Ties That Bind: A Muse Urban Fantasy (The Veil Series Book 5) (8 page)

“
A
meńage á
trois
is not how I envisaged finding you.”

I snapped awake as did my cat guardians. The three-headed demon kitties hunched, ready to spring, and growled so low the sound tickled my skin.

“Li’el.” I sneered, and then, remembering where I was, looked for enemies. A cool newmorn breeze riffled through the grass. Bright light spilled over the distant mountains: the sunbirth about to breach the horizon. The Prince of Pride appeared to be alone. His image shivered and blurred, but the smile on his lips was solid. “Where’s Stefan?” I asked.

“Safe. As I said he would be.” He ruffled his wings and drew them close against his back. “Where did you find the neko?” He gestured toward my crowd.

“They found me.”

Pride’s pupil-less eyes narrowed with suspicion, but a smile softened the effect. “The princes even now assume you will die out here. Most hope it to be the case so they can put their trust in some other creature. All but Asmodeus. There is a change in him. I am neither surprised you have survived, nor am I surprised you have tamed the neko. They are the kings companions.”

I was surprised. And I wasn’t sure
tamed
was the right word, but I wasn’t about to tell Pride that. “What do you want?”

“I am your escort.” He said it with far too much delight in his eyes for my liking.

“Well, as you can see, I don’t need an escort.”

The neko grumbled and growled then proceeded to pad off through the grass, sniffing and shuffling with all the stealth of cattle.

Li’el arched a brow. “No, you do not, but
ventores
will have to drag me from your side. You are far too intriguing to be left alone out here.”

“Fine, tag along if you must, but don’t expect me to save your ass should the neko need a princely sized snack.” I turned my back on him but not before seeing his smile grow. We fell into an easy stride. The neko wandered off, but when I thought them gone, a rustle in the grass gave them away. Occasionally, they’d veer back in and give me a playful nudge, almost knocking me off my feet. They had all the cat-like attributes of Jonesy plus several hundred pounds of demon flesh. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d bounded back and dropped a lesser’s head at my feet. Pride watched all of this with a slight incline of his blurred brow, not least because the neko growled whenever he ventured within five strides of them. Had Jerry sent them for me? Pride had said they belonged to the king.

What had begun as a gentle breeze grew into something of a mischievous gale that would gust, fall away, and then sweep across the savannah like waves on an ocean. The wind brought spicy scents, summoning fragments of memories I long ago thought I’d forgotten. I’d been raised in the netherworld, albeit locked away behind one owner or another. What my mind had forgotten, my body hadn’t. I breathed the netherworld in and let it infuse forgotten demon muscles and habits.

“You wear demon well.” Pride wove through the grass a stride beside me. He solidified his being into the glorious black-skinned man and trailed his feathered wings behind him.

“She is me. I am her.”

“Half bloods… Only a handful of elementals were aware of their potential. When I first traveled to the human world, I rucked with human females—all smooth skin and curves.” He gazed ahead and trailed his hands over tufty grass heads. “One produced a half blood. The thing was quite the curiosity. Human elders burned it alive.” He didn’t see the trip in my stride. I’d perfected my mask, so nothing of my alarm showed on my face. But he did see the flare of fire in my veins, a mere throb, but it was enough. “Mammon’s fury is no trivial thing.”

A thousand questions burst in my head, but I voiced none. He knew Mammon in the human world. This was huge, and he knew it, hence the dramatic pause, giving me room to reveal my shock. I strode on, heat wilting the grass as I brushed through it.

“Was Mammon angry the child was killed or angry that you produced a half blood?” I asked, successfully barring the intrigue and disgust from my voice.

“He did not like to draw attention to our existence in the human realm, whereas I enjoyed the attention. The half blood was too…unnatural for them. Once, I revealed myself in full view of a gathering. I became air, a mighty storm. I am beautiful. Why would they not want to see this perfection?”

I hadn’t thought it possible, but I’d met a prince with a bigger ego than Akil. “Indeed.”

“They worshipped me like a god, and what am I really if not a god?”

“Demon?”

“Elemental. We are their gods, their angels, their devils, and their dreams. We could rule them. They see us, and they see the divine. I had followers, those devoted to my contentment. My every whim, they provided for. Mammon did not share my perspective. He believed the truth of us would corrupt them. He wanted to observe, to be embroiled in their lives, to be part of their existence. He wanted to live as they live. Why, I asked him, when we are better in every way?”

“Not every way.” I found the ghost of Akil’s words in my mind. “Demons do not dream. They do not reach for the stars or strive to better themselves. Demons simply are.”

Pride grumbled a foreign word. “I hear him in you.” He snagged his hand on one of the peculiar turquoise flowers that had started peppering the savannah and plucked off its head. With a flourish, he turned and presented the bloom to me.

I stopped and scowled. From somewhere nearby, the neko growled. “Flowers? For me?” He didn’t recognize the sarcasm, which made the fracturing of his smile all the more delightful when I plucked the bloom from his hand, popped it in my mouth, and ate it.

He blinked. “Human females like flowers. I have proven this to be the case.”

“Do you see any human females here?” He looked so sorry with his big black eyes and pouting lips. “Don’t try to manipulate me. The biggest most badass manipulator was my teacher. Your little”— I swept my claws at him— “act, is pitiful in comparison.”

When he smiled this time, his fangs gleamed. “You are so like him.”

“Okay, what’s the deal with you and Mammon?”

Pride rolled his shoulders back and lifted his chin. “Mammon’s jaunts through the veil did not go unnoticed. Most of our kin dismiss the humans as weak and worthless. But I wanted to know why Mammon always returned to their world. I followed and found it to my liking. I stayed. He deemed my visitations too obscene, too public. The humans there worshipped me as the light-bringer. We rucked and feasted and killed. It was glorious. Mammon sought to end all of that.” Li’el’s stormy eyes churned. “He had no authority over my choices. He could have had everything, could have been worshipped as a god. You would think Greed, such as he was, would want everything. But no.” Pride’s wings ruffled. “We fought. They still tell the tale of the battle where I became the fallen one. He turned my humans against me, manipulated their pliable minds so that I became the enemy, the dark one, the opposer, the
demon.
I had no choice but to return.” Li’el traced a finger down the scar on his lip and chin.

I now knew who’d given him that mark. “So what is this? You can’t get your revenge on him because he’s gone, so you thought you’d pick on his half blood?”

Li’el barked a laugh that startled the neko and brought them bounding back to my side. “No. You are not his. You never were. You have always been your father’s bloodspawn. I am here because I believe you can stop Asmodeus.”

A Prince of Hell believed in me. That was a chilling revelation. “Why did my father sire a half blood?”

“Your brother Valenti witnessed in your father’s flesh a one-winged half-blood, who would rain fire from the skies and slaughter an army in a single breath.”

“Did he know that army was demon?”

“Yes, Valenti warned him, but Asmodeus believed you could be controlled, as all half bloods must be. He immediately sought a human female so that he might fulfill the prophecy, enlisting Mammon’s help.”

“What?”

“Enlisting Mammon’s help,” Li’el repeated, louder.

“No, I heard you. I mean… Mammon helped Asmodeus find a human female?”

“Asmodeus asked Mammon to assist. He was the only demon with widespread knowledge of the human world, more so than even I. Mammon initially refused. We princes do not often seek help. We simply…twist desires, utilize leverage, and so it was with Asmodeus.”

“What do you mean?”

“Asmodeus threatened to expose Mammon’s existence beyond the veil. His pantomime life would have been ended.” Li’el traced a fingertip down the tip of his scar.

“Mammon knew my mother,” I whispered.

“Mammon chose your mother.”

I’d asked Akil if he knew her. I distinctly remembered the conversation in my apartment. He was being
nice
at the time.
‘Who was my mother?’
and his answer,
‘I don’t know. I suspect she succumbed during your birth or was killed soon after.’
He’d picked her! He may not have technically known her, but he’d damn well selected her. How? Luck? Did she catch his eye? Did something she said, something she did, incite his distaste? Eeny-meeny-miny-moe, come with me, nobody will know… The bastard had sidestepped the truth.
‘If she was anything like you, she’d have rained hell down on them all.’
The heat within throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I wanted to kill him all over again. I wanted to resurrect his Armani-suit clad ass and then murder him to death with my clawed hands.

“I can assume from your expression, you were not aware of this,” Li’el said.

“No.”

“If it is any consolation, he volunteered to monitor you, but Asmodeus considered you a failure on sight. Like so many before you, in demon form, you had both wings. He told Valenti to dispose of you, despite your brother’s insistence you were the one. Asmodeus would not believe the runt you were would be the death-bringer. Your brother sold you, but I suspect Mammon never stopped watching the half-blood demon with fire in her heart. And then, of course, when your owner took your wing, Mammon knew for certain who you were and petitioned Asmodeus to let him be your mentor.”

I knew Akil had tutored me for my father, but I hadn’t known what hold Asmodeus had over him. Now I did. Akil had been protecting his own interests, his pretend human life. He’d wanted me for himself, that hadn’t been a lie. Was it possible he might even have felt something about his part in my mother’s death? He would have known Asmodeus and my brother would never let a human live after everything she’d seen. He’d picked a woman—a normal everyday woman—to die among demons. Had that knowledge hurt him, or had he shrugged it off the way any immortal chaos demon would have?

“Mammon’s motives are forever complex.”

“
Were
forever complex,” I corrected.

Li’el smiled. “Of course.”

“Wait, you said…like so many before me? My father sired more half bloods?”

“He did, looking for the one-winged Mother of Destruction, but all infants had both wings. They were killed at birth or sold.”

All half bloods were killed at birth or sold. All demons knew it. Half bloods were curious playthings. But Asmodeus knew the truth. Mammon and my brother, they’d known. So not all were killed. Some of Asmodeus’s bloodspawn could have been sold. Did that mean I had half-blood brothers or sisters somewhere? I had
family?
Why had Akil not told me this? “Did Mammon…” A growl clogged my throat. “Were there more women, besides my mother?”

“Yes. After your birth, Asmodeus tired of your mother’s failure to produce the prophesized half-blood. He ordered Val to kill her and found another human female.”

My brother had told me he’d cut my mother’s throat. Perhaps it had been a mercy for her? My degenerate upbringing had been nothing compared to what she must have endured beneath the body of the Prince of Lust. And Akil had known. He’d said my father was brutal. He would know. He’d helped him.

My smile was a bitter and twisted thing. I turned away from Li’el. “What happened to the other woman?”

“Killed the moment you were recognized.”

Akil had delivered human women into the hands of my father, who had used them as brood mares, looking for me, the prophesized Mother of Destruction. I didn’t know my mother. I had no idea what she’d looked like, what her name was, how her voice had sounded, or whether she’d laughed or lived at all. But I cared. The human part of me cared for that poor woman. “I want to find my siblings.” Perhaps in them, I might know her.

“Your brother killed the majority of them. Of those he let live, he was the only one to know where they were sold. Their locations are unknown.”

I had family. Real flesh-and-blood family. They were half bloods. Their lives would have been torture. But if they were like me—like her—they’d be survivors. If I put my mind to it, I could find them. Half bloods were rare. I thought of how Jerry had once told me he’d tried to save one. Jerry might know more. Akil would. He’d watched me. He’d likely watched Asmodeus’s other offspring too. It was more important than ever to get that slippery bastard back on his feet. I was so going to go nuclear on his ass.

Li’el, my demon escorts, and I walked in silence the rest of the way across the savannah to a small gulley between the grassland and a rocky, barren stretch of land where Jerry’s sanctum would be. No lessers attacked. I hadn’t expected them too. Li’el sometimes dissolved into mist so that he was hardly by my side at all, but his cool, whispering touch never quite left.

“I am sorry if my words distressed you.”

“No, you’re not,” I said to the swirling cloud hovering over the narrow stream beside me.

“You are right. I am not. Human females—”

My growl was a wonderful baritone ripple. “Sorry doesn’t work unless you mean it. You are demon and the Price of Pride. The day your kind say sorry and mean it is the day hell freezes over.”

Li’el’s cloud anchored above the water while I stomped on. “You believe we are only demon.”

“Oh, I know you are.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“You wouldn’t ask me that if you knew the torture I’d endured at the hands of
only
demons.”