Tarang sniffed her skin and carefully licked her pinky.
Lena hid a small smile. Approval glittered in Yuliy’s and Gustav’s eyes.
Anyone Tarang liked was a keeper in their books.
Delphine watched the familiar for a moment before meeting Vlad’s gaze. “Are you a sorcerer?”
The question startled him. He fisted his hands.
He knew he would have hidden his reaction better had he been in possession of his incubus powers.
“You know about witches and sorcerers?”
Delphine shrugged. “A bit. Serena is acquainted with a bunch of them. She married the son of a demon after all and lives with a bunch of divine beasts in Chicago, a fact I believe you are aware of after meeting her a few months ago.”
Wariness crept onto Yuliy’s face. Gustav and Lena tensed.
Vlad had told them about the people he’d met during the time he’d helped Mae fight the Sorcerer King.
“Don’t worry,” Delphine said quietly at his faint frown. “She didn’t reveal the details of the mission she and Lou Flint undertook in New York. She didn’t need to. Most of us in the corps know about the supernatural world that exists alongside ours. After all, we have Immortal DNA inside us.”
“Has she allayed your doubts?” Yuliy grunted in the hush that followed.
Vlad hesitated. He could hardly refuse to have Delphine as his bodyguard if she both knew about the otherworldly powers he and Tarang possessed and accepted them.
Still, she doesn’t know the whole truth about me.He met the super soldier’s gaze squarely, his heartbeat accelerating on a note of apprehension that wasn’t him at all.Here goes nothing.
“In answer to your prior question, no, I’m not a sorcerer. I am an incubus who possesses demonic magic. And Tarang is my familiar.”
Delphine’s pupils widened infinitesimally.
“An incubus?” she repeated in a neutral voice.
“My mother was a Fire Witch.” Vlad faltered and glanced at Yuliy, guilt twisting his stomach. “And my father is Ilmon, the king of Incubi and Succubi who dwells in Hell.”
Yuliy’s expression didn’t change. His uncle had accepted Ilmon’s identity and the truth behind how Vlad came to be conceived with a calmness that still shocked Vlad ever since he’d informed him of what he’d learned in Hell.
He’d wondered what would happen if the crime lord and the demon ever found themselves in the same room. Vlad masked a grimace.
Knowing Ilmon, he’ll probably weep buckets and beg for Yuliy’s forgiveness.
His father was the biggest crybaby in the underworld, a fact that often worried his demon allies since he had a tendency to drown entire valleys with his tears.
“Shall we get down to business?” Yuliy said curtly. He turned one of his computer monitors around. “Two nights ago, there was an incident in Manhattan. One that will have serious ramifications for this city’s criminal underworld if we don’t solve it fast.”
He pulled up the video that had circulated on the internet before Jared shut it down. “This footage was taken secretly and posted to a public channel. We found the camera hidden inside a plant. It had been shot to pieces.”
Vlad’s jaw tightened as his uncle played the footage from theOro Divino.
CHAPTERTEN
Delphine maintaineda neutral expression as she watched the masked gang break inside the restaurant, Tarang materialize his presence, and Vlad and a man who could only be Enrique Cortes face their enemy in a devastating show of power bathed in gold and crimson magic.
It was her first time seeing the powers Serena had once described. Powers that were as otherworldly as the ones she herself possessed by virtue of the Immortal DNA weaved into her flesh and bones.
She couldn’t drag her gaze away from the dazzling sight that was Vlad in action. The way his eyes gleamed with scarlet fire. The diamond blades that sang in his hands. The formidable energy bombs he manifested.
He was a fighter in his prime, as bewitchingly beautiful as he was deadly.