A Den of Tricks (A Shade of Vampire #54)(32)

“After you.” Caspian smirked and bowed curtly.

I grinned as I stepped through the wall, the cool stone tickling my face with liquid motion. The rest of my team followed, dragging the daemon along with them. Caspian then grabbed the fiend and pushed him into a corner, slitting his throat with one swift move.

I gasped. He held the daemon in place, pressing a forearm into his chest as blood gushed from the gash across his throat. The creature gurgled and choked until the light in his eyes went out. Caspian pulled himself back, and the daemon slumped on the floor behind a couple of rocks.

“We couldn’t risk him getting loose, and we don’t need him down there,” Caspian said, noticing my furrowed brow.

“No, it’s fine. It makes sense.” I shrugged. There was no issue with Caspian killing a daemon—even though this one had been restrained and could not harm us in any way. I was just surprised by the speed with which he made that decision, and the swiftness with which he executed it. Caspian had the cold blood of a killer if needed, and I knew it was in the best interest of our group.

“Let’s go,” he breathed, and went ahead.

One by one we descended after him. The tunnel got narrower every hundred yards, until we had to crouch in order to pass through it. Once we reached the exit, we followed him across a small plateau and hid behind the large rocks on the edge. It was secluded enough to keep us concealed as we took in our surroundings.

I held my breath as I looked up—a massive dome ceiling stretched for tens of square miles, with thick pillars pouring down into the city to support its titanic weight. The daemon city below sprawled across the cave floor—riddled with square houses and buildings, made entirely out of black stone with obsidian reflexes. Orange fires burned in massive copper bowls at street junctions and in iron and glass boxes mounted on almost every wall.

The sight before me resembled a painting of a Renaissance inferno I’d seen in a museum back on Earth, with deep and dramatic contrasts of black and amber, of light and dark, and of sharp and soft forms in a terrifying display of what could easily be described as hell. Slim, pointy towers poked out from the sea of buildings, and thin streams of freaking lava poured through the city, crossed by a multitude of bridges.

It was hot all over, like a midsummer’s day, dry enough to make me lick my lips every other minute because I was suddenly feeling all crusty and about to crumble. The center of the city was rich in immense buildings with tall columns and foundations, the latter linked to the black stone pavement through broad stairs. Farther outward, the buildings began to shrink, while the outskirts were occupied by small houses and modest huts.

Thousands of daemons roamed through the streets, and even they varied in size depending on their proximity to the city center. The rich, big, and strong ones lived in the middle of this massive settlement, while the weaklings were cast off to the sides.

Survival of the fittest, I guess…

“Keep your heads down,” Caspian hissed, and pulled me back under the shade of our rocky cover. We all huddled closer together.

My heart stopped, and ice tumbled through my veins at the sound of a gut-wrenching shriek. I looked up and saw giant black bat-like creatures flying overhead. There were three of them, gliding in tandem as they took a tight turn and resumed their survey of the city.

“Those are Death Claws,” Caspian breathed, watching them fly away.

They were scary as hell, with long, skinny legs and large wings that also served as arms. Each wing ended in a large claw, which explained why they were called Death Claws—those things were just a fraction of Blaze’s dragon size, but they looked perfectly capable of tearing any one of us non-dragons to shreds, if given the chance.

I resumed my quiet study of the city beyond the edge of our little hiding place. Some of the daemons were riding pit wolves with charmed iron collars, and others used transportation methods akin to rickshaws maneuvered by weaker, skinnier daemons. There were elites, there were military grunts, there were portly overlords, and there were poor, subjugated daemons. There was a hierarchy, and it sort of put this dark world into perspective.

They had rules and customs, just like the Maras. They lived underground, and they certainly liked it hot. They ate souls and used swamp witch magic. Our problem on Neraka was far more complex than it had seemed at first, and the closer we got to its center, the more layers we discovered as we kept peeling away at it.

“This place is called Black Tower,” Caspian whispered, “mainly because of that big one in the middle.”

I looked out into the distance and noticed the structure he was talking about. At the very center of the city, a giant tower rose above all the others, thick and round, with a palace serving as a base. The palace was a square construction, each side stretching for half a mile, and was lit up by thousands of little orange flames. It was beautiful and creepy at the same time, and it filled me with dread.

Suddenly, dealing with a handful of invisible hunter daemons seemed like a walk in the park, compared to the fresh hell unraveling in this underground city. My stomach turned into a painful little peanut at the sight of Imen, about a dozen of them, being dragged across one of the lava bridges in cages pulled by pit wolves. They were all females, all young and defenseless. Two daemons snapped their whips at the pit wolves to get them to move faster.

I instinctively moved to help them, but Caspian caught my wrist and pulled me back.

“Don’t! We can’t risk detection at this point,” he murmured.