Hunt the Darkness (Guardians of Eternity #11)(71)

Just a common, nameless demon whom she would never have sought out if she hadn’t needed his help to end her accidental mating.

Now she struggled to accept this . . . glorious, unnervingly alien being . . . was her father.

“Is that some sort of joke?”

He gave a slow blink. “Why would I jest about such a thing?”

Yeah. That was the question of the day, wasn’t it?

She shivered despite the heat of the sun. “I’ve stopped expecting anything to make sense after I fell down the rabbit hole.”

“This is no . . .” Sariel seemed to struggle over the unfamiliar word. “Joke. You are indeed my daughter. Blood of my blood.”

Sally licked her lips. This was some sort of trick. It had to be.

“If that’s true, then how did you meet my mother?”

His answer came without hesitation. “She was under the influence of a powerful spell that allowed me to pull her through the barriers.”

“What spell?”

“A fertility spell.”

Sally frowned. How had he known? “You could sense it?”

“Yes. It was like a beacon for me to latch on to.”

“So you brought her here and . . .” Sally grimaced. No daughter should have to consider the ins and outs of her mother’s sex life. “Seduced her?”

“Not here.” He shrugged. “But yes, I did seduce her.”

The ick factor doubled in value.

“No.” She shook her head, unconsciously pressing the box against her stomach as if it might whisk her away from this psycho wonderland. “I don’t believe you.”

Sariel’s slender nose flared in outrage. “You accuse me of lying?”

“My mother would have known the second she caught sight of you that you aren’t human,” Sally informed him, her voice two octaves too high. “She hated demons. She certainly wouldn’t have willingly crawled into bed with one, no matter how gorgeous you might be.”

The man smiled with pure arrogance. “I can be very persuasive.”

“Okay . . .” Sally held up a hand in protest. “TMI.”

“Excuse me?”

Sally shook her head. “Even if you did manage to overcome her prejudice, there’s no way she wouldn’t have aborted me once she discovered she was pregnant.”

“Ah.” He didn’t look particularly concerned that Sally might have died before she was ever born. But then, Sally was beginning to suspect that the demon didn’t have many feelings that weren’t directly connected to his own survival. “Her memories would have been stripped when she left my bed.”

“By you?”

He gave an impatient shake of his head. “No, by the barriers that surround me.”

Sally bit her lower lip. It was hard to deny the sincerity in his voice. He truly believed that he was her father.

Was it possible?

She studied the painfully beautiful face, searching for the truth.

“So she didn’t remember she slept with you?”

“That is correct.”

“Then she must have slept with a human male and assumed I was the result of that hookup,” Sally said, grudgingly accepting that Sariel’s story made as much sense as anything else.

“If you say.” He waved a dismissive hand. “My only concern was for you.”

Concern. She made a sound of disbelief.

“Yeah, right. If you actually had any concern for me, you wouldn’t have ignored me for the past thirty years.”

He looked puzzled by her accusation, the soft breeze stirring his satin gold hair.

“There was no need to attempt to contact you until you came into your powers. You were of no use until then.”

She should have been prepared for the callous explanation.

A father who hadn’t bothered to send her so much as a postcard in the past thirty years wasn’t interested in her as a person, no matter how many fantasies she’d woven about him.

If he suddenly decided to contact her, it had to be about what-can-you-do-for-me.

Just like it’d been with her mother.

Still, she couldn’t halt the heavy sense of disappointment that lodged in the pit of her stomach.

“What powers?” she at last forced herself to demand. Might as well get all the bad news over with at once.

Like ripping off a bandage.

“The power to create a portal, first of all,” Sariel said, impervious to her thickened voice and slumped shoulders.

“I can’t . . .” She gave a shake of her head. She’d worry about who’d created the portal later. “Never mind. What else?”

“Your human blood had to be fully consumed by the pure fey that now runs through your veins,” he said. “Only then could you pass through the barriers and release me.”

Was that why she was changing? Because the fey blood was overwhelming the human?

And if so, why would that cause her to be a sudden fey-magnet?

“Release you from what?” she obediently asked, her gaze flicking down his tall body.

She couldn’t see any shackles, but maybe they were invisible.

Or metaphorical.

“I’m being held prisoner,” he insisted.

“By who?”

“That is not the point,” he said, his velvet voice edged with impatience. “All that matters is that you are the key to my escape. As I said, that is the reason you were born.”