Chapter 27
I shrieked.
I wasn’t a shrieker, and I’d done stuff like raise an undead army as well as hundreds of ghosts in my life, but I shrieked at the fleshy mass exiting my toilet.
“What the—” I choked, backing up fast.
I tripped over my feet and fell hard, like a secondary female character in a scary movie. I scrambled to crawl out of the bathroom and to my bed before turning to look back with wide eyes.
What the fuck was it?
The creature had no discernible eyes or nose, just a bottom row of long, rectangular teeth around the hole in its face that must be a mouth. The thing scuttled closer, and I shrieked again as I spotted the long tail.
It was a rodent.
It was a…
“Qer,” I breathed, then screwed my face up.
A qer might have been a cute rodent, like a pygmy jeboa, but instead, a qer was a fucking naked mole rat—but twice the girth and three times the length. When the thing moved, it simultaneously scuttled and stretched its body forward like a slug, rat, lizard, caterpillar.
Gross.
No wonder they stayed underground.
I inhaled slowly, glad Tyran was in the hangar. He’d “trusted” me to get ready for battle without him. Mostly because of his looming death threat against Carmine. “Where are your white scales?”
The qer hissed and groaned, then opened its mouth. The inside of its throat was lined with white scales, all the way down.
The thing was inside out. I couldn’t. “Did you find them?”
The qer nodded.
I didn’t like that it could communicate, but I forced my previously unknown fear of qer aside. “Can you bring them to me?”
The qer shook its head.
“Dammit,” I muttered. There was no one to send. Athira would be joining us in battle. Tsan hated me. Everyone else was on Earth.
I pursed my lips. “Where are they?”
The qer scuttled and stretched toward me, and I hugged my knees up, blurting, “What are you doing? What are you doing?”
The qer stopped immediately before me and turned its head. Bile rose in my throat as a flap of skin retracted to reveal a slimy, flesh hole behind what might be its ear. Or stomach. I couldn’t tell.
Two members of Istg had become badass serpents. Twenty-three had become pretty cool nismus. Fifteen members of Istg had become this thing. Short fucking straw.
“What do you want from me?” I whispered.
The qer flicked its tail, and I yelped when its tail touched my forefinger. The qer then jabbed its tail at the slimy hole in its side.
No. Way.
Nope.
“You want me to put my finger in there?” My teeth chattered. My body shook. I’d faced down Tyran at the height of his rage with more courage.
I’d rather be healed again.
“Does the fate of supernaturals hinge on me doing this?” I whispered.
The qer jabbed its tail at its side hole again.
Nausea churned in my stomach as I lifted a finger. Squeezing my eyes shut, I set the tip of my finger in the hole. Just a plug in a socket. Just a plug in a socket.
The hole closed around my finger and sucked!
I tried to jerk away without success. This was a fucking rat anemone, and I wanted no part of it. Everyone could die. “Let me go!”
My head flung back as an image flashed in my mind, obliterating my vision of the room I still sat in. The image was of shadows and light, the image seen by someone near blindness—which I guessed the qer must be. I smelled dirt. Death. The scrape of stone. Sobbing. The swing of a gate.
My body jolted as the image left my mind, and I was left staring at the qer. He—or she—released my finger, and I drew it back, wondering if I wanted to keep the finger or chop it off. Slime still connected me to the qer’s hole.
“Thank you?” I sobbed.
The qer hissed, and then its fucking head retracted into its body then came out its ass end. It’s tail appeared where its head had been.
My chest rose and fell as the white-scaled monstrosity scuttled and stretched its way back to the toilet, then plopped in.
I would never use that toilet again. Not ever.
My breath shook as I crawled to the vanity, and I remained on my knees while washing the slime off. I would never be the same.
I closed the toilet lid and set a heavy stone on top.
I could safely say that a qer had just made me consider abandoning four supernatural races to Tyran’s rule. And I still had no idea where the blue gems were. Was that image from the qer meant to help me? Because right now I was feeling as if I’d violated myself for nothing.
War.
Shit.
I was meant to be going to war.
Another war. I’d already faced one tonight.
Clawing my way upright using the vanity, I staggered my way through the castle, focusing on deep breaths until I felt some tension ease from my shoulders. My stride lengthened, and I almost felt myself again upon reaching the packed hangar.
Tyran threw me a chilled look. Oh, was I late? Fuck him. I’d just fingered a qer.
He frowned, and I walked to join him and Athira.
“You’re pale,” Athira said. “Surely you are not scared of a little war?”
“My queen,” Tyran murmured. “You are pale. What troubles you?”
Cold amusement hardened his gaze, and no doubt he believed me pale because of the looming threat over Carmine. “I consider myself lucky to have a mate and mother-in-law who are so concerned for my well being. Are we going?”
Athira snorted, and Tyran chuckled without humor like the ancient maniac he was.
“Soldiers,” he called.
I tuned out his war speech, and though I should be frantically continuing to figure a way out of this mess as I had attempted to do all day, instead my mind turned to the images and sounds gifted to me by the qer.
Scratching stone. Sobbing. Creaking gate. Shadows. Uniform shadows set six feet apart. Like stones.
I had no clue. I also had to make it through this night first.
Three of the Vissimo gates creaked open, and I heard the blaring alarms on the other side. The Vissimo would be waking already and sprinting into position, sounding the alarms for their allies.
Tyran blurred through, and I blurred after him with Athira following in my slipstream.
The army came after, splitting between the three gates as per their orders.
One battalion would target the back. Another would target the front of the royal Vissimo mansion.
The third was with us and the weapons squadron. They’d enter the mansion with us.
I pulled up next to Tyran, and the squadron blurred ahead of us, led by Raes.
“Mother, take your force and target any Vissimo royal within. Leave the king and queen for us,” Tyran ordered her.
Athira bowed, then split away with a group of her ten favorite crimsons.
Sorry, Kyros. I doubted that he’d get through this night without any loss.
“Come, my queen,” Tyran said.
I walked forward with him, and we entered the mansion. The place was like I imagined. Enormous, minimalist, and dotted with artworks that had to be twenty times my age, minimum.
Battle echoed through the grounds, but I tilted my head at the utter lack of fighting within.
Tyran inhaled, and then pulsed his power forth.
“Where is my army?” he hissed.
He blurred forward, and I joined him, hope fueling me.
We both wrenched to a halt in a cold, stone hall at the sight of our army, sprawling and writhing ahead. I blinked at the strange film surrounding them.
Ah. A trap. Of my sister’s making.
“It is her power,” Tyran seethed.
Kyros’s chilled voice split the air. “A little gift she left us before your mate killed her.”
Tyran lifted his head. “A gift that I will shatter.”
“Be my guest. Your mother attempted the same,” Kyros replied, and I spotted him on a throne at the opposite end of the hall, which was more like the secret, underground rendezvous of an ancient organization.
His throne was set at the top of a pyramid of stairs, and Basilia sat in the throne beside him.
His eight siblings stood either side of the thrones, four on the left and four on the right.
My eyes landed on Athira next. Like the rest of the weapons squadron, she was writhing in agony in the trap. Raes was doing the same in the middle of the squadron. I whistled low at the size of the trap. Impressive.
“Break it,” Tyran ordered me.
“I can’t,” I said. “My magus magic isn’t strong enough to decode it. I could no sooner disintegrate a four-affinity barrier by myself. I can sense its nature. That’s it.”
Tyran half turned, gripping me above the elbow. “You can shatter your twin’s magic. So shatter it.”
I glared up at him. “It is not just made of her magic. The entire coven put in on this. My magus power isn’t strong enough. Only those in the trap can break it.”
“How?”
Kyros’s laughter preempted my reply.
I arched my brows. “By thinking happy thoughts. The trap reflects their love of violence and pain and suffering back upon themselves, exponentially. They are not trapped in power, just in mind and spirit. If they can think happy thoughts, then they could simply walk free of the trap.”
Which was brilliant because demons weren’t capable of detaching from their intrinsic violence. The trap was unbreakable. “I suggest you move on.”
“What next, great demon king?” Kyros called. “Will you fight the royals of Sundulus alone?”
“Kill them,” Tyran ordered me. “Raise your army.”
I hummed. “No. I think not.”
He bowed his head and hissed in my ear, “You would pay the ultimate price.”
“Your threat did hold weight before. When you had a third of your army within the mansion. But I think not. Separate from Carmine first. Or go without my help.”
See, I’d come to some kind of forced peace with my obsolete strategy these days. But now I was resorting to bluffing and hoping to call him on his bluffs.
That felt like a new, dangerous low.
Tyran smiled, then straightened. He disappeared. Not into a portal. He simply was that powerful that his speed had always been near impossible to track. But my power had increased too. My eyes tracked him across the stone hall, and I was stepping through a portal when he was halfway to his goal.
His hand was extended to grip Basilia’s throat when I portaled in front of her. Kyros was half out of his throne, no match for Carmine’s speed. Basilia had slammed back in her throne.
The siblings reacted at the sight of us already there.
“And unless I am convinced that helping is in Carmine’s best interest, Tyran,” I said. “Then you will find me content to be a hindrance. None of the Vissimo royals will die tonight.”
Tyran laughed. “And you think that you can defeat me?”
“I could give it my best shot, but it would be in the interest of the Vissimo royals to aid me, of course, and live to fight another night.”
Kyros had extracted Basilia and placed her in the care of his strongest siblings. I recognized Gerome, but the others were unknown to me.
Looking in Tyran’s gaze was like looking at a prehistoric glacier. I couldn’t help a shiver, and I felt that shiver rippling through the onlooking Vissimo. We were in the presence of evil, and the danger was palpable and so very heavy in the air.
“Retreat,” I told him. “And we will enter negotiations. I will not win a war for you while Carmine is trapped within you.”
Kyros’s gaze was upon me. He must already know the truth of this from Tempest, but seeing was believing.
Tyran’s lips were white with fury. Probably because I’d let slip his little secret. “Do you have any idea what I can do to him, young demon? Do you have any idea of the torment I can lock him in?”
The ice faded, and Carmine fell to the ground, arching—his jaw locked in a silent scream.
My breath quickened, and at first I couldn’t believe that Tyran would dare to do this in front of the weapons squadron.
But a quick look told me that no one in the trap was concerned about anything beyond their own agony.
“If you would do that to your own host, then you are not as cunning as I thought.” My voice was icy enough to rival Tyran’s.
Carmine’s writhing halted, and he stood again as Tyran. I heard Basilia’s gasp behind me.
“Kill my mate,” I told him. “And you will have no help at all. Carmine has been in agony within you for twenty years. He is strong enough to cope with whatever treatment you place him through, especially knowing that treatment weakens you too. You wanted to know what we discussed in our dream, Tyran, and I’ll tell you.
Carmine wants me to kill him. He will go down with you, so that other supernaturals and his son can find peace again.
That is what he wishes. You think a few months or years of pain will change that?
He’ll revel in anything that makes you easier to eliminate.
The only thing between him and that is my choice.
So again, negotiate with me, or find me a very unhelpful queen.
I could help you win a war, and I sure as fuck could help you lose it. ”
With that, I opened a portal back to the gates, then curved my lips. “Shall we, my king?”
Tyran glanced at the Vissimo royals, sizing them up. This would be a serious blow to his pride, and I would pay for this. For all my bravado, I had no doubt of the monster I’d chosen to unleash with that speech.
I glanced at Kyros, who returned my look with a grave one of his own. I looked next at a somber Basilia, who mouthed, “Badass bitch.”
Oddly, tears sprang to my eyes at the encouragement.
Tyran inhaled and straightened his shoulders. “I can see that I have acted in haste this night. Let us return to the realm, my queen, and we shall negotiate as we should have.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes. “After you, Tyran.”
He walked through, and I followed him, with only a cursory look at the demons in the trap. The power of the coven would eventually run dry, but I had no doubt that they could hold the demons in there for several days. Longer, if other covens lent them additional power.
A third of the demon army were trapped.
Kyros, Basilia, and their family were alive.
That was a win. Something to be grateful for.
Tyran barked for a retreat, and the two battalions blurred through the gates. I entered the middle gate behind Tyran. The thick fog cleared, and just as the hangar came into view, an explosion blinded me to everything but the roars and screams of demons.