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On the far wall sat a throne below a mounted dragon’s head. In the corner of the room was a wooden perch where a huge black raven stared at the crowd. For a second, I thought it was real, but it didn’t move or blink. I wondered how long the lifelike statue had been there. The eerie words of Edgar Allan Poe filtered through my mind:And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting…and his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming.The urge to run kept shoving at me.
A throng of Dungeon groupies sipped from goblets in true Goth style surrounding the one on the throne. I wondered if I’d stepped into a vampire coven, but as we all know, vampires don’t exist.
Maria Brink screamed the word “burn” in a long, agonizing wail as if she were literally on fire. The sensation of walking directly toward a dark creature who would snatch the chance to own me like an animal, like the girl on the leash, with a woman screaming about burning alive, sent me into a state of surrealism. I might have an out-of-body experience at any moment.
The man, if you can call him that, wore black dress pants, an expensive-looking white button-down with silver cufflinks. He held a clear glass with crimson liquid and whispered intimately to a corseted, red-lipped blonde propped on the edge of his throne. I noticed a pewter skull ring on his forefinger.
Silver studs pierced pretty much everything, lining his earlobes all the way up the cartilage. If it weren’t for all the metal crap in his face, he might’ve been attractive. The blonde’s cleavage spilled out of her top when she leaned forward for his pleasure. The creature’s eyes grazed her a moment longer before turning his attention to us.
Annoyance skittered across his eyes when he saw Jude. And something else.
Jude nodded. “Dommiel.”
The man pulled himself more upright, taking a sip from his glass.
“Greetings, Jude,” he crooned as if a Dominus Daemonum stepping into his lair were an everyday occurrence. He tipped his glass up in a toast, “To the saint of lost causes.”
I didn’t miss the underlying insult. I glanced at Jude, seeing his eyes wiped clear of any light, his expression like granite. Apparently, he caught it too. Jude had that look about him when he was examining every minute detail, trying to discover what’s hidden beneath.
Fixing my gaze on our host, I shuddered. His eyes had flickered to me. Though I couldn’t tell their exact color as he observed from the shadows, one thing was for certain. There was no sign of the fiery-red hue coloring the irises of the other demons I’d seen so far. There was also no doubt in my mind, body, or soul that this thing was, in fact, a demon —a high one.
“Mmmmm. You’ve brought me a gift?” he asked, letting his gaze rove up and down my body. “Overdressed but quite delectable. Come on, Jude. I’ll give you mine if you give me yours.”
The blonde slid Jude a seductive smile, tilting her voluptuous body so he could see all she had to offer. Apparently, this proposition was nothing new to her.
Jude repositioned himself directly behind me, moving his hand to wrap around my right hip. It was an act of possession. Not in any romantic sort of way, mind you. This was the way Jude did things. Subtle moves to let you know where you stood in his book. Right now, he was telling this Dommiel dude I was in no way up for grabs.
I pressed back into the wall behind me, the six-foot-five wall of muscle and badass attitude, just so our host knew howIfelt on the topic of swapping. Dommiel smiled, revealing a row of perfect gleaming-white teeth.
“So, Jude. If you’re not here to share, then for what purpose do I owe this pleasure?”
His words lilted like liquid, one word pouring into the next.
“There’s another high demon in your territory.”
An unpleasant frown deepened Dommiel’s brow, hooding his eyes further.
“None of my brethren would venture into my domain without proper homage.”
“None of them, Dommiel? You don’t know your kin like I do.”
Jude’s voice rumbled low and deep, vibrating through his chest to my back. Dommiel clinked his skull ring against the glass in thought.
“You’re lying, Master of Demons,” he replied with poison in his voice. “It’s against our rules. What do you want?”
Rules. I needed a seriously long discussion with Jude on more of these damn rules.
“Obviously, there is something you donotknow.”
Cold drifted over me, like a draft when you’re cozy in your warm bed and someone yanks the covers off you. I sucked in a short breath, knowing Jude had lifted his shield of illusion. Fear reared its ugly head, threatening to swallow me whole. His hand tightened on my hip, a warning to keep still.
Dommiel watched me with interest. There was a shift in the air. He set his glass down on a table at an insanely slow pace. A dawning flickered over his features. His creased brow straightened to a blank slate, then contorted into a mixture of feverish anger and hard lust.
He growled deep in his chest. I don’t know what happened next because things moved literally too fast for me to see. One second, I was pressed hard to the front of Jude; the next, I was behind him. He had Dommiel on his knees before him with a long dagger pricking the hollow of the demon’s throat. Seriously, I was standing there fearing for my life, then I blinked, and Dommiel was cowering before Jude.
The raven in the corner cawed. Itwasreal! The groupies shrank back, losing their façade of Goth-cool, except for the one who wasn’t human. A lower demon lurched forward.
Jude put his free hand palm out and chanted three words in Latin. The demon bounced off an invisible wall and fell to the ground in a stupor. Jude then gripped Dommiel’s shoulder and pressed the dagger blade so that a drop of black liquid trickled out, staining his pretty white shirt.
