“Amazing, as always,” Caine said. “We’ll just need two more bourbons. Neat.”
“No problem.” Jorge pulled a glass bottle from the shelves, unscrewing the cap to fill two more glass tumblers. “I’m just happy to see you with a girl who isn’t trying to murder you for once.”
“Give it time,” Aurora said.
Rosalind frowned. “Wait. Why is Caine always with girls who want to murder him?”
Jorge scratched his chin. “The vampire girls get obsessed with him after he screws—”
“We don’t need to get into that,” Caine snapped. “Has no one ever told you that bartenders are supposed to be discreet?”
Jorge furrowed his brow. “I’ve never heard that.”
Caine scowled. “I don’t know why I continue to be surprised whenever vampires fail to be empathic.”
Jorge leered at Rosalind, waggling an eyebrow. “I’m perfectly empathic.”
Given the way he was looking at her, she was pretty sure he thought “empathic” meant horny.
Caine knocked back his drink. “Speaking of my new girl—as you mentioned, she’s not trying to kill me. Obviously, I’m quite fond of her for that reason. And there’s that little curse. It’s not a big deal, of course. But it would be nice to take that ring off her so she could use her magic again.”
Jorge flashed a wolfish smile. “You want to get some of those kinky spells going?”
She nearly spat out the pancake. What does that even mean?
Caine nodded. “Exactly. So if we could figure out how to lift the spell…”
Grinning, Jorge leaned on the bar. “You need Sambethe. The sybil.”
Caine swirled his drink. “And where would I find the sybil?”
Jorge let his eyes roam over Rosalind’s body. Whatever “kinky magic” meant, he seemed to like the idea a little too much. “The sybil is allied with Borgerith.”
“Ah,” Caine said. “The goddess of the mountains. So she won’t speak to us.”
Jorge leaned in further, looking around the bar. “You can find her in Elysium. It’s an underground club where demons get together, no matter what the alliances. Fire demons mix with night, rock mixes with sea. It’s chaos. But you can’t tell people. The gods wouldn’t exactly approve.”
Rosalind took a sip of the bourbon. “And where would we find—”
Something halted her sentence. A wave of shadowy magic rippled through the bar, crawling over her skin like spider legs. She glanced around. The magic was a deep red, the color of dried blood, and it smelled of moldering hemlock—a smell of death.
“Caine,” she whispered. “We should go.”
“Why? I haven’t even finished my drink.”
“Because something powerful is headed right here. Something deadly.”
Caine studied her, but before she could get an answer out of him, the bartender’s eyes flicked to the door, and his face went even paler. “Bileth,” he whispered.
Rosalind turned to the entrance. In the doorframe stood a hulk of a night demon, his skin pale as moonlight and cheekbones sharp as razors. He must have been three hundred pounds of pure muscle, and horns grew from his skull. His eyes were empty, ivory pools.
A shiver ran up her spine. She’d seen him before—his portrait hung in Lilinor Castle. Every fiber of her being screamed at her to run. She’d read about high demons before, but she’d never seen one. And hadn’t Caine said something about smelling her blood…
Caine slipped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him. He whispered, “I’ll handle this. Get out of here.”
She was terrified, but she wasn’t going to run from a demon. She was a Hunter.
The high demon cocked his head, sniffing, then licked his lips. His gaze slid over Rosalind’s body, and Caine whispered, “Run. You too, Aurora.”
Aurora was out the door in a split second. But Rosalind stood rooted to the spot. She was a Hunter, damn it, and this was her chance to prove herself. She wasn't going to leave Caine to fight alone.
On top of that, it wasn’t like she could run that fast. Bileth would stop her in a second.
In the next moment, the high demon was before them. Caine squared off with him, muscles tensed.
The demon opened his mouth, revealing jagged teeth. “Is this Hunter with you?”
Oh, shit. Hadn’t take long for him to suss her out. His fetid magic coated her body, roiling through her blood like a poison. But Caine's magic was there, too, cool and silvery. With their auras blazing, the two demons seemed to be gearing up for a serious battle.
“Her? A Hunter?” Caine asked, obviously stalling. He glanced at Rosalind, his eyes burning into her. “She's a mage, and she was just leaving. Though now that you mention it, she may have accidentally ingested—”
Bileth gripped the mage's throat with both hands, and long, ivory nails pierced Caine's neck. Crimson tendrils spiraled from the demon's fingertips, wrapping Caine in a web that pinned his arms against his body, binding his legs, sealing his mouth shut to stop his magic.
Chapter 14