Page 32 of Tall, Dark & Horny

“My mom never really talked about my father,” I explained. “Whenever I asked, she changed the subject. But she always got nervous during storms. Even when it was barely raining.”

Adan listened without interrupting, just rubbed his palm down my arm in a comforting gesture.

“I used to think she was just being dramatic,” I went on, my voice thick with the tears that always came when I talked about her. “But maybe she knew that something inside me wasn’t normal. Or at least suspected.”

A strange warmth stirred low in my belly, curling outward like the slow spread of embers.

I pressed my palm over my stomach with a gasp, and Adan tugged me close, covering mine with his, firm and steady. “What’s wrong?”

The warmth inside me didn’t fade. It intensified. Not painfully but heavy, as though something old was stirring in my blood, yawning awake after too long in the dark.

I turned slowly, my eyes drawn to the wall across from us. One of the protective glyphs shimmered faintly. It was no brighter than the others, but somehow called to me. Not with sound or even a touching sensation. Just a magnetic tug…like gravity.

Before I could second-guess the impulse, I stepped away from Adan and reached out. My fingertips brushed the center of the symbol, and it flared to life beneath my touch, glowing with the same violet hue I’d seen react to him.

But this time, the color didn’t dim. It pulsed.

Beneath my feet, the stone warmed while the air thickened. The room seemed to lean toward me the way it had bowed for Abaddon. An acknowledgment without submission.

My breath caught in my throat as the space around me shifted, folding inward. The air darkened. And just for a moment, I wasn’t in Adan’s quarters anymore.

I stood before a throne made of jagged and sharp obsidian. Instead of being elegant, it was violent. Primal. Ancient.

Flames coiled at its base, flickering in unnatural colors—deep indigo, shiny gold, and the same magenta I’d seen shimmer at the tip of Adan’s demon tail. The heat should have burned, but it didn’t. The air felt charged with electricity. Similar to the moment before a lightning strike.

I couldn’t see the figure seated on the throne, but I felt him.

A pressure built behind my eyes, and a distant rumble echoed in my ears, like thunder muffled by miles of stone. Then a voice whispered my name, low and cold.

“Calliope.”

I stumbled back with a gasp, yanking my hand away from the glyph. The light vanished, and the room snapped back into place like a string pulled taut.

My knees buckled, but Adan caught me before I hit the ground, his arms strong around my waist.

“What in the world was that?” I whispered, twisting in his hold to wrap my arms around his muscular frame.

“I don’t think it was from this world.” He tugged me close and stroked his palm down my spine. “I think the demon who sired you just made himself known.”

“My father?”

I blinked up at him and shook my head. I’d spent the past two years without a single living relative, feeling like I’d been set adrift by my mother’s death. But the man who’d gotten her pregnant might be out there somewhere. A demon.

The air around me slowly settled, but the buzzing inside didn’t. It was like my blood had turned into a current I couldn’t shut off. I’d felt something ancient reach for me, and I hadn’t recoiled. An instinct deep inside me had responded.

I drew in a shaky breath, only half steady on my feet. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

Adan guided me into the bedroom and over to the edge of the bed. He sat beside me, his hand never leaving mine. “With how the glyph responded to you, it must be the power my father mentioned, already starting to awaken.”

The words should’ve scared me, but they didn’t. Nothing did with Adan beside me.

I glanced down at our joined hands. “I know I chose not to continue my education, but I think I need a crash course in ‘Demon 101.’ Maybe a syllabus. Class schedule. Office hours.”

That earned a small smile from him, the kind that chased away the shadows. “We’ll figure it out together.”

I knew we had more pressing matters to discuss, but I couldn’t help but ask, “Do you think we’ll be able to find out who he is? My father?”

His thumb brushed over my knuckles. “I think we already have part of the answer. The throne you saw wasn’t just demonic. It was primordial. My guess? He’s one of the old ones whose name the underworld still whispers.”

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