Mentored in Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights)

He stood in the window with only dim light at his back. He didn’t have his sword, which would be a problem, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. I’d tried to devise a way to get down to the armory to get it back, but I’d never been allowed to go there. I wasn’t ready to see the darker parts of the kingdom, I’d been told, as though I didn’t know how torture worked. As though I hadn’t been tortured right before being brought here.

They just didn’t trust me. They thought I would try to steal the sword out from under them. They were right.

He pulled the latch and swung the heavy pane inward. He glanced down the side of the castle to the ground far below. Then back at me.

“Wanna hug?” I put out my arms.

He glanced down again before stepping up onto the ledge and reaching out for me. I cinched my hands around his big body, grabbing him beneath the pits, before wrapping my legs around his middle. While I’d discovered I could hover two entities, he could only wrap himself in shadow. Unless I was glued to him, of course.

What took you? Cahal thought.

“I had a lovely surprise meeting,” I whispered, sliding down the side slowly, working around windows great and small. “Ja showed up.”

His large slabs of muscle bulged, his arms squeezing my back uncomfortably.

“Yeah. Surprised me, too.” I tried to glance around his big arm to the ground, but no go. “How close are we?”

Half a floor. How did… It wasn’t Vlad.

“Correct. She scolded me for not having seen that. She had a lot of disparaging things to say, actually. She doesn’t think too highly of the way I’ve spent my time here.”

She was in the elves’ dungeon when I got there. She cleared the way for Lucifer, though he didn’t know it. Or need it. I don’t know what else she was doing in there, but she mentioned that you needed training. She wanted you here.

“She was going to release the hold on my bond with Darius, but she ran out of time, I guess. She just did it there, in my room. Well, halfway. It’s enough. I can get Darius’s direction. I’ll be able to find them easily this way.”

We bumped into the ground a little harder than we should’ve. Whoops.

“Let’s go, druid. Let’s see if you can keep up.”

I took off like a jet, needing to get the hell out of there as fast as possible. Cahal was right beside me, hopefully close enough to impart a little magic. He wouldn’t last long at this speed, but we could slow down once we were out in the nothingness.

“I do not…get that…vampire,” I said as we went. “She told me…some of her…end game—”

I hit a rock and stumbled. Cahal braced me. The guy was like a dark guardian angel. He was dangerous and rough and deadly, but when he was helping you stay alive, no detail was too small.

Do not trust anything she says. Her mind is dizzying, and her motives are never clear.

I was glad I wasn’t the only one that thought so.

Cahal looked back and then slowed, breathing heavily.

Thank you for the air, by the way, he thought. I may not technically need it, but it is uncomfortable to live without it.

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when I did it. Also, I was throwing a tantrum.”

He continued on at the slower pace, and I took that opportunity to tell him all Ja had said, repeating her plans in slow detail.

She will let them kill the spy she had with Vlad?

“It seems so.”

She must have others. She likely brought him in case the worst should happen.

“Which it clearly did if she is now asking for help.”

Yes, exactly. She is learning the hard way what it is like to enter into a situation with you and Ms. Bristol. It takes some getting used to.

“You’ve done well.”

Yes.

His delivery was deadpan. Who would’ve thought that was possible with a thought? I laughed as we reached the dragon territory. We slowed, and Cahal stepped in front of me. He bent, and I climbed onto his back so his magic would mask both of us. Most of the dragons were asleep, but the big ones would be heading out soon for the hunt.

“And here I thought you’d carry me like a bride,” I murmured as he started jogging through the trees. He’d drop me at Archion before he went back for his dragon.

Only a madman would consent to carry you like a bride and mean it.

“I’ll tell Darius you said so.”

He is not a man.

I rolled my eyes. I’d walked into that one.

Hey, I thought as Cahal put me down next to a sleeping Archion, all curled up like a dog in a comfy, big bed. Trees and bushes closed him in on all sides but one, a setup I’d made for him over the last few days, much of it an illusion. It gave him privacy, which he deserved, but it would also keep Lucifer from noticing his absence.