“Who are you, Demon!?” He shook me again as he snarled in my face.
My face pulled into an ugly expression. “Fuck. You.” I spat.
The room grew too hot. My chest struggled to pull in air.
“Wrong answer.” Davenport put his hand on my forehead, and suddenly the world was on fire.
Chapter 14
Flames as tall as skyscrapers roared and crackled, their bright appendages reaching ever higher in the search for material to burn. The sky above was black with thick plumes of smoke, a drape over the landscape battered back only by the never-ending fire as far as the eye could see.
The back of my throat burned. The smell of burning rubber made me move my feet, only to discover that I had left behind the melted sole of my sneakers.
Davenport was nowhere to be seen. The hissing growl of the fire blocked out all noise. Cracking and popping as I continued to walk.
My skin felt tight as the heat began to penetrate my borrowed body. I continued to move as if the Hunter would emerge behind me at any second.
I tried to escape Frankie's body, but I was stuck fast. My lungs labored, unable to find anything breathable in the smoggy atmosphere. The air tasted like ashes and pain.
I didn’t want to die.
Davenport would kill me. I was certain. I knew too much about the Hunters. I had seen their compound. Learned their names. He would never let me live.
What had I been thinking—hanging around with a group of killers, eating up their attention and friendship like a starved child? I had been foolish.
I kept moving, even when each breath became tight against my ribs, and my lungs seized and cramped.
I didn’t want to die.
Drudes had a collective memory. I had felt the desolation and hopelessness of my kin as they felt their skin harden and their essence drain into the ground, gobbled by the writhing mass of ancient wyrms.
I had managed to break free. I had managed to escape the Bhakshi and Shayati. I would be damned if I allowed a Hunter to take me.
But it seemed like the effects of the fire would drag my host's body into the sweet embrace of death before Davenport would ever find me in his own fiery Hell.
Perhaps that had been the plan all along.
The bare soles of my feet blistered.
I winced with every step.
Just as my foot lowered to make a connection with the cinders on the ground, the world slipped away, and I fell on all fours. The chilling feel of concrete was a refreshing relief to my burned palms.
I gulped air like a person dying of thirst and rolled over onto my back as I felt my demonic healing wash over my body.
My clothes hung from my body in tatters, turned to sludge by the flames.
My eyes took the longest to heal, blinded by the fire, all I could see were rainbow spots and dark blurs.
When my vision finally focused, Davenport stood in front of me. His arms crossed, and his legs shoulder-width apart. He looked like a man that would not be moved for anything. Still dressed in his shirt and trousers, his sleeves were rolled up, and his scuff had grown enough to mark the passing of at least a day.
My teeth were bared. I stepped forward only to find myself knocked back by a line of salt. I growled, low in my chest, a sound that should have not have been possible from a human voice box.
“Who are you?” Davenport asked in a low and dangerous tone. His dark eyes focused on my own, coated with contempt that told me my host's eyes were black with my inner Demon.
I cocked my head to the side. “And who are you to demand my name?”
Davenport laughed without humor. “Do you have any self-preservation?”
I seriously considered the question.
“I will not allow you to kill me,” I told him.
His eyebrows raised, and Davenport's look said everything that he did not speak out loud.
I stopped you from escaping your host. You really think you could stop me if I wanted to kill you?
I narrowed my eyes but bit my tongue against all of the deliciously horrible insults that ran through my mind.
Instead, I reached out with my magic—attempting to latch onto the fear and turmoil that all humans kept below the surface. I honed my magic into a blade and reached for the Hunter. I would not go down without a fight.
Davenport waved me off.
My heart stuttered, and my mouth popped open. My magic was flawless, immune to all attacks and defenses, and yet, a trumpeted up Hunter with BDSM tendencies had the cajones to actually stop my magic in its tracks.
I couldn’t fight well, but I would find out if my survival instincts were enough to keep me alive. I'd go for the balls and hope for the best.
Damn. I should have gotten that printed on a t-shirt.
Davenport had stepped forward while I had been distracted, his Italian leather shoes almost touched the salt line.
“I have no plans to kill you, as of yet,” Davenport said. “But that may change if you do something stupid.”
I liked to think that I had gotten to know Warren Davenport in the weeks I had spent at the Hunters compound. He was a man of his word. A man that would walk on Legos to ensure he did not break a promise.
Despite my survival instincts screaming in my ear, and the residual memories of my kin's deaths making me want to bite, claw and chew my way out of my salt prison, I decided to trust him.
For now.
Davenport left shortly, and I spent my time surveying my surroundings.
The walls were made of seamless concrete, with no pipes or door in sight. The circle was large enough that I could lie down, but not much else. The space around me pointed to a warehouse floor, stripped of machinery. Cavernous. Strips of lights ran overhead, the strange foreignness of fluorescents bathed the concrete in a grey glow.
I reached forward, studying Frankie Gardiner's callused hand. With little thought, I was able to push my darkness out of the pores to shroud her fingers in a haze of smoke. I breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever Davenport had done had only worked when he was touching me. I wasn't doomed to spend the rest of my life in an aging body.
The salt line would keep me in place for a while. I could leave Frankie's body behind, but I still wouldn't be able to pass the barrier unless I could find a way to break the continuous line.
Still clad in the burned remnants of Duane's stolen clothes, my feet started to protest after I had been standing for an hour. Boredom was not a good state of mind, and I felt myself ping-ponging back and forward in my own mind. Desperate for stimulation of some kind.
I started to sing to myself. Under my breath at first, but then loud enough that my shouting echoed off the concrete and back to me.
After I grew bored of Carly Rae Jepson and my loop of 'Call me Maybe,' I took off my oversized sneakers and did all the actions to the Cha Cha Slide, using each of the fun dance moves to test the circle for weak spots in power. I found one next to the rune for Imprisonment. H'caryhkut.
A previously unseen panel shifted and slipped into the floor, revealing the inscrutable figures of Warren Davenport and Remington Weber. Both of their faces were devoid of emotion.
Davenport strode in first, stopping at the edge of the circle. Remi leaned against the back wall, a spectator, he tilted his head and did not take his eyes off mine.
“Dermot Dirk put a Demon in my compound,” Davenport stated, speaking to Remi as if I wasn’t there. “It seems that the Fae are attempting to start a war.”
I tapped my lip with my fist, but said nothing.