Demon from the Dark (Immortals After Dark #10)(54)

She was about to declare her hatred for him as well, but stopped herself. She didn’t hate him for what he’d done.

Now that she could see things more drunkenly, she wasn’t convinced he’d taken her blood in lieu of making love to her. She suspected his bite might have been a try at closeness, like intimacy for a vemon. Maybe?

With a sigh, she unsteadily gestured to herself. “Becauss, less face it, demon hasta be fallin’ in love with me by now.”

He’d looked so completely staggered by her reaction, clearly expecting her to feel differently about his bite. And she would have if she hadn’t been planning to deceive him soon—would’ve just accepted the pleasure it brought her.

So damned difficult.

“Malkom?” she called, marching out after him. “Where are you?” No response. With his uncanny senses, he should have been able to hear her over the wind. “Demon, come back!”

Finally, she spied his large prints, saw they were accompanied by a blood trail. Guilty pang. Down the booby-trapped path she went, trying to remember where he’d pointed out traps.

But it turned out that his contraptions were easy to find. Because they’d all been triggered.

By demons. Now mangled and dead demons. An attack? The dossier had said Malkom guarded the mines. Maybe this was a takeover attempt. Or perhaps the Trothans had come here to capture their fugitive, the one who’d killed their prince?

Farther down the mountain, she could see signs of a struggle. Bone trees had been felled. This had to have involved someone as powerful as Malkom.

Had even more demons jumped him? She’d bet they were regretting it now. Malkom was probably out hiding the fresh bodies from her—or cooking them. Who could tell with her man?

She surveyed all the tracks scattered over the clearing. Again, she could make out Malkom’s prints, but now she saw lighter boot prints. Even more demons?

With ten shots of Jack D in her belly, she was convinced that her scientifical mind could read tracks and deduce a corresponding fight. She was a regular Sacagawea. Even though Carrow had never learned to track.

Deep half prints meant someone lunging, right? There were lots of those. They spun around and around. But she could swear that it looked like in the end, Malkom had just limped away with lighter demons on either side. Then the tracks simply disappeared.

What—the—frack? Had he allowed a gang to teleport him away? Even if he was weakened, if he resisted enough, no one would ever be able to trace him against his will.

She had to know what had happened, so she eked out some power to fuel a sobering spell—her least favorite of all spells. On the heels of that, she launched a viewing spell, murmuring, “See here. See Malkom.”

A scene began to play out like a show on a TV with fuzzy reception. Malkom was sweating, as if he’d been running up and down his mountain, but he appeared to be returning in the direction of the mine.

Though time had passed since he’d left, he remained thoroughly pissed at himself, ramming his horns into trees. He was still limping, his injured arm hanging awkwardly, and he had dried blood all over him.

Another guilty pang. She’d never meant to hurt him so badly.

Her eyes went wide as the scene continued. More demons lay in wait for him. Malkom was so injured and distracted that he didn’t see them—

Until they’d surrounded him, at least twenty of them. The largest one wore a grand suit of armor and was nearly as large as Malkom. The others called that demon Ronath. From the look on his face, Malkom despised him.

They were here for Malkom, specifically for his capture. If Malkom was a fugitive, had this armored demon come to arrest him?

With hatred seething in his now dark eyes, Malkom said something in a low, brutal tone.

When Ronath responded, sneering some reply, Malkom launched himself at the demon, driving him into a tree.

But Ronath’s armor took the brunt of the blow. And unlike Malkom, Ronath and some of his men could trace. Even with Malkom’s speed, he couldn’t defend against so many as they appeared and disappeared, stabbing him again and again.

Can’t watch this . . . can’t watch . . .

After several tries, they cast a metal net over him, but they couldn’t trace him away when he was resisting so violently.

How much longer could he keep up his struggles? He was weakening—he clearly knew it. Still he clashed with them, and he might have gotten free. But then Malkom froze. His senses were better than the others’. And he’d heard Carrow calling for him, approaching them.

His eyes were calculating, his mind working. Her lips parted as he stopped fighting them. He’d made the decision to be taken.

Just before they traced him away, he roared twice more to cover her drunken calls. And then they were gone.

Ah, gods, no.

If they’d seized Malkom for that murder, then they’d likely take him back to the nearest city. She hurriedly climbed to a vantage point to gaze out from the mountain.

In the distance, she could barely spy out a collection of buildings rising from the horizon. If the winds had been up much more, she’d never have spotted them.

Surely regicide was punishable by death. She had to go after him. Aside from the fact that she felt guilty as hell for injuring him and then distracting him, she needed Malkom for her and Ruby’s freedom.

So she’d go and save him, just so she could betray him?