Page 79 of Higher Demon

With that reminder of what Marc’s doing somewhere far beyond my reach, Tom comes over and puts his arm around me. “You’re right. Just… tell me one thing. Do you see this as a long-term kind of relationship?”

I swear, everyone in the room holds their breath while they wait for me to answer. My gut tells me what to say, but I make myself think it over first. I won’t have any of them saying I didn’t consider everything carefully.

“Yeah, I do. I don’t ever want to be apart from him.” Ever.

Click.

* * *

Marc

I throw Vestia across the room hard enough for her to go partway through the wall, then stalk after her. So far, she’s been no match for the rage driving me, but I’m not stupid enough to think that means I’ve won. I know exactly how strong a demon she is, and desperation can be a powerful ally.

She scrabbles free of the wreckage and pummels me with a wave of power that, if I had been caught unawares, would have ended me. As it is, I’m caught off-balance when she follows that up by throwing herself at me again, morphing back to her natural form and slashing claws at my belly. I twist, ducking under her arm and driving my shoulder squarely into her chest, flipping her behind me, then spin and blast her with energy that wrenches screams from her triple larynx.

She was a treshom demon before she became, and there are realms of human folklore—the nightmarish kind—that spawned from her species. Personally, I’ve always thought they give the rest of demonkind a bad name.

It won’t upset me in the slightest to hear the last breaths from all three of her larynges.

But before I kill her, I need answers. Hauling her up by the throat, I lift her high enough that even her hind legs can’t find traction on the floor. She swipes at me, her claws coming within an inch of my face, but I don’t flinch—nor do I bother to shift into my own natural form. Not yet.

I don’t need to.

“Vestia, Vestia, Vestia. After all the trouble you went to in sending me to Earth and making sure I stayed there, did you really believe it would be so easy to kill me?”

“You’re mak—making… a… mistake,” she wheezes.

“Am I? Because I have an eyewitness account of Titus’s murder that assures me I’m not.” Rage surges in me again. I didn’t tell Ian everything—didn’t think he needed the brutal details. Vestia tortured my friend before she killed him; incapacitated him with a blast of raw power, then mutilated and eviscerated him, all the while chiding Titus for inconveniencing her.

“Lying,” she gasps. “They… lied!”

“Hmm. Really? And what about the diary I found that identifies you as the patron of the Highett family? You didn’t think it might be relevant for me, your ambassador, to know you had spies in the Collective?”

She kicks frantically, swiping at me again. “Only… humans.”

How dare she? Yes, humans may be a grubby, annoying species, but they’remineto protect now. I tighten my hand around her throat, enjoying the way her orange skin darkens.

“Tell me, what was the plan? Unleash the dregs of demonkind—yourself included, of course—on Earth? Did you support Cato all along?”

Her black lips pull back in a grimace, baring her fangs. “Cato—barbarian. But—no—need—to—act—he—did. Wait—enjoy.”

The gist of that is clear enough. She thought she could let Cato do the dirty work, then reap the spoils on Earth. His death forced her to make a move—only she couldn’t reveal her motives directly, not when I’d just proven I could take on any challenger.

The irony is, if she just wanted free rein to kill humans, back then I wouldn’t have cared. My issue with Cato was the destruction of the barrier and the way that would have slaughtered dozens of species here that couldn’t survive the mixing of Earth’s atmosphere with ours. I only started giving a damn about humansaftershe sent me to Earth.

I tell her so and revel in the chagrin that fills her expression.

“Lie,” she wheezes.

“Oh no.” I smile at her, but there’s no cheer in it. “Too bad you didn’t bother to do any research before?—”

Her gaze goes over my shoulder, and instinctively, I switch my focus to my wider senses. There’s nobody there, but she’s seized on the split second of inattention, and her hind feet catch me squarely in the midsection, the powerful dewclaws ripping through my flesh. I lose my grip on her as I go flying toward the wall she destroyed earlier.

Landinginthe wall, half in her office, my head and shoulders in Dyp’s antechamber, I push aside the pain and force myself to clamp an arm across my belly, holding everything inside as I begin to knit the wound. As I told Ian, my body is what I want it to be, but I’ve been in this one for a long time without changing, and it’s taken on a life of its own. Lifting my head, I watch Vestia stride toward me, the dark bruises on her throat a reminder that I can still win this. Even if my body is being far too human right now.

“What’s the matter?” she rasps. “Finally realizing how delicate humans are? How delicious it is that your ridiculous fondness for such a nothing species is going to be the thing that kills you.” She stomps her left foreleg on my gut, and I can’t stop the scream from erupting from my throat.

“Wallow in this,” she hisses, bending her face close to mine as I gasp through the pain of having my organs spurt from my torso. “Wallow in this and the knowledge that when you’re dead, the first humans I’ll feast on will be the ones you befriended.” She smiles slowly as I clench my jaw. “Perhaps I’ll wear your visage while I do it. They’ll die, soulless, thinking the demon they trusted killed them.”

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