Page 32 of The Demon's Due
Morgan’s voice, buried deep in the cockpit of their shared body, groaned.“With our luck, we’ll bang straight into the Eiffel Tower.”
Ashmedai’s grin widened. “This monument is important, yes? Then we will make history.”
They landed just outside Paris and walked the rest of the way, slipping into Père Lachaise Cemetery under cover of night. Ash explained that the shadows told him where to go.Cloaked in twilight, the place had an unsettling majesty. Ancient trees arched overhead, their leaves whispering in the wind, casting dappled moonlight over graves and mausoleums. Statues of angels loomed in silence.
Morgan guided them through the winding lanes, past moss-covered headstones and names that whispered of centuries: Proust, La Fontaine, Oscar Wilde.
Síofra paused, shivering, at one marker - a weathered sculpture of a man clutching a severed head. The stone beneath it bore no name. Nearby, under the weeping boughs of a willow, an ancient, unmarked slab of rock lay sunken into the ground.
Ashmedai stirred, his voice reverent. “This leads to the tunnels of the dead. The catacombs.”
Smoke peeled across Morgan’s shoulders, the demon taking shape long enough to raise a clawed hand. The slab trembled, stone grinding against stone, until a narrow passage yawned open, a shadowy tunnel plunging into the earth.
“Nope.” Síofra backed up two steps, shaking her head. “Absolutely not. I amnotgoing in there.”
Morgan peered down into the dark, his own stomach knotting. “How are we supposed to see?”
Ashmedai only smirked. He snapped off a low branch from the willow, lifted it to his mouth, and exhaled a tongue of fire. Thewood caught instantly, burning with a steady, unnatural light. He pressed it into Morgan’s hand. “Better?”
“You could’ve done that five minutes ago,” Morgan grumbled.
Ashmedai ignored him. “You need to eat more,” he added offhandedly as he melted back into Morgan’s body. “I have been reading. You are eating for two now. Low blood sugar is dangerous if the internet is to be believed.”
Morgan groaned. “You found Google”
“I’ll go first”, he said, gingerly dropping down to look around before slotting their makeshift torch in a holder on the wall and reaching up to help Síofra. His hands caressed her calves to travel up to the curve of her waist and finally bring her skin to skin and hold her there for a minute while smelling her hair.
“This is not how I planned our mating would go,” he sighed into her hair “I promise I will make up for all this,love”
Síofra snorted despite herself, then pressed herself into his muscled chest and held him for a few precious seconds. Then she sobered as they descended into the yawning dark.
The air grew damp, heavy with the smell of earth and bones. Skulls and femurs were stacked in grim walls, endless corridors of the dead. Their footsteps echoed, every sound magnified. Somewhere in the dark, something skittered.
Ashmedai whispered directions, his voice low but steady, until they reached a particular skull wedged among the countless others. “Here,” he said.
Morgan reached for it reluctantly after placing the torch on a holder on the wall. The bone was cold as ice, and crusted with centuries of filth. He braced one hand against the wall of ossified remains and tugged.
The skull didn’t come free easily. It gave a sickeningsquelchas if something half-rotted still clung to it, as if strings of decayed sinew were peeling away. Dust and fragments of teethrained down, the eye sockets staring hollow and accusing as he wrenched it harder.
When it finally tore loose with a wetcrack,the sound echoed down the tunnel like breaking cartilage. A stench puffed out with it, the stale reek of centuries trapped in bone, enough to make his stomach heave.
Morgan grimaced, holding the grim relic at arm’s length. “God. That’s foul.”
The wall groaned.
Suddenly the section collapsed, skulls and bones tumbling in a thunderous avalanche. Dust choked the air. They stumbled back, their hearts hammering, the torchlight flickering.
“Unworthy mortals, frightened by these puny remains. Start digging,” Ashmedai urged. “The sword is close.”
They started digging into the wall while Síofra tried to control her terror. Every so often, dull thumps echoed in the distance behind them. Sometimes too quick, sometimes heavy.
Finally, jutting from a stone block was a corroded hilt. Morgan grasped it, muscles straining and with a final wrench, the sword came free, gleaming faintly as though it was recalling its purpose.
“Yes,” Ashmedai breathed. “Freyr’s blade.”
Morgan turned, lifting the torch. “Good. Now let’s get the hell out of here-”
The words froze in his throat as an inhuman groan echoed from the darkness..
