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A KNOCK SOUNDED AT the door to Raum’s private quarters, rousing him from his thoughts. “Enter,” he said without raising his voice. All demons had exceptional hearing and one of his hulking gray guards pushed the door open. One of the scouts who watched for anything interesting that was going on in the city entered. “You have news?” Raum asked, arching an eyebrow in enquiry. He was sitting on a black leather armchair in front of the fireplace. No matter what time of year it was, it was always chilly in the catacombs. It was a marked contrast to the heat of hell.
“I spotted Xiara Evora making her way to Crowmon’s shrine in a carriage, my lord,” the scout said, subserviently lowering his hideous head. Only four feet tall, the scout had slimy looking brown skin and a bat-like face. He didn’t have wings, or a tail. He was adept at hiding in the shadows and spying on people.
“I see,” Raum said thoughtfully. The trickster god was up to something, but the Demon Guild Master didn’t know what it was. Maybe Ms. Evora could shed some light on what his ally was planning. “Get one of the demons who can fly to take you to the shrine,” he ordered. He left the black leather couch in front of the fireplace and crossed to his desk. He quickly wrote a message and sealed it in an envelope. “Watch Ms. Evora from afar and make sure she gets this letter.” He handed it over to the scout. “Use one of our non-demonic allies to deliver it to her,” he added. “Make sure the demons who are watching the entrances to the catacombs allow Ms. Evora to enter. She is to be escorted to me immediately.” The scout bowed his head in agreement, then scurried outside.
Raum’s chambers were made of black rock rather than gray like the rest of the catacombs. The floor was smooth and it had been polished to a high sheen. The chamber was lit with candles that flickered as though there was a draft that didn’t actually exist. The candles were no longer magical and wax dripped to the floor. A crew of minions came in weekly to scrape the wax away and to clean his sanctum, since there wasn’t enough magic in his District to take care of the menial tasks.
Thick red rugs lay beneath elegant furniture. A living area sat to the right, with comfortable couches and armchairs surrounding a massive coffee table. The coffee table was formed out of black rock. A dining area was to the left, with a table that could seat a dozen people. The chairs were plain and wooden rather than ornate. Another door stood ahead led to his bedroom. Beyond the dining area was a library, with bookcases that were lined up in neat rows. To the right of the library was a den, with a huge wooden desk and a green leather chair.
A couple of hours passed before another knock sounded at the door. “Enter,” Raum called out, for his guest’s benefit. Xiara Evora had received his summons and had arrived as he’d requested.
“A little help?” he heard his minion say snarkily to the gigantic guards. The door swung open and a yellow demon gestured for Xiara to enter. The demon scurried away even before his guest took her first step into his chambers.
“How kind of you to accept my invitation, Ms. Evora,” Raum said politely from his seat behind his desk where he’d been waiting for her. At his gesture, the guard pulled the door shut. He knew what women saw when they looked at him. His human form was charming and wickedly handsome. He was just over six feet tall, had midnight black hair, dark blue eyes, tanned skin and a smoldering smile. He wore a midnight blue shirt beneath a charcoal gray suit. His teeth were very white and he’d had to practice for several decades to make his smile look genuine.
“Did I have a choice?” Ms. Evora asked with a scowl as he rose to his feet.
“Why, no, actually,” he admitted. “If you had ignored my note, I would have sent some of my servants to retrieve you. Would you care for a drink?” he asked and gestured at a sideboard that held a variety of alcohol.
“I don’t drink on the job,” she informed him.
“Really?” he asked in fake surprise. “I thought you didn’t drink because you can’t tolerate alcohol.”
“What do you want, Raum?” Xiara asked. “Shouldn’t you be at the Demon Guildhall?” As the Guild Master, he ran both the Demon Guild and the Demon District.
“My representative takes over when I’m busy elsewhere,” he said as he poured himself some scotch.
“Who?” she asked, then answered her own question. “Not Azazel?”
He saluted her with his tumbler. “You are astute, Ms. Evora. You’re not just a pretty face and the wielder of a deadly staff.”
“How can you trust him?” his guest asked with her upper lip lifted. “He’s a weasel.”
“Azazel is my faithful servant,” Raum said with utter confidence. “He knows that to betray me would result in harsh punishment.” His eyes sparkled in merriment at the thought of the agonies he could force his right-hand demon to suffer. For a moment, the hellfire that burned inside him danced in his eyes before he could banish it.
She held up her hand before he could go into detail. “I don’t want to know,” she said. “So, you called me here for a reason I presume?”
Sighing that she wasn’t playing along with his pretense that she was there for a friendly visit, he drained his scotch and set the tumbler down. “You met with Crowmon this evening. I wish to know what the two of you discussed.”
“How do you know I had a meeting with him?” she asked suspiciously.
“You were seen riding in a carriage towards his shrine,” he said. “It seems rather obvious that you were travelling there to speak with the trickster god.”
“I’m not sure Crowmon can be classified as a trickster god anymore.”
One black eyebrow rose in enquiry. “How so?” Raum asked. He took a seat on an armchair and invited her to join him with a sweep of his hand.
She perched on the edge of the couch and propped Wrath up beside her, keeping the staff close. “What do you know about his priests and priestesses?” she asked.
“I’ve heard they practice unsavory acts that some claim are evil,” he said, being as cryptic as possible.
“They’re performing vampire sacrifices to their god and they’re trying to start a war between the human magic users and the leeches,” she said starkly.
Raum tented his hands and rested his chin on his fingertips. He wasn’t at all surprised by that information. His spies frequently reported on what was going on in the other Districts. “One wonders what the Guardian of Nox is going to do about these murders and sacrifices,” he said in a pondering tone.
“No one has reported them to the Immortal Triumvirate yet,” she said with a shrug. “I can’t punish anyone if I’m not given the order to execute them.”
“You are aware of the murders, yet it seems you aren’t going to inform our illustrious leaders about them,” the demon said slyly. “May I enquire why you’re choosing to keep your silence?”
“I can’t change Crowmon’s fate,” she said. “He’s chosen this path and he’s going to have to see it through to the end.”
Raum nodded thoughtfully and looked off into the distance. “I have a feeling things aren’t going to go quite as Crowmon hopes,” he said. “Nox is changing and not for the better. If I had known how weak my people would become due to the annual Energy Tax, I never would have made the deal to engineer the Drain.”
Xiara seized on that and couldn’t resist questioning him about it, just as he’d known she would. “What part did you play in the Drain?”
Raum was glad he was finally getting the chance to admit to his part of the scheme. He didn’t get to chat to others very often and it grew tedious talking to his own kind all the time. “I know a priest who can contact our brethren in hell,” he said coyly.
“No one has access to the outside world,” Xiara refuted.
He slanted her a sly grin. “We don’t have access to anyone on Earth, no, but hell is in another dimension. The priest can pierce the veil and send messages to my kin. Sadly, he can’t receive messages in return.” That was a lie, but he wasn’t about to divulge all of his secrets to her.
“What messages did your priest send to his contact in hell?”
Raum rose and sauntered over to the sideboard to pour himself another drink. Alcohol didn’t affect him at all, but he enjoyed the taste. “The Immortal Triumvirate made a deal with Crowmon and me. They tasked us with creating a disaster that would be catastrophic enough to allow them to have a reason to drain the power from the Night Cursed beings. Their plan was to use their creations to gain more strength.”
“Okay,” his guest said when he paused to take a sip of his drink. “Did you know the soldiers were going to invade Nox?”
Raum grinned with wicked good humor. “I didn’t just know about their plans, Ms. Evora. I came up with them.” Her brow furrowed in confusion and he straightened his already perfectly straight tie and waited for the questions to begin.
“Maybe you should just explain it to me from the beginning, because I don’t get it,” the huntress said.
That was exactly what he wanted to hear and he launched into an explanation. “The humans knew that the people who had been hexed on Halloween so many years ago had headed towards this general area, but they hadn’t yet discovered Nox,” he told her. “Normal people can’t see the City of Night. Only someone with magical abilities, monsters and supernatural creatures can see through the barrier.” She nodded to indicate she was aware of that and he went on.
“I came up with the idea of alerting the Army to the location of Nox so they could attempt to rescue the Night Cursed from their terrible fate,” the demon explained. “My priest sent word to my contacts in hell. They possessed key members of the Army and the government and convinced them to send spies to Nox. Once they saw their soldiers vanish into thin air, they realized the City of Night wasn’t just a rumor.”
Pleased with the Guardian of Nox’s dumbfounded expression, he paused to savor a sip of his scotch.
“It didn’t take much to convince the authorities to send in their soldiers,” Raum continued smugly. “They’d been convinced that they would be able to kill our leaders and free the cursed. Of course, that was never a possibility,” he added with a chuckle. “The invasion gave the Immortal Triumvirate an excuse to unleash their undead hordes. Crowmon and I combined our magic to take control of the undead once the soldiers had been defeated. They turned on the uncursed citizens and, well, you know the rest.” He lowered his eyes to try to hide his glee at the mayhem and chaos that he and the trickster had wrought.
“Tens of thousands of vampires, shifters and magic users died,” Xiara said in a flat, unfriendly tone. “The Night Cursed were drained of their energy and the Energy Tax was introduced. Crowmon got his shrine and you became the Guild Master of the Demon Guild. The Triumvirate became truly immortal just as they’d hoped.”
“Are they truly immortal, though?” Raum asked slyly. “Is there no way to topple them from their metaphorical thrones?” She hesitated, which was all the answer he needed. “So, there is still a chance that they can fall and that someone else can take their places,” he mused.
“It will be nearly impossible, but there’s a slim chance,” she said grudgingly. “A fortune teller foresaw that all three of our leaders could be defeated, but their fates aren’t written in stone.”
“How curious,” the demon said as he studied the amber liquid in his tumbler. “I thought our fates were always set.”
“The Immortal Triumvirate have brought this on themselves,” his guest figured with a shrug. “They’ve tampered with all kinds of dark magic on a scale that’s apparently never been used before. It’ll take someone with incredible strength of will and power to be able to change their fates.”
“Thank you for paying me a visit, Ms. Evora,” Raum said and rose to his feet again. He downed his scotch, then escorted her to the door when she stood up. “Our conversation has been most enlightening,” he added with a winsome smile.
“Are you going to get your minions to kill me?” she asked him suspiciously as he opened the door.
“Not this time,” Raum replied with a wink. “Your escort will guide you safely back to the surface.”
The same yellow demon scurried forward as he stepped back into his chambers and closed the door. Raum ambled over to the fireplace and stared into the flames as he contemplated his next moves. It seemed that events were aligning in the other Districts and he planned to use this knowledge to his best advantage.
