Chapter 12 Inkletter
Inkletter
“This task didn’t require two of us,” Nadje muttered with irritation as she and Ink approached the Firis River, also known as the River of Hell.
Even from a distance, its molten current cast a dull crimson light across the night and radiated a sultry heat.
Voice sharp, she added, “I expected you to go alone, to demonstrate what you’re capable of. ”
Ink adjusted the staff slung across his back.
A stone bowl hung from one end by a short length of chain—the peculiar tool she’d given him with little explanation.
“This task might be deadly,” he said. At best, it was baffling.
At worst, it hid a lethal trap. “I will demonstrate for you what I’m capable of. Up close.”
The vampire glared.
“What exactly did you think would happen to me after I set off to do your bidding?”
She waved a careless hand. “Any time you inch near the Helter, things get strange.” Tonight she’d traded her slippers and dress for worn trousers and sturdy boots. Sensible. If one expected to run. She’d also belted her sword at her side. “That’s why the pay is so high.”
Only the desperate or the damned came this close to the Helter, and they tended to strike first and ask questions later. Any encounter could be one’s last.
“Logically,” he said, “you should want to get rid of me. I alone know your secrets. So if you want me to return you to your room as easily as I just took you from it, you’ll ensure I survive the night.”
“Your teleportation is valuable to me,” she said simply.
He nodded without warmth. “A successful outcome suits you. An unsuccessful one suits you. Or at least it did before I forced you to come along.”
The faint flush rising in her cheeks told him all he needed to know.
She was hiding something. Again. And this mission—on paper so simple—reeked of complications. So he had traced her with him. If I go down, so shall you, little flame.
He hoped she wasn’t spinning a second web around him. In truth, his accounts were less robust than he remembered. Rare books weren’t a hobby of the unemployed, so Nadje’s promised payment glimmered like salvation.
Plus, he still wanted to solve the mystery of why he’d reacted so strongly to the plump blood drinker. “Now that we’re here, you can divulge who the buyer is.”
She raised her chin. “He’s a moneyed warlock. I’ll explain more once we’re at the meeting place.”
“And where might that be?”
“I’ll reveal that once we have our prize in hand. Patience, incubus. I need to protect myself.”
“From me?”
“You could trace me across the river and abandon me in the Helter, surrounded by monsters. Then take the meeting yourself.”
“Didn’t you survive the Badlands?” he asked. “Can the Helter be much worse?”
Her gaze went distant, her mind clearly turned to memories. “Maybe not. The strigoi of the Badlands attack regular vampires with a particular viciousness, like a resentment. Or appetite.” A shadow crossed her face. “I’d prefer the Helter’s beasts. Their motives seem purer.”
Ink inclined his head. Everyone had their specific fears, the limits of what they could tolerate. I have my own. He frowned down at the vampire as she sauntered beside him.
“And you?” she asked after a moment, gazing up at Ink from under her thick auburn lashes. “Always lived in Grimrock?”
“Yes.” He pictured the jagged peaks, endless quarries, and remarkable temples of his home territory. “Most incubi, stone, and rage demons make their home there.” The remaining demon breeds roiled in neighboring Rhun.
“You can only trace to places you’ve already been,” she said thoughtfully. “So when were you in this area before?”
He’d teleported them far enough away so that they didn’t land in lava should the river have shifted course over the ages. “My sire brought me,” Ink said. “As a lesson.”
That memory still tasted of smoke and fear, yet he wished he could go back to that time. His father would be dead less than a year later.
After demons had carved out a rich region from the All-Battle, they’d continued fighting for centuries in the old Ruin and Stone Wars. Father had fallen in a blood-soaked field between two emerging demon territories.
“As a lesson?” Nadje said.
“That this is where immortals come to die—or to do cowardly murder.”
“I’ve heard the tales. They say the river’s haunted by all who perished here.”
He nodded. “Any immortal who’s lost a mate can find deathly solace in those depths.” But then, more than one gullible immortal had been shoved in as they’d gazed into its flames. “Did you consider pushing me in?” he asked.
“And lose my ride home?”
“Vampires can’t lie, so they often answer questions with questions.” Now that she seemed so apparent to him, he wondered how she’d managed to dupe him in bed.
She only smirked, scanning the gloom with one hand on her sword hilt. She readied for threats but also likely for prey. Nadje was a predator; she couldn’t turn off her drives, no more than he could turn off his appreciation for certain females. A buxom beauty’s pleasure was his favorite meal.
Yet he hadn’t fed since her, too confused by their bed play. Over these days away, he’d begun to find the memory of being with her less distasteful and more…tasty.
Nadje’s mouthwatering profile caught his attention when she twisted her long hair into a knot. She swiped her perspiring nape, large breasts rising in her dampened shirt. Her stiffened nipples pressed against the fabric, and he couldn’t stop recalling how sweet and salty those tips had been.
Broiling hot, sweaty redhead. At the thought of such a meal, his demon tongue darted in his mouth. He would lick the dampness from every inch of her, all around those pendulous breasts down to her sodden copper curls.
His cock surged in his pants, and his stomach growled. Unbidden words left his lips: “Why did you cry when we had intercourse?” He had to know! Her tears had stripped something raw inside him, left him unarmored.
“When you used me, you mean? Because pleasure had turned to pain. As you intended. I imagine most females would do anything for relief, telling you whatever you wanted to know.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “But you didn’t.”
“And you didn’t like that at all, did you?” she replied, her tone cool and calm. But her pulse beat at her throat.
He remembered that pulse against his tongue.
She caught his gaze focused on her neck.
“Look, if we’re going to be partners, we stay professional.
Better for business that way. Plus, I don’t want to get any closer to three times with you.
Thrice in one’s arms, forever enslaved,” she said, repeating the lore.
“I’ve seen the mindless sex slaves you incubi make.
I don’t even like you, and I still crave you—after just one time. ”
Same. Unfortunately. “I’ve never made a thrall, and I’ve no interest in trapping you thus.”
“What if I hadn’t told you things that night? Would you have risked a second time?”
“I would have brought you bliss,” he said, “without penetration.”
“Oh, nice. Good to know you had a plan, pleasure reaper.”
Heat breathed from the river, thickening the tension between them. The air grew searing, gusts flinging cinders that clung to their skin, drawn as if to blood.
They reached the banks, close enough to feel their eyelashes crisping. The crimson surface churned like a living wound.
“We’re meant to extract lava from this?” Ink said hoarsely.
“Yes. The staff and bowl are heatproof, even against this temperature.”
“Why couldn’t our patron collect it himself?”
“He rarely leaves his lair and can’t open portals far from it. And hired teleporters”—she cast Ink a sidelong glance—“aren’t known for reliability. Outsourcing the risk made sense.”
Ink rubbed his stinging eyes and stared at the lava, the age-old river seething with power.
Should we tap it? “We stand at the precipice.” In more ways than one.
He was reminded of the mortal tales of Icarus flying too close to the sun.
Just because one can do a thing doesn’t mean one should.
“Taking lava from this river feels wrong.”
Nadje hesitated, her expression half defiant, half afraid. “It does. But I’ll do it anyway.”
With or without you. The unsaid words hung in the air.
He studied her visage in the fiery light—hair glinting ruby, cheeks flushed, jaw set. “Whatever you ran from, it’s still chasing you.” A kernel of protectiveness grew.
Shrug. “Coin equals survival.”
His own share of tonight’s take would fund his next rare acquisition—the history of a Valkyrie oracle who’d predicted an entire other world of immortals living in peace with humans in Gaia as if the Exile had never happened.
She’d spoken of it just before lightning had struck her down.
The tome cost a fortune. What secrets would it hold about Gaia, the Skein, and immortals in other worlds?
Temptation prodded him. He unslung the staff and lowered the bowl toward the burning current. “In this wind, whatever I secure will crust over fast. Does he need it still liquid?”
“He didn’t specify,” she said. “Only that I meet him at midnight on one of these three nights, or the offer dies.”
Ink hesitated. The heat felt sentient, clawing up his arms. “Someday we might look back and wonder what we were thinking at this moment.”
“That’s the thing about the future,” she said. “It won’t exist unless you claw your way to it. I’ll sleep better tonight, dreaming about the plentiful gold I earned.”
He exhaled in resignation. “That we earned.” Carefully, he dipped the bowl. The surface hissed, then filled with molten fire. He met Nadje’s gaze as he lifted their prize.
They were still staring at each other when he realized something that gave him chills in this heat. Reflected in the vampire’s eyes was the full red of the lava, cooling not one degree.
It continued to spiral in the bowl, turning on itself, circling in perfect rhythm.
As if it lived.