Chapter Eight #2
charm proving her point. “I feel like I need to defend myself and insist that
I’m all kinds of damaged.” He tipped the bottle to his lips, and she became
mesmerized at the way his throat worked with each swallow, his supple skin
rippling over straining tendons.
Jedda had to resist fanning her face. “Shrike called you an Unfallen. Is that why you’re not like him?”
He smiled, amused. “No. I’m not like him because I’m not a
True Fallen. I’m not evil.” He put down the nearly empty bottle. “And you,” he
said, watching her curiously, “you say you’re an elf.”
“I am an elf.” She tucked her hair behind one
pointy ear so he couldn’t miss it. She didn’t miss the way he’d
changed the subject. Now she was super curious about his damage.
His mouth quirked in amusement. “A lot of demons have pointy
ears.”
“I’m not a demon.” How insulting. And how many times did she
have to tell him that? Annoyed, she reached for her bottle of water, but in her
haste, she knocked it over, striking the marble napkin holder. The bottle
shattered, spilling foamy seltzer everywhere. “Dammit.” She reached for a
napkin, but once again her haste cost her, and she sliced her arm on a broken
piece of glass.
Blood splashed on the table, and before she could mop it up,
tiny emeralds, citrine, lapis, and a dozen other gemstones formed in the
splatters of blood.
“That’s...interesting,” Razr murmured.
“It’s nothing.” She swiped her hand through the mess, and
instantly the gems disappeared into her palm. “I’ll get this cleaned up––”
“Wait.” He seized her wrist and pulled her hand close. “What
just happened?” Gently, he pressed a napkin against her wound, which was
already healing, but was also spilling out a couple more gemstones. “What’s
going on, Jedda?”
At his no-nonsense tone, soft but steely, her breath burned
in her throat and her blood burned in her veins. Gem elves did everything they
could to hide this secret. If people knew the truth about them, they’d be
hunted into extinction, slaughtered for the wealth
they carried within their bodies.
Jedda didn’t know Razr. Didn’t trust him. And yet, there was
something about him that made her want to trust him.
“Jedda?” he prompted. “You can tell me.”
“No,” she rasped. “I can’t.” All around her, diamond dust poofed into the air, turning the kitchen into a priceless
snow globe.
“Okay then.” With a little cough, Razr released her, keeping
the blood-soaked napkin. As he turned it over, a couple of sapphires pinged
onto the tabletop. “I’ll tell you what I think’s going on. You sweat diamond
dust and bleed precious gems, and you’re worried I’ll hang you by your feet and bleed you out for them. Am I right?”
He’d called it. Son of a bitch. She supposed there was no
point in lying anymore, so she stared at the sparkling water as it drip, drip, dripped to the floor.
“My species...we don’t locate priceless gems just to sell.
We use them like fuel. They’re what our bodies are made of. Our bones, our
muscles, our organs. We can sense them. Not to toot my own horn, but that’s why
I’m such a successful gemologist.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Do you need
different kinds of gems to survive?”
“You mean, could I live off, say, rubies, exclusively?” At
his nod, she shook her head. “Every gem has a different chemical and mineral
composition, and our bodies need certain types of stones for different
functions. I need diamonds to cry and for the protective coating on my skin,
for example.”
Reaching out, he trailed a finger along her bicep, leaving
behind a heated tingle. “Protective coating?”
“See how I sparkle in the right light? It’s diamond dust.
When I’m in a mine and my body detects deadly gasses
or excessive heat, it absorbs the worst of it and lets me go deeper and stay
longer than humans. Topaz gives me night vision. Stuff like that.” She gestured
to the large gemstones she kept all around the flat, many displayed as works of
art, some just filling glass bowls, and others lying around waiting to be
dusted. “They all give off their own unique, life-giving vibrations. We don’t
absorb them all—we surround ourselves with them too. Their energy is our fuel.”
Sitting back in his chair, he appeared to contemplate what
she’d told him. “Is their energy infinite? Or do you have to replace the gems
when their energy is depleted?”
She reached out and spun the table’s centerpiece, a crystal
dish containing a mix of uncut gemstones, and watched the colors swirl in a
multicolored blur.
“Stones we keep around us provide infinite, but mild energy.
For more intense energy and special abilities, we have to
absorb the gems. The small ones are drained within a few months, and even the
larger and most powerful ones can be depleted if we don’t return to our realm
every decade or so to recharge them. We can also hit capacity.”
“Capacity?”
She nodded. “I’m so full of hematite that I can’t absorb
another one unless I break a bone and need more to heal.”
“Are there ever any that you can’t be around?”
“Oh, yes. Some are so powerful that they can have a
corrupting effect on us, like a drug that never wears off.” She’d seen that
more times than she wanted to admit. “Of course, part of what makes us what we
are is that we can’t resist gemstones like that. We want them, even though we
know we shouldn’t actually use them. Those go into
storage. At least, those of us who aren’t crazy put them into storage.”
There was a long pause as he stared at her with such
intensity that she started to squirm. “Do you have any like that?”
“Several.” She pushed a piece of carrot around on her plate,
her appetite ruined by the topic. “Most of them are there because they’re
infused with evil, and I don’t want them getting out into the world. I mean,
can you imagine what would happen if someone like Shrike got hold of a lapis
lazuli that could turn water into arsenic on a large scale?” She shuddered.
“You have a lapis lazuli that can do that?” Razr stood and
headed into the kitchen.
“I have a lot of gems that are even worse,” she sighed.
No way was she letting any of them go, and she’d paid the dhampires enough to keep the things stored for eternity.
She especially didn’t want them to fall into the hands of evil gem elves.
Members of her species were just too self-destructive when they went evil, as
Jedda knew all too well. Never again would she allow an evil gem to leave her
possession.
Razr fetched the garbage and started to clean up the broken
glass, refusing when she offered to help. “Okay, so you have this incredible
affinity for gemstones. What makes you think you can’t find the Gems of Enoch?
Sounds like if anyone can, it’s you.”
“I can’t just wish a gem into my possession,” she said,
because that was the truth. “In order to find an enchanted stone at a distance,
it has to be in use. That’s the only way it’ll send
out a strong enough signal. But even then, I have to
be somewhere close.”
He wiped up the last of the broken glass with a paper towel.
“How close?”
She shrugged. “Once, a Svetnalu
demon princess in northern Vietnam was using runes made from a lava beast, and
I felt it from Malaysia. But that’s rare. Really rare.”
She and her sisters had felt the Gems of Enoch in use from
twice as far away, but there was no way she was going to share that precious
nugget of information.
“So you’re saying you have no idea
where any Enoch gems are, and you don’t know how to find them.”
She took intense, sudden interest in her plate so she
wouldn’t have to look at him while she lied. “That’s what I’m saying,” she
mumbled.
There was a long silence, and she sensed disappointment
rolling off him in a wave so strong that she swore she
experienced it as well. Did she actually feel bad that
she couldn’t give him the gems?
Finally, as he sat back down across from her, he broke the
silence. “What if I can get you the crystal horn? We can get Shrike off your
back with it. At least buy some extra time, and I’ll help you find the Enoch
gems.”
Help her? It wouldn’t make any difference. She couldn’t give
up her diamond. But the crystal devil’s horn? Was he serious?
“How can you help me get the horn?” she asked. “I thought
you didn’t know what it even was?”
“After you and Shrike described it, I realized I’d seen it
before.” He waggled his brows. “I just happen to know who owns one.”
No way. “That’s next to impossible,” she informed him.
“Probably a replica. I told you, according to legend there are only two––”
“And one of them happens to belong to my boss.”
He really was delusional. But she played along.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll bite. Who is your boss?”
“I call him Azagoth, but you
probably know him as the Grim Reaper.”
She wasn’t sure if she should laugh or laugh...harder. The
Grim Reaper? Demons were always calling themselves all kinds of crazy shit.
She’d met a dozen idiots who swore they were Lucifer. And a dozen more who
claimed to be Jack the Ripper. Hitler. Caligula. The list went on.
“Tell you what. You prove you work for the Grim Reaper, and
I’ll prove I’m an elf. Deal?”
“Deal.” Razr grinned, that killer one that made her ovaries
clench. “Come on, Dobby. Let’s go.”