Page 2 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

B?k: A Stray Arrow

T he main difference between Hell and Earth, if you ask me, is the degree of irritation one must endure. In Hell—minimal. On Earth? Endless.

We rode into those caverns with a simple mission.

The Fated’s strength lay in its network of camps.

Having exceeded recruitment goals steadily for months, the faction needed a quick and convenient place to house its most recently developed regiment.

The caverns were a prime candidate. They’d served as barracks long ago.

They were structurally sound, if littered with corpses and garbage.

Not to mention, they were in stale gray territory that the Huntress faction held only by default and made little effort to defend due to the general uselessness of the surrounding land .

It should have been an uneventful day. But like I said, Earth’s hallmark? Endless irritation.

We watched the meager Huntress party gather loudly and clumsily at the cave system’s mouth.

I’d personally hoped I was witnessing something of a land tour.

And here you see a bunch of empty caves.

Nothing much of interest. Let’s move along to that sad clump of trees in the distance.

But no such luck. They were there to “plunder” the many, many-times plundered caverns.

The precise ones we were there to clear and claim.

The bloodlust ran hot in my party. Never mind that our targets were clearly Huntress in name only. Not a single one of them looked fit for a fight.

Well, perhaps one did. A young woman in an impractically colorful cloak possessed a weapon that, even from a distance, I could tell was blessed beyond any object I’d ever expect to find in the graylands.

Its aura emanated a dark, thorny, unreadable power entirely at odds with its wielder’s colorful knot of magic.

But that was not unusual. Opposites attract—a truth to which fighter and weapon are far from immune.

And then I noticed her lute. Haz’s saggy sack. A bard. Just my luck.

I’d been painfully bored by the idea of the encounter to begin with. It figured that my one hope for momentary intrigue would be a double-edged sword.

I sighed. I hated when civilians played at war. I hated when people got in my way. And most of all, I hated bards.

Naturally, I was in a foul mood.

The others babbled with excitement. As a scouting party, we saw more action than most of our regiment, but it had been a good while since we’d dirtied our blades.

Our travels of late had been mild and dull.

My party was excited to bring down this gazelle of a group, however grandmotherly she was.

The should-be civilians had gone and received the Huntress’s mark, and in doing so, had sealed their fates.

There was nothing for it now but to get it over.

I will admit, my ill humor coupled with the certainty of their impotence made me…less careful than I ought to have been.

I entered the slaughter last, uninterested in participating lest I trigger some little-known subclause of my contract and end up in a psychotic state of torment.

(Long story.) By then, death rattles sounded all around.

I did not see the old man with his holy blade crouched in the shadow.

It wasn’t even a holy blade, in truth. It was a dull, rusted saber with a bit of holy water dumped on top.

Ironically, that was one of the few things this meager party might have possessed that could have done my human form any real harm.

Had I not been busy drowning in self-pity, I would have sensed and avoided it without hesitation.

But I was drowning in self-pity, and I did not avoid the blow.

The holy water seared through my flesh, clearing the way for the rusted blade to burrow deep.

I froze for only a fraction of a second.

My furious gaze met the man’s. He saw his death in the flames deep within my eyes.

He was ash before he could scream. But unlike most of his companions, he didn’t die without leaving a mark.

I yanked the saber from my human flesh and watched my blood spill from the gash. My party made quick work of the others as I attempted to glower my wound into submission.

“Nasty cut, that,” Brü said with the irritating weight of an oft-recycled argument once his part in the conflict was done.

Brü had petitioned several times to add Aelith to our party.

Aelith, being a true healer—and the woman in whom Brü liked to bury his cock anytime we weren’t actively raiding.

(If he could figure out the logistics, I’d bet he’d have it buried in her during raids too.) He acted like I was the one preventing her addition to our ranks, simply because I found her insufferable and she, in turn, loathed me.

But I was not in charge of the colonel’s decisions, whatever anyone liked to think.

“It’s nothing,” I said, and I knew my tone conveyed how not in the mood for this conversation I was. “Check for stragglers. I’ll strip the corpses.”

He didn’t have to listen. I had zero authority here—by contract. But give an order with conviction, and you’d be surprised how quickly people jump to follow. In Brü’s case, I think he just liked me. I couldn’t begin to guess why. I was not likable, nor did I make any attempt to be.

When the others were gone, I knew even in my injured and distracted state that I had an interesting problem. The bard was alive. And hiding.

From my perspective, it was akin to watching a child cover their eyes and bask in the confidence that because they couldn’t see you, you couldn’t see them.

Her aura radiated from the wardrobe like a beacon.

Her panic made her colorful magic undulate in an inviting wave.

And oddly, I thought I tasted a hint of citrus in the air that suggested mild arousal.

Perhaps a misread. Even my senses could be flawed.

Demons tend to specialize in their brand of work.

Punishers, for example, like to cause pain wherever and however they can.

They smash the vulnerable. Guzzlers prefer to leach the will from their subjects until there is nothing left to take.

They drink sentient beings dry. I have…more particular tastes.

I am a Tormenter through and through. High emotions draw me like a moth to the flame.

I like to taste them—to cause them—and, most of all, to see how high a pitch I can tease them to reach.

I like people under my thumb. I like to squeeze .

My loathing for bards and my fury over the wound at my hip only made my hunger that much riper. I wouldn’t get the pleasure of teasing the moment out the way I would have liked. Wouldn’t get to enjoy the entire meal, so to speak. But I could take a bite.

I let her terror hang in the air. I needled it with a slow examination of the neighboring wardrobe, hearing her heart thud as I took my sweet time.

Then I pounced.

Before I shattered her door, I solidified my shadows to shield against the arrow I expected her to have readied. I’d seen the stunning bow after all. The shielding took effort with the wound draining my focus, but I wasn’t about to take a second blow today.

Surprisingly, my shield turned out to be unnecessary.

The bard sat statue-still at my feet, eyes as wide and shiny as a kitten’s—not at all the hardened adventurer she’d appeared from a distance. The weapon that might have given her a fighting chance lay utterly discounted on her lap. Instead, she clutched her lute as if it would save her.

I can heal you , she cried, but strip away the words and the utterance was an obvious plea. Don’t kill me. Don’t hurt me.

She would have to settle for one of the two.

If she’d played that thrice-damned lute then, I might have slain her.

Luckily, her panic led her down a less strategic path.

Her words spilled out in a barely coherent rush.

I didn’t need to do anything but stand there.

She tormented herself. Just watching her come apart made my infuriating human cock pulse. Her tears made me rock hard.

I didn’t care about most of what she had to say, but there were two things that stood out that I did care about.

First, she was not pledged to the Huntress .

I held the stolen cuff as she wiped demonstratively at her smudged ink. It wasn’t hiding another faction tattoo. She wasn’t faction at all —which meant that I couldn’t kill her.

That was irritating.

It was also irrelevant, because the second truth made killing her out of the question.

The bard was from Finchton.

It was in the peaks and valleys of her vowels. The delicate inflections, the soft, unique flavor of the words as her tongue caressed them. Only a Finchton native spoke like that.

Although today’s purpose was to perform menial tasks on behalf of the Fated, the reason I was here —existing on this mortal plane, trapped in human form—was to help the warlord who’d bound me win his war. In that task, I’d hit an infuriating wall. And it all came back to Finchton.

So, the bard would come with me. That much was settled, even if she didn’t yet know it.

“Stop talking,” I ordered.

I lifted my knife to cut a length of rope and scowled when she opened her mouth to protest. Bold little bard. In a flash, I envisioned half a dozen ways to teach her to listen the first time—and then realized that I would have to show some restraint if I hoped to elicit information from her.

I tied her wrists and examined the crossbow absently while I considered my options.

The bow was just as impressive up close as it’d been from afar, dripping with enchantments.

I didn’t require a weapon, so it wasn’t of much use to me.

I reached for the lute, even less interested—but her immediate fury spiked in the air like volcanic gas. That intrigued me.

Don’t fucking touch that.

I carefully masked my pleasure. There were people ?I spent years working to get that kind of reaction from. Show me where to hurt you, I begged them. And nothing. Not my little bard, though. She hissed like the na?ve kitten she was, too angry to be wise.

I’ll do anything. Please.

Her rising panic was the first salve to the wound that was my day.

I breathed in her desire for a quick resolution.

It tasted of bitter roses. She yearned for me to force the matter, to shove my cock down her throat or demand a healing song in exchange for my mercy.

Neither tempted me. I couldn’t break her…

yet, but her words gave me an idea. She would do anything?

I set the instrument carefully aside and reached for the artifact in my pocket.

I’d never intended to use it. It turned up in a raid and latched onto me. Darkness called to darkness and whatnot. I’d planned to hold it for trade. What did I want with a human pet, anyway? With all the rules imposed by my contract, it would just as soon be a nuisance as a toy.

Except. It would settle any concerns I had about the Finchton matter. One order when we reached the base camp, and she would sing.

To my surprise and further irritation, though, she refused.

How much did the bard know about the collar? Clearly, she recognized it. Did she know I couldn’t simply clap it on her? That it would be nothing more than an expensive necklace unless she chose to submit and don the piece herself?

Not that I wanted to force her. Not really. My favorite flavor of submission is the kind my subject begs for. I strongly prefer manipulation to force.

I turned away, snapping an empty threat about the mines. She could chew on that while I spun my web.

I gave the rest of the gutted barracks a lackluster search—just to call it done—while I turned over what I knew about the bard. She was bold, to be sure. Brave too, considering the way she’d snapped at me. But not a martyr. She had chosen self-preservation in the face of imminent death.

I turned. I knew my path.

But before I could pluck her chords, she played them herself—again.

I’ll wear it.

Her voice trembled as she attempted to elicit assurances I would not give. It didn’t matter. She’d decided. My party had returned, and although I knew they wouldn’t touch her—she’d convinced herself otherwise. I merely arched a brow and let her fears carry her across the finish line.

The collar snapped into place.

Her iridescent ribbons of magic flared against the stranglehold of the dark enchantments. I didn’t push the collar. Her magic didn’t fight it. It was a standoff—an impasse. Invisible to the human eye. A light show just for me.

She closed her eyes in anguished defeat. I’d never tasted anything quite so sweet. I was enthralled. I was addicted. The Finchton matter was a boon, sure—but I knew the real prize was the fact that now that the little bard wore my collar, I would get to break her a thousand times more.

I was so certain.

Of course, the adage would eventually ring true: A fool and his certainty are soon parted. Or whatever humans say.

Anyway, I can tell you now that I…underestimated the bard.