I know nothing of a Thorn.
“And that answers that.” Aeron glanced around at the dank, iridescent-black walls of his makeshift prison. They bled like an oozing oil pit. At least he wasn’t bound. Not that it would have done them any good. Hard to pin a púca with shackles, and while he was still a bit chafed at his family for what they’d done to him with their cursing, there was something to be said for it.
Sitting back, he looked up at the eerie blue lights that radiated above their heads. They pulsed like a living creature.
He grimaced at the sight of what he was pretty sure were the remains of a poor beast who’d had a much worse day than his. Thank the gods his innards didn’t glow after death. He’d hate to have his guts used in such a manner.
“You didn’t happen to see what brought me here, did you, boyo?”
Taahiki demons.
Well, that explained the stench. They were the polecats of the demon world. It’d be weeks before he’d get that off his skin. “Now, I’m going to ask a ridiculously rhetorical question.”
No, there’s no way out of here.
“You could have at least given me the satisfaction of asking it. But since you ruined that, I have another. Me master has misplaced his own hellhound. Any chance you might be familiar with him? He’s named Zavid.”
You serve the Malachai?
Aeron hesitated in his answer. One thing he’d learned aeons ago—you volunteer no facts until you knew what side of the matter your opponent was aligned to, and he knew nothing of this new “friend.”
“I don’t serve anyone.”
“Yet you’re the one who said it was your master’s hound.” A low, insidious moan echoed around them from no known source.
The black wolf crouched low and began growling at the wall to Aeron’s left.
“What’s that?”
Noir’s servants. If you are friend or servant to the Malachai, they’re coming to make you regret it.
“And what are you?”
I’m no friend of Noir’s or Azura’s. But if you can show me this Thorn, I will be the best friend you’ve ever made.
Rising to his feet, Aeron stepped away as every warning in his body went off simultaneously. This was a little too easy. “And why would I be wanting to take you anywhere when you’re the one who’d be knowing the way when I don’t? Not like I’ve got a set of keys to the kingdom. You could have left here at any time. Why did you wait on me when you didn’t know I was coming…? Or did you?”
A flash of light blinded him an instant before the wolf became a tall, thin, male demon. “You’re just all kinds of smart, aren’t you? Pity that…”
*
“You know that won’t break him, right?”
Noir turned a ball-shriveling glare toward Grim that would have sent anyone else in this dismal realm scurrying for a hole to vanish into. Almost seven feet in height, the ancient primal god held an insidious beauty that only the source of all evil could possess.
His black hair and eyes were as soulless as his actions. And there was a wicked light that flickered in the depths of those cold eyes that seemed to match his dark burgundy demonic armor. He tossed his bloodred cape back over his shoulder. “Are you trying to piss me off?”
“No, but that would be a sweet bonus.”
Noir actually laughed. Something that caused all the demons around them to run away like rodents fleeing a pending explosion—which was most likely what they thought that unnatural sound portended. The ancient god reached out and grabbed Grim’s pale hair.
His mouth curled into the semblance of a cruel, twisted smile before he jerked Grim against his chest and gave him a bone-shattering embrace. “I’ve missed you, boy.” He placed a kiss on the top of Grim’s head, then released him. Quicker than Grim could blink, he backhanded him so hard that Grim saw stars from it. “But if you back talk me again, I’ll rip out your entrails and throw them to the slug demons to eat.”
Wiping the blood from his nose and mouth, Grim forced himself not to show how much that blow had staggered him. Or the fact that he still wasn’t seeing straight from it as his face continued to throb and ache to distraction.
Holy crap, for an old fart whose strength had waned, Noir could pack a wallop.
He passed an angry pain-filled glare to Laguerre who held absolutely no sympathy for him in her cold, dark eyes.
But then, she was Noir’s daughter.
He grimaced at the blood on his hand. He’d forgotten just how much he hated being around Azura and Noir. Now being that he was virtually trapped with them and dependent on them …
If he ever laid hands on that sniveling Malachai, Gautier would know pain unimaginable.
When people talked about having bad in-laws, they had no idea what true misery meant. They should have to spend a weekend with his.