Burning Dawn

CHAPTER TEN

HER TEAR...that one lone tear... I’m gutted. It brought Thane to his knees.

He’d known in that moment, as Elin left the suite, that a female’s weeping would never again arouse him. He would always associate the action with his little human’s soul-crushing anguish.

Elin is just like me. She thinks she deserves punishment, not pleasure.

Had his other women felt the same? He’d wondered before, but the truth had evaded him. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to face it. Now, the answer was clear, and undeniable. They had. He hadn’t chosen females based on their exterior—tall, strong and stalwart. He’d chosen those with shadows in their eyes, because deep down he’d known they’d hoped to exorcise figurative demons, just as he had.

They’d all failed.

Thane punched a hole in the wall. Right now, he had to concentrate on Elin. His sweet mortal was in need of comfort he wasn’t capable of giving. When she’d talked of her time with the Phoenix, his rage had been so great, he’d nearly stomped from the room to murder every man and woman in his courtyard.

Then Elin had listed her second reason for desiring pain. Even as she’d talked of commitments and clinging, she’d wanted to hate being with him, so that she would never again be tempted to betray her husband.

Her dead husband.

His hands curled into fists. If Thane were to harm her, even at her request, it would change her. It would dull her bright smile. Never again would she feel at ease enough to tease him. Never again would she bake him a cake or pull weeds in the garden with him. Never again would she speak so freely with him. She would flinch from him.

And if another man were to harm her...heaven and earth would tremble from the effects of Thane’s wrath.

Have to prove she deserves good things. Have to make her crave good things.

He headed into town to buy chocolates and romance novels. Several hours ticked past as he selected the very best of both. A man devoted time to what mattered to him—to what he deemed worthy of his attention.

When he finished, he tracked down Merrick.

A man guarded what mattered to him.

Shame Spiral was performing at another bar that night. Bodies danced, and strobes flashed rainbow-colored lights in every direction.

Thane didn’t bother pushing through the crowd. He flew above it and landed on the stage.

The moment he was noticed, the music stopped.

Thane locked eyes with a confused Merrick. “Stay away from the girl.”

The male frowned and moved away from the mic, coming closer. “You’ll have to be more specific. What girl?”

“The human. My human.”

The confusion intensified. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

As if he hadn’t noticed Elin. Only a blind man would pass by her—but he would backtrack when he caught hint of her scent. “Go near her, and I’ll give you more of this.” Thane hammered a fist into the Sent One’s jaw.

Merrick’s head whipped to the side, and he stumbled. Straightening, he narrowed his gaze on Thane. The other band members abandoned their instruments to flank their friend.

“I’ll let you have that one,” Merrick said, rubbing his jaw, “because there’s a good chance I slept with her and forgot her.”

“You didn’t.”

“You sure? Because it happens. A lot.”

“Do you want me to kill you?”

Merrick shrugged. “There are worse ways to go.”

How did you frighten a man like that?

Frustrated, Thane left.

At the Downfall, he plucked the fullest, brightest roses from the garden and arranged them in a diamond vase; the action soothed him.

The next morning, he had the gifts delivered to the kitchen, where Elin was busy baking.

This time, he included a note. It read, I’ve never believed everything that happens is meant to be. Fathers and husbands aren’t meant to be murdered, and mothers aren’t meant to die in front of their children. But I do believe something good can come from something bad. You, Elin. You are my good. Give me a chance, and I’ll prove it.

LATER THAT EVENING Thane and his boys flew to Rathbone Industries in New York. They were systematically checking off names from their part of Jamilla’s list. So far they’d come up empty.

Number seven was Ty Rathbone. Once lauded for his calm under the worst kind of pressure, now known for his violent temper. The switch had happened in mere moments, his closest friends had stated.

Demons were definitely involved. But was it one of Germanus’s killers or just some minion?

Thane’s wings glided seamlessly through the night-darkened sky. Wind cut through his hair. He rolled to avoid a flock of birds, even though he would have ghosted through. He was still in the spirit realm, the birds in the natural. Spirit and flesh were not solid to each other.

Your time with the human didn’t go well, I take it, Bjorn said inside his mind. Judging by the sounds I heard—no, I didn’t eavesdrop, but, yes, you should be quieter—I expected you to be in a much better mood.

The male had recovered from his time with the shadow demons, at least. We ended...poorly. And she had yet to respond to his gifts.

He should have been relieved, he supposed. Elin was kindling and salve, and he despised both. One pushed him past the limits of his control. The other made him crave the things he’d never before wanted. Connection. Communion. A future.

He would have blamed Kendra’s poison, would have claimed it was still at work inside him, pushing him toward the human, but he’d consumed more Frost, and the fire for Elin wasn’t even close to banked.

She spurned you? Xerxes asked, incredulous.

No.

I don’t understand. What’s the problem?

She wants what I give everyone else.

Xerxes frowned. Again I have to ask. What’s the problem?

I want to give her more, he admitted.

Shock registered. Can you?

His hands fisted. Maybe. For her—probably.

For the first time in his existence, he’d lost himself in the beauty of a kiss, in the decadent taste and carnal touch of the female in his arms. In the breathy sounds she made and the way her heart careened out of control. He’d had no need for pain. Not to arouse him, and certainly not to keep him aroused.

Had Elin lost herself in him, too?

Had he turned her on as spectacularly as the husband used to do?

Jealousy struck, as vicious as a demon. Every festering wound hidden inside Thane suddenly stung as though doused in acid.

I can relocate her, Bjorn said. Your torment will end and she will—

No, he shouted, baffled by his vehemence. More gently, he added, No. She stays at the club. He wanted her within reach. Protected and...coddled.

Had they been in their suite, his boys would have regarded him oddly, he knew. He wasn’t the type to fight to keep a female around.

Let me find you someone else, Xerxes requested.

I wish it were that simple. Now that he’d tasted Elin’s sweetness, the thought of other women actually repulsed him.

Bjorn brushed the tip of his wing over Thane’s. A woman is a woman is a woman. Close your eyes, and they’re all the same.

A callous assertion—one he would have concurred with in the past. But now? Now he knew differently. Elin has something other women do not.

Both males were intrigued.

And that is? Xerxes asked.

Thane smiled without humor. My trust.

Their destination loomed ahead, effectively ending the conversation. Good. He studied the building. The base was five stories tall, and the steel tower above it forty-two. He swooped low, bypassed the walls and entered the atrium. There were two guards behind the reception desk. A man with a briefcase strutted out the doors. A female click-clacked over the tiled floor and entered the glass elevators. As the cart lifted, it ran through a waterfall.

Pretty, but not what caught his attention. In a spirit realm the humans could not see, a horde of viha, envexa, and pică stalked the lobby. Demons of anger, envy and unforgiveness. None of them were one of the six who’d slain Germanus; they weren’t powerful enough. But they might belong to one of the six.

Twelve demons in total, ranging in sizes and shapes. Two were over six feet tall, but most were stooped over, gorilla-like, using both hands and feet to move forward. A few had horns—ivory towers, they were sometimes called—protruding from their scalps. A few had black, gnarled wings stretching from their backs. Some were covered in a mix of fur and scales. Some had antlers growing from shoulders and spine.

So ugly. Soon, so dead.

A battle of blood and bone was exactly what Thane needed to improve his mood. Grinning coldly, he held out his hand and summoned his sword of fire. Bjorn and Xerxes did the same.

One of the demons noticed the intruding Sent Ones and laughed. Not a typical reaction. The others stopped what they were doing and searched the lobby for the reason for the amusement. More laughter rang out before clawed footsteps echoed, the creatures racing away.

“Laughter,” Xerxes said through clenched teeth, as befuddled as Thane.

“No time to give chase and interrogate. We’ll have to catch them on our way out.” Thane flared his wings and flew up, up, up the many stories, taking note of the types of demons on each floor. Para and grzech here. Fear and sickness. Slecht there. Maliciousness. More viha, envexa and pică.

The higher up the building, the more powerful the demons became, until Thane was certain he was seeing what the creatures of the ever-dark referred to as their “high lords.” These supposed lords were only one position below the princes, the most powerful of all.

For demons, a prince was the equivalent of what a member of the Elite Seven was to a Sent One. Like Zacharel.

Thane had never fought one. He and his boys were the equivalent of a high lord, and as it was, he’d battled only a handful of those.

He stood in front of the bank of elevators and swept his gaze through Mr. Rathbone’s lobby. Spacious, screaming with wealth. Several of Monet’s best hung on the walls. Crystal vases perched on metal tables. A white leather couch formed a C in the far corner. Bloodred carpet draped the rosewood flooring. There were no prowling demons up here. Why?

He forced his robe to conform to his body and separate into different pieces. When the fabric darkened, he was wearing an exquisitely tailored pin-striped suit. He stepped into the natural realm. In the spirit realm, Bjorn and Xerxes remained at his side, unseen to the untrained eye.

A young, pretty receptionist tore her gaze from the document she was pretending to type, while wiping her watery eyes and nose—she’d been crying—and faced him. Her jaw dropped. “Um...uh, hi. I mean, hello, and welcome to Rathbone Industries.”

“I will see Mr. Rathbone now.” His tone left no room for argument.

She gulped. “Do you have an appointment, Mr....?”

Wasting time. He stalked away from her without another word.

She called out a frantic, “Stop. Please.”

He snaked the far corner and entered a hallway that led into several different conference rooms. He could go left or right. Left offered more doors. The right dead-ended at a large corner office with frosted glass walls. That one. Evil pricked at the back of his neck.

He opened the door.

A male, no more than twenty-five, sat at an ornate cherrywood desk. He had dark hair, every strand in place, and slate-gray eyes. His skin was deeply tanned. His elbows were propped on the desk, his fingers drumming together as he waited. He’d known Sent Ones had arrived.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he said with an elegant wave to indicate the chairs. “Please, sit.”

Thane’s first thought: not possessed, but influenced.

Demons possessed humans by entering their bodies and controlling their minds from within. A human was influenced if a demon attached itself to his side, whispering into his ear to direct decisions. And right now a demon stood behind Mr. Rathbone’s chair. A demon unlike any Thane had ever seen. Seven feet tall, at least, with skin that rivaled the brilliance of the world’s most perfect diamond. A fall of white hair reached his waist.

Though Thane had never seen such a creature, he knew what it was.

Zacharel, he projected to his leader. I believe we found one of the demons responsible for our king’s death. But there’s a problem. He’s a prince.

Leave. Now, came the immediate, panicked reply. I’m gathering the Elite Seven.

Thane had counted over two hundred demons in the building.

The odds were not in their favor.

Leave? We need answers, Thane said.

We need you alive, Zacharel snapped.

Very well. He would leave...soon.

He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t intimidated. He was eager.

The demon stroked long, lean fingers through the human’s dark hair, and the human smiled slowly, coldly. “Took you long enough to find me. I worried no matter how many clues I left you, you would fail.”

The demon’s mouth never moved, but those had been his words. So. The human wasn’t merely influenced, but controlled. How? When the demon still lived outside his body?

A talent of all princes?

“Don’t pretend you wanted to be found,” Bjorn said, not needing to enter the natural realm to be seen by the demon. “Kind of defeats the purpose of hiding out, don’t you think?”

No reaction from the prince.

But the human said, “I left clues because I was curious to know the warriors who would be sent to capture me. Now I know. I’ve seen. And you’ve seen. A new battle can begin. But, Sent Ones...you are wrong. So very wrong. You think I’ve been hiding, but the truth is, I’ve been amassing an army.”

“Demons lie,” Xerxes snapped.

Sometimes, though, they added a bit of truth to their lies, to make it harder to find the light in the dark.

“Yes,” the human continued. “We do, but even we are capable of the occasional truth.”

“Truth you use to mislead.”

“Believe me...or not. I hardly care.”

“Then why don’t you skip ahead and tell us why you’re here?” Bjorn said.

An easy nod. “Too long you have policed the skies and the land, as if you own them. No longer. My kind is taking back its world, and its people.”

If the demons took over, chaos and death would reign.

“Is that why you killed Germanus?” Thane demanded. “To start a new war? To take what you think is yours?”

This time, the human remained quiet.

This time, the demon smiled slowly. “No. We killed your Germanus for fun.”

The voice was all kinds of evil. Dark and twisted, a thousand screams hidden in the words—in the lie. With demons, there was always a purpose.

Then the prince and human vanished.

The prince had flashed, Thane realized, taking the human with him. An ability he and his boys did not possess.

A second later, the entire building began to shake.

It was the only warning they had—before the entire structure collapsed around them.