Mentored in Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights)

She was beyond my reach, but I could maybe learn a little more about her while I was here.

“First, whiskey.” He wandered closer, an easy sort of stroll that held all the swagger of a prized pony. Not that I knew what one of those really looked like. “Remind me. I’m sure I know of it.”

I filled him in as I stepped away from the wall I’d torn down, wondering if I’d be chastised. It had been a good one, intricately made and pumped full of power, completely solid. I’d marveled at it before I labored to rip it away, knowing in my gut that it had been created by the Great Master himself.

“Hmm, yes. It has a burning sensation.” He smiled. “I remember it. We have something similar here. I’ll show you. It’s more potent, though. You’d best watch yourself.”

“That sounds like a challenge.”

He laughed. “Indeed, it is.”

His eyes twinkled as they beheld me, velvety soft but brimming with power. Brimming with an ego he had earned. He was the master of his domain, and he knew it. I felt the call of it, stirring in my blood. The power welling up in me. The excitement for what was to come.

I squished it down. That wasn’t the right frame of mind to fall into down here. I couldn’t let the siren call of my magic change me. I was perfectly content being nothing more than what I was—a girl who liked her bad neighborhood, full of people who would take a bat to someone’s head on her behalf. Some might accuse me of thinking small, but I didn’t want to think big. If I wanted servants, I could get them from Darius. If I wanted to rule people, I could just hire a staff…

With Darius’s money.

Lucifer tilted his head to the side. He’d heard that thought—I’d let it slip. He probably also read the annoyance in my posture.

I gritted my teeth and focused on appearing neutral to him. I needed to be better about watching myself around him, about not letting him realize how good it felt when I fully gave in to my power. That was something he could exploit.

Without commenting on my slip, or whatever he saw in front of him, Lucifer shifted his attention to the illusion I’d torn down. “I am incredibly impressed.”

I lifted my eyebrows, following his gaze. Cahal, his eyes on my face, took this opportunity to step into my line of view. His focus was fixed on me. He thought I’d just messed up something, I could tell. I’d probably get a lecture later. A very dramatic lecture.

Hopefully Pops came through with the whiskey beforehand.

“With…what, exactly?” I asked Lucifer.

He furrowed his brow at me then indicated the large space in front of us. “I put up this wall myself.”

“Yeah, I gathered. It was really well done.”

“It was at the height of the power scale.”

“Also that, yeah.”

“How long did it take you to rip it down?”

“Oh…” I formed a duckbill with my mouth and glanced at Cahal. “Fifteen minutes? Twenty? It was a doozy.”

“Seventeen,” Cahal replied.

I took a moment to try to read Cahal’s face, because that had been very specific. All those planes and angles were very attractive in a hostile, severe sort of way, and very hard to get a read on. One would think I’d be better at it by now. Then again, he was incredibly closed down when Lucifer came around, and with him, that was saying something.

“Okay, then,” I said, pulling my gaze back to the large area that used to hold a solid wall made entirely of magic. “Seventeen minutes, says the guy without a watch.”

Lucifer laughed. “What our brooding druid is not telling you is that he is constantly comparing you with your predecessor.”

“Your other kid?”

“Yes, exactly. It took him months to learn which walls were magical and which were real, and months more to work out how to tear one down. But you can do it in”—his eyes darkened as they flicked Cahal’s way—“seventeen minutes. Did our illustrious druid teach you that?”

“No. Demolition was always one of my strong suits. He basically taught me how to take a punch.” I grinned, then frowned when neither of them reacted to my joke. I let it go. “But I can’t make anything solid. I can’t build as easily as I can take down.”

“Curse breaker,” Cahal said, clasping his hands in front of him. “The very magic that allows you to stay down here will make it harder for you to create down here. That is the magic that has allowed you to gain admittance to carefully constructed worlds and then, well, ruin them. You are the true demolisher, for not even the land of angels would hold up to the Underworld magic you wield.”

Curse breaker.

I didn’t know if that thought came from myself, Lucifer, Cahal, or a memory. Callie had said it. She’d told me I was one. She hadn’t elaborated, though, and certainly Cahal had never mentioned anything about it. But now, as I watched Lucifer’s eyes spark with a cunning gleam, I wondered what exactly Cahal was playing at. Clearly that was something he should not have advertised.