A Den of Tricks (A Shade of Vampire #54)(33)

Glancing to our side, I noticed Hansa, Jax, and even Caia and Blaze nodding, though they weren’t happy with that decision either.

“He’s right, Harper,” Hansa whispered. “There’s much more at stake than those Imen girls…”

“So, what, we just let them carry them off so daemons can literally suck the life out of them?” My blood simmered, but deep down, I knew they were right. It just made me feel absolutely miserable.

“This is an evil, violent, and turbulent world, Miss Hellswan,” Caspian replied. “The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, and you know it.”

I cursed under my breath and gave him a brief, sullen nod in response. Heavy growls sent shivers down my spine, and I looked over the edge again—giant daemons sauntered across another bridge not far from us, pushing the smaller, weaker fiends to the side.

“They’re freaking huge,” I gasped, my eyes nearly popping out of their orbits as I took in their incredible size. They were twice as big as the daemons we’d encountered before, with double the muscle mass and thick, burly arms and necks. “I bet it would take five or six of us just to tackle one and maybe live to see another day…”

“Which is why we need to keep a low profile.” Caspian pulled me back again, his grip firm on my right arm. “We need to get to the other side of the city. There’s someone there who can help with the information you need to prepare a campaign against the daemons.”

“Why won’t you spare us the trouble of trekking through a damn daemon city and give us the information yourself?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Because I took an oath of silence on these matters,” he finally relented with a deep sigh. He looked at all of us, and shook his head slowly. “You wouldn’t understand, but I’ll try to explain anyway. As an Exiled Mara and the heir to House Kifo, I take my oaths very seriously, even when everything in my body and conscience tell me otherwise. I swore to keep certain things secret until the right time comes along for me to speak up, but it won’t stop me from taking you to see someone who can tell you what I can’t. It is the best I can offer, at this point in time.”

“How will we get across to the other side of the city, then, given the variety of fiends waiting for us down there?” Blaze frowned.

Caspian pointed at a narrow set of stairs just twenty yards to the right, carved into the wall. They led somewhere below, and were bordered by large, sharp chunks of obsidian.

“We’ll go around,” he replied. “There are several routes that the daemons barely use in these parts of town. They’re narrow enough for us to slip through and kill any fiend we might come across without causing a stir. It’ll take us farther to the other side, where we can sneak between huts, undetected.”

I braced myself for what came next. My heartrate increased as Caspian took my hand and guided me toward the stairs. The others followed quietly, but I could feel the tension mounting as we descended. The closer we got to the daemons, the harder it was to breathe.

Whatever came next, we had to pull through. Caspian’s hold on me helped a little, soothing some of my frayed nerves; it was enough for me to focus and use my True Sight along the way, looking out for daemons who might get too close and see us through the obsidian gaps. Down here, nobody bothered to hide.

Down here, the daemons could be themselves, and we were the ones hiding.

Oh, how the roles have changed…





Scarlett





(Daughter of Jeramiah & Pippa)





We’d been scouring the city library’s archives for several hours. Patrik looked through all the scientific papers available, while I took notes from pages of local lore—though we only had the Exiled Maras’ written words to go on. There was absolutely nothing from the Imen’s culture.

Patrik nervously flipped through the pages of a science journal that analyzed the effects of the asteroid belt on the Nerakian fauna and flora. There were patterns that the ancient Maras had identified, but they mostly concerned the impact of the asteroids in conjunction with the alignment of the three moons. He was beginning to lose patience, and it wasn’t like him.

“Are you okay?” I asked, taking a quick break from my notes. My survey of local lore hadn’t yielded any useful insights, other than the Maras’ suspicion that the asteroids influenced dreams during certain periods of time.

“Not really,” Patrik replied, pinching the bridge of his nose, a clear sign that tension was building up inside him. “I just can’t find anything useful. There’s no data on how to potentially disrupt the asteroids’ effect on communications and spells, but there are plenty of hypotheses on how they actually affect the planet. It’s like the Maras have plenty of information on the problem, but absolutely nothing on a solution.”

I looked down at my book, a three-hundred-year-old volume of folklore, and sighed. I had nothing to offer him either, but we couldn’t stop searching. We had to find a way to reach out to Calliope, and we definitely needed a way off the planet, sooner rather than later.

“I don’t think we’re done here yet,” I offered. “We’ll find something eventually. It has to be in here somewhere…”

“What if it isn’t?” He frowned, concern darkening his steely blue eyes. “What if this is all there is? What if we find nothing and I have no means of helping our team with those wretched asteroids? What if these are my limits?”