AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As much as she disliked Tallak, she couldn’t help being glad he’d found Basil, and a piece of her heart melted—quite irritatingly so—at the way the demon doted on his son. He spent time with him, listening, talking, laughing with him, bonding in a way that gave Basil the father-son relationship he’d always yearned for. Tallak had butchered an entire court of fae for Basil, and there was not a single sliver of doubt in her that he’d wipe out all of Faerie and beyond to keep Basil safe.
A mother had to admire that sort of brutal devotion to one’s offspring.
But any admiring would be done secretly and from afar. She’d be darned if she ever let Tallak know how much his love for Basil meant to her, lest that pesky demon get any more ammunition against her. He was snarly and territorial enough and barely accepted her as Basil’s adoptive mother, as irrational as that was.
And, above all, she could not let him know how he affected her. The razor-sharp vulnerability of it would hand him way too much power over her. The last time she’d given a man that sort of edge, she’d ended up in a marriage that had bloodied her soul.
Revisiting that stolen moment in the woods of Faerie while she lay awake in her empty bed would have to suffice, and any fantasies of an encore with Tallak would remain her hidden, guilty pleasure.
CHAPTER 2
Adrenaline pumped through Tallak as he ran after the demon, the fall night mild and quiet. Down a silent residential street lined with single-family homes, all of them dark at this hour. His heart thundered with the thrill of the chase, and he grinned. Just what he needed—the distraction of an exhilarating kill, to take his mind off a witch he couldn’t have, shouldn’t even want.
He shook off the image of black hair framing a face of porcelain perfection, of brown eyes that glowed warmly whenever she beheld her children, but usually turned to ice when she looked at him. Except for those rare moments when heat would flare within their depths when she swung her gaze to him…and stirred up memories of how she’d come apart under his touch, in the dark privacy of an enchanted fae forest.
Oh, Hazel could be cold toward him all she wanted, but he didn’t buy it. He’d already seen her flames, knew what she looked like when she burned with passion.
Focus.
Not the time to pine for a repeat of what now seemed like a faraway fantasy rather than a memory. He had a demon to catch.
The sucker in question had just jumped over a low fence encircling a house—vacant, if the eviction notice on the door was anything to go by—and rounded the corner into the backyard. Tallak followed, gaining on him. He skidded around the house and tackled the perv as he ran past the back entrance. The impact had them both crashing through the weak door into the house.
They rolled several times, glass and debris scratching at Tallak’s hands and face, and he was faintly aware of a light source within the room somewhere. He couldn’t focus on it, however, because the demon fought like a feral cat, forcing him to keep his attention rooted on exterminating the fucker.
A sorja demon—a species that sucked brain fluid from unsuspecting humans, and this particular guy here specialized in children.
In terms of kills Tallak was allowed to make, per Hazel’s strict guidelines, this fit the bill perfectly. Normally, he wouldn’t be picky about his food choices, but if he killed arbitrarily, he might lose Basil. Not just because Hazel would bar his ass from ever visiting again—not to mention she’d throw him in the Murrays’ dungeon without batting an eye, as she’d made unequivocally clear—but also because Basil would lose respect for him.
Tallak would rather go back to a moldy dungeon than allow that to happen.
So he stuck to killing demons on the witches’ Most Wanted list. Had the nice side effect of being paid for his services, too.
He wrestled with the sorja, head-butted the freak, and then punched two fingers into the guy’s right eye, which incapacitated him enough for Tallak to execute the killing move—a clean snap of the neck. At the same time, he reached out with his powers and grabbed the demon’s innate magic, his memories, and absorbed them into his own.
He heaved a breath, savored the rush of powers into his system. He didn’t have to do this often, but every once in a while, a kill—and absorbing an otherworld creature’s magic—was necessary for him to function. Those twenty-six years he’d spent wasting away in the royal fae dungeon had tested the limits of his demon physiology, and he’d barely been able to take out the fae guard in that precious, lucky moment that allowed his escape. That kill, however, had given him enough power and energy to then go on and slaughter the rotten lot of them.
Free, he thought. I’m free now. He pushed the image of grimy stone walls and a floor covered in his own feces out of his mind and blinked at the movement in his peripheral vision.
The entire fight with the sorja had taken only a few seconds—and apparently stirred up a person hiding in the house. Tallak glanced over the gruesome display he hadn’t noticed before, the blood, the guts, the mutilated body laid out spread-eagle in the middle of the floor, and zeroed in on the shape escaping through the open back door.
The female ran as if an army of demons were behind her. An impulse to follow zinged through him, only to be buried under the wave of memories still flooding his brain. The sorja’s entire life, his feelings, thoughts, and darkest secrets, had come along for the ride when he’d absorbed his powers, a pesky side effect Tallak had no control over. And now the most revolting of the demon’s memories short-circuited his brain, made him freeze long enough for the fleeing female to disappear. The sudden urge to slurp up the dead human’s brain fluid made him stagger.
Ugh. Fucking nasty sorjas.
One of the most disturbing aspects of absorbing a victim’s mind was the temporary overlay it caused, making it hard to remember the difference between his own memories, thoughts, and emotions and those he’d taken from his kill.
He battled the instinct to change his shape into the sorja’s and stick the demon’s specialized tongue into the human’s ear to extract—
“I’m not a fucking zombie demon!”
He shook his head, gritted his teeth, and breathed past the foreign impulses manipulating his system. Thank fuck his heart still pumped fast, his adrenaline yet high enough to stave off the tsunami of pain sure to devastate his nerves soon. Another bloody brilliant symptom of absorbing powers and memories. If he stayed wired, the impact would be delayed until he calmed down, which was a good thing, as it allowed him to leave the scene of his kill and retreat to a safe place before he succumbed to the often-paralyzing pain.
Looking at the bloody mess in front of him, he should most definitely hightail it out of here before the agony crippled him, lest he be discovered curled into a ball right next to what looked like someone had staged a Satanic sacrifice.
Halfway to the door, his steps faltered. Come on. Shrug and walk away, like you do. He glanced at the scene, then at the spot where the female had disappeared into the night. He should leave. Shake his head and turn his back, let the human authorities deal with this shit. Even if what had happened involved—
Nope. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
