A Den of Tricks

  We went on like that for a couple of minutes, until I started getting closer. I noticed that the fewer feet between us, the more sluggish his defenses got. Something sparked in the back of my head, and I feigned a hit on the right side, stopped halfway, and immediately executed a rapid 360-degree turn and brought my sword in from the left. I hit nothing but air.

  Zane had already vanished in that fraction of a second that I’d turned away.

  What the…

  “Don’t take your eyes off me.” His whisper in my right ear made me yelp and jump. His hand came down hard and fast, and knocked the sword out of my hands.

  Oh, no, no, no!

  Before I knew it, Zane had me with my back against the wall, his massive body pressed against mine as my blade clanged loudly on the wooden floor. That was the sound of defeat I was hearing…

  My breath hitched. I couldn’t move. His thigh had slipped between my legs, and my arms were twisted and caught behind my back, stuck between my body weight and the wall. When did he manage to do that?

  I was helpless, my heart pounding out of my chest. Zane looked down at me. His red gaze darkened, his natural fragrance filling my lungs with hints of cedarwood and leather—so intense, almost mesmerizing. I could rip him a new one with my fangs, enough to get my arms out and claw at him like there was no tomorrow. But my instincts were on lockdown. I couldn’t react. My brain was working perfectly, but there was something about him that kept me pinned down and motionless.

  His breath warmed my face, and his lips stretched into a lazy smile. What was he going to do now? Most importantly, how was I going to react? Because there was something terribly off about me where Zane was concerned. I had no desire to go for the kill. None whatsoever. He was still, by all possible definitions, the enemy. So why was I so reluctant to treat him as one?

  “Do you mind letting go?” I whispered, unable to find my voice.

  “I honestly don’t know what it is about you,” Zane replied, as he sank his face in my hair. I could hear him breathing in deeply, and it made my skin ripple in an eerily pleasant way. My own reaction was baffling. “I can’t get enough of your scent. I don’t know if it’s your soul that smells so good or just you—I’m not sure… but I just had to come see you.”

  His words sank in slowly, hitting the bottom of my conscience with a loud thud, as I found myself softening against him. My muscles were relaxing, and I couldn’t do anything about it. My body was eager to betray me.

  “Where did you get the swamp witch magic?” I croaked, changing the subject and trying my best to be a professional. Zane wasn’t making it easy at all…

  He lifted his head to look at me, his gaze clouded and glimmering crimson. What a fascinating color to look at from up close! His eyes were like round rubies with liquid dashes of gold sprinkled in the middle, and I was slightly hypnotized.

  “You just had to ruin the moment, didn’t you?” He sighed, shaking his head slowly.

  “Well, I need to know,” I replied. “You are the enemy, after all.”

  “Am I, though? Besides, you’re in over your head. You wouldn’t understand, Fiona.”

  “Ugh, again with that same crappy line,” I groaned, manifesting an exaggerated amount of boredom. “Can you please come up with something new?”

  He stiffened against me, and I could feel tension building up in his body. He held my arms, his fingers digging into my flesh through the layer of black leather. His gaze darkened as he inched forward, the tip of his nose touching mine.

  “You might want to do yourself a favor and stay on my good side, Fiona,” he said slowly, his voice rumbling through my stomach. “That is, if you want to survive once it’s all over.”

  “Wait, once what is over, exactly?”

  He grinned and puffed yellow dust in my face. My brain lit up, but it was too late for me to do anything. Gah, he expertly conned me!

  I wheezed and choked as everything went dark around me. My body surrendered, and I passed out, once again at Zane’s mercy. Damn…

  Harper

  (Daughter of Hazel & Tejus)

  We had a limited supply of invisibility paste with us, and we hadn’t found any on the daemon we’d captured to get us down here, so we decided to only use it if we had no other choice. We snuck through the outskirts of the city, making good use of all the nooks and crannies in the black stone wall that extended into the massive dome ceiling.

  We used stairs and hid behind boulders, taking short one-minute breaks where appropriate, to calculate the next portion of our route and get closer to where Caspian said his friend lived. I had a hard time imagining Caspian’s daemon friend, but he certainly wasn’t going to be the strangest or craziest thing we’d seen all week.

  The lights were always on in this underground city, so there was barely any notion of night and day passing, other than a town clock announcing yet another hour gone. We followed Caspian behind a cluster of dirty old huts, crouching to stay out of sight. Small, weak, and old daemons lived on this side, and they were out and about, growling and grumbling at each other. The occasional insult was hurled, causing the others to snicker at the daemon on the receiving end.

  “Call them neighborly pleasantries, if you wish,” Caspian muttered, his jade eyes twinkling with amusement when he noticed the frown on my face.

  “Yeah, I don’t see myself mowing my lawn and saying hello to one of these fellows anytime soon,” I replied.

  He gave me a half-smile, then reached out to the side of the hut, where a cart was stationed. Several dirty black cloaks were piled up in it—he grabbed them, then handed them over to me, keeping one for himself. I took one, and passed the others to Jax and Hansa, who made sure Caia and Blaze each got a cloak as well.

  “Put these on,” Caspian whispered. “And keep your heads down. We can pass as weaklings while we move forward. My friend’s place is about a hundred yards away from here.”

  I nodded and covered myself up, then proceeded to follow Caspian as he snuck between rocky huts. A spine-chilling wave of squeals stopped me in my tracks, and I looked over my shoulder to identify the source. Jax, Hansa, Blaze, and Caia stilled next to me as we witnessed the feeding of the poor.

  A larger daemon dragged a cart up the narrow road. It was loaded with a cage filled with wild animals the daemon had captured from outside—mostly deer and boar-like creatures that squirmed and whimpered as they got closer to a small gathering of elder daemons.

  “Those living in these parts of the city are too weak to hunt for themselves, but they still provide labor,” Caspian said, following my gaze. I watched as the cage was flung open, but the animals were too scared to come out. Instead, the daemons went in and started dragging them out, their red eyes glimmering with delight as they tore flesh from bone and ate the meat raw, blood smearing their chins and saggy, wrinkled chests. “So they’re fed by the city and kept alive, as they clean up and do various other duties that are considered too demeaning for the others.”

  “Demeaning?” I murmured, as we continued walking through the poorest parts of the daemon city.

  “Yes. Things that hunters and soldiers cannot be tasked with doing. Jobs that are not fit for merchants, servants, and nobles,” Caspian replied.

  “They have nobles here?” Jax asked, constantly looking around, making sure we weren’t followed or noticed.

  “Of course,” Caspian said. “They have hierarchies in place, like an organized society, and that includes royal and noble blood.”

  We followed him deeper into a section of rounded, igloo-shaped huts made from black obsidian blocks. They looked cleaner and smoother than what we’d seen so far. The daemons here were quiet and kept away from the crowded main street that stretched about fifty yards to our left.

  “This is where clerics live,” Caspian explained. “The others leave them alone, mainly because the king likes them. Their service to local deities isn’t valued in any way, but the king is amused and fascinated by their ancient customs, which long prece
de him, so he leaves them be.”

  “You’re awfully chatty about daemons now,” I noticed, raising an eyebrow at him.

  He gave me a brief sideways glance as I kept up with him.

  “These aren’t secrets anymore. You are here, walking among them. The least I can do is explain what you’re seeing,” he replied bluntly. “Anyway, we are here.”

  We stopped in front of a small hut. Caspian checked our surroundings, and then we went inside. The place looked nice and rather spacious. Orange lights flickered on wall-mounted shells, and furs lined the floor. There were several crates piled on one side, and a small firepit dug in the middle. It was currently being used for boiling water infused with pleasant-smelling herbs.

  An old daemon shot to his feet as soon as he saw us, a glimmer of recognition in his eyes at the sight of Caspian, followed by concern as he measured each of us from head to toe.

  “It’s okay, Mose,” Caspian said. “They’re here to help the Nerakians.”

  Mose looked to be in his mid-sixties, his long black hair riddled with thick white streaks pouring into a ponytail. Red and yellow beads were braided into the hair on top of his head, and he wore a simple black tunic that left only his arms and calves uncovered. There was a medallion around his neck that caught my eye—a silver triangle mounted in a circle, with a black enamel center on which a familiar symbol had been painted red.

  “Are they the ones you spoke of, Lord Kifo?” Mose asked, taking several wary steps forward to get a better look at us.

  “Yes, Mose. We need to talk,” Caspian replied, as Mose motioned for us to sit around the firepit and pulled a black curtain over the hut’s entrance, before he sat down across the fire from us.

  “What are you all doing here?” Mose asked, his red eyes on Caspian.

  “I’m under oath and cannot tell them everything they need to know, but you can help fill in some of the blanks,” Caspian said, his knee touching mine as he crossed his legs in his seated position.

  Silence fell between us for a minute, while I tried to read Mose’s emotions. I’d not had any luck with the other daemons I’d encountered, and Mose was just as immune to my sentry abilities. My shoulders dropped. I’d known the chances were slim, but still, can’t blame a girl for trying…

  “What do you wish to know?” Mose eventually asked, his gaze fixed on me. “You can ask, instead of trying to poke around in my head.”

  My cheeks flushed as I realized he’d felt me just then.

  “So you can sense when I try to read your mind,” I mumbled, and Mose responded with a nod.

  “You can’t read me, but I can definitely feel you trying,” he replied. “Word’s already out about you, young lady. The hunters you faced came back with interesting stories.”

  “Okay then, let’s start with some basics.” I leaned forward. “How old are you, Mose?”

  “Seventy-one thousand, nine-hundred, and ninety-nine full moons. And I’ve yet to know your name, young lady.”

  I blinked several times, doing quick math in my head.

  “My apologies. I am Harper,” I said, then nodded at the rest of our team. “These are Jax, Hansa, Caia, and Blaze. We are members of GASP. And you’re… six thousand years old?”

  “I believe so, yes,” Mose replied, looking at each of us for a couple of seconds, as if putting our names to our faces. His gaze settled on Jax. “You’re a Mara.”

  “Yes, I am,” Jax said.

  “But you’re not from here.”

  “No, I’m from Calliope.”

  “Ah, the world from which our Nerakian Maras were exiled.” Mose scoffed, the shadow of a smile flickering over his face.

  “Tell us about your species,” I said, content with having the lead in this conversation. There were so many questions I wanted to ask.

  “That’s a broad request,” Mose smirked, “but I will do my best to tell you as much as I can, without putting my own life at risk.”

  “What, so you’re under oath, too, or something?” I frowned, already sensing I wouldn’t get all the answers I’d hoped for.

  “We all answer to higher powers in this world, Miss Harper. But, to answer your request, we are daemons. Our kind has inhabited this world since the beginning of time. We inhabited cities beneath the surface of Neraka—hundreds of them, linked by tunnels spanning hundreds, even thousands of miles.”

  Jax rubbed the back of his neck, cringing as he heard the painfully unpleasant truth: there were more daemons out there than we’d thought. We definitely couldn’t take them all on by ourselves.

  “You mean to tell me there are more of you out there?” Jax replied.

  “Yes. Tens of thousands.” Mose nodded. “But this is the capital city. It is the home of our king, Shaytan, ruler of all daemons. We thrive in the underground, away from the sunlight, bathed in volcanic heat.”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Hansa shot back, wiping the sweat from her face. I wasn’t too far behind her as far as level of discomfort, and, judging by the glistening beads forming on Caspian’s temple, he was coming in third, along with Jax. Blaze and Caia seemed comfortable.

  Figures…

  “What about soul eating?” I asked.

  “We feed on souls. I’m not sure what is unclear about that.” Mose shrugged. “In the absence of souls, however, we eat raw flesh. When we are young, we are able to hunt and provide for ourselves, especially where souls are concerned. The older we get, however, the weaker our bodies become, and we’re reduced to eating meat. In this day and age, becoming old and not being royalty, military, or nobility, you are automatically bumped to the bottom of the food chain and reduced to living in these slums, taking the mercy food that hunters bring in from the surface.”

  “Like the cages we saw outside, stuffed with living, wild animals,” I muttered with disgust.

  “Yes. And I’d say that beats eating souls, don’t you think?” Mose retorted. I gave him a brief nod. “What you probably do not understand about soul eating is how exhilarating it can be. One soul can keep you sated for days, even weeks on end. Raw meat barely gets us through the day. We don’t experience hunger like the Imen do. Our stomachs do not ache for sustenance. Our entire bodies do. Soul eating is painfully addictive, Miss Harper, and weaning off it can be deadly. We need plenty of raw meat to quench some of the urges. So, yes, our city helps us—as long as we prove to be useful. Once we are no longer able to support our society in any way, we are no longer fed.”

  “Survival of the fittest taken to a new extreme, I see,” I replied. “Survival of the useful, sounds more like it. And after all these years of service, are daemons just okay with being tossed aside like that?”

  “They don’t have a choice. That is how our world works.” Mose shrugged, with a tinge of sadness in his voice. “The day will come when I will experience that same end. Just not yet. I still have a few years ahead of me, and I plan to put them to good use.”

  “Is that why you’re helping us?” Jax asked.

  “Not exactly. To tell you the truth, soul eating wasn’t always a part of our nature as daemons. It started out about… ten, eleven thousand years ago. We don’t know who discovered it and how; it just became the norm. It has turned my people into beasts, a degenerate mass of violent soul eaters, and we’ve systematically reduced the Imen’s population on the surface of Neraka. There used to be millions of them…”

  There was a collective gasp among us as we came to terms with the horrible truth. The Imen were the primary targets of daemons, and they were nearing extinction because of this soul eating practice.

  “Since the Imen population has been dwindling, my people have resorted to feeding off the Maras lately,” Mose continued, shaking his head with contempt. “I swore off souls a long time ago… not because I couldn’t hunt anymore, but because I saw the cruelty of our ways. I couldn’t do it anymore. Of course, I’m a mere underling, a nobody. No one noticed when I got clean. The same cannot be said about the others, higher up.”

&nb
sp; “Higher up?” I asked.

  “I’m part of the slums. The workers and the dying old. Well, technically I’m a cleric, as I preserve the daemon lore archives for the king’s reading pleasure, but I still go out and clean the streets if needed. I do not wish to live at the mercy of an insane monarch. Above us are the soldiers, the armored daemons. The military is a key part of our society. They enforce laws and some sense of order. Then come the hunters, given invisibility magic so they can go out to the surface and fetch us our food. There are thousands of them. They start off by hunting animals for us, and they get paid in souls. Once they become strong enough, they can choose to become independent hunters, and provide sustenance for themselves and their children only.”

  “Daemons raise families?” Jax replied, frowning as he probably tried to imagine a daemon family scene. I was doing the same and, for the life of me, no clear picture came to mind.

  “Not exactly,” Mose said. “The males choose their females to mate. The females are given custody of the child for the first seven years, then the males take them away to raise them strong and teach them how to survive in our society.”

  “And what happens to the females after that?” Hansa asked, her gaze slowly darkening as her hands balled into fists.

  “They’re chosen by other males to produce more children. Once the children reach adulthood, they are given options for what to do with their lives. Most of the females go on to bear children of their own, but some become hunters or even join the military.”

  A few minutes went by as the picture began to clear, as far as the daemon society was concerned. Their behavior started making sense, but it didn’t make me want to sympathize with any of them. If anything, it made my stomach churn harder at the thought of mothers being forced to separate from their children like that. It was downright heartbreaking…

  “We saw some huge daemons out there,” Jax then said. “Much bigger than the… hunters, and even the armored fiends we’ve seen on the surface. What are they? They must have some special role.”