Page 25 of A Study of Blood and Ichor

When my stomach was completely empty, my eyes stung, and I slowly rose on wobbly legs to face Vain. The demon pressed a hand to the small of my back, a touch so different than the one that had held me minutes before. It was gentle…soothing even. I stepped out of reach.

“Where the hell did you bring us?” I choked out as I righted myself fully, attempting to get my bearings.

Vain had shifted us to the edge of a winding road in the middle of a thickly wooded area. I could barely see more than twenty feet in any direction thanks to the dense fog that wove through the trees and blanketed our surroundings in a dampened, eerie quiet. It was as if the nature around us had sensed the demon’s arrival and was holding its breath in anticipation.

“I’m too weak to shift any farther than this. You can thank yourself and your High Witch for that.” The demon’s gaze remained fixed on the road. “Ideally, I would have taken us directly to one of my homes, but unfortunately, we’ll have to make do here for now.”

“And where exactly is here?”

“Somewhere in Tennessee if I remember correctly,” Vain said absently, then smiled to itself.

We couldn’t be far from the Moreau Coven, maybe less than a hundred miles if we had crossed the state border into the mountains like I guessed.

“This way,” Vain said, then began walking ahead into the fog. “I’m starving.”

Vain brushed past me, and I shuddered at the closeness of the demon—a puzzling, charismatic, terrifying demon—who somehow hadn’t killed me…yet. It would have been so easy to do in the Hull, or even on the side of this dark mountain road in the middle of nowhere. But for some reason, it hadn’t.

I jogged to catch up, not about to let Rory go. Vain kept a quick pace and it didn’t take long for a burn to settle into my legs and my throat.

I'd never trained with the other witches in my coven. I never went into the field, so there hadn’t been any point in learning alongside them as they honed their skills with blades and hand-to-hand combat. It had always been more important for me to keep my nose in my books. But now I was kicking myself for not building up my stamina.

Eventually, the glow of neon lights seeped through the fog, and a small diner came into view. Two cars and an eighteen-wheeler were parked in the front lot. Tiny slivers of movement flashed behind the windows.

I prepared myself for the inevitability that I would need to use all the power I had left to keep Vain in check. The demon was too unpredictable, and I still wasn’t sure of all that Vain was capable of. I tried searching the demon’s eyes for any hint of ill intent, but its expression was stony, giving nothing away.

When we reached the parking lot, Vain stopped. “I need to make a call first,” the demon said and then veered toward the semitruck. I looked for anyone who might be nearby watching, but nobody was around to see. I followed Vain into the shadows.

It faced the side of the truck, which was crusted in gray muck and grime. It held a hand out, palm open to me. “I’ll take that knife now.”

“What knife?”

Vain gave me a sidelong glance. “Would you prefer that I took it from you instead?” it asked, annoyance clipped in every beat.

The thought of Vain running Rory’s hands over the bare skin of my thigh left a heat in my lower belly I couldn’t ignore.

“You promised you wouldn’t hurt me, remember?”

“The knife isn’t for you, mellilla.”

I hiked up the hem of my dress and slipped the knife from its holster, watching Vain while I did. The demon’s eyes roved up my leg until I shoved the skirt down and smacked the handle into Vain’s waiting palm.

“Thank you,” Vain said sweetly and then made a clean slice across its other hand, cupping the crimson blood as it pooled. It handed the knife back, then dipped two fingers into Rory’s blood and drew a sigil on the side of the truck. Wide, sweeping strokes first formed a circle. Along the outer edge, Vain made smaller sketches of demonic runes, one on each compass point, connecting them with whorls and smaller symbols in between. By my study of it, it appeared to be a sigil for communication rather than for summoning, but my hackles rose all the same.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Phoning a friend. Unless you’d rather be stuck here?”

My grip on the knife tightened. “I swear if you’re crossing me, I’ll—”

Vain swung its head to me, one brow cocked, as if it knew as well as I did how limited my options were. “So mistrusting,” it crooned.

With the sigil finished, Vain placed the bloodied hand to the center of the circle. Shutting its eyes, the words of the demon tongue spilled from its lips, too low and quick for me to make out. Vain hissed as it drew its hand away, and the bloody sigil ignited into flame until nothing but a stain of ash was left behind.

The demon stepped toward me but stopped, noticing how I took up the space between the truck and the car next to it.

Vain glared down at me, and I was struck by the size of Rory’s body compared to mine. The glow of the neon from the diner sign overhead painted its figure in an eerie reddish incandescence. “Are you planning on stopping me?”

“What the hell are we doing here, Vain?”

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