Stacia Kane - Demon Inside

If anyone knew how deceptive appearances could be, it was Megan.

A servant appeared with a tray of drinks. Megan accepted one after Greyson, but did not sip until he’d done so.

“I was just about to sink some putts,” Maldon said, holding out one arm. A servant appeared, or perhaps one of his rubendas, and handed him his coat. “In the yard. Join me.”

Greyson gave her a look that said, I’ll go to the mat on this one if you want. She shook her head. If the demon wanted to play golf at night in the December cold, that was fine. She just wanted to make him happy so she didn’t have to worry about him anymore.

And some of his Yezer? Were the defectors returning to him, as well as to Ktana Leyak?

She wanted to find out. So she followed him, her heels sinking into the tawny carpet, while Greyson rested his hand reassuringly on the small of her back.

Maldon hadn’t been lying about putts. He selected a long, slender steel club from a rack outside the door and trotted off into the yard, where a strip of AstroTurf seemed to glow in the dead brown of the grass.

“This is bizarre,” she whispered to Greyson. “Like Alice in Wonderland.”

He nodded, but his eyes didn’t leave the small form now teeing up in his bulky coat. “Just remember the Red Queen, bryaela.”

“So,” Maldon said when they reached him. “What do you propose to offer me?”

“I—” She stopped when Greyson gave a slight shake of his head. “I’ve already offered it. My apology. I’ll be leaving on Thursday.”

“Not good enough.” Maldon watched the little ball roll down the artificial grass. It missed the hole. “Damn!”

“Why don’t you just tell us what you want, Orion.” Greyson sounded bored, lazy, but his arm next to hers was tense.

Maldon glanced at him. “So curt,” he said. “As if you’re the one giving the orders. As if this is your land.”

Greyson didn’t respond.

“What do you think is an apt price to pay, Greyson? For invading another man’s territory?”

Shit.

“That debt’s been paid.”

“And now I’ll take another one. The human shouldn’t be here. She stole my demons and I couldn’t do anything about it because she bound them to the Accuser. Now they’re bound to her. She’ll pay me for them. In cash.”

“Fine.”

Was he crazy? She didn’t have any money, especially now she didn’t even have her practice. Her radio paychecks weren’t that good.

He didn’t know about her practice, she remembered. She hadn’t had a chance to tell him.

“And she’ll pay for her trespass.”

“She apologized.”

“Not enough.” He looked at Megan, his eyes glowing faintly red in the dim light. “I have another form of payment in mind. An hour in my bed.”

“No—” she started to say, but Greyson’s voice sliced through hers like an icicle.

“Do you want to fight me, Orion? To start a war you can’t win?”

“Those are my terms.” But Maldon’s gaze faltered as he spoke.

“You don’t have the authority to make a request like that of a Gretneg and you know it. You could be censured just for suggesting it.”

Maldon glared at them. Anger thrashed around him, hitting Megan, hitting Greyson. She stood firm, her eyes steady. The thought of this demon’s hard little hands on her body made her stomach clench.

“Fine,” he spat. “But I can request blood. You know I can.”

Silence. Megan wanted to speak, to run, but she concentrated on standing perfectly still. Blood…Greyson’s rubenda had asked if he could have it…she herself had wanted it…

“You can have mine,” Greyson said.

Maldon’s face split into a grin. “No. Hers. I’ve had yours.”

Greyson took her arm and led her away, out of earshot. “You don’t have to do this,” he said. The lights from the windows of the house reflected in his dark eyes. “We can try to talk him down further.”

“But you want me to.”

“Hell, no, I don’t want you to. But he’s not lying. It’s an excessive request, but the bastard’s within his rights to make it.”

She looked at the ground, at her shoes disappearing into the shadows made by her legs. “Is he…why does he want it?”

She thought she already knew, and she was right.

“He’s a blood demon. He wants to feed on it.”

“Oh God.” She pressed her hand against her mouth as the Scotch threatened to come back up. Already in her mind she could see it, the sharp knife, her blood flowing into a silver bowl…Orion Maldon lifting the bowl to his lips.

“I’ll talk him down,” Greyson said. He turned away, but she grabbed him.

“Would he touch me?”

“I won’t let him.”

“What will he do if…if we don’t?”

He sighed. “It depends. He could make us stand out here all night—to hurt you, you know, he knows the cold doesn’t bother me much—and eventually just let us go. Or he could stick to his guns, in which case we either give him what he wants or he talks to his boss, who talks to me, and we have to give in or we have a minor war on our hands.”

“He doesn’t strike me as the giving-in type.”

“No.”

Tears threatened, but she blinked them back. “Okay,” she said. “But I want another drink first.”

This, at least, looked like the lair of a demon. The crimson walls of Orion Maldon’s basement changed from blazing red by the flaming torches to deep and shadowy—the color of blood—between them.

In an odd way, the color, and the ornately carved gilded furniture, had a calming effect on Megan. It would have been utterly bizarre to make a blood sacrifice in the comfy earth-tone living room in front of the plasma-screen TV. The basement felt like a movie set, filming about to begin on a scene in a biopic that grew increasingly more bizarre by the day.

Girded by several more drinks, Megan allowed Greyson to lead her into the corner and set her in a surprisingly comfortable armchair. She’d barely settled in it when Maldon advanced, holding a wicked-looking knife.

“You asked for blood and you’ll get it,” Greyson said, stepping in front of her, effectively blocking her from sight. “You didn’t ask to cut her.”

“It was implied.”

“It wasn’t agreed to.”

Silence reigned for a moment while Megan pictured the two men staring each other down. Then Maldon stepped back and stabbed the knife forward.

Megan gasped, but Greyson caught it before it touched him. “Now, now,” he murmured, and turned back to Megan.

Tension laced her muscles, her entire body, as he knelt on the black-tiled floor at her feet.

“Give me your hand.”

It wasn’t the thought of the pain that made her nervous. Pain she could take, and it would most likely be fleeting anyway. Greyson’s healing abilities were excellent, and she doubted he’d let her walk out the door with a bleeding cut, especially in a house full of blood demons—at least, she assumed they were all blood demons.

But then, she’d assumed Greyson’s Meegra was all fire demons and she’d apparently been wrong.

She’d never asked. She’d never asked a lot of things and had ignored Greyson’s casual attempts to teach her. Now it was biting her on the ass—or to be more precise, it was about to slice into her skin with a sharp silver blade.

No, it wasn’t the thought of being cut making her heart pound in her chest. It was the thought of bleeding. It was the memory of the overcooked steak that was in fact perfectly done, of Greyson’s blood on the white marble floor, of the time he nicked himself shaving and she’d been about to lick the wound before she caught herself.