Demon's Cradle (Devany Miller Book 3) (18 page)

“Bigger Devany,” Ty murmured, looking like he was thoroughly enjoying himself.

I pushed with my mind and it grew, damn did it grow. When it was big enough to hold them all I asked, “How many of you would like to have a new leader?”

An uproar. Kali held up her hands and shrieked. The noise about burned off my ears. Silence fell.

I reiterated my deal. Made it clear I didn’t want them to torture and/or murder anyone to get their soul. “I also vow not to hurt any of you. Pain doesn’t amuse me and doesn’t interest me.” A slight lie there, but I didn’t say it aloud. “I’ll even release you if you find my leadership unpalatable.”

More noise. I let them have at it and leaned against the wall with Tytan.

“I like this new Devany.”

I snorted. “You would.”

“Jasper is quite upset.”

Jasper had been a good, kind soul. Seriously too good for Tytan. Too good for me. “If he wants to be upset, tell him to glower at Amara.”

“Any actions you take right now you will most certainly regret when you retrieve your soul.”

“Probably. So I’d better enjoy myself.” I eyed him then straightened from the wall. “Does anyone have a Formless One?” Several of them twitched. One actually raised his hand. “Will you allow me to use it?”

“Of course.”

I tipped my head. “I do not wish to take it from you. What do you want in return?”

He looked so startled I laughed. Really, this was all quite amusing. At least I hadn’t lost my sense of humor.

“I wish only to serve.”

I asked Ty, “What should I give him in trade?”

“Normally, a Formless One would grant me a few days’ worth of unregulated Source from Ravana. If she was having an on day. Now that you’ve granted them free access ...” He shrugged.

To my spawn I said, “Thank you. I appreciate the gift. If there’s something I can help you with in the future, let me know.”

He bowed his head and disappeared, I presumed, to grab the vessel.

In several minutes the noise died down and one blue-skinned creature stepped forward, its body shining with scales. “We will come to you. Let it be so.”

One after another, they began murmuring the same words. Out of the corner of my mouth I whispered, “What do I have to do?”

“Accept them all.”

I turned back to them and a wave of magic knocked me back into the wall.

“Oh, and brace yourself,” he said, desire coloring his words.

Yeah. Tytan had a power fetish.

Their collective strength filled me and filled me. It wasn’t the same as the nasty ick that Amara had shoved into me. It wasn’t like my soul. This was vibrating, pulsing energy that pricked me and made the fine hairs on my arms stand at attention. Electrified. Like grabbing a high voltage power line.

Then the wave of power exploded outward, vibrating the floor underneath me and the walls around me.

Silence.

Then there was a strong tugging sensation in my abdomen and the Skriven scattered, leaving Tytan and I alone.

High. This was what it felt like being high. I buzzed. I hummed. I wanted to fly. Lifting into the air, it was like the feeling I’d had long ago when I’d first visited Midia to pick up lodestones, but that moment paled in comparison to this one.

I snatched the front of Tytan’s shirt in both fists and yanked him to me. He didn’t even seem surprised and didn’t hesitate to kiss me in return. His strong hands were on my back, pulling me close, one leg parting mine as he maneuvered to press me tight against the wall. I burned with him, his heat sinking into my skin, into my bones. I made a noise deep within my throat. A growl. I would take him now when I couldn’t before because my conscience stood in my way. I had no such barrier anymore. Except.

I pulled away from him, his grey eyes dark with desire. Wrong color, I reminded myself.

I turned my head to see a mannequin-like thing standing in front of me. Lucy had had human features even before I’d given her a name but this thing was truly a blank.

“Do it,” I ordered, wanting him to be as free to enjoy me as I was him.

“I’m not sure how.”

I could though, couldn’t I? I’d yanked the soul free from Ivy in order to shove it into Ravana and kill her. I could do this. I sunk down into myself and reached out with my magic. The soul inside Tytan didn’t want to be caught and it was slippery. Jasper, I reminded myself. Jasper was slippery. Still, I managed to snag him and yanked, hard. I tossed him at the blank and opened my eyes in time to see the grey of his soul wash over and get soaked into the very skin of the Formless One.

Jasper collapsed on the ground. I walked to him, interested in seeing if the blank would form itself to Jasper’s face or if it would retain its expressionless shape.

The flesh warped, rippled.

“He will have to impose his will on it and that will take time.” Tytan’s greedy eyes were on me. “Come. Leave him to it and let’s go do something to satisfy this itch I’ve had since first I knew of your existence.”

He tugged me away. I said, “Nex, will you keep an eye on him? Make sure he stays put and doesn’t do something stupid?”

“Of course, Mistress.”

“Don’t do that. Friends, remember?”

Again, he inclined his head. “Always you do me the honor.”

“Nex, seriously. It’s what friends do. I got your back, you have mine.”

As Tytan tugged me from the room, I heard Nex mutter, “Such a curious concept.”

Tytan did not take me to a bedroom, as I expected, but to the basement. It wasn’t an Earth basement. This stretched into the dark, its cavernous depths both endless and oppressive. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness. The whimpering cry of a living creature. A moan.

“What is this place?”

“Come.” He led me into the blackness. I couldn’t see with my eyes but I could with my Magic Eye. The place was crawling with broken energy, sparking, crackling in jagged lines. Ragged, colorful shapes flared and receded, some human, some monstrous, with belches of reds and yellows pouring from them.

He stopped in front of a cell carved into the rock. That I could suddenly see didn’t surprise me. The witch balls sitting in pockets on the wall glowed as we neared. There was a human inside the cell; I could read the signature easily. That’s what I used to look like, I thought to myself.

Like prey,
Neutria said with relish.

As the glow brightened, I could make out a man blinking at the light. “Harrison.” The memory that had been niggling at me returned full force. “We killed Marco Rivera together, didn’t we?”

“Not quite. I killed him and you watched.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I didn’t remember any of it until now.”

He shrugged. “You asked me to help you forget, so I did.” He caressed my face with his long fingers.“Do you remember how you felt when you watched him take his last, tortured breath? How you felt when he begged for his life?”

Exultant. Satisfied. The memories came in flashes. A feeling there, a picture here, like an off-kilter montage.

Tytan circled me, looking predatory. “He’s here because I was hoping you would kill him with me this time. If that never happened, then I still wanted him here, rather than down on Earth making trouble for you. He would have found his way to your door eventually.” His eyes darkened. Even in the low light I could see that they were back to his rich reddish brown. “Torture him. Draw out his death. Tease it from him bit by torn bit.”

“Ravana tortured you and you hated her for it.”

“Still do. However, I never did anything to her like this man did to his wife. Your friend. Would you like to see more, now that your delicate sensibilities are no longer in place?” He held out his hand.

Also something I would regret. I put my hand in his anyway.

***

Harrison Perkins didn’t die, but he wished he had. Instead, he lay in his cell, bleeding and broken. My hands were bloody and my conscience clear. Tytan had showed me what he’d done to Danni and to other women before her. Death was too good for him.

I stood under a stream of warm water that splashed over the lip of a black rock in a nook that reminded me of the Dreaming Caves. Sort of. This place looked like it was made to wash blood off dirty hands. The Dreaming Caves were a place of sacredness. I didn’t feel sacred.

I did feel satisfied, though.

Every cry I wrung from Harrison had sent a bolt of pure pleasure through me. Now I knew why the Originators asked their Skriven to torture the souls before they paid their tribute. The thought of it would have sickened the old me, the one with the soul. Now I felt a vague sense of unease that I would come to regret my actions here today, but that unease was easy to push away.

Hands touched my skin. More blood, diluted by the water, streamed over my body and swirled away down a black metal drain. It was strangely erotic, the hot fingers, the pink-stained water, the man in agony a few feet away. I leaned into Tytan’s hard body, enjoying the feel of him naked against me. He’d said it would happen and I had vehemently denied it. And now, here we were.

Before he could even get started, I turned in his arms and put my hand on his chest. “What do you think you’re doing?”

His dark eyes burned into mine. “Washing off the blood.”

“I didn’t say I would have sex with you.”

“It wouldn’t be sex, Devany. Not with you.”

I slid my palms over his chest, enjoying the play of muscle and skin under my hands. He didn’t have any hair at all on his body. I peeked. Nope. Nothing below. He was one happy guy, though. “Not sex, huh? Then what would it be? Recreational exercise?”

“It would be destiny.” His lips took mine in one of those kisses that set off a nuclear meltdown inside me. A part of my mind grabbed onto the destiny bit. Weird to say that, wasn’t it? Destiny? I stepped away from him, my hand and my newfound strength keeping him at bay.

“No.”

He didn’t argue. Didn’t speak. Just burned with desire for me. Why? What did it gain him to have sex with me? Now that I didn’t have those pesky emotions to deal with I could think clearly about him. I also could put myself in his shoes and when I did, I saw that having sex with me could very well cement his place by my side. It would benefit him but what would it do for me? What indeed.

“Not yet. Not now. Maybe not ever. I’m soulless not stupid.” I fumbled for a towel then realized I could probably air myself dry using magic. I tried it, my access to the magic almost instantaneous. No more picturing what I wanted, at least not right now. I thought it and it happened.

I was dry in seconds and pulling on my clothes before Tytan tempted me into fucking him. “I have shit I have to do. Shit that doesn’t involve torture or sex.”

He hadn’t spoken still and I finally studied his face more closely. His lips were flat and tight, his eyes hard, burning coals in his head, though when he saw me really looking, the tension drained away into a lazy smile. “As my lady wishes.”

TWELVE

It felt like months had passed, but since I’d been in the Slip, nothing had changed on Earth or Midia, not unless I went back through Amara’s Rend and I didn’t want to do that.

As we walked back to the stairs, we passed the cage where Harrison lay in misery. “What about him?”

“I have a use for him.” His hand pressed on my back and a shudder went through me. Something like guilt—maybe its ghostly cousin—flitted in my chest and was gone.

He deserved it, I told myself. After what Tytan had shown me, I believed Harrison deserved all he’d gotten and more.

My soul, if I could get it back, might not agree.

Tytan grabbed Harrison from the cage and flipped him casually over his shoulder. It had to hurt. I hoped it did, guilt or not.

Upstairs, Nex was hovering around a dazed looking Formless One. It still didn’t look like Jasper—the features were too plastic and stiff. He didn’t seem to know who I was and it disappointed me. “Is he ever going to be okay?”

Tytan shrugged. “It takes time for souls to adjust to a blank.”

With Ellison banished to Midia, Jasper should have been safe in the Slip. I wouldn’t put it past Amara, however, to bring him here, so I said, “Is there some place besides the swamp where I can hide him?” I squatted in front of Jasper and studied him.

“Temporarily, yes. However, I have another idea that might make your Amara problem disappear.” He dumped Harrison to the floor.

To Jasper, I said, “Do you remember me?”

His head jerked as he tried to focus on me, his eyes out of sync with one another. His mouth moved but he couldn’t get any words out.

I had wanted to ask him if he thought I was damned for my act of evil. It didn’t worry me but I knew it should. Unfortunately, he held no answers and after a minute, I stood, annoyed and impatient of a sudden. “So, what’s your use for him?” I nudged Harrison with my shoe and he spit at me, mucous and blood splatting inches from my shoe.

“Amara’s downfall.”