Chase the Dark (Steel & Stone Book 1)

  Before the world went all to hell, she imagined cities had been noisy places. Now, they were too quiet. Even though the apartment building was on a main street, she heard almost no signs of life. Towns were much better places to live than the wrecks of once-great cities. It didn’t help that the neighborhood was on the edge of the slums.

  She’d awoken a couple of hours ago. After a long shower and a good meal, she was feeling refreshed and ready to get a move on. Urgency made her skin twitch. They’d lost so much time already. As of sunset that night, four days would have passed since the attack on the Consulate. Four days that Quinn had been missing. Four days for the prefects to get closer to finding them. Four days for more power-hungry daemons to join the hunt. She wasn’t sure how they hadn’t been found yet. It was only a matter of time before their luck ran out.

  Impatience chewed at her but she’d wait another hour before she woke Ash and Lyre. They both needed sleep. If Lilith the succubus came through, the three of them could be heading to the Gaian headquarters that very night. There had to be a meeting place of some kind nearby if she remembered her mother’s comments correctly.

  Trying not to think about it, she straightened the file folders still covering the table, aligning them all at right angles to the table edge. When that was done, she stared around the barren apartment for a minute, then flipped open the nearest folder. It was the one with the profile pages of high-risk daemons. She began to idly flip through the profiles, reading a little off each page and studying the occasional accompanying photo. Most of the daemons were very nasty indeed. Some were deliberate killers. Others were predators who couldn’t control their instincts well enough around humans. A handful of them were dangerous in other ways: breaking laws, abusing their power, or luring innocents into trouble. The more infamous daemons she’d already learned about during her training.

  Not all daemons had good self-control. A lot of Piper’s training involved a proactive approach to daemon nature—avoid triggering their instincts and causing them to shade. She knew some humans who didn’t even know what shading was. The thought made her shudder.

  The most important knowledge a person could bring to any interaction with a daemon was that the daemon’s mind wasn’t built like a human’s. They had two modes: logic-driven and instinct-driven. Ash and Lyre were both exceptionally good at staying in logic mode, which was close enough to human behavior that they could pass as human and interact smoothly with the general public. But when that switch got flipped into instinct mode, a mental state called shading, that’s when things got dicey.

  A daemon in instinct mode was not logical. He wasn’t necessarily out of control, but he wasn’t seeing the world through rational eyes; he was seeing the world through the eyes of a predator. His reactions were reflexive, instinctive, and often violent. You couldn’t reason with him, couldn’t talk your way out of a confrontation. Shaded daemons didn’t listen to words; they read your body language, scented your fear or anger, and gauged your strength as compared to their own. If you made a wrong move, they reacted. Whether it was right or wrong didn’t matter. Whether it was illogical, illegal, immoral, or uncalled-for didn’t register. They obeyed instinct, whether that instinct was to defend or, most often, to attack.

  A shaded daemon was equivalent to a wild animal. All you could do was try not to provoke an attack, back away slowly, and get the hell out of their way as soon as possible.

  She’d come close to seeing Lyre fully shaded in the car when they’d attempted to charge Ash’s lodestones. He’d been right on the edge. If he’d gone completely into instinct mode, he wouldn’t have stopped. His instincts would’ve overridden all thought or reason and he would have pumped aphrodisia into her until she just as willing as any other girl—at least until the magic wore off.

  Shivering at the thought, she focused again on the profile pages. She perused them from last to first. Only a few sheets from the top of the stack, she flipped to a page that made her heart stop in her chest.

  A photo of a familiar daemon was centered at the top of the page. It was Ash.

  There was no doubt it was him. He was partly in profile, concentrating on something distant. He obviously wasn’t aware of the photographer. His dark hair was exactly the same as she knew it, braided with that strip of red silk. His gaze was colder than she’d ever seen—his expression hard and unyielding. He looked as dangerous as the other daemons in the folder and far more deadly.

  She turned to the identification information.

  Name: Ashtaroth

  Origin: Underworld (region unknown)

  Caste: Draconian

  Age: 18-21

  Risk Level: 5

  She took a deep, shaky breath. Ashtaroth. Did Lyre know Ash’s full name? The –taroth ending wasn’t meaningless. It was extremely bad news. Underworld daemons swore by Taroth.

  Nearly everyone familiar with Underworld history knew the story. For thousands of years, six families—not five—had ruled the Underworld, with the Hades family as the most powerful. They were constantly at odds with their closest rivals, the Taroth family, until about 500 years ago.

  A daemon named Nyrtaroth had been the head of the family then. Nyrtaroth had done something—killed someone or maybe a lot of someones—and the Hades family had lost it. They’d turned on the Taroth family in a bloodbath coup, wiping out everyone except a few younger kids, whom they enslaved and eventually killed. Maybe a handful had escaped but the family itself was broken forever, never to reunite. The bloodline had died out generations ago.

  A few daemons claiming to be Taroths had surfaced in the intervening centuries and all of them had been nasty pieces of work. Being outcasts had turned them vicious and most of them died young and violently. There was no record at all of a living Taroth in the last 150 years.

  She’d never before encountered a demon with –taroth as part of his name. Was it a coincidence? Could Ash possibly be a distant Taroth descendent? The bloodline was supposed to have died out. Her eyes dropped to the page again.

  It jerked out of her hand.

  Zwi backed up the length of the table with the paper clamped in her mouth. Her body had turned a threatening shade of red.

  “Give that back,” Piper ordered.

  Zwi hissed around her mouthful of paper.

  “Give it back!”

  The dragonet jumped off the table. Piper leaped up but it was already too late. Zwi dashed across the room, her head held awkwardly high to keep from tripping on the paper, and squeezed through the gap where the bedroom door wasn’t quite closed.

  Piper sank back into her chair. She wasn’t about to burst into that room demanding to see a profile of Ash’s crimes. Her gaze slid down to the page beneath Ash’s in the folder; that daemon liked to hunt humans for sport and was known to have killed at least fifteen innocent people. She knew Ash had a bad reputation and she knew he was dangerous, but was he really like these monsters? He was rated the highest risk level, reserved for known killers.

  Ash had a lot of power and he wasn’t shy about using it to get what he wanted—whatever that was. But she’d been starting to think he was a decent guy beneath that cold stare and menacing reputation. He’d saved her life three times. He’d protected her. He’d almost died because of her. That made it easy to forget his real nature. If he was Taroth descendant . . . Every supposed Taroth for the past 500 years had been a vicious killer.

  She closed her eyes and saw his black-scaled hand stretched in front of her, each finger curving into a deadly talon. She saw again how swiftly and effortlessly he’d incapacitated the prefect guards in front of her uncle’s hospital room. She relived the terror of that blast of magic he’d used to take down twelve armed prefects at once.

  He was dangerous. But she trusted him anyway.

  She had no choice.

  CHAPTER 9

  WHEN the boys finally ventured out of the room at nine that evening, it was obvious they’d prepared well for the night’s outing.

  For p
ossibly the first time, Piper’s attention was captured by Ash first. He was back in black, looking once again like the mysterious, intimidating Underworld daemon she’d avoided at the Consulate. Black jeans, heavy boots, and a black shirt with a skull design in silver splashed across the chest. The sleeves had been torn off to bare the mouthwatering curves of his biceps and his forearms were wrapped in studded leather bracers. A silver chain was wrapped several times around the bracer on his right wrist, and another chain hung over his lean left hip. A little extra glamour had darkened his hair to ebony and hidden the red silk tie braided in it.

  With effort, she closed her mouth. Damn. Ash was . . . was badass. Dark, sexy, and oh-so-yummy badass. Lyre oozed so much sensuality she’d never really noticed Ash that way before.

  Well, she was noticing it now. His mien was still tinted with danger, still intimidating without any apparent effort on his part, but . . . it was seriously hot.

  The memory of the profile page reared in her mind’s eye like a bucket of cold water in the face. She swallowed hard and turned her gaze resolutely to Lyre—but he was no safer to look at.

  Gone was the respectable charmer with a hint of naughty. He was clad in black and red to Ash’s black and silver. His hair was now bleached to dramatic white, a sharp contrast against his warm skin. Dark gray jeans, tighter than Ash’s, a bit more chain, a bit less leather. Black t-shirt with a red dragon coiling up one side. Interestingly, his jeans had been ripped down the side of one leg, then sewn boldly together again with a narrow strip of black leather.

  She looked back and forth between them, trying to keep her breathing rate normal. Lyre noted the direction of her stare. With a sly smile, he sidled over to Ash and slid an arm over the draconian’s shoulders. He leaned into Ash and gave Piper a slow, distinctly wicked smile.

  “Two for one is always an option,” he purred.

  Piper clenched her jaw as her cheeks flushed. Ash gave Lyre a withering look and shrugged away from his arm. She closed her eyes and counted to ten in an attempt to get the image of the two of them out of her head. It burned into her retinas instead. Great, now how would she suppress dirty thoughts for the rest of the night? Lyre’s libido was rubbing off on her.

  “I guess I’d better change too. Is this, uh, the dress code?” she added, gesturing to Lyre’s outfit.

  He gave her his impish half-smile. “We’re on the conservative side. Feel free to test the boundaries of obscenity laws.”

  “Oh, why,” she drawled, “didn’t I think to bring my studded leather corset?”

  After retreating into the bedroom, she opened her backpack of clothes and sighed. Having not expected a racy nightclub to pop up on their sightseeing list, she hadn’t brought much in the way of club wear. In the end, she selected tight, low-rider jeans and her usual butt-kicking boots. For a top, she cut four inches off the hem of a tight black halter top and pulled it on. Her midriff was totally bare. There. Lyre would be happy. For finishing touches, she put on her spelled armguards, added a long chain from Lyre’s bag around her waist, and hid daggers in her boots.

  She slipped into the bathroom adjoining the bedroom and tried to work a little life into her black-and-red-streaked hair but gave it up as a bad job. With a sigh, she headed back to the main room. As she reached the half-open door, a thump from the main room made her freeze. Imagining killer daemons bursting into the apartment, she crouched at the opening and peered into the room.

  A lamp had fallen over, somehow landing without shattering. Zwi was sitting on top of the shade, wings flared and something dark in her mouth. She lowered her head and growled at someone across the room.

  Ash appeared, half crouching and grinning like she’d never seen him.

  “Give that back, you little monster.” The rough words were laced with amusement.

  Zwi chattered in a haughty fashion, tossing her head. Piper realized the dragonet had Ash’s lodestone wristband in her mouth. Zwi stuck her rear end in the air and swished her tail like a cat about to pounce. Ash lunged for her but she leaped away. He dove after her and she mock-snarled as she ran across the back of the sofa and ducked under the coffee table. Ash stuck an arm under the table and tried to grab her.

  Piper blinked and glanced around the main room for Lyre, but the incubus had stepped out. Hidden behind the door, she watched Ash chase his dragonet in another circle around the room before he finally pinned her on the sofa and scooped her into his arms. Unaware of his audience, he slid down to sit on the floor beside the window and pried his wristband out of Zwi’s mouth. She gave it up reluctantly, still growling and trying to wrap her little clawed feet around his hand.

  He tucked the band in his pocket, then tilted Zwi onto her back and tickled his fingers across her belly. She squirmed and trilled, grabbing his hand with all four feet and trying to gnaw on his knuckles. He pulled his hand free and scratched under her chin. She went limp with bliss and started to purr like a cat—a cat with gray scales, a black mane, and big wings.

  Ash idly petted her as his gaze turned toward the window. The softening touch of humor and affection was already fading. The ugly orange light of a streetlamp shone through the barred glass, casting harsh stripes of light and shadow over his face. The room seemed bigger and emptier, too quiet and lonely, as he sat in the far corner beneath the jail-like window, staring off into the night. He bowed his head over Zwi and lightly touched her scaled cheek like she was the only friend he had in the world.

  Piper backed silently into the bedroom and straightened. She bit her bottom lip, feeling vaguely uncomfortable—like a voyeur. At the same time, her opinion of Ash softened a little. It was nice to know he could grin like a normal person, play around with his pet, and even show affection. He wasn’t as cold as he appeared. Maybe that meant he wasn’t as dangerous either . . . but she doubted it. She’d already seen him in action.

  Ruthlessly burying the mental image of that profile page and its condemning number five, she shook her head to clear her expression and banged the door loudly as she strode out of the bedroom.

  For some reason, she was expecting a change in Ash when she appeared—an embarrassed flinch or an accusing glare. Instead, he glanced over casually, still sitting on the floor with Zwi in his lap, and gave Piper’s appearance an assessing onceover. Apparently she passed, because he nodded and returned to staring out the window.

  She stood there stupidly, not sure how to react. Most of her wanted to throw her hands up and stalk away, screw him and his stone-faced reticence. But then she thought of his grin when he’d faced off with Zwi. There was a nice guy behind those walls. Somewhere.

  So she crossed the room and sank to the floor beside him. He gave her a questioning look.

  “How’s your stomach?” she asked. “I never thought to ask if you healed all right.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. His expression darkened slightly. “Thanks to Vejovis, of course.” The bastard. He didn’t say it, but she could hear the words in his tone.

  “He was weird,” she commented. “Is he immortal?”

  Ash shrugged. “Who knows? Either way, he’s ancient with unrivaled healing skills. I was knocking on death’s door by the time he showed up but he still managed to bring me back.”

  “Same as the last time, huh?” she said softly.

  His jaw tightened. He didn’t look at her. “He told you about that?”

  “He said he saved your life once before but you hated him for it because . . . because he saved the wrong life.”

  Ash said nothing.

  She could tell he didn’t want to talk about it, but curiosity got the better of her. “Whose life didn’t he save?”

  His jaw flexed again and he looked away as Zwi chirped in a concerned way and head-butted his stomach.

  “My sister,” he whispered.

  Piper sucked in a sharp breath. “I’m sorry.”

  Ash stared at nothing, seeing memories. “If that bastard had left me and taken her instead, she wouldn’t . . .” He shook hi
s head sharply. “It was a long time ago.”

  “That doesn’t make it hurt less,” she murmured. “How long ago?”

  He shrugged. After a moment he realized she was waiting for an answer. “A couple years,” he muttered. “Maybe a few more than a couple, I guess. I was fifteen.”

  Fifteen. So young to have been prepared to die so his sister could live.

  “How old was she?”

  An even longer pause this time before he answered. “Thirteen.”

  She nodded sadly and looked down, studying the bruises on her knuckles from punching ugly haemon faces. She touched one of her brutally short fingernails and heard a long-ago voice chiding her for chewing them. Knowing he didn’t want to talk about it, she offered a painful memory of her own in return. Yay for sharing.

  “My mom left when I was eight,” she said. “She walked out and never came back after a big fight with my father. She died a year later. I never got to say goodbye.”

  A bit of the stiffness receded from his posture at the change of subject. “You didn’t see her at all after she left?”

  “No. She didn’t come back and I had no way to contact her. She never called or anything.”

  “That must have been some argument.”

  She nodded. They sat in silence, lost in dark thoughts. Then with a crash and yelp, Lyre careened through the doorway, his sexy outfit spoiled by his obvious fear.

  “Uh, guys?” he panted. “We’ve got company. Squad of prefects just broke down the main door.”

  . . .

  By the time they dumped all the file folders except the one about the Gaians in the oven for burning, grabbed all their stuff and hid it under a bed, and snuck out the door, the prefects had searched the entire main floor. There were ejecting all the non-fugitive residents into the street as they went along.

  Piper, Ash, and Lyre rushed silently down the hall toward the far staircase—but not fast enough.

  “Stop,” Ash hissed. “I hear them in the stairwell.”

  A rumble of voices at the other end of the building warned them another group of prefects had reached the second level.