Page 4 of Another Damned Darling

Not good.

The demon took another step toward me and sneered, revealing a row of small, spiked teeth. It pointed one long, black claw at my neck, and I instinctively pressed my free hand to the spot, wincing at the slick of blood beneath my fingers. Then it growled something bordering on coherent, and when my brain finally processed the word, my whole body went rigid.

My trusty four-inch blade suddenly felt like a prop in my hand, nothing more than a child’s toy.

“Darling,” it growled again. Its green eyes flared in the darkness.

What in the actual fuck? How did that thing know who I was?

“Do I know you?” It was a struggle to keep my voice level.

The demon’s lips curled up on one side like I’d only confirmed its suspicions, and my gut twisted in my stomach. That smirk was entirely too human, entirely too calculating.

Shit, shit, shit.

That was all the time I had to formulate a thought before the thing lunged at me again. I scrambled back and almost got clear, so freaking close, but it managed to hook its claw around my ankle and spin me, sending me diving face first into the dirt and damp leaves. I tightened my fingers around the knife—silently thanking the god of fuck that I still had it—and rolled onto my back. There was no way I was letting that thing slice me open without looking it in the eyes.

The demon stalked slowly toward me, moving like it savored the idea of drawing out the moment as I tried to scoot backward, until another hair-raising growl rolled in from behind me. We both froze.

I probably could have taken one of those nasty smelling demons down by myself. With a little luck. But if there were two of them?

Yeah, I was officially fucked.

2

HOOK

I needed to get up. I’d been lying awake in my bed for what felt like hours while sleep, that elusive mistress, remained just out of reach. My sense of time had been skewed for a while, years maybe, and the pitch black of my seabound accommodations offered no assistance in gauging the time of day. And yet, despite deliberately cutting myself off from the world outside my shadowed quarters, I knew someone was waiting on the other side of the door. I could hear his hesitance as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, building up the nerve to wake me.

Any minute now.

The tick of the clock on my mantle was relentless, growing louder with each passing second. Tick, tick, tick. Every sense zeroed in on that sound until it resonated in my chest, as if my heart had no choice but to match its pace.

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

I wasn’t the least bit startled when the booming knock echoed through the room, but knowing it was coming didn’t stop me from cursing under my breath. It was an invasive reminder of just how much enchanted rum I’d drank in my attempt to force a night of restful sleep.

My failed attempt.

I pressed my palms to my temples and closed my eyes. “Come in, William.”

The heavy door swung open, and my first mate swept into the room, pulling back the heavy, velvet curtains along the viewing wall with an unusually gleeful air about him. “The demon has escaped, sir.”

My head was a fireball of pain. Every muscle in my body ached as though I’d taken a tumble down a very long, very steep flight of stairs.

I rolled my head, groaning at the way my pulse seemed to thump through every inch of it. “Thank you for the wonderful news, William. It’s fantastic.”

He ignored the sarcasm dripping from every syllable of my response as he moved around the room. “I thought you would be pleased to know your charge is no longer wallowing.”

It was entirely too late to be pleased about anything. Or was it too early? I cracked one eye open and glared at the only man on my ship who would dare to interrupt me in the middle of the night.

“Are you not aware that every single time the shadow breaks free, it runs to the same place? I was certain that fact was common knowledge at this point.”

And I’d be damned if I’d ever tried to follow it back to that insufferable realm, especially when I knew it would be forced to come back, one way or another. It wasn’t the demon’s physical form that was trapped here. It was its shadow.

The demon’s body could travel where it pleased, it just couldn’t survive more than a day on its own.

William offered me a curt nod but didn’t speak. Nor did he turn to leave.

---