Dark Needs at Night’s Edge (Immortals After Dark #5)

13

Cadeon Woede of the rage demons would rather have had his black claws pulled from his fingers or his horns filed than come to this bar—a grungy biker dive, patronized almost entirely by male demons.

But if Cade hadn’t accompanied his brother and crew here, he would’ve gone to stalk her—and Rydstrom was already getting suspicious about his late-night activities.

Besides, they had a business meeting with a soothsayer this eve. “And here’s the dove of the hour,”

Cade muttered when N?x and another Valkyrie entered the bar. They’d been searching for N?x for days now, and a mutual friend had arranged the meeting.

Rydstrom twisted around in time to see the two small females accosted by a pathos demon. The pathos was a brawny biker, but he looked young, too young to tangle with the much older Valkyrie.

“Step aside,”

N?x told him, already glancing past him.

When he didn’t, her companion tensed. “Move.”

The female was wearing a low-hanging cowboy hat. Good money said that the hat was shading the glowing face of Regin the Radiant, a combat-loving Valkyrie. “Or hurt.”

“My friend here has been spoiling for a brawl for weeks now,”

N?x said. “At this point she’ll smack down unwary kindergartners over sandbox toys. I suggest you get out of our way.”

“None doing, lovelies,”

the pathos said in a nineteenth-century Cockney accent. “Pretty little things like ye come in a place like this, methinks yer keen for a demon twixt yer thighs.”

N?x rolled her eyes. “Only about, oh, always,”

she said in an exasperated tone. “As long as they don’t resemble you in any way.”

The pathos put his arm in front of N?x, blocking her. “Now, that’s not nice.”

Cade shook his head. The fuckwit has no idea what he’s provoking.

“No,”

Regin began, “making you wear your bulbous horns out of your ass wouldn’t be nice.”

Rydstrom asked, “Should we warn that demon?”

“Let them sort out the tosser,”

Cade answered. “The Valkyrie’ll be in a good mood after violence.” And the spectacle would be something to take Cade’s mind off his obsession.

In a flash, N?x snared the pathos’s hand and smiled, baring her small fangs. His eyes widened with belated recognition, just as she squeezed his hand in her own, pulverizing the bones. He yelled, alerting a kinsman, who unwisely decided to join in.

Rydstrom’s battle-scarred face creased into a grin. “It’s never dull with Valkyrie around.”

“Hey, N?x,”

Regin said minutes later, “my demon screams like a singing bitch—what does yours scream like?”

N?x replied conversationally, “Also like a singing bitch. Hmm. Only without balls.”

As N?x plugged his left horn into a wall socket, Regin got to enjoy a round of the cheap shots she was known for, until her hat got knocked off in the skirmish. Her glowing face made everyone back away.

Though N?x was older and therefore stronger, Regin had a notorious vicious streak.

The crowd quieted as a whole, but more than one creature cursed under his breath, “Not Regin.”

A drunk hunched over the bar muttered, “That glowing one made me eat a transistor radio once.”

In the lull, the Valkyries’ two battered opponents fled.

With a shrug, Regin collected and dusted off her hat, then cast N?x a blazing smile. “N?xie, you were on fuego!”

N?x tucked her black hair behind her pointed Valkyrie ears. “And your waif fu is as diabolical as ever!”

As predicted, the chits are in a great mood now.

Seeing the show was over, Rydstrom rose to go collect the pair, which meant Cade rose as well. “N?x?”

As Rydstrom strode to her, even hardened denizens of the bar dived out of his way. N?x and Regin had to crane their heads up to look into his face.

“King Rydstrom,”

she said with a smile, “and behind you as usual is your guard Cadeon the Kingmaker.”

“Why don’t you have a seat with us?”

Rydstrom led N?x to their back table, with Regin and Cade following.

“Excuse Cade’s mercenaries.”

Not bothering to hide his disapproval, Rydstrom indicated Cade’s crew. “Some of them are in town. Indefinitely.” Rydstrom could be just as ruthless as Cade and his men, but he never wavered from his personal code.

Cade wondered where Rydstrom had gotten that code, because his own was missing.

N?x gave them an exaggerated howdy wave, yet they all scowled. She seemed to recognize two of the five: the smoke demon R?k, a fugitive in two dimensions living under a “terminate with extreme prejudice”

order, and Grimslade, who sat in the chair closest to the darkened corner.

Grim, one among a warrior breed of demons raised underground in the most hellish conditions, looked to have a heart attack when Regin sat beside him. She was unaware that Grim had only two aversions—one to bright things and one to beautiful things. Regin was both.

As N?x took a seat, she said to Rydstrom, “Mariketa the Awaited told me you wanted to speak to me.”

“Aye, I need your advice.”

“My advice.”

She pressed her fingers to her chest. “But didn’t you recently say that I was a ‘mad creature’ who was ‘soft in the head’? Sniff, sniff, Rydstrom. Sniff, sniff. I was so crushed that I ate a gallon of Ben Cade swore. “Ever-knowing, Cade,”

she said softly.

Cade hiked his shoulders, pretending nonchalance. “Tell me about the vampire, or not, dove. But none of us really wants to be here.”

“I’ll tell you,”

N?x said, her gaze rapt on his horns. “But only if you let me lick your rock-hard horns—”

“N?x!”

Regin’s attention snapped back to this conversation.

Eyes wide, N?x cried, “Who said that?? I didn’t say that! Oh, very well—the vampire’s named Conrad Wroth. Best be careful with that one. He single-handedly took down Bothrops the Lich.”

“That was Wroth?”

He’d heard of the assassin before. Cade grudgingly admitted that the leech did nice work, dealing deaths with a unique, gruesome signature to them. Which was important in their line of business. “Where is he?”

“To find him, you need to trail the one who seeks him in sleep.”

“Soothsayerese? I don’t speak it,”

he said, but she didn’t elaborate. “That’s all you’re going to divvy?”

“Wanna know more?”

N?x raised her brows. “Then you should have let me lick your horns.”