Page 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“ Y ou are no longer my favourite,” Ash announces as he paces a hole into the floor of our living room. I can almost feel the destructive energy radiating from him while he glares daggers at Rio.

“Like I give a shit,” Rio hisses back, but I can tell by the hint of pink in his cheeks that Ash’s words have struck a nerve.

I don’t think he actually cares what the demon thinks of him, but I know he’s feeling guilty about Eden. He might not think of her the way Daion and I do, but he takes the responsibility of his job seriously. It’s clear he knows that he’s fucked up by letting his emotions get in the way. It was a rookie mistake letting her leave the warded car without him, and now it’s going to weigh on him until he makes it right.

Now isn’t the time for pointing fingers, though.

“No fighting,” I grumble, not in the mood for listening to either of them.

“He fucking started it,” Rio snarls, uncrossing his arms so he can wave them around aggressively. I sigh, letting my eyes fall shut. I’m planning to ignore his outburst, but Daion speaks for the first time in several hours, and I open them again to look up at him.

“He’s not the one who allowed Eden to be taken.” Dai’s words land their intended blow, causing Rio to flinch as if he’s been hit. As much as Rio may act like an only child at times, he’s always been more sensitive to criticism from our older brother. Mine is…taken a little less seriously. I know he values me just as much, but it’s always been in a different way. Closer to an equal than as someone to look up to.

“I’ve decided; I now like you the best.” Ash nods to Daion, then resumes his pacing. “You haven’t fucked her since my return, and you also didn’t allow,” Ash spins sharply to face Rio directly, his anger rising along with his voice, “one of the most powerful demons in existence to fucking kidnap her!”

I move quickly, placing myself between Rio and the raging demon. I set one hand on the hilt of a weapon capable of killing demons and the other out in front of me, making it extremely clear that I’m not fucking around.

“It was a mistake. Don’t raise your voice to him again,” I say carefully, tilting my head as I watch the demon. For Eden’s sake, I don’t want to hurt him, but I won’t allow him to harm my little brother either.

“I’m fine, Torrin,” Rio grumbles behind me.

“I didn’t ask.” I keep my eyes fixed on the demon as he shakes with anger.

“He has my child,” Ash whispers, his shoulders dropping as he deflates, gaze dropping to the floor. “He has the little witch. They’re both in danger.”

“We’re going to find her. Nothing will happen to either of them, I swear it,” Daion steps up to say, placing his hand on his shoulder and giving it a squeeze. They stand there like that for a long moment, until Ash tilts his head as he observes Dai.

The demon frowns, his lips parting, but Dai spins away before he can say whatever was on his mind.

“Let's go.”

I can’t help replaying the events of yesterday and last night in my head as we walk to the car. As if worrying about the coven isn’t bad enough, now Eden has been kidnapped by a fucking demon. When Rio called us saying he’d taken Eden, we’d all lost our shit. We spent the night looking for her, using what little Ash knew of Paimon’s reputation to try and find where he might have taken her. We had no luck. Not even a single fucking lead.

In the early hours of the morning, I reached out to Eli for any information he might have. I hadn’t wanted to involve him after seeing his reaction to the other demon in his store, so obviously afraid of the iracae. I won’t let Eden be harmed, though, not even to spare a friend from involvement. Thankfully, he’d understood. Eli had almost immediately asked us to come meet him at his shop, which is where we’re finally headed now.

I drive, not saying anything as Rio gets into the passenger seat. I do see that Ash deliberately slides across to sit behind me while Daion doesn’t seem to notice at all. It’s unusual for him to appear so unaware; normally he’s the more hypervigilant one. Everyone deals with stress differently, though, and we’re all struggling with Eden being taken for our own reasons. Well, only slightly different reasons for some of us.

Rio is disappointed in himself that he wasn’t able to protect her. Ash obviously wants his unborn child to remain unharmed, while Daion and I…well, I think we just want Eden back. In such a short amount of time, she’s managed to worm her way into making a place for herself in our lives. There’s never been a case where a client has become so involved in our world and us in theirs. Most of the time I forget that she’s supposed to be one. It’s become far more personal to me now than professional.

I need her to be okay. Not because it’s my job or even that I was raised to see protecting people from the worst of demonkind as my duty, but because I care about her. She’s important to me. She has to be okay; I don’t know what I’ll do if she isn’t. That goes for her baby, too. If there’s one thing I’ve figured out over the last few weeks with Eden, it’s that she loves her unborn child in the primal way mothers do. She’ll die before allowing anything to happen to them, and I’m desperate to prevent that outcome.

If—no— when we get her back, I’m cuffing her to myself and Daion. Tying ropes around her fucking waist so she can’t move more than two feet away from me at all times, if that’s what it takes to keep her safe. It feels like a failure not just on Rio’s part, but on all of us for letting this happen. For not taking the possible dangers seriously enough.

I knew I should have planted a magical tracker on her when I had the chance…

“Let me do the talking,” I say with a sigh as we park outside of Eli’s antique shop and all of them throw their doors open before I’ve even cut the engine.

“Fuck that,” Ash grunts in reply, jumping out of the car and not bothering to wait for the rest of us.

Within a second, Rio is hot on his heels, leaving Dai and me to quickly catch up as Ash enters the store. Eligos greets us immediately, locking the front door and ushering us all into the back. We pass by the freaky mirror, the one that sometimes reflects two of you when you look at it. One time when coming here, my second reflection had fucking waved at me. I almost tripped over my own two feet from the shock.

Eligos shushes Ash when he attempts to speak, giving him an irritated look, then resumes his obvious attempt to gather himself before explaining why we’re all here. Well, it’s as irritated as Eli ever looks at someone anyway, which is pretty tame. I’ve never met another demon who makes it so easy to forget what they are; even the other praeresi I’ve met were nothing like him.

While I’ve encountered other demons over the years who were clearly not the threat our people believe them all to be, he’s the only one I would consider my friend.

“I’ve been thinking since you called, Torrin, and I believe that I have a way to draw Paimon out. There’s an object I’ve been hiding from him for…a while now. I know he’ll find it too tempting to resist,” Eligos explains as he paces back and forth in front of us.

We’re all standing shoulder to shoulder as we watch him working through his obvious nervous energy, something that sets Rio on edge when he realises he’s beside Ash. It’s much closer than he’s typically comfortable with being to those of his particular group of demons. Normally, I’d step in, but I don’t have time to regulate Rio right now, so I focus on Eli, hoping that they’ll prioritise helping Eden over their current beef.

“Great, so you can lure him away. That still doesn’t help us find her,” Rio snaps before I can get a word out, and I fight the urge to glare at him. Ash is already doing that more than enough for all of us.

“I’m aware, demon hunter,” Eligos says coolly, then turning to face me directly. “Paimon is known to use a special kind of… containment. He has them for both his possessions and his prisoners. He built these structures into pocket dimensions in the demon realm, and they’re meant to be accessible only to him. They’re heavily fortified and warded to levels of complete paranoia. They’re also all but impossible to simply find unless you have a direct link to where you're going, let alone break into one of them.”

“If you brought us here just to tell us there’s nothing we can do, you can stop wasting our damn time,” Rio says, and this time, I can’t keep ignoring his behaviour.

“Shut it, and let him fucking finish,” I demand, turning to level a sharp look at my brother before he can offend the one person who might actually be able to help us. “I know Eli, and he wouldn’t have called us here if that was all he had to say. He just wants us to understand what we’re going up against.”

“Just so,” Eligos agrees quietly, his expression grateful. “I believe he has her in a cell in one of these structures. Most who’ve entered these places, they do not ever leave. I, however, have been inside. Not of my volition, I’d like to add, before any of you decide to get stabby. I am simply lucky I was able to convince the brute that a good collector is useless without the freedom to locate their items.”

“So, you think you can get us inside?” Ash demands, latching onto the hope immediately. I can’t even blame him for it, feeling the same sense of desperation building in my own chest.

“If he is using the same measures now as he was then, I do,” he confirms, turning to pick up a strange, gold cylindrical object from the table behind him. He holds it carefully, as if afraid it might explode on him. Slowly, he rotates the object so we can see the runes carved into it. They’re complex, ancient-looking things, ones I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else. “I engraved this myself, as insurance, in case I should ever need it.”

“That’s an inerancultur,” Ash says, sounding extremely shocked as he steps closer, suddenly examining it with great interest.

“An innyranculter… ?” I attempt to ask, no doubt butchering the word, given the cringing response from both of the demons present.

“It’s an ancient device. It can hold open a stable dimensional tunnel for extended periods of time,” Ash explains before glancing up at Eligos curiously. “These markings you’ve added aren’t standard, though.”

“That’s because they’re designed specifically to bypass the warding he uses on all of his structures. So long as you have something of hers to set the specific location for the other end of the tunnel, you can use this to open it right through all of his defences and get her as easily as if they didn’t exist.”

“A useful thing to have,” Ash comments, his gaze turning considering. “Why would you give it up? You have to know he’ll change his security measures after this. Your insurance will become worthless.”

“After some consideration, I came to the conclusion I couldn’t in good conscience not offer it to you,” Eli answers as he passes the priceless object into Ash’s hands without hesitation. He turns back to me with a sad shine in his eyes. “I’m very sorry, Torrin. If I didn’t continue to do business with Paimon, then he never would have stumbled upon Eden that day. It’s my fault he took an interest in her. I should have done more to distance myself from him or, at the very least, let you know this isn’t the safe place you believed it to be.”

“You think it’s your fault that Paimon’s an unhinged power-hungry asshole?” I ask with a smirk, attempting to reassure my friend, but the words don’t seem to ease his guilt. “This is already enough to make up for it, Eli. You don’t need to put yourself at even more risk by involving yourself in this anymore.”

Rio scoffs at my words, but we all ignore him.

“No,” Eli objects with a strong conviction in his voice, even as his hands shake while retrieving his phone from the pocket inside of his jacket. Despite always having known he owns one, the modern device still looks so odd in his hands. “I owe you and your family for much more than I can ever repay, more than you know, and in turn, I put you and those you care for in danger. I will call him and lure him out.”

“Fine, but hold off for a moment,” I reluctantly agree, sensing that this isn’t something he’s going to budge on. “We need a little time to prepare and go grab something of Eden’s. Unless the sperm of her baby daddy counts?” I joke while looking at the others, but no one seems inclined to laugh at the moment, though I do see Ash crack a small smile. Eli lifts his brow, and I clear my throat. “Right. Uh, we’ll text you when we’re ready.”

“One hour tops,” Daion adds, then reaches for the spelled dagger he keeps strapped to his forearm and holds it out to him. “You should take this.”

“You think I don’t already have a collection of my own weapons? I have a collection for everything .” Eligos snorts, smirking, but I see the fear in his eyes that he’s trying to hide.

“You don’t have to do this, Eli,” I say again, offering him an out one more time, but he shakes his head.

“Yes, I do. Now go.”

“I know you aren’t doing this for me, but I’m still grateful,” Ash says. He then tips his head forward and tucks his chin, letting his eyes fall shut. He holds the pose for a long moment, long enough for the gesture to feel significant.

Eli’s eyes go wide for a second, but he nods back as Ash straightens, then awkwardly coughs. “Please, tell Eden that I’m sorry. I truly hope for her safe and quick return.”

Having gotten what we came for, and with none of us wanting to waste any more time than necessary with Eden in the hands of that psycho, Eli sees us out.

We exit through the front, hearing the door being locked again behind us. As we head back to the car, I can’t help but glance over my shoulder at the closed door with a horrible feeling of dread. Paimon is both powerful and cruel. Will Eli be okay dealing with him by himself? He’s got collections of all kinds of powerful shit, stuff I’ve never seen anywhere else. Something there has to be useful against someone like him, right?

Fuck, I really hope so…