Hammer Down: Children of the Undying: Book 2 (27 page)

“What did she tell you?”

There was no way she was going to relay all of Sora’s words. “Just enough to give me the feeling it was a complicated situation.”

Zel closed his eyes and squeezed her hand. “You should sleep. Who knows what’s coming tomorrow?”

“Pull your blankets over here. It’ll be warm enough without a fire.”

He obeyed without a word, spreading out the bedroll with her tucked between him and the wall. “I’ll get you out of here,” he said quietly. “You and Ruiz both. Jai’ll take care of her. He’s strong, and he’s stubborn.”

Devi lay down and drew his arm around her. “I’m more worried about you.”

“Don’t be. My mother was right.”

“Good.” He had other people to think about, to protect, and that would keep him from making rash decisions that would put him in danger. “We’ll find out what Aton wants, and we’ll deal with it. Both of us, together.”

His breath stirred the hair at the back of her neck as he pulled her closer. “We’ll find a way to get Jai and Ruiz and get the fuck out of here.”

As escape went, it was more a goal than a plan, but they wouldn’t be able to plan until they knew what the hell Zel’s father wanted. “Do you think they’re okay?”

“Jai bonded her.” His fingers splayed over her stomach in a quiet, possessive gesture. “Do you know what that means?”

“All I know is that a bonded summoner is protected from other demons’ magic.”

“Summoners are vulnerable. Not so much to getting popped, not like humans. You pop a human out of their body and they’re gone. Not a summoner. But they can get leaned on. Flipped. Demon, halfblood, anyone with enough power can make a summoner do any damn thing they want, and make ’em like it, too.”

“I’m aware of that.” It was the main reason no city would harbor a summoner, and why she would never have one in her crew—or so she thought. “I just don’t understand the bonding.”

“It’s…” He cleared his throat, and his hesitation wound a thread of anxiety through Devi. “Only one demon can control a summoner at a time.”

The anxiety blossomed into panic. “He—he took control of her?”

“Not exactly. But his magic is locked around her now. It would take days for anyone to flip her without killing him first. But the trade-off is that she’s open to him all the time. He could control her if he wanted to. She has to trust he won’t.”

“Trust doesn’t come easily for her.” And it wouldn’t have come at all if there had been any other option. It wasn’t a reflection on Jai, but on Juliet. “I should have known. I let my crew keep their secrets, even when I shouldn’t.”

“They seem to have their share.” Another pause, as his thumb smoothed in a slow arch, back and forth over her side. “Aton said that Tanner wasn’t human. Not anymore.”

Another helpless, overwhelmed sob rose, and she swallowed it mercilessly. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Me neither, but I think Tanner did.”

Devi closed her eyes. “What the hell is going on?”

“We’ll figure it out. Tomorrow. Get some rest, Dev. We’re gonna need it.”

How was she supposed to rest now, after all this? “This is a mess, Zel. I’m sorry.”

“I know. Everything gets messy when demons get involved.”

Or humans. She squeezed her eyes tighter. “Good night.”

“Look at me, Devi.”

“I can’t.” It was all too much to process.

His hand slid under her cheek, gentle but unyielding. “Devi.”

Reluctantly, she turned her face to his. “This is stupid. Everyone’s safe for now, and this is… I’m being silly.”

He smiled and smoothed his thumb over her lips. “We’re safe. I didn’t want you here, but now we’re gonna do this. Together.”

The words melted some of her tension, but they couldn’t melt her worry. “I didn’t know if I’d find you and you’d be okay, or—”

“Shh.” He pressed the pad of his thumb against her mouth, stilling her words. “I’m tough to break.”

He was, and it went beyond the physical. “We’re safe,” she echoed. “Promise me you’ll stay that way.”

“Of course.” He almost smiled. “I left Lorenzo in charge. I have to get back before the place falls in around his ears.”

Zel couldn’t doubt himself, not if her life and the lives of others were on the line. “Good, because I don’t think he wants your job.”

“No, probably not. He juggles too many lovers to make that practical.”

“Unless he builds a harem.”

“They might let him.” His voice turned serious again. “I didn’t get a chance to see how many of Aton’s men are warriors. I don’t even know if the sex demons associate with the rest of them.”

There was too much they didn’t know. “We have to be up front with him. For some reason, I get the feeling he’ll do the same.”

“Did my mother tell you that?”

“No.” She’d gotten the distinct sense that what Aton wanted, more than anything else, was not to be dismissed out of hand as a threat to be eliminated. “What she told me is that we can’t underestimate him. And that means we can’t play him.”

“Maybe not.” He slid his hand back down to her abdomen and curled around her. “Like I said, it’ll be okay.”

It’ll be okay.
The words echoed in her head, a consolation, the only thing that allowed her to relax enough to welcome sleep.

It’ll be okay.

Chapter Twenty

A soft hand at her hip woke Devi, followed by Zel’s low whisper. “They’re coming.”

There was no time to wake slowly. Devi bit her tongue and sat up straight, shaking off sleep with ruthless efficiency. Pale light filtered through the boarded windows. “It’s barely morning.”

“Whatever they want, they want it now.” Zel rocked to his feet, his hands held loosely by his sides.

Aton came through the entry to the windowed doors. He knocked, a strange courtesy considering he could see through the cracked and broken panes. “Good morning. I trust you slept well?”

He’d had someone posted outside the nearest window, listening, of that Devi was certain. Only a fool wouldn’t have, and Aton was no fool. “Well enough.”

Zel ignored the pleasantries. “I want to see our people. I want to know they’re safe.”

“Of course.” Aton smiled. “They’ll be at breakfast. Will you join me?”

After the briefest hesitation, Zel glanced at Devi and nodded. “Breakfast would be…welcome.” The word sounded as if it hurt coming out.

Devi grasped his hand and rose, keeping her fingers tight around his. She could only imagine how much harder it must have been for him, having to keep his animosity in check while dealing with the man who’d fathered him.

Zel didn’t look at her again, but he squeezed her hand as he studied Aton. “Will we find out what you want with us over breakfast?”

“You
and
your guests,” Aton assured him as he turned away, waving one hand behind him. “Come.”

Outside, the demons had already begun to gather, some whispering in low tones and staring as Devi and Zel filed out of the house behind Aton and his guards.

Aton led them across the uneven, broken pavement, toward a large house that showed some sign of repair. Zel eyed the neat piles of discarded furniture and detritus, stacked next to salvaged wood, and his grip on Devi’s hand tensed. “It looks like you’re settling in.”

“This particular collection of houses has advantages which could make it a useful base camp.”

“And what advantages are those?”

Aton shrugged. “Access to water, the roads are in surprisingly good shape, smaller cities with a healthy trade ripe for the picking—no offense, Devindra—and… Well, good neighbors.”

“Good neighbors.” Zel’s voice was flat. “Is that what we’re here for? To strike a truce?”

Aton didn’t react to the disbelief in the question. “Not primarily, no.”

Zel opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again, his jaw clenched and his shoulders tight.

More guards stood in the house’s entryway. They averted their eyes when Devi and Zel walked in behind Aton, almost…

Almost as if they were afraid to look at them.

That single notion was more chilling than anything else that had transpired in the camp, but it slipped Devi’s mind when she caught sight of her friend through an open doorway to the right. “Juliet.”

Her friend looked up from where she sat on the floor, her eyes huge in her pale, shadowed face. “Devi? Shit, you shouldn’t be here.”

“I’ll leave you to reassure yourselves about the safety of your companions,” Aton murmured behind them. “When you’re ready, please join me in the dining room. The guards will show you the way.”

With that he withdrew, pulling a freshly restored door shut behind him.

“Jai.” Zel’s voice held an edge of rough tension, and it brought the halfblood seated next to Juliet to his feet. The man was beautiful, with curly black hair and dusky skin made all the more striking by his sharp cheekbones and dark eyes. He was dressed like Zel, in leather that was more armor than clothing, and he looked every bit the warrior in spite of his beauty.

A nervous warrior, though. He spoke without waiting for Zel to ask a question, so fast that the words tumbled over one another. “They were on us before we could send out a distress call, and the ADS barely worked. It was cranked high enough to make my teeth rattle, and they didn’t seem any more bothered by it than we were. I know there wasn’t time to explain things to her—”

Zel held up a hand, effectively silencing the avalanche of words. Then he turned to study Juliet, his eyes narrowing. “I can’t feel her,” he said finally. “Not even a little bit.”

Jai’s hand hovered over Juliet’s shoulder, like he wanted to pull her into his side—or push her behind him, out of the path of Zel’s assessing gaze. “None of the halfbloods can,” Jai replied, rough emphasis on the word
half
.

Something changed in Zel’s expression. “I see.”

Devi took a deep, careful breath. “I don’t, not at all. What did he do?”

Zel glanced from Jai to Juliet again, his narrowed eyes still impossible to read. “Jai had a halfblood mother and a demon father. Sometimes he can sense things the rest of us can’t. Like the fact that your Juliet is a summoner.”

Summoner.
Devi knelt. “Juliet.”

“I didn’t know,” she rasped. “I swear I didn’t know. My mother, she had summoners in her line, but it passed me. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Hey.” Devi wrapped an arm around her. “This isn’t the time to beat yourself up about it.”

“I can’t help it.” The words were muffled by Devi’s shirt. “What if that’s why that checkpoint opened up on us, why we got attacked during our haul?”

But Devi had no answers. “Shh, later.”

Jai appeared, kneeling down to drop a comforting hand to Juliet’s shoulder. “Hang in there. I told you—we’re gonna get you a big fucking gun and you can shoot whoever the hell you want with it.”

She raised her head and leaned toward him a little. “They don’t make guns big enough anymore.”

“Then we’ll have Trip design something new.”

The halfblood hovered protectively, and Devi looked up to meet Zel’s gaze. He shrugged one shoulder and answered her unspoken question obliquely. “Back off on the protective instincts, Jai. The leader seems fixated on the urge, and I’d rather not get him in the mood to test how far we’ll go.”

Juliet shook her head. “He wants something. I heard—” She bit off the words with a quick glance at the guards.

It didn’t matter. “We’ll know soon enough, anyway,” Devi whispered.

“We need to know now.” Zel extended his hand. “Ready?”

She was loath to release her friend, but she didn’t have a choice. Besides, Jai was there, looking fiercely ready to tear apart anyone who might come too close.

So Devi took Zel’s hand, but only long enough to stand. “We’ll be back,” she promised as the guards moved to lead them outside.

The room they ended up in had probably been meant for formal dining. It was the cleanest of any area they’d seen yet, scrubbed down and holding sturdy furniture—a long wooden table and two rough-hewn benches. One side of the table held a simple meal, and the other…

The other held an array of computer equipment.

It looked like the sort of stuff Cache would kill to get her hands on, the kind for which she dropped every bit of credit and trade she earned. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Aton tilted his head. “Do you find the technology or the breakfast unsatisfying?”

Devi rubbed her pounding head and shifted her gaze from the equipment to the man—the
demon
—standing at the end of the table. “Just…tell us what you want.”

“You won’t understand. Not yet.” Aton gestured to the opposite bench. “Sit, both of you. Please.”

Zel’s hand slid to Devi’s back. “What needs to happen before we’ll understand?”

“Talk. Nothing more.”

She sat—again, as with so many things these days, because she had no choice. “I’m not hungry.”

Aton glanced at Zel, who had settled next to her. “And you?”

“Would you eat food offered by an enemy?”

“So we are still enemies?”

The muscles in Zel’s arm tensed. “We’re not yet allies.”

Aton shifted his gaze to Devi. “Do you consider me your enemy, Devindra?”

“No,” she told him honestly. “I don’t know what you are yet.”

“None of you seem to know what we are.” He leaned forward, folding his arms on the table. “What is it that you call us?”

“Demons.” An unfair label, perhaps, one fraught with theological meaning to which Devi herself didn’t particularly ascribe. They were beings from another realm, allowed entrance to their own through a rift between worlds, but that term seemed too neutral. “I’d call you demons.”

“Yes.” His eyes were an endless black. “Your ancestors called us gods.”

“Summoners, maybe. Magic users who dragged you here to fear and worship.”

“Humans,” he countered. “You were less skeptical back then. You lived so bright and fast, so beautiful in your ignorance. You worshiped summoners as priests in one season and burned them as witches in the next.”

Zel sat silently beside her, but it didn’t matter. Aton seemed to be speaking to her, and her alone. “They also thought the world was flat. Now we know better.”

“You know what it pleases you to know. Less than you should.” For the first time, the demon’s voice carried a tinge of frustration. “So little that it would take years to educate you. You call me Aton but you don’t understand. A son of Ares has bonded your summoner. Does that name mean anything to you?”