Chapter 7
It’s never quiet in Astera, but when we trudge out of the Cineplex and onto the snow-crusted street, it’s uncannily still.
The wind doesn’t howl. No taxis speed by.
My shoulder throbs dully, and my jaw strains to keep my teeth from chattering.
I wasn’t this tired when my hunt for a werepanther kept me awake for forty straight hours in the hills beyond the Hesperides.
But I’m going to need to muster every ounce of energy I have.
No chance Deacon lets me leave without a fight.
I take a bracing breath as he steps past the gates and Ward locks them behind him.
Neither he nor Ward is wearing a jacket despite the frigid winter air and late hour, but I do notice Ward’s pants are stolen off a dead Brood.
Classic werewolf behavior. They’re always losing clothing in their fights.
“You guys get Penny back to the Windsor,” I breathe to Elliot as Deacon strolls over. My daggers are already warm in my grip.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Elliot says warily.
Even he, cardiovascular champion of men, looks depleted from our fight.
Sophia takes a step forward, placing Penny safely behind her, and Pen wraps her coat around herself tightly, eyes locked on the mammoth ice-blond demon and his near-equal-size werewolf with unmistakable fear.
“You can call off your dogs, Vivienne,” Deacon drawls, bored.
“It’s Viv.”
Deacon says nothing, studying me. And something in his expression—his pursed lips, his hands lodged in his pockets—tells me he isn’t here to drag me kicking and screaming back to Fever Dream.
I don’t ask what’s changed. Why keeping me prisoner is no longer his priority.
Something about tonight has shifted the status quo.
He…needs something from me. And unfortunately, I need something from him. “Why’d you kill that vampire?”
Deacon’s brows pull inward in confusion. “Did a Brood hit you very hard in the head tonight?”
“You have no problem with murder. Fine, I get it. But that’s not what you said. You said you couldn’t have the High Thane knowing you were looking for Reid. Why not?”
Ward stiffens imperceptibly and it’s all I need. A rush of triumph peels through me—I’m onto something.
“Why would I want the High Thane to know I’m after his prisoner? Sounds like a one-way ticket to a mob of Brood at my door.”
“You aren’t afraid of the Brood.”
I’ve heard the way he talks about them. About Finn and his father. He mocks them, not fears them. His entire club stands in direct opposition to the High Thane’s power. An untouchable lighthouse in the storm that is his rule over this city.
Deacon stares at me. Really stares, as if his crystalline eyes are boring into the very heart of me.
His rigid jaw, neck, and shoulders—every part of him, really—enormous and brutish as an ox.
The kind of demon who could lift a car one-handed and carry it up a flight of stairs. I fight the urge to squirm.
“No,” he says in the end. “I’m not.”
I shouldn’t push my luck…“But you are afraid of something. Something Finn—or the High Thane—would do to you if they knew you were trying to rescue Reid.”
There’s a flash of fury in his eyes, and for the briefest of moments, I wonder if he’ll punch me. Instead, he says through nearly gritted teeth, “One point for Vivienne, the nosy, unkillable huntress. Would you like a cookie?”
So there’s something he fears from Finn and the High Thane that isn’t their army of demons. I store that information away for later. But I’m on a roll. I feel closer to finding Reid than I have yet, and not even Deacon’s punishing body and cruel grin can stop me now. “Get ready for point two—”
“You love those little one-liners.”
“You wouldn’t have killed that vampire until you got something out of him. What did you learn?”
“You’re very bold. Do you understand the only reason I have yet to drink that delectable hunter soul from your lips is because of that thing in your back?”
I’m too determined to be afraid. “Yep. What did you learn?”
Deacon shifts his jaw in thought. Ward stifles a laugh. Behind me, I can feel Elliot and Sophia lean closer.
“Why don’t you answer a question of mine first. How did you know I was here before I entered the projector room?”
And there it is. What he needs from me. I’d told Penny Deacon was here before any of us could see him walk in. And Deacon heard me.
I debate lying. Though I can’t say I heard him or scented him, because Deacon has all those same skills and then some.
He knows what’s a normal hunter ability and what’s not.
Demons are already better at that stuff than hunters, and more and more with age, and Deacon and Reid are nearly a thousand years old by my calculations.
Even if I could think of a different lie—an ability from a ritual I learned at Harker, the sound of his key chain jangling on his jeans—I’m asking this monster to share something with me.
And for better or worse, I’m beginning to learn how his brain works.
He’s not just looking for quid pro quo. Somehow my answer to this relates to my original question of what Deacon learned from the vampire.
So I take a breath, reminding myself that there’s no reason to hide my aeon nature from him.
The syrabraxa in my back already denotes what I am.
“I think the syrabraxa has heightened my aeon abilities.” I don’t mention the way my scar ached briefly, only soothed by slaying the Broods, but fear coils in me that the two aren’t unrelated.
“I can always tell when a deviant’s nearby.
It’s an aeon thing. But tonight was the first time I could tell…
” I try to remember the feeling. “I felt in my bones that it was you. I could…sense your being, if that makes sense.”
Deacon looks at Ward. The werewolf only offers him a weighing frown. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
My chest flutters with hope. Whatever Deacon was looking for, it seems he’s found it in my answer.
The demon’s gaze finds the night sky once before he levels it down at me.
“Those parties the vampire spoke of…” Deacon muses.
“Since Finn was a boy, there have only ever been two things he likes. Sex and pain. Occasionally together.”
My body goes rigid. Rage quickly turns to bloodlust, swirling beneath my skin until the two deviants before me glow like objectives in a video game. I could kill them both in one swift movement. One of my daggers lodged in each heart.
“How do you know so much about this guy?” I bite out. “You rape and pillage together back in the day?”
Penny gasps.
“Viv,” Elliot warns.
“Vamp also let loose that he’s developed a proclivity for poppy,” Deacon continues, ignoring me. “There’s only one place to find poppy, women, and pain South of the Chasm on a Friday night.”
“Fever Dream?”
Ward laughs. Deacon rolls his eyes. “Your snark is not as adorable as you think it is.”
“The Manor,” Ward supplies. “Exclusive, members-only sex dungeon and drug den. Frequented by none other than our boy Finn.”
“Great,” I say, blood heating. I check my phone—it’s only midnight. “Let’s go.”
“Not so fast,” Deacon purrs, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and lighting up. Smoke swirls from his nostrils in the winter night. “Vamp said Finn goes on Friday nights.”
“But Reid could be kept there. He could be—”
“He’s tough,” Deacon tells me, as if five more days of torture is no worse than braving a trip to the dentist’s office. “He’ll be okay. Or he’s dead and it doesn’t really matter, does it? Either way, we go Friday night. We’ll need the cover of the party to blend in.”
“Blend in? We’re not going to storm the place?”
Ward snorts. “Did you miss what he just said? About not wanting Finn to know what we’re after?”
“How are we supposed to get into this exclusive Brood-owned club if we aren’t members…” But Deacon’s smirk tells me all I need to know. “Of course you are.” Gross. “Fine. So we go to this dangerous sex party—”
“And you use that little trick of yours to sniff out Reid.”
“And once we find him, he and I both walk free.”
The smirk on his lips is more punishing than playful. “Don’t push it. You’re still a liability.”
For once, I do what he tells me. We have a plan. I could potentially see Reid again in five days. My heart beats with guarded hope. I can figure out how to avoid rotting in Deacon’s club after that. “Then I’ll meet you there Friday.”
I turn back toward my friends, but Deacon grabs me by the arm, yanking on my injured shoulder. “Ow,” I snap.
He only grins. His fingers are like embers on my skin. “No goonie squad.”
“What?” Sophia snarls. “No way.”
I’m not going into the belly of the beast, with another, possibly more dangerous beast, without my friends. “No chance. I need them.”
“They’re annoying.”
“And mortal,” Ward growls, and Penny cowers behind Sophia. Something about her being here tonight seems to have really pissed him off. I shoot the werewolf a What gives? face.
“And it’s members only,” Deacon says. “Remember?”
“I’m not a member,” I retort.
Deacon’s eyes light with mischief. I know something stupendously vile is about to leave his mouth. “That’s why you’ll be my whore.”