Chapter 2
No Touching! Well, Maybe a Little…
Brioni
Alamar had been wrong about both things she’d told Brioni: the path was not at all well marked, and it most certainly wound its way into the forest.
Brioni didn’t remember the Dreadmoor, not when she was awake, which was probably a blessing because she remembered everything before it all too vividly, but she’d had a few dreams since coming to Heck about big twisty trees and glowing eyes flashing from a thicket.
That nightmare wood wasn’t entirely frightening on its own, but then someone in her dream would scream, and strange hands would grab her, and an all-too-familiar voice would say, “more trouble than you’re worth. ”
The pounding heart and sweaty brow of those nightmares didn’t come as she crept along the dirt path into the definitely-not-Dreadmoor-and-not-quite-Veilwood wood, but they were a struggle to keep at bay.
Her creeping was quick at least, the sachet in her hand urging her onward and the single flickering lantern ahead assuring her she wasn’t yet lost. Unlike the edge of the city elsewhere, there were no runes carved into the trees to push her back where the magic thought she ought be.
It probably wasn’t dangerous then, not when she was on official Heck Post business.
Unless…unless Alamar was trying to get rid of her?
She had been late coming home multiple days in a row.
And she had to ask many demons for directions, some of whom seemed quite annoyed at having to give them and even a few who outright told her to get lost. I already am lost, she always thought but never said after that first time because it hadn’t made the cranky red lady chuckle like she’d hoped.
What if there had been complaints? What if demons didn’t want their packages once they’d been touched by a human?
What if she wasn’t as polite and useful as she was trying so hard to be?
Brioni reached the lantern and studied how it was affixed to its carved post. Very purposeful, she decided, and that meant it probably wasn’t a beacon leading her to a premeditated doom. But it shone green over the ferns below, and panic struck anyway—was she being sent back?
A harried swat at the nearest leaf proved it was a ghostly white variety of fern sprawling over the forest floor, and she hadn’t stepped through some portal that unknowingly whisked her back to the outskirts of Ankerick.
There weren’t people-portals, she reminded herself, and relief came as quickly as the panic.
The portal that delivered and took away mail in the post had done a number on her imagination, but thankfully it was Kat’s job to deal with that.
And it was her job to deal with deliveries.
Another lantern glimmered farther ahead, the in-between dark as pitch.
Heck was dim-ish all the time, but the moonlight of the day was a comfort.
The starlight of the night, however, too often transformed ordinary shapes into sinister shadows, yet even that wasn’t here under the thickness of the trees.
Well, total darkness meant there were no shadows to turn sinister, she supposed, so she gripped the sachet tighter, ignored a far-off predator’s howl and the slightly closer brush’s rustling, and crept faster than any human had ever crept before.
Three stumbles over roots, two snags at her skirt, and a single squeak of alarm at something buzzing past her face later, she made it to her destination, and that Alamar had gotten completely right: it was the biggest barn Brioni had ever seen.
A streak of stars lit up the clearing she stepped into.
The building in its center stood tall and wide with a large entryway flanked by dim green lanterns.
Of the demons she’d met, the green ones were some of the nicest—a scribe called Elliran, who delivered coin to Alamar for her and Kat’s keeping, and an apothecary called Kizros, who Aofe worked and lived with.
Maybe another earth-magic wielding demon lived here.
That would make sense, nestled out in the woods surrounded by nature.
She stood and listened to the forest’s sounds again, but this time the night creature noises weren’t ominous.
The rustling seemed more like a friendly breeze through the leaves than something terrifying creeping up on her, and the low buzz of insects didn’t have her worried one might propel itself at her face.
There was no bell to announce her arrival, just an entry that spanned wider than Brioni’s arms held out, so in lieu of a door to knock on, she simply stepped inside.
She was met with the warm, musky scent of animals and the earthy essence of straw.
The forest’s din fell away, and something shifted in one of the dark stalls to her right while rhythmic huffing sounded off to her left.
Perhaps fifty paces ahead, the barn’s other end was as open as the front, more gentle green light spilling out over a well-worn patch of dirt and illuminating the edges of thicker forest beyond.
Inside, there were jars of green- and yellow-colored lights hung up on posts that flanked the long central corridor of the giant chamber.
Her steps crunched softly on the straw as she passed the stalls.
Some had doors, but others were open, and shadows deep within lifted heads to watch her.
Brioni felt her shoulders unpinch and her lungs fill more fully.
A cricket-like insect sang, and the low rumble of sleeping animals slowed the ever-flowing faucet of admonition in her mind.
Her task list crumpled itself up, and her body moved more freely.
There was no one here to convince she should be allowed to stay but the creatures bedding down, and it took only a kind voice and a treat or two to befriend an animal.
Much easier than humans…and probably demons too.
Two dim purple shapes floated in the shadow of one of the stalls. Too small to be lanterns, they moved in unison. Brioni crept toward them, and their light intensified as they rounded out. Eyes.
The slightly brighter glow illuminated its head and a long snout that was smooth and bone white. It cocked slightly, taking her in, a friendly move if she had to define it, which she did have to if she was going to keep approaching. And Brioni was definitely going to keep approaching.
As her foot scuffed the ground, one of its ears twitched.
That meant curiosity, didn’t it? Brioni knew all about curiosity—about the deep desire to see what would happen if she just did the thing a primeval and wayward part of her brain always prodded at her to do.
Her own piqued at the sight of those ears, dark and furry unlike the creature’s strange snout, and she bet very good for petting.
The demons of Heck had eyes that were all black and much less readable than she would like, but the ones staring back at her were more like the lanterns that hung all over the city, glowing with color and swirling slowly.
Her own eyes adjusted when she reached the edge of the stall, and with a quick glance downward, she could make out its paws, clawed and huge.
All of this creature was huge, she realized as her gaze drifted over the sharpening shadow of it, and she had brought herself just within lunging distance.
A pall of yellow lantern light fell over the creature as it stood. It might have been a wolf in another life, but this animal could never have gone by the simple name. It was bigger—much bigger—and its snout wasn’t covered in short white fur like she’d assumed but was solid, smooth and…bone-like.
Brioni shouldn’t have extended a hand toward the wolfish skull with glowing purple eyes.
No one should do such a thing, really, but our heroine had been so good even when absolutely everything in Heck pushed her to the utter limits of her goodness, and surely she deserved a reward for her behavior.
Brioni would eventually get that something, but it would take quite a few more pages before her desires came to fruition.
So Brioni continued to reach for the bony, fangy, spooky snout, not least of all because she was a pale woman, and female humans of the white-ish variety tended to believe wild creatures weren’t all that dangerous no matter what universe they lived in.
“Stop.”
A shriek caught in her throat as a massive, clawed hand dropped down on her wrist. The creature in the stall growled, more angry animal noises rose from the darkness of the barn, and the excitement of panic twisted into Brioni’s stomach.
Uh oh. I’m in trouble.
The grip was too tight to escape, not that she tried. Thick fingers completely encircled her wrist with black claws extended, the hand rigidly holding her in place attached to an arm swollen with more muscle than she could imagine.
And Brioni was an expert at imagining muscle.
There was another growl then, this one somehow vibrating right into Brioni’s core from the connection on her wrist, and the rest of the sounds in the barn ceased.
She blinked, fear traded for surprise, and snapped her head up to the demon standing only a foot away.
No, not standing—looming because, gods, did he ever loom.
Fangs bared, he glared at the creature she had been so close to petting—an act she was still convinced would have gone perfectly fine if she hadn’t been so rudely interrupted—and the glowing eyes withdrew into the stall’s shadows.
The demon turned to Brioni, and that twisty panic in her stomach fell all the way through the floor.
He was perhaps the tallest demon she’d encountered and certainly one of the most broadly shouldered.
Even doused in shadows, his muscled body hulked over her, face creased with utter condemnation.
Black eyes narrowed under black brows drawn down with ire, and black horns swooped away from his temples with a matched severity to every angle of his face.
Oh, gods, she thought, he’s perfect.
“You’re a human,” he said, a twitch to his lip that suggested the faintest hint of confusion clouding his disapproval, and Brioni took the opportunity to verbally pounce.
“S-sure am,” she stuttered through the widest smile she could flash.
There was no hiding it even if she wanted to, not with her rounded ears and her rounded…
everything else. “It tends to surprise everyone here, but it’s just sort of normal to me, so I forget to announce myself.
I made a baby cry the other day, but then I made friends with her, so you lose some and you win—”
“You’re lost.” There was no room for argument in his tone.
But that wouldn’t stop Brioni. “Oh, no, Alamar drew me a map, and this is definitely where she meant for me to go. I mean, maybe not definitely, but how many big barns are on the outskirts of Heck, nestled into a little forest hollow but not actually past the runes I’m not allowed to cross?”
Brioni hadn’t tried to escape the demon’s hold because she knew it would be futile and also maybe because she didn’t entirely mind it, but she jiggled her arm then so her magic cuff would catch the lantern light.
He lifted her wrist and cocked his head, a short braid of black hair falling over his shoulder. When he inspected the runes that kept her confined to Heck, realization softened his features. “You’re one of those…girls.” He said the word like it was foreign. “From the…cart.”
“Yes! Oh, it’s nice to not have to explain the whole tragic story about getting sold off and beaten up and knocked out.
Look I still have some bruises”—she held up her other arm and the fading green-ish splotches, perhaps pointless as they were under the equally green-ish light, but her pouty frown would do wonders regardless—“and I also have a special delivery for you.” In her hand, she wiggled the sachet strategically beside her chest. She gave him the fourth cutest smile she had in her arsenal.
He’d have to earn the other three, and she hoped he would be up to the challenge.
“Finally.” The demon snatched the sachet, and with it went all her budding confidence.
The grip disappeared from around her wrist, and his shadowed form stalked away as if she would simply stop existing if he wasn’t looking at her.
As his form faded into the darkness, a tail swished indignantly through the air, thick at its base and tapered to a point.
Brioni pouted at her empty hands and then glanced at the glowing purple eyes for some sympathy.
“Do not touch the veilhound.”
She snatched her reaching hand back and clicked her tongue. “I wasn’t going to!”
The demon hadn’t bothered to actually look back at her, climbing a stairway in the barn’s middle to a closed loft above. She rubbed her wrist as she watched him take the stairs two at a time until the muted, colorless light glowing from the doorway fell on him, and then her breath caught.
Brioni had seen plenty of demons on her daily expeditions through Heck.
Though some had vivid hues to their skin and others were made up of dreamy pastels, they all had their colors and coordinating magics in common.
But this demon wasn’t any of the brilliant colors Brioni had become accustomed to. This one was silver.