As if suddenly comprehending there was no talking his way to safety, Gibson’s face twisted. He lifted his hands, and instead of fingers, single, silver blades shone. That was both his strength and his weakness. He could Change, but only partially, ever the hybrid human and monster.

Zaire had no such limits, but he’d only taken a handful of forms from Quinn before they parted. He had to make do with what he had. Changing fully into his demon form, he cast a net of terror and despair.

Gibson, as expected of any true V’alkara, held his ground, but the tang of his fear hung in a satisfying cloud. His skin drained of all color, glistening with perspiration, and the rapid slog-slog-slog of his heart sang through Zaire’s veins, sweeter than any melody. He raised his swords, light gleaming along each length. “I’m not afraid of you, Prince.”

“Liar.” Zaire flicked out his black, forked tongue, enjoying the fact that the blade on the side with Gibson’s missing fingers was smaller than the other.

The former V’alkara lunged, swinging his blades with precise force. Zaire dodged with ease and swiped talons at Gibson’s head. Neither was a stranger to fighting, with and without weapons, both trained beneath White’s merciless guidance. Their reflexes had been honed through years of battling for survival in a harsh world.

But Zaire had something to live for now.

Keeping his working hand facing the enemy, he circled the Crow. The initial spark of fear in Gibson’s expression had vanished beneath a mask of intense focus, all emotion shoved beneath a lifetime of V’alkara composure. A shame. Any other time, Zaire would savor the challenge and break Gibson down breath by breath, slicing until he bled to death from a thousand cuts. Not while Quinn suffered, trapped in a box.

They didn’t bother with taunts or useless conversation. Snarls and growls were enough. Metal clanged on metal. Neither flinched nor faltered. Zaire ducked a particularly quick swipe, and air swept over his head, fluttering hair. He spun to deflect the inevitable second strike.

With his numb arm.

He launched into the air at the last moment, and Gibson’s blade nicked his leg in a burst of pain. First blood.

A slow, satisfied smile spread over Gibson’s face. “Having trouble with your arm?”

Zaire snarled and divebombed, throwing one of his precious knives.

Gibson dodged easily and spun. He’d Changed. While one hand remained a blade, the other resumed human fingers, holding a syringe. “I’d be very interested to know the results of the Faction’s improved serum on the Demon Master.”

Zaire alighted on the lawn, battle rage erasing the pain. Avoiding Gibson’s attack while killing him was one matter, but if he was injected and rendered helplessly human, he couldn’t rescue Quinn. He couldn’t even save himself. Defending himself one-armed was a welcome challenge, keeping his skin free of stray needles quite another. Using his shadows to hunt centipedes had depleted their strength, and with the floodlight, they’d be of little use against Gibson as a weapon.

But shadows could be weapons in other ways.

“It’s not too late.” Gibson paused, catching his breath. “Join the Crows.”

His lip curled. “It was too late the moment the Crows turned eyes on my nephew.”

Gibson’s jaw set, and he advanced, blade flashing, the needle set to strike.

Zaire countered with steel claws, but the attack was too fierce, too focused. The force drove him back, and he stumbled into a tree. Off-balance, he threw his last dagger.

A whirl of Gibson’s blade deflected the missile, and he stabbed the needle at Zaire’s neck. A slash of steel claws raked his cheek, and the Crow lunged back, out of reach.

A sudden wave of dizziness made the world tilt, and Zaire braced against the tree. He blinked fast. Two Gibsons stood before him, each holding swords and needles. Zaire snarled. The centipede poison—debilitating, but not deadly.

Unless another enemy was around.

Gibson lunged, and Zaire countered the nearest sword, finding only air. For a split second, he faltered. He spun to deflect the second sword—the true weapon, not the poison’s reflection—too late. Too fast to dodge, steel sliced through his wing, straight into the tree behind him, trapping him there exactly as he’d pinned Caius to the ground only minutes before. As his back seized in agony, the needle plunged toward his chest. And clashed in a clang of metal against the shining, iron cross hanging around his neck.

The unexpected barrier combined with the force of the thrust ripped the needle from Gibson’s fingers, and the syringe sailed behind him a few feet into the grass. He scrambled for it, lengthening his sword to keep Zaire pinned.

The opening was enough for the shadows. Silently, they gathered in a wall of darkness behind Gibson, a barrier between their master and his enemy.

Needle in hand, Gibson lurched around and froze at the black void looming before him. His fear erupted like a heat wave, a trembling, tangible shift in the air. The sword impaling Zaire’s wing shrank and reverted into a human hand.

Leaning against the tree, his back throbbing, Zaire panted as Gibson mentally fought against whatever the shadows revealed to him. Without the demons in his head, no sly whispers gleefully informed him of the personal horrors unearthed to torment their victim. Yet another reason to be eternally grateful to Quinn.

Gurgling, Gibson clawed at his throat, as though an invisible hand tightened around his airway. Blood leaked from his ears, nose, and mouth. The sharp crack of dozens of bones breaking at once pierced the quiet night, and the V’alkara collapsed to the grass, unseeing eyes aimed at the sky.

Two minutes. Much too quick.

Zaire stumbled toward the house past Gibson’s body. He searched the two-bedroom dwelling, fury rising with each step, red glazing his already unfocused sight. There was no box, no Quinn, no sign of her.

His breath coming fast, shoulders heaving, he ripped through cupboards and closets. He should have kept Caius alive for questioning. Torture would have been useless on Gibson, a ranking V’alkara, but Caius would have fractured beneath the fear. Every nook and cranny was empty. There was no attic or basement, nothing left to search.

Quinn wasn’t here.

Zaire lifted his face to the heavens and roared his rage.

As the echoes faded, a rhythm rose, faint, before fading.

He went still, every sense alert.

The beat resumed, weak and unsteady, dying again. It came from outside.

Zaire shot through the roof and paused near the gutter, his ear cocked. The thunder of his heart filled his head, too loud. He willed his breaths to be smooth and steady, willed the rhythm to begin again.

There. His attention snapped to the camouflaged garage with the white van, where a single, feeble thump had sounded.

His claws shaking, he tore the back doors off their hinges. A coffin-sized wooden box, layered with wards etched in silver and amethyst rested in the center of the van’s cargo space. They’d kept her here, in the box, in a vehicle, as though she were nothing more than chattel. He tamped the violence down and wished he could kill both Crows again, at a much slower, much more satisfying pace.

He ripped the lid off, locks and all, and the world stalled.

Quinn lay inside like a corpse, her curls limp and damp. Beneath bruises and swelling, her face was pale almost to the point of gray. She wasn’t breathing.

Zaire Changed into human form. “Quinn.” He forced her name through his tight throat. He pulled her limp body out of the coffin and cradled her against his heart with his working arm. “Don’t leave me.” He rocked her as he would a child, gentle and protective, his face in her hair. “Please.” The word was no more than a broken plea. “Stay.”

A huff of warmth skated over his collarbone, and his breath caught. Zaire eased back.

Her lips had parted.

He pressed his face to hers, afraid he might be hallucinating. “Come back to me, dearling.”

Quinn’s eyelids fluttered. She inhaled sharply and coughed. Opening her eyes, she found his gaze and held it, her expression blank. Finally, she croaked, “You can roar really loud.”

“Damnation, Quinn.” He didn’t protest as she wiped the wetness from his face with a trembling hand. “I’d kiss you, but you’re in no position to carry out your threat.”

Smiling weakly, she laid her head in the crook of his neck and sighed. “Give me a few minutes and…” She was asleep before she finished the sentence.

Zaire kissed her brow. Still holding her tightly, he Changed into demon form again and sailed crookedly into the night.