Wulfe Untamed (Feral Warriors #8)(45)

A small smile lifted the corners of her lovely mouth. “I’m ready.”

Together, they left the library and started back down the hall toward the stairs. As they approached the foyer, he overheard Paenther and Vhyper talking.

“So what I don’t get,” Vhyper muttered, “is whether the real Satanan, the Daemon still trapped in the Daemon Blade, knows what the lost piece of his consciousness—the one that infected Inir—is up to. Are they working together, or as completely separate entities?”

“I don’t know,” Paenther replied.

“Separate entities,” Wulfe told them, as he and Natalie entered the foyer. He joined his friends. “One has no idea what the other is doing, but it doesn’t matter since both are fully focused on freeing the Daemons from that blade.”

Vhyper’s eyes narrowed. “And you know that how?”

Wulfe stilled. “I have no clue.” He scowled and started to turn away, but Paenther stopped him.

“Wulfe . . . what else do you know about Satanan, or at least about the piece of his consciousness inside Inir? We need all the insight we can get.”

“You already know most of it.”

“Humor us.” Paenther’s steady gaze demanded cooperation.

Hell. He didn’t know how he knew this stuff. If he could unknow it, he would. But, yeah, maybe it could help.

“During the years of the Daemons Wars, wraith Daemon consciousness shattered fairly frequently, the wisps hiding in rock crevices, in objects, and in the ground until a person—usually human—came in contact with them. The wisp, what we call dark spirit, would turn the host evil for the course of his or her short life, then both host and wisp would perish.”

As he spoke, Lyon and Kougar walked up, joining them, listening.

“But of the true Daemons,” Wulfe continued, “only the strongest ever left behind a piece of consciousness, and only in times of fierce desperation. The sliver of Satanan’s consciousness within Inir sheared off when he was being pulled into the Daemon Blade. He resisted the pull so strongly that part of him was actually left behind. Not until Inir accidentally came in contact with it did that piece of Satanan’s soul find a host and come awake again.”

Hawke and Falkyn joined them. Wulfe saw the surprise on his brothers’ and sister’s faces, but Paenther nodded for him to continue, and he did.

“In such cases, the lost sliver is usually never found, and the Daemon himself, though aware of the loss, is rarely incapacitated by it. He may feel the loss as one might feel grief for a long-dead loved one. A literal missing piece. If the missing sliver is found after it has infected someone, the two pieces can be runited only by destroying the host.”

Silence descended over the foyer as his Feral brothers and sisters stared at him with a mix of interest, surprise, and shock.

“How do you know all that?” Hawke breathed.

Wulfe shrugged. “Daemon blood.” He ushered Natalie toward the stairs, through with revealing his weirdness for the day. But he couldn’t help but wonder what other odd Daemon knowledge now resided in his head. And why.

“The woman Vhyper saw earlier is back.” Melisande’s voice erupted in the foyer behind him. “She’s coming up the drive.”

“Keep an eye on her.” Lyon leaped into commander mode. “If she leaves again, follow her. Everyone else, remain inside. I don’t want to scare her off, but she’s not getting away this time. I want to know who she is and what she wants with us. If she’s another newly marked Feral, she’s going straight to the prisons.”

Jag grunted. “Ten bucks says she winds up in the prisons no matter what she is.”

“She’s parking the car,” Falkyn called from the living room. “She’s getting out and starting for the front walk.”

“Move away from the door,” Lyon ordered. “Out of sight until we have her in the house.”

Wulfe took Natalie’s hand and hurried her up to the second-floor landing, where they had a clear view of the foyer over the railing. Fox, Hawke, and Falkyn joined them while the others melted into one or another of the hallways that fed into the foyer.

A moment later, the doorknocker rang on the wood with hard, confident taps, an interesting counterpoint to the apparently tentative nature of the woman’s initial arrival.

Lyon swung open the door to reveal a woman of medium stature and girl-next-door looks, dressed in hiking boots, knee-length shorts, and a lightweight vest covered in pockets over a light brown tee. Dark hair, corkscrew curly, fell well past her shoulders.

The woman stared at Lyon with a combination of wariness, awe, and that surprising confidence as she thrust out her hand. “I’m Dr. Vivian Mars, Assistant Professor and Director of the International Center for North African Archaeology at Boston University. I believe you have a Daemon in your midst, and I’d very much like to talk to him.”

Wulfe jerked.

Lyon, to his credit, showed no obvious surprise as he shook her hand and stepped back. “Come in, Dr. Mars. I’ll be very happy to talk with you.”

The woman didn’t move. “Before I come in, let me explain who I am and why I’m here.”

“It’s safer if we talk inside.”

The woman’s expression lit with wry amusement. “Safer for whom?” She lifted a hand, palm out. “Let me at least tell you that I’m human. Two years ago, during a dig in the East Sahara, I became the unwitting, if not entirely unwilling, host to a wisp of Daemon consciousness who’d been separated from his body sometime ago. He doesn’t know how long. His name is Strome and he desperately wants to know what happened to his race.”