A Den of Tricks (A Shade of Vampire #54)

“I’m under oath and cannot tell them everything they need to know, but you can help fill in some of the blanks,” Caspian said, his knee touching mine as he crossed his legs in his seated position.

Silence fell between us for a minute, while I tried to read Mose’s emotions. I’d not had any luck with the other daemons I’d encountered, and Mose was just as immune to my sentry abilities. My shoulders dropped. I’d known the chances were slim, but still, can’t blame a girl for trying…

“What do you wish to know?” Mose eventually asked, his gaze fixed on me. “You can ask, instead of trying to poke around in my head.”

My cheeks flushed as I realized he’d felt me just then.

“So you can sense when I try to read your mind,” I mumbled, and Mose responded with a nod.

“You can’t read me, but I can definitely feel you trying,” he replied. “Word’s already out about you, young lady. The hunters you faced came back with interesting stories.”

“Okay then, let’s start with some basics.” I leaned forward. “How old are you, Mose?”

“Seventy-one thousand, nine-hundred, and ninety-nine full moons. And I’ve yet to know your name, young lady.”

I blinked several times, doing quick math in my head.

“My apologies. I am Harper,” I said, then nodded at the rest of our team. “These are Jax, Hansa, Caia, and Blaze. We are members of GASP. And you’re… six thousand years old?”

“I believe so, yes,” Mose replied, looking at each of us for a couple of seconds, as if putting our names to our faces. His gaze settled on Jax. “You’re a Mara.”

“Yes, I am,” Jax said.

“But you’re not from here.”

“No, I’m from Calliope.”

“Ah, the world from which our Nerakian Maras were exiled.” Mose scoffed, the shadow of a smile flickering over his face.

“Tell us about your species,” I said, content with having the lead in this conversation. There were so many questions I wanted to ask.

“That’s a broad request,” Mose smirked, “but I will do my best to tell you as much as I can, without putting my own life at risk.”

“What, so you’re under oath, too, or something?” I frowned, already sensing I wouldn’t get all the answers I’d hoped for.

“We all answer to higher powers in this world, Miss Harper. But, to answer your request, we are daemons. Our kind has inhabited this world since the beginning of time. We inhabited cities beneath the surface of Neraka—hundreds of them, linked by tunnels spanning hundreds, even thousands of miles.”

Jax rubbed the back of his neck, cringing as he heard the painfully unpleasant truth: there were more daemons out there than we’d thought. We definitely couldn’t take them all on by ourselves.

“You mean to tell me there are more of you out there?” Jax replied.

“Yes. Tens of thousands.” Mose nodded. “But this is the capital city. It is the home of our king, Shaytan, ruler of all daemons. We thrive in the underground, away from the sunlight, bathed in volcanic heat.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Hansa shot back, wiping the sweat from her face. I wasn’t too far behind her as far as level of discomfort, and, judging by the glistening beads forming on Caspian’s temple, he was coming in third, along with Jax. Blaze and Caia seemed comfortable.

Figures…

“What about soul eating?” I asked.

“We feed on souls. I’m not sure what is unclear about that.” Mose shrugged. “In the absence of souls, however, we eat raw flesh. When we are young, we are able to hunt and provide for ourselves, especially where souls are concerned. The older we get, however, the weaker our bodies become, and we’re reduced to eating meat. In this day and age, becoming old and not being royalty, military, or nobility, you are automatically bumped to the bottom of the food chain and reduced to living in these slums, taking the mercy food that hunters bring in from the surface.”

“Like the cages we saw outside, stuffed with living, wild animals,” I muttered with disgust.

“Yes. And I’d say that beats eating souls, don’t you think?” Mose retorted. I gave him a brief nod. “What you probably do not understand about soul eating is how exhilarating it can be. One soul can keep you sated for days, even weeks on end. Raw meat barely gets us through the day. We don’t experience hunger like the Imen do. Our stomachs do not ache for sustenance. Our entire bodies do. Soul eating is painfully addictive, Miss Harper, and weaning off it can be deadly. We need plenty of raw meat to quench some of the urges. So, yes, our city helps us—as long as we prove to be useful. Once we are no longer able to support our society in any way, we are no longer fed.”

“Survival of the fittest taken to a new extreme, I see,” I replied. “Survival of the useful, sounds more like it. And after all these years of service, are daemons just okay with being tossed aside like that?”

“They don’t have a choice. That is how our world works.” Mose shrugged, with a tinge of sadness in his voice. “The day will come when I will experience that same end. Just not yet. I still have a few years ahead of me, and I plan to put them to good use.”

“Is that why you’re helping us?” Jax asked.

“Not exactly. To tell you the truth, soul eating wasn’t always a part of our nature as daemons. It started out about… ten, eleven thousand years ago. We don’t know who discovered it and how; it just became the norm. It has turned my people into beasts, a degenerate mass of violent soul eaters, and we’ve systematically reduced the Imen’s population on the surface of Neraka. There used to be millions of them…”

There was a collective gasp among us as we came to terms with the horrible truth. The Imen were the primary targets of daemons, and they were nearing extinction because of this soul eating practice.

“Since the Imen population has been dwindling, my people have resorted to feeding off the Maras lately,” Mose continued, shaking his head with contempt. “I swore off souls a long time ago… not because I couldn’t hunt anymore, but because I saw the cruelty of our ways. I couldn’t do it anymore. Of course, I’m a mere underling, a nobody. No one noticed when I got clean. The same cannot be said about the others, higher up.”

“Higher up?” I asked.

“I’m part of the slums. The workers and the dying old. Well, technically I’m a cleric, as I preserve the daemon lore archives for the king’s reading pleasure, but I still go out and clean the streets if needed. I do not wish to live at the mercy of an insane monarch. Above us are the soldiers, the armored daemons. The military is a key part of our society. They enforce laws and some sense of order. Then come the hunters, given invisibility magic so they can go out to the surface and fetch us our food. There are thousands of them. They start off by hunting animals for us, and they get paid in souls. Once they become strong enough, they can choose to become independent hunters, and provide sustenance for themselves and their children only.”