Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Breaking into Petra’s private suite wasn’t nearly as fun as breaking into her office, mostly because it didn’t involve setting anyone on fire.

In fact, it didn’t take any effort at all.

A bubble of anger burst in his chest as he seamlessly slid through the basic wards guarding her door. In another building, his witch and the rest of the cathedral staff were busy enjoying whatever it was they ate for dinner, leaving a perfect opportunity for him — anyone — to trespass.

Silas stood by the door for several seconds, his eyes narrowed as he peered into the darkness. Like her office, the walls were paneled with wood, the windows were narrow but tall, and the furniture in the sitting room was elegant but clearly aged. The rich scent of her was strong, too, all warmth and spice that made the primal thing in him flex its claws.

And like her office, the room was bugged.

His wrist cuff vibrated twice in a specific pulsing pattern, alerting him to the number of surveillance devices it’d picked up.

Normally, he found the existence of surveillance amusing. Cameras had trouble picking up the presence of a shadow-cloaked demon even when they were the most advanced kind, and he liked the challenge of dismantling audio equipment while some unknown lackey listened on, oblivious.

But that thing in him stirred at the thought of Petra’s space being invaded. Not by him. He had every right to be there, but by unknown others. Who knew what they’d seen? What they’d heard? He understood why someone might have eyes on her office, where she took meetings and kept information, but in her private space…

Dissatisfaction rankled him anew.

With a flick of his claw across the screen on his wrist, a low, nearly inaudible whine broke the silence. There was a low pop, the sound of a mic’s natural feedback, and then quiet.

Silas stalked across the room, noting that, despite spending three years in the suite, Petra had no personal effects scattered around. No pictures on the walls, no throw blankets over the back of the couch. He couldn’t say it was pristine, necessarily, not when the suite had the distinct feeling of being lived in, but it didn’t feel like hers.

Maybe she knows she’s watched in here, too, he thought, ire growing as he threaded a path around the low coffee table and toward the walnut-paneled door across the room.

His body moved differently when he took on his shadow form. While he could never manage the pure liquid grace of Tal and other wraiths, he didn’t walk like a human, either. Silas glided across the old wood floor without hitting a single creaky board. His hand, fingers unnaturally long and swathed in shifting darkness, curled around the brass doorknob of Petra’s bedroom.

An explosion of scent stopped him there in the doorway.

A deep, involuntary rumble worked its way up his throat as he savored the smell of incense, sunlight, and lush woman. He’d never been particularly scent-motivated, unlike his fully demon cousins, but this…

He now understood what’d driven them so crazy when they encountered something sweet around this time of the year.

The concentrated scent of Petra was enough to make blood rush to his cock so fast, he actually swayed.

Silas bit back a groan as he adjusted himself, trying to ease the pressure. He was there on a fact-finding mission, not to roll around in her bed and maybe paint her sheets with his come. Not yet, anyway.

Maybe later, when he had his little goddess on a pretty golden leash, he’d let her watch as he stroked his cock to the scent of her. If she was extra good, he’d even let her sleep on the sheets he soiled.

Oh, but the primal thing inside him liked the idea of her sleeping cocooned in his scent. It liked it almost as much as the thought of her walking around in her sacred robes, her thighs and pink cunt wet with his release. Any predator would know the sharp, musky scent of come and understand the pious priestess was well-fucked.

It wasn’t in the cards for that night, but he couldn’t stop himself from drifting toward the dark shape of Petra’s simple canopied bed. The itch to stroke the pillow where she laid her golden head was too?—

A vibrating pulse stopped him in the center of the room.

Motherfucker.

At once, territorial rage crackled through his shadows, whipping them out across the floor in search of a target. The shadows that were him and yet not craved destruction, but it was as if they sensed what was Petra’s and what wasn’t. The seeking tentacles didn’t want to destroy her den. They wanted to find the intruder who’d made the colossal mistake of touching something Silas claimed.

It was one thing to know her outer suite had been bugged. It was quite another to discover her bedroom was, too.

Silas activated the sensor on his watch and waited for it to ping a signal around the room. His jaw clenched hard as he held himself still. It took less than a minute for the information to flicker across the shielded screen.

Barely warded, bugged, and watched.

Audio and visual surveillance had been detected in her bedroom. Just one device, but one was more than enough.

Silas turned slowly, until he stood facing the wall opposite Petra’s simple bed. Glory’s symbol, a blazing sun cast in polished bronze and glass, was mounted to the wall. When he lifted his wrist toward it, a quick pulse followed.

He tilted his head to one side. I’m gonna kill you, he silently promised the person behind the camera and, should they be separate entities, the one who’d ordered it placed there. I’m gonna let her watch, just like you’ve watched her.

It wasn’t fun being angry. He preferred to laugh, to do things that interested him and made him feel alive. Very little stirred him to true anger because very little made him feel much of anything at all. But sometimes, when the mood struck, he didn’t mind a bit of rage. It added a little something special to an act as mundane as murder.

This was different. This was a sort of anger he’d never experienced before, and it was about as pleasurable as having a tooth pulled.

Silas reached into his pocket and withdrew a notebook, small enough to fit into the palm of his shadowed hand. He flipped the cover over with his thumb claw, opening the notebook to the tiny, wax-lined pages he sewed in himself. Each one held a variety of tiny, clear-backed stickers, and every one of those stickers held a sigil, crafted of hair-thin wire, a battery too small to be seen, and a similarly-sized microchip.

Like most everything he used in his line of work, he’d crafted them himself, and each one had a specific function.

Using the tip of his claw, Silas carefully peeled a sticker off of the paper before tucking the notebook back into his pocket. That done, he raised his arm and, gently enough to not accidentally move the ornament, placed the sticker just out of sight.

A flare of magic, hot and bright and metallic, filled the air. Silas rocked back on his heels, gut still roiling with anger but at least momentarily satisfied that no one would watch her now.

Except him, of course, but that was okay. She was his.

He would have liked to rip the ornament off the wall and smash it under his boot heel, but that wasn’t smart. It was better to have Petra’s watchers simply view the loop of the last week, as he’d programmed into the sticker. It usually took days, sometimes even weeks, for people to notice they were watching the same footage, especially if there was a rotating crew assigned to the surveillance.

That bought him plenty of time to get information out of Petra, track down who was behind it, kill them, and then delete any footage they’d saved.

Silas turned his head back and forth, judging the line of sight from the hidden camera. Fury snapped again, a lightning bolt through his very being.

It was situated directly across from Petra’s bed.

There was no telling what they’d seen, but even if it wasn’t those manicured fingers pulling sad little orgasms from her pretty pink cunt, it was too much. He didn’t like the thought of someone else watching her sleep. He didn’t like knowing that they’d seen her dress. He didn’t like sharing Petra and all the mundane, private things she did when she thought she was alone.

He didn’t like it at all.

Silas wasn’t entirely sure what he expected to find in Petra’s bare little bedroom, but rigidly folded clothing, a box of cremated human remains, and three separate caches of non-perishable food wasn’t it.

There were no frills, baubles, ornaments, or hidden luxuries. Her makeup kit fit in one tiny bag, neatly stored on her small bathroom counter. The entirety of her wardrobe was contained in the top two drawers of her dresser. The most lavish things he discovered were her formal robes and the Crown of Glory, the elaborate headdress and veil she wore during the equinox services.

Well, that and a disproportionate amount of lingerie. It appeared his witch had a weakness for satin and lace, but only a small one. The only reason it was notable — besides his obvious interest — was because she had so little clothing to begin with. All of it was high quality, elegant, and well-cared for, but there was so little of it that he actually went looking for more.

But no, in the closet he found only a thick peacoat, her lavish and jewel-encrusted ceremonial gown, and a small, dented suitcase.

The only things he discovered in abundance were food and the ashes of a man named Maximilian Dooraker.

Silas sat on Petra’s bed, his boots off and her softest nightgown draped over his shoulders. Around him were her caches — each one squirreled away in a discreet but accessible spot. He’d discovered one in her office as well and hadn’t thought much of it, but three stashes of food seemed excessive. Granola bars, crackers, bottles of water, fruit snacks, trail mix… It looked like an assortment of things one might filch from a snack table at a convention.

Or, he thought, brows bunching, from the dining hall of a cathedral.

Something about that bothered him, and it wasn’t just because the more he dug into Petra’s life, the more questions he had. He stared at a flashing neon sign and yet somehow couldn’t make sense of what it was telling him.

More troubling, of course, were the ashes.

Silas turned the box over in his hand, examining the plain, waxed wood and the simple plaque on top. He knew the name, of course. Maximilian Dooraker had been the previous High Priest of St. Emaine’s cathedral and died unexpectedly some years prior, leaving a small power vacuum Petra, a no-name witch, had filled.

It made sense that his remains would be interred in the cathedral and, perhaps in the interim, be placed into the care of the new High Priestess, but something about it seemed off to him.

Silas scowled at the box. Why does she keep you next to her bed?

He gave the box a good, hearty shake, but he wasn’t sure if it was to startle an answer out of a dead man or to listen to the tell-tale rattle of bone fragments and dust.

Tal’s innocent question rose unbidden: Is that an ex-lover of hers, do you think?

Dooraker would have been centuries her senior, but odder pairings had happened, particularly in corrupt power structures like Glory’s Temple. So long as she was a fully-grown woman who knew her own mind, something as inconsequential as an age gap certainly wouldn’t have stopped him from fucking Petra. He didn’t relish the thought of dying long before her, though.

Centuries was an awfully long time for her to have to stay single.

“Tough shit, old man. She won’t be doing that for you,” he told the box. Silas gave it one more resentful rattle before he leaned over to tuck it back into its hiding place beside her bed. He didn’t particularly care if she knew he’d gone through her stuff — that would be obvious — but he tried to be measured about these things.

Petra would be upset knowing he did it, but seeing him casually inspecting the remains of her dusty lover would take that to a level he didn’t have the patience to deal with.

She didn’t seem like a shrieker, but the more he peered past her masks, the more she surprised him, so he really couldn’t be sure.

I’m about to find out, he thought, lounging back against her too-soft pillows. He listened to the sound of her opening the outer door as he ripped open a pack of chocolate candies with his teeth. His other hand mindlessly bunched her nightgown, rubbing the petal-soft fabric against the callused skin of his palm.

Her skin was softer, making the nightgown a pale substitute, but he liked knowing she wore it to bed. The fact that it smelled like her, all warm and sexy, made it irresistible. The fact that it now smelled like him, too, was a delicious bonus.

Silas chewed on his candy quietly, holding the rest of his body very still and cloaked in deep shadow, as the sounds of her footsteps approached the bedroom door. Petra walked briskly, on the balls of her feet, with long, purposeful strides.

The knob turned. The muscles of Silas’s abdomen flexed with anticipation. Chocolate melted on his tongue just as the door swung open.

His breath caught.

She glows in the dark.

Not a lot. Maybe not enough for the average person to notice. But for a demon whose soul was welded with shadow, the faint luminescence of skin was striking. It was the afterglow of a warm day, the memory of sunshine, and something about it made him want to sink his claws into her and never let that warmth go.