A Valley of Darkness (A Shade of Vampire #52)(70)

“They took her,” Caia cried out, dropping her backpack at her feet, and I reached her side. “A daemon took Fiona…”

The revelation floored me. My heart stopped beating, then kicked itself back on in a frenzy.

Blaze spat something on the cobblestone. I gasped, realizing he’d captured a daemon. Blood pooled underneath the invisible mass he’d just discarded from his jaws.

“Holy mother of…” My voice trailed off as Blaze returned to his normal form, tall, muscled, and… jaw-droppingly naked.

He swiftly pulled a pair of pants from the backpack that Caia had dropped and slipped into them, and then Heron helped him carry the beast inside the infirmary. Avril and I followed with Caia. If I’d gathered new questions after my encounter with Caspian, this development threw in a bunch more, further contributing to my angst and determination to find out what the hell was going on in this city.





Harper





(Daughter of Hazel & Tejus)





Patrik and Scarlett did their best to perform an autopsy on the invisible daemon. Blaze and Heron had plopped the beast onto a spare table, but the Druid wasn’t even sure where to start his analysis, given his inability to see his subject.

While they tried to figure the creature out, we helped Caia regain her composure. She gulped down a glass of water and told us everything that had happened, between hiccups and sobs. Blaze helped fill in any blanks whenever Caia faltered due to her emotional distress. My heart broke for her. She’d watched Fiona get snatched, and I could only imagine how traumatic that had been.

After Jax debriefed Caia, I moved closer to her and gently squeezed her shoulder. I didn’t have a solution for our problem, but I was positive we’d bring down fire and death on anyone who stood between us and Fiona.

“At least you found the prison.” Hansa sighed, too tired to express the rage I knew was building up inside her. I felt the same.

“The daemon took Fiona,” Caia mumbled.

“We’ll get her back,” Jax reassured her.

“We should’ve gone after her!” Caia shot back, giving Blaze a brief glare. She was mad at his decision to come back to the infirmary.

“I wanted to go after her, but I didn’t want to risk your life in the process,” Blaze said, a muscle twitching in his jaw as he stared at the invisible creature on the table. “I didn’t want to break the team down any further, either, and I didn’t even know how many of them there were. What if we were flying into a nest of thousands? I also hoped we could at least analyze a daemon corpse before charging after Fiona.”

“I agree—it would have been unwise to go by yourselves, even if one of you is a fire dragon,” Jax said. “If you don’t know your enemy, you don’t know their numbers or which weapons are effective. Most importantly, I’m not sure how even a fire dragon would fare against what could be a massive army of daemons—it would have only taken one smart one to figure out how to slash Blaze in the eyes.”

“It’s also good that you brought the dead daemon here,” Patrik interjected, pouring black dust into the palm of his hand from a small leather pouch. “Because now we can try to find out what makes this monster tick.”

“When are we going after Fiona?” Caia wasn’t able to focus on the daemon, not that I could blame her. I felt sick to my stomach just looking at the table, with blood dripping from its edges. One of them had our friend—our partner.

“I’m hoping an hour, two hours at most,” Jax replied, then nodded at Patrik. “Depending on how fast you can get useful information out of an invisible corpse.”

“What about the prison?” Blaze asked, stealing a glance at Caia.

“Lord Kifo will have some explaining to do,” Jax replied. “But Fiona’s our priority right now.”

“Hold on,” Hansa said, and sat up, her bare feet touching the floor. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around what the daemons were doing down there. You said the Imen referred to them as ‘soul eaters’, right, Caia?”

“Yeah, and I could see what they were doing, clear as day,” she replied. “I mean, I think that’s what they were doing. It was the only thing that made sense at that point.”

“They weren’t killing them yet, though—at least, I don’t think they were,” Blaze added. “But the Imen were definitely in pain, weak, and pale… Maybe ‘soul eating’ doesn’t kill right away.”

“This is getting more and more complicated.” Hansa shook her head. “I don’t think just going into the Valley of Screams is going to work. We need more manpower here!”

“One of us could go back to Calliope using the swamp witches’ travel spell,” Scarlett suggested.

“True, but the clock is ticking, and it takes what, six or seven hours per trip?” I frowned. “That’ll be twelve hours we can’t yet afford to lose reaching out to Calliope—and we also can’t afford to spare any one of us right now. We’re a small team as it is. I think we need to go after Fiona first, then send one of us back to Calliope. The daemons won’t kill her yet, based on their patterns and what you saw in the prison. They’ll probably cage her like they did with Minah… and maybe feed off her soul.” I shuddered. That sentence didn’t end up sounding as comforting as I’d intended.