Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

LYRE

As the Head Consul’s office door closed behind Piper, Lyre inhaled, his nostrils flaring.

The daemon scent was stronger here.

With Piper sequestered in the empty and relatively safe office, he slunk down the hall to the kitchen. Pausing there, he scanned the room, his senses stretching for any sign of danger.

He could smell more than a single daemon—one male and one female.

Wherever they were, it wasn’t in the kitchen. Lyre hastened to the pantry, his shoes crunching over splinters of wood and broken dishware. The door hung open and the shelves were a lot barer than he remembered. From the bottom shelf, he pulled out a plastic bin and filled it with crackers, jars of preserves, granola bars wrapped in wax paper, and bottled drinks.

Heaving the tote up, he carried it to the back door. He shoved the door open with his foot and stepped into the fresh, cool air outside.

With a touch of magic, Lyre strengthened his cloaking spell and started across the lawn. After only a few steps, the back of his neck prickled. Someone was watching him. Cloaking spells only disguised a daemon’s presence. They didn’t do shit when your enemy had already spotted you.

He kept walking, heading for the tree line where he could hide the tote. His nerves wound tighter with each step, but he reached the edge of the lawn without issue. He shoved the tote into a bush, and as he turned back toward the manor, he reached for his hidden spell chain to activate another defensive weaving.

Movement flashed in his peripheral vision—someone shooting out of the trees. A blast of magic caught him in the chest and sloughed off his defensive weave. But the caster charged in right behind his spell, and Lyre hadn’t activated his second defensive shield yet—the one that protected him from physical harm.

The larger daemon slammed Lyre into a tree, seized him by the throat, and lifted him off his feet before smashing him into the trunk a second time. Lyre grabbed the daemon’s wrist, fingers digging in as he tried to ease the pressure on his windpipe.

“What do we have here?” His attacker cocked his head, his stringy blond hair hanging in his face. “It’s a little incubus bitch. Has dragon-boy been fooling around with you instead of doing his job?”

Lyre opened and closed his mouth, unable to make a sound. The daemon relaxed his grip enough for Lyre to wheeze in a desperate breath. His head swam.

“Tell me where he is,” the daemon ordered.

“Where who is?” Lyre choked.

“Your boyfriend, Ash.” The daemon curled his upper lip derisively. “He’s around here somewhere, and after what I did to his leg, he won’t be moving fast.”

Ah, so this was Cottus. Lyre had heard of the assassin but never met him before. How tragic that their first meeting would also be their last.

“So, here are your options,” Cottus continued. “Tell me where Ash is, and?—”

Lyre squeezed his eyes shut and flicked his fingers, unleashing a swift spell. Magic erupted in a blinding flash.

Cottus recoiled with a curse. Lyre broke free from his grip and ducked sideways. Recovering quickly, Cottus flung a blade of maroon magic. It caught the tree trunk as Lyre ducked behind it, wood chips exploding in every direction.

With another flare of maroon light, the trunk split. The tree toppled sideways as Lyre backed hastily away, his trembling hands raised in a pointless defensive gesture.

“You know I’m going easy on you, don’t you?” Cottus sneered. “You’re only alive because I’m sick of chasing Ash. Tell me where he is, or”—he raised his hand, conjuring a spinning orb of power—“my next attack will splatter you all over the ground.”

Lyre shuffled back another two steps, his wide eyes darting between Cottus’s face and the spinning red spell. Deciding he’d opened enough of a gap, he whipped a dart of power at Cottus. The assassin cast a shield with his free hand—and Lyre’s spell shattered it.

Lyre pitched his second spell in the next instant. The binding encased Cottus in sizzling power, paralyzing him with his red spell still swirling above his palm.

Strength swept through Lyre as he shed his glamour. Before the transformation had even completed, he was reaching over his shoulder. His fingers found an arrow and slid it from his quiver while his other hand closed around the smooth, glossy wood of his recurve bow.

He nocked the arrow and raised his bow as he drew the string back to his cheek. Taking aim with steady hands, he leveled the arrowhead at the assassin’s forehead from five paces away.

Fear lit Cottus’s eyes, but shock dominated his expression—disbelief at the sudden calm of his supposedly terrified adversary.

Lyre smiled.

The arrow went clean through Cottus’s skull. The daemon’s orb spell exploded, blasting a chunk out of the body before it hit the ground. Lyre covered his face with one arm as blood spattered him.

Passing the mutilated corpse, he retrieved his arrow, wiped it off on his already stained shirt, and dropped it back into the quiver. Power slid over him as he shifted back into glamour, and he sighed wistfully as familiar weakness settled into his muscles. No one liked being around incubi in their true forms. He’d spent most of his life in glamour.

He rolled Cottus over with one foot. It would’ve been a different fight had Cottus not underestimated the seemingly helpless incubus. Next to Ash, Lyre looked even more harmless.

He smirked. He’d have to tell Ash about the “boyfriend” comment, just because it would tick him off.

Abandoning his dead foe, Lyre grabbed the food tote and carried it twenty paces away from the body before hiding it again. Then he broke into a jog, hoping Piper hadn’t gotten into any trouble while he’d been busy.

As he darted through the back door, something thumped loudly—a sound like a body hitting the floor. He shot across the kitchen but pulled up short as Piper careened out of the hallway, breezing right past him with her eyes on the open pantry.

“Lyre?” she called.

Right. He’d strengthened his cloaking spell. Grinning, he slipped around behind her.

“Hey there, pretty thing,” he crooned in her ear.

She yelped and spun around with a glare. “Where have you been? I was almost kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?” He glanced over her, taking in the sloppy binding spell trapping her arms against her sides. He poked her shoulder, using a drop of magic to snap the spell. “Did you find?—”

Footsteps thundered up to the open door Lyre had come through. Three haemons stumbled to a stop in the threshold.

“There they are!” one shouted.

“Shoot them!”

The middlemost haemon raised a gun. Lyre snatched Piper around the waist and lunged behind the kitchen island. With a bang, a shot flashed over their heads and pinged against a cupboard. Something small hit the floor with a clatter.

Lyre frowned at the projectile and its fuzzy pink top. “Is that a tranquilizer dart?”

“I did say they tried to kidnap me.”

“Why?”

“No idea.”

“Show yourselves!” a haemon called. “Or we’ll come back there!”

“What’s the plan?” Lyre asked Piper. The only ideas he had involved more magic and murder than were wise.

“Um.” She glanced over her shoulder and gestured. “In here.”

She darted into the pantry, and he followed on her heels, slamming the door once he was inside. Gripping the knob, he wove a spell through the metal, locking the handle so it couldn’t be turned. The haemons would have to rip the door off its hinges to get in.

But that left him and Piper standing in a pantry with no other exit.

He lifted his eyebrows. “I hope there’s a step two to this plan.”

She pulled a box out from under the lowermost shelf and opened a sliding panel. Another secret passageway? How many hidden rooms were there in this house?

Shaking his head, he followed her in and closed the panel. The passage was even smaller than the one connected to her bedroom. He squeezed through the tight space, trying not to pick up any slivers as his shoulders scraped the walls. This wasn’t fun at all. Why couldn’t the manor have a nice secret sex dungeon instead?

The passage connected to a vertical shaft with a wooden ladder, and at the top, they came out into a linen closet illuminated by a strip of light under the door. Lyre squashed himself into the space, standing almost nose to nose with Piper.

“Another closet,” he pointed out.

She cleared her throat. “Escaping, remember?”

“Ladies first,” he replied, adding a heavy note of innuendo to the words.

With another faint cough, she cracked the door open, checked the hallway, then scooted out. He followed, and they silently headed for her bedroom where they could escape out the window and get off the property. On the level below, the inexplicable gathering of haemons argued loudly, then a loud crash sounded—their attempt to break down the pantry door, he assumed.

Another bang—then a loud pop much closer than the main-floor kitchen.

A sharp sting erupted in the side of his neck, and he clapped a hand over the spot as he whirled around. He pulled a tranquilizer dart free from his skin and bared his teeth at the daemon half hidden behind a partially closed bedroom door.

Why was he only remembering now that he still hadn’t engaged his physical defense shield?

The hallway tilted under his feet, and as a buzzing daze engulfed his mind, he hoped his idiotic oversight wouldn’t cost him and Piper their lives.