Page 62 of Of Flames and Crows

“Ouch.”

Nikolai glared at the grinning incubus while Violet, Miles, and Julius sighed. “You deserved that, asshole.”

CHAPTER26

“What did you say?”

Tension hummed through Oscar as he stared at Dietrich.

“Word on the street is that the kid is Budimir Volkov’s grandson,” the Immortal said warily.

Oscar lowered his brows. “As in, that Bratva general everyone is scared of?”

Dietrich dipped his chin.

Oscar twisted around and stared out of the leaded window of his temporary accommodation, his mind racing. Sunlight glinted on the still waters below.

The abandoned fortress they were using as their base stood in the middle of a lake, a lone sentry that had seen scores of battles in times past. It was only accessible by boat and the secret tunnel that ran deep underground beneath the woods surrounding it. The old man who’d lived in a cabin close to the mine concealing the entrance had been disposed of weeks ago. No one knew they were here.

A muscle jumped in Oscar’s cheek.And with Barquiel’s portal around us, that damn witch can’t find us either.

The demon had finally reappeared that morning, his mood subdued. Oscar suspected he’d visited the place he always vanished to for hours on end. He’d finally questioned the demon about it a few weeks ago, when they’d still been in Budapest.

Barquiel had morphed out of Rose’s body and gripped him by his neck before slamming him against the wall of Vedran’s study.

“That’s none of your business, runt!” the Archduke of Hell had spat in Oscar’s face.

Raya had watched on nervously while a bored expression had drifted across Vedran’s face.

“You mustn’t taunt Barquiel, Oscar,” the Sorcerer King had drawled. “There are certain…things we all want to keep private.”

His eyes had glinted as he’d watched the demon.

Oscar frowned presently.

“It doesn’t matter,” he told Dietrich. “We’ll deal with Volkov and his Bratva if we have to. Roman’s Fire Magic core is more important.”

It wasn’t until later that he headed down to the dungeon beneath the medieval fortress with Drabek. Another sorcerer had died that morning, the result of his experiment a failure once more. Oscar couldn’t see much point in carrying on with the remaining Fire Magic users at their disposal. The answer he sought lay inside Roman. He was certain of it.

The stench of human waste and sweat made him curl his lip when he descended the stairs to the prison. He reached the bottom and made his way to Roman’s cell, boots clacking on the stone floor while Drabek padded silently beside him.

The kid was sleeping on a thin pallet on the ground.

The sorcerers and witches in the neighboring cells stirred as Oscar invoked a weak, black-magic bomb and sent it floating through the iron bars of the prison.

“Boo.”

The spell detonated above Roman. He woke up with a startled cry, bolted upright, and backpedaled until his body hugged the wall.

Oscar burst out laughing. Drabek grinned beside him.

“For the grandson of a mobster, you sure are chicken,” he finally managed between chuckles.

Roman recovered his composure and glared at him. “What the hell do you mean by that?!”

Oscar wiped his eyes, full of mirth still. “There’s no use being stubborn, kid. We know who your grandfather is. If you’d told us who you were in the first place, we might have treated you a little better than these rats.”

He sneered at the figures cowering in the adjacent prisons.

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