Page 129 of The Demon Court

“Demon!” Minerva called out from inside the Tower. “I have laced the walls with runes that will trap you forever. If you take one step inside this Tower, you will be forever entombed within it.”

He doubted that.

“And you will be stuck with me, Minerva.” Lust stalked the edges of the Tower, dragging his claws along the stone as the screeching noise burned in his ears. “Do you know how long I can keep you alive? Torture is too simple of a word for what I plan on doing to you. You took everything from me.”

“I didn’t take her from you, Demon. You took her from me.”

How was she projecting her voice? He glanced up at the electricity crackling through the clouds and thought perhaps that was it. She used the storm to make her voice sound like it was coming from everywhere. As if that would confuse him. He knew where she was.

He could smell her.

“Runes will not trap me,” he growled.

“Demonic energy can always be trapped.”

Perhaps it could, but he was no demon. Obviously Selene had kept his secret, and his heart thudded hard in his chest at the knowledge. She hadn’t come here to betray him, though it would have shocked him if she had. She’d come here to beg for her life, and her mother had little pity left to give even her dearest daughter.

Baring his teeth in a snarl, he flexed his own magic and sent it out into the walls. The runes were old, ancient even. She’d found the right ones, but she’d missed a single line in the center rune that was easily over a hundred markings.

That mistake would cost her.

“Where is she?” he called out. “I will leave you all alive if you tell me where she is.”

“You are in no place to be making bargains, Demon. She came home because she doesn’t want you. Because she knows you cannot give her what we can. She needed someone to save her life. You failed her, and that means she’s mine.”

Goading him? No, gloating, he thought. Minerva didn’t think he’d come into the Tower and if he did, she was certain that she’d won.

“We both know this is a small chance you’ll actually trap me. It’s even smaller of a chance that I won’t get her back.”

“Perhaps I will kill her in front of you, just for the insolence of your belief that you are better than us.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I would dare much to keep my children alive.”

And just like that, his anger snapped again. Lust drew back his fist and pounded it through the rune that she’d made a mistake on. Over and over again as the dust grew around him and the stone broke beneath the hard plating of his fist. A scream lifted and then more, until they were a symphony to every strike.

The sorceresses had scattered by the time he stepped through the rune and into the Tower. Power crackled around him, and his horns scraped the stones as he moved through them.

But Minerva? She stood in the center of all her chaos with fanatic jubilation on her face. “You are trapped.”

He pointed to the destroyed rune. “You missed a line.”

Her eyes only had a fraction of a second to widen before he was upon her. Demon he became, as his claws flashed and his teeth bared in frightening brilliance.

She fought. Her power lifted her into the air as though she were flying, only for him to catch her ankle and throw her onto the ground. Another sorceress screamed at him and he felt the strike of something hard on his back.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the pieces of a chair shattered on the ground. Snarling, he reached for the woman, who glared at him with anger and not fear. She would die, he decided. And so she did.

The spray of blood from her throat painted the white walls red. She spun away from him, her hands pressed against the wound as though that would save her. It would not.

Another sorceress launched at him, orbs floating in circles around her, each one filled with burning oil. A telekinetic, rare in these parts. He’d thought Minerva had trained them all out of strong powers.

Tilting his head to the side, he watched as she tossed one at him. Catching it in midair, he threw it back to the young woman, who went up like a candle. Her screams echoed through the walls and that’s when he heard the others. So many more sorceresses than he thought lived here.

It was time to end this. Growling, he turned back to Minerva, ready to cut the head off this snake.

But she wasn’t there.

---