Outside of the room, with Darius apparently knowing where he was going, Emery asked, “What’s the nature of the ritual? Penny won’t go quietly to anything extreme, no matter how much she tries. You must know that.”
“This won’t be that sort of extreme,” Darius said, and left it at that.
They only had a scant couple of hours of idle time before Darius emerged from his little alcove in their joined room, nothing more than a rough rock cut out from the main drag on the third floor, outfitted with a few little sleeping cubbies encircling a firepit in the center of the space. A spit straddled the circle of rocks. It had been slowly turning as they walked in, roasting a pig that must have been magically thawed when they first arrived at the compound. Darius was incredibly extra when it came to food, clearly. She’d been expecting to eat beans out of a can, cowboy style, and instead they would get fire-roasted pork. Now that she was finished healing, she could feel the hunger coming on.
The little alcoves didn’t have doors. Just something similar to mattresses, plus lots of pillows. Penny had quickly fallen asleep.
“So…you don’t have to participate in the ritual?” she asked Darius as she stepped out of her and Emery’s little alcove. Darius had been annoyingly silent on what the ritual would entail, and Emery hadn’t pressed for unknown reasons. She would’ve magically dragged it out of the vampire hours ago if she hadn’t fallen headfirst into a nap.
“No. They tried to make it a requirement of me at first, but I strictly refused. I told them I would engage in it when my beloved was with me. Not until then.”
“But I have to participate?” Penny demanded. “How is that fair?”
“Because your beloved is with you. And because I will still participate; I just won’t touch another.”
“Well, I won’t touch another,” Penny said adamantly as they walked down the corridor. Other demons walked in the same direction, some hurrying and others dawdling. They represented all different forms, some resembling humans, others looking like creatures, and one a sort of man-goat. That one was really gross.
When they got close to Darius, many smiled, and some made lurid sounds.
“You’ll touch me, I have a feeling,” Emery said softly, and something in his voice lit a fire in her core, tightened her up in all the right ways while loosening her in others.
She struggled to breathe out of a suddenly tight chest, butterflies filling her stomach. She wasn’t in the right headspace to comment on that.
“It’s your seduction they like?” Emery asked Darius as they took to the stairs.
“Yes. Humans are easy prey when offered the fundamentals of their species’ survival—-food and sex. Our magic is seductive to lure them in, and this type of demon feeds on it. It heightens their…senses, I think. Or maybe just adds a little flavor, I’m not sure.”
“So you hang around while they bang?” Penny asked in a harried tone. She knew she sounded like a prude. She knew she was theoretically clutching her pearls. But this was some sort of crazy. She’d only ever been with Emery, and she hadn’t started with him all that long ago in the scheme of things. She wasn’t ready for intense public displays of affection. Yes, okay, maybe she’d made love to him outside when they were becoming a dual-mage pair. But they’d been alone. And that had been a special circumstance…
“Yes.” Darius led them off the stairs and down a wide stone corridor, the nicest area she’d seen in this strange, cavelike dwelling. “I read, typically, or think about other things.”
“And it doesn’t gross you out?” she pushed.
“No, quite the opposite. It makes me long for…my beloved.”
“The leader didn’t seem concerned about why you’re here,” Emery said, his fingers entwined with Penny’s.
“No,” Darius replied. “This sect mostly ignores politics. That is why I sought them out. They thrive around my magic and don’t much care why I am here. It’s a perfect setup for my goals. I’m not sure if…they will be suspected in harboring us or not. Likely not.”
“And why is that?”
They turned a corner, the demons bumping and jostling now, the ground turning from stone into that mattress-like material. The room opened up into something similar to the cavern on the ground floor, although not nearly as big. The edges that seemed more like catacombs. There were little nooks and crannies everywhere, it seemed like, plenty of darkened corners for people to disappear from sight. And plenty of room for them to lie around, on full display, nestled in the pillows or along the soft ground.
A large cauldron stood in the center, raised on a stone dais. Creatures stood on the dais, dipping in golden cups and handing them to those waiting on the ground. Those that received the offering drank it down, handed the cup back, and moved on, choosing a spot in the open or grouping with others in the darkened areas.