| |
––––––––
AZAZEL HAD BEEN PUTTING off the task Onvier had given him. He finally decided it was high time to kill the demoness Raum had declared was off limits. He slunk through the catacombs searching for a likely victim to possess. He picked a small, but vicious female minion. Pouring his essence into his target, he took her over and shunted her dazed mind aside. He was used to taking over other beings’ bodies and had no trouble operating the demon’s limbs.
He headed for the pit and sent out his senses. Ember wasn’t in the hidey hole she used as her lair. He’d been stalking the area and had been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of her a week ago as she’d vanished into a small tunnel. He climbed the wall and crawled to the end of the passageway, then dropped to the ground. The cave was completely empty when he scanned the bare walls, floor and ceiling. “What a dump,” he muttered, then settled down to wait.
Dawn finally drew near and he snapped out of a light doze he’d fallen into out of sheer boredom. Ember hadn’t turned up and it didn’t smell as if she’d been living there for several nights. “She’s found somewhere else to live,” he concluded.
Annoyed at his failure to put an end to the hellion now that he’d finally decided to eradicate her, he exited from the minion’s body. In a fit of pique, he tore her head off with his talons, then left her to rot in the chamber. The catacombs were extensive, so it could take weeks or possibly even months to track Ember down to her new lair.
When Azazel woke the next night, he headed to his office in the Demon Guildhall. He’d just sat down when a flash of glowing gold eyes caught his attention as he glanced through his window. Lurching to his feet, he pressed his face up against the glass. He watched Ember zoom towards the Immortal Triumvirate’s headquarters. “What are you up to?” he murmured when he dimly saw her land on the roof of the building.
Hoping Raum wouldn’t send for him, he hurried up to the roof of the guildhall and slipped out into the rain. He flew in a wide circle around the huge stone building where their leaders had their offices and landed on a rooftop a few blocks away. He had a perfect view of the demoness and spied on her as she sat hunched in the rain.
A couple of hours before dawn, Ember suddenly took off. Azazel followed her at a distance as she headed to the Shifter District. She seemed to be following a carriage. He smirked when he saw Lord Graham exit the vehicle when it stopped in front of a large stone mansion.
His curiosity about why Ember was stalking the alpha werewolf wasn’t strong enough to prevent him from performing his task. He expected her to head back to the catacombs when she took to the air, but she instead flew towards the shifter woods.
It was a mystery why any demon would travel to the forest where the rogues ran wild. It was too dangerous even for his kind. The bestial shifters would kill and eat anything they could catch, including hell spawn, or so he figured.
Azazel watched Ember descend to the ground and walk towards the mouth of a cave. She hesitated, looked around as if she sensed danger, then went into a stealthy crouch and entered the dark mouth of the tunnel.
Roars sounded from within the cave and echoed around what sounded like a large chamber. Azazel couldn’t resist the urge to see what was going on. He flew over to the entrance and landed quietly. As stealthily as possible, he crept along a short passageway to see dozens of rogues from several different species in a killing frenzy.
He caught sight of a tattered black wing as Ember fought off the horde. Her gold eyes lit up the space as a werewolf batted her to the ground with a paw. She fell with a despairing cry and a werelion leaped on her and savaged her stomach. Azazel kept his scarlet eyes slitted so the scarlet glow didn’t give him away as he watched the pack play with their meal.
Ember screeched when the werewolf clamped its jaws around her throat. She thrashed around, but the werelion pinned her down with a paw and continued to worry at her stomach. A death rattle sounded from the hellion, then she went limp. The gold light faded when her eyes drifted shut. The rest of the pack converged on her corpse to feed.
Azazel chuckled in glee and a weretiger heard him. Its head whipped towards him and it let out a roar of warning. Other heads turned, then the rogues were rushing at him. The demon backpedaled and ran into something even bigger than he was. He turned to see a werebear glowering down at him. The creature bellowed directly into his face and Azazel let out a squeal of fright. He ducked beneath the beast’s arm when it swiped a paw at him and fled from the tunnel.
The demon leaped into the air and flew as fast as he could away from the shifter woods. He’d thought the Demon District was a brutal place to live. The rogues were even hungrier and crazier than his kind were.
When he reached an entrance to the catacombs, he swiftly made his way to his quarters and shut the door. “I need to send a letter to Guild Master Onvier,” he whispered. A sheet of paper and a quill appeared in front of him. “Raum’s pet demoness is dead,” he recited and the quill wrote down his words. An envelope appeared around it and it zoomed over to his door, then squirmed through a crack to escape. He didn’t bother to explain how Ember had died. The message implied that he was responsible for her demise, so he would get the credit for it. “Let the elf believe I ended the female’s life,” he murmured smugly. Raum would never know what had happened to her. The rogues would devour her utterly and only bone fragments would be left.
With a chuckle, he curled up on his bed, picturing how furious his master would be once Raum realized Ember had vanished without a trace.
