Page 85 of Reaper Unhinged
I didn’t have the energy to argue, and all I’d eaten for hours was cheesy toast. “Can we have chicken or steak?”
“We can have both,” Bobby said with a smile.
Grayson took my hand and tugged me into the lounge. He sat and pulled me onto his lap where I curled up and closed my eyes.
Uri and I hadn’t done much sleeping, and my body clock was totally out of whack from going back and forth from the Underealm. Had Conah received the phoenix? Would he come? The poor vamps in the garage deserved to feel safe. What if we got attacked by super vamps again?
“Fee.” Grayson’s chest vibrated soothingly beneath me. “Stop thinking and sleep. We can sort it all when you’re rested. Sleep. I’ve got you.”
As I slipped under another thought occurred to me. If they stopped my heart and I didn’t wake up again, I might end the Underealm’s hope of escaping Mammon’s rule, but if I was honest, that wasn’t the worst fear in my heart. The worst fear was that I’d never see my guys again. I needed to see them one last time.
I needed Conah to come here.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mal
There is death all around us. So many demons slaughtered, too many injured. Mammon struck hard and fast, and the fucker left carnage in his wake. The south barracks held by my battalion is in pieces. The building where my soldiers live has been decimated, and dead bodies strew the flatlands as far as the eye can see. The sky is gray and churning, reflecting my inner turmoil.
Fresh troops will be here soon; in the meantime, the handful of survivors drag the dead into piles ready to be burned while the injured sit around small campfires nursing their own wounds. Feathers litter the ground, black and red, like a carpet.
Yes, fresh troops will come, but for what? To meet the same fate as the ones that came before them. I should have been here.
I should have been here to lead them. We’ve had too many years of peace, and we’ve grown complacent.
Something has to change.
“Daemons,” Conah says from beside me. “I’m not sure what breed yet, but I’ve taken inventory of the wounds, and I will find out.”
“Mammon’s recruiting from the fringes of the Underealm.”
“From the daemons that were pushed out of their homes by the fallen and their offspring,” Conah says. “There’s obviously enough resentment and animosity left for them to fight against Lilith.”
“He must have promised them lands.”
“And he’ll renege on his promise,” Conah says. “Mammon won’t share. It isn’t his style.”
A gentle breeze at odds with the climate of this scene brushes my cheek. I inhale the coppery scent of blood, and my gums ache with hunger. I should feed, but any blood that isn’t Fee’s tastes like ash. I think I might have replaced one addiction for another.
“How are our numbers looking?” Conah asks.
We’ve lost the cadets we’d trained to Mammon. He has them, and goodness knows what he’s doing to them. We’ve lost three battalions of soldiers, and we’ve lost our queen.
“Crap.” I sigh. “Are we going to win this war when it starts?”
Conah snorts. “The war has already begun.”
He’s right. Mammon is chipping away at us. While we push our efforts into recovering Lilith, he’s slicing into our defenses. We’re going about this all wrong, and suddenly I know what we need to do.
“We have to stop looking for her.”
Conah frowns across at me, his sapphire eyes bright against the grime and blood that smears his face. “What?”
“It’s what he wants, don’t you see? He wants us to focus on finding her. That way, we leave our troops without the commanders they need. That way, he slowly disables our defenses.”
I can see from the tightening around Conah’s eyes that he’s considering this too.
“We need to change strategy.”
