Chapter 7 Des
Des
Des watched in utter disbelief as the Blake girl emerged from the large stone mansion she’d disappeared into just two hours
ago, alone.
What in the name of Aciano did she think she was doing, walking at night without a chaperone? Had the tall, gangly twig of
a boy who escorted her earlier expired from lack of nourishment?
Des receded farther behind the hedge he and Gareth were using for cover, grabbing the younger boy by the collar and yanking
him backward just in time to avoid the girl’s notice. Not that he should have bothered. She seemed completely oblivious to
anything as she sighed and lifted her hair from her neck, clearly relishing the feel of the cool breeze on her skin.
The moon was bright, and there were still plenty of people out and about, but even grown men didn’t walk these city streets
alone at night. Not when demons were afoot. Had she no sense at all?
“What should we do?” Gareth asked as the Blake girl began to make her way down the street.
“Follow her, of course.” He was beginning to think this entire endeavor was a complete waste of time.
Whomever the tall man with the thrall was, the Blake girl was not involved.
How could she be, when she looked about as threatening as a potted plant?
A very small potted plant, wearing a fancy dress.
Still, they couldn’t very well leave her to be eaten by a demon, not when Commander Yew expected him to keep her safe in her uncle’s absence.
Wisteria City, for all its stagnation the past one hundred years, was still considered the crown jewel of the kingdom, which
didn’t say much for the kingdom as a whole. Along the main boulevard, old shopfronts leaned heavily against their neighbors,
leaving corner buildings to jut precariously over their foundations. Here and there, lots stood vacant where a structure had
crumbled beyond repair and no replacement could be built in its stead.
Des, who only ever viewed the city from a hunter’s eyes, watched as the Blake girl made her way blithely along. Perhaps he
shouldn’t be surprised that the dean’s niece wasn’t afraid, considering she spent her entire life behind the university’s
iron gates.
“What’s that?” Gareth said, suddenly gripping Des’s arm with surprising strength.
His eyes caught what he should never have missed in the first place: a pair of glowing red eyes in an alley, just feet from
where the girl was passing.
His hand went to his sword automatically, but the demon, mostly translucent in the glow of the streetlamps, didn’t attack.
Instead, it drifted in the girl’s wake, maintaining a respectable distance of fifteen feet or so.
“Is it following her?” Gareth whispered.
Des grunted an unintelligible response. He’d known there was something off here. He should know better than to discount his
own instincts, even if Commander Yew had doubted him.
The girl crossed the boulevard toward Café Dahlia, a common gathering spot for Wisteria’s young and wealthy. Des had never set foot inside, and he certainly wasn’t going to start now. The demon, perhaps realizing its quarry was unreachable for the moment, drifted into a nearby park.
“Now what?” Gareth asked.
Before Des could answer, he heard someone shout his name from across the street and swore under his breath.
Daisy and her partner, Jasper, sauntered toward them, oblivious to the somnia and the girl. “Shift over?” Daisy asked, her wide smile softening Des ever so slightly. “We just finished.”
“We’re tracking Dean Blake’s niece,” Gareth replied, pointing toward the café.
Daisy’s eyes lit up. “She’s in there? Then what are we standing out here for? Let’s go meet her!”
As Daisy and Jasper began to cross the street, Gareth looked to Des for instructions. The plan had never been to meet the
girl, simply to observe her. Besides, there was a demon loitering somewhere nearby, and he couldn’t very well leave it to
find a new victim.
Just as he started to turn, the somnia came swooping out of the darkness, moving alarmingly fast for a dream demon. He was caught so off guard by the rapid approach
that he barely had time to remove his sword from its scabbard before it flew past him, heading straight for the café door.
Des’s pulse thundered in his ears as he leapt after it, sure it was going for the girl. But before he could catch up, Jasper
had unsheathed his own blade and decapitated the somnia in one sweeping arc of iron. The burst of green flame was so close that it nearly singed Des’s eyebrows as he reeled backward.
“Aciano’s beard!” Daisy gasped. “Where did that come from?”
Des looked past her to the café window, where six or seven patrons stood with their pale faces pressed to the glass, their
expressions distorted by shock and alarm.
“For fuck’s sake,” Des muttered as the owner of the café emerged.
“Well done,” the woman said, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Come inside. Drinks are on me.”
The entire night had gone from calm to utter chaos in a matter of minutes. Des dragged a hand down his face as he followed
the others in. The café was old but well-kept, with stained-glass skylights overhead, depicting some sort of flower in soft
pastels. Most of the patrons had returned to their seats, though some approached hesitantly, hoping to shake the hands of
the Iron Guards. A cluster of young people sat at one table, gossiping loudly, while the older patrons sipped their drinks
and cast exasperated glances at the youths.
Des’s eyes found the Blake girl immediately. She sat on a high-backed stool at the end of the long wooden bar, a purple cocktail
sitting in a cut-crystal coupe before her.
“Did you see?” someone hissed nearby. “Cut its head clean off!”
“He didn’t even flinch!”
But while Jasper and Gareth clearly relished the praise, and Daisy blushed under the attention, Des hardly heard them. The
rush of blood in his ears was too loud. It was the first time he’d seen the dean’s niece stationary and in proper lighting.
And for reasons he didn’t care to examine, the sight of her had taken his breath away.
She was clad in a fine green dress, the square neckline revealing a swath of pale skin interrupted only by a black ribbon around her neck that looked like it would come undone with just the slightest tug.
Des’s gaze traveled from the dark chestnut hair framing her heart-shaped face and wide green eyes to her narrow waist, to
her slipper-clad feet that dangled a good two feet above the ground, his brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of her.
She was smaller than Daisy, which was almost incomprehensible. Daisy, who had sidled up to the bar in her practical training
leathers, her red hair tied into a messy ponytail, while this girl looked like she belonged on a shelf in a row of porcelain
dolls.
How did a person like Miss Blake survive in a demon-infested world?
A touch on his arm startled him. A young woman had approached and was gazing up at him in a way Des knew most men craved.
“Thank you for saving us,” she said, batting her thick lashes. His eyes fell on her long, perfectly manicured fingernails
against his leather arm brace, and Des felt his stomach turn in disgust.
Girls like Aurelie Blake survived by staying behind the safety of the university’s iron gates, he reminded himself bitterly.
By idling their days away studying while girls like Daisy risked their lives. Des gripped the hilt of his sword and stepped
pointedly away from the girl to move closer to the bar, where his friends were ordering drinks.
And somewhere from across the bar, he heard Aurelie Blake giggle.
His eyes shot up and caught hers, and she blanched under a glare that suggested she was as useless as a demon, something else
that needed eradicating but wasn’t worth the effort.
“Des, what do you want to drink?” Daisy asked, finally tearing his attention away from the girl. He asked for a pint and tried to clear his head as his fellow guards chattered.
“You really think it was following her?” Daisy asked Gareth, who nodded.
Des grunted his assent. “We need to get back and tell Commander Yew. Something is definitely wrong with that girl.”
It took him a moment to realize that the others were staring at him with blank expressions.
“What?” he growled.
“Have you actually looked at her?” Jasper asked. “She’s the size of a flea and clearly wouldn’t know a demon if it bit her
on the—”
“Cheek,” Daisy said, cutting him off. “Jasper is right. If the demon really was following her—”
“It was,” Des insisted.
“If it was, she clearly knew nothing about it.”
They all turned their eyes on the girl, who had finished her drink since they entered and was waving her hand politely to
get the bartender’s attention.
She must have felt the weight of their collective gaze on her, because her eyes darted toward them, and her pale cheeks flushed
pink before she looked away.
“I’m going to talk to her,” Daisy proclaimed.
“Like hell you are,” Des hissed, but she was already halfway down the bar.
“Come on,” Jasper said to Gareth, who glanced at Des for permission.
He rolled his eyes and nodded.
By the time he reached Daisy, she was chattering away while the Blake girl stared at her, looking completely baffled by this turn of events. That made two of them.
“I’m Daisy,” she said, holding out her hand.
“Erm, it’s nice to meet you? I’m Aurelie.”
“You’re Dean Blake’s niece, aren’t you?” Daisy asked, as subtle as a sledgehammer, and Des, who had been draining the last
of his pint, choked.
Daisy reached around and smacked him hard on the back. “Don’t mind Des. He doesn’t get out much.”
The girl fished in her coin purse pointedly. “No, I expect not.”
What was that supposed to mean?
“So you are, aren’t you? Dean Blake’s niece?”
She glanced at Daisy from the corner of her eye. “I am. How did you know?”
“Yes, Daisy,” Des said through gritted teeth. “How did you know?”
Daisy continued to stare at the Blake girl, ignoring him. “Commander Yew mentioned the dean had a niece named Aurelie. It’s