There was a tall man with tanned skin, messy hair, and a feral look in his eyes as he scanned the club suspiciously. The thick tattoo encircling his neck seemed oddly familiar, but it was too dark in the club for Sunshine to see it properly.
A short, curvaceous female with pale skin and summer-blond hair tugged on the man’s hand until he glanced at her. When their gazes met, she smiled sweetly, and the wildness bled from his eyes. Another couple, then.
Then, there were two more men. One was unusually large, and he sat facing the stage with his back to Sunshine so she was unable to see his face. Something about his presence made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. His short hair was a bright platinum blond, and he was so tall that, even sitting, he was nearly the height of those on their feet around him.
The final man had rich dark skin and brilliant gold eyes, so bright they seemed to gleam all the way across the crowded bar. His face didn’t look like one that smiled often, but it made him no less striking. In fact, to her, he was the most distinctive of them all.
Sunshine’s gaze lingered on him the longest as her heart began to pound.
That man... There was something about him. But what? And who was he?
All the men were curious, in fact. The air around them seemed to crackle with energy, and their auras were like nothing she’d seen on a human before. In fact, the more she studied them, the more she began to suspect...
Perhaps they weren’t human at all.
17
SKELETON IN THE CLOSET
I’M SORRY, IRIS.”
Not long ago, Iris had been intensely curious to find out what Meph would shift into. Now, she would have given anything to ensure she never found out.
“No!” she shouted into the disgusting rag in her mouth. It came out like a muffled shriek, like every other sound she’d made.
It had been so easy for Valefor to grab her. She hadn’t been able to fight him. She hadn’t even come close.
He’d grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into the next-door apartment, where he’d bound and gagged her and taken her through a hellgate in the living room. She’d known immediately the musty castle on the other side was in Hell, and she’d struggled futilely as he’d carried her past groveling demons she assumed were his subjects and down a staircase to a seemingly deserted floor. There, he’d brought her into this low-ceilinged chamber where she’d found Meph lying unconscious in a sigil.
No wonder her mother had forced that blood vow on her all those years ago. Her mam had known Valefor was coming, and she’d known Iris wouldn’t stand a chance against him.
By doing so, her mother had saved her life. Iris fully accepted it now. Had he found her then, Valefor would have taken her as easily as he’d killed her parents. There wouldn’t have been anything she could do to stop him, just like there wasn’t anything she could do now to save Meph.
The shadows seemed to darken in the room, the torchlight faded to a candle’s faint glow.
And then Meph shifted.
His body was subsumed by impenetrable shadows, and then the darkness stretched, growing taller and taller, until it loomed into the shape of a monster over seven feet tall.His fingers were long, spindly and spiderlike, with an extra knuckle joint and knifelike claws. They flexed into a grotesque position, like the mutated hands of a skeleton.
He wore a cloak, the dark hood hiding his face. Whether it was an actual fabric cloak that appeared with this form or a cloak made of the shadows pouring off him like fog from dry ice, she couldn’t tell. Its gaping sleeves hung open at the wrists, so all she could see were those bony hands.
He was huge, long and slender like a towering tree in a haunted forest, and his presence sucked the oxygen from the room. The complex sigil on the stone floor no longer seemed like enough to contain him. Cold malevolence radiated outward from the center of his being.
Iris shrank back against the stone wall, clutching at her chest with her bound hands. She was suddenly ice-cold, but she was too fixated on the monster before her to care about her chattering teeth.
“There you are.” Valefor’s voice was low. “My precious, deadly thing.”
His words jarred her out of the frozen terror slightly. She’d been so transfixed by the sight of the shadowy monster, she’d forgotten Valefor was there at all. She’d forgotten where she was. She’d forgotten that the creature before her was Meph.
Laughing, teasing Meph, with his crooked smile and red eyes that crinkled up in the corners. Meph, who’d gasped for breath because he didn’t understand his feelings. Meph, who’d looked at her with such hurt in his gaze when she’d told him their friendship was over.
All that seemed miles away now, like it had happened months ago instead of only a day. But it didn’t lessen the heartbreak Iris felt as she tried to reconcile this demon with the man she knew. It didn’t make it any easier for her to accept that he was gone. He’d made a deal to save her life, and she didn’t know how to get him back.
Valefor stepped toward the sigil and, astonishingly, stretched out a foot and smudged the line. As if he was less afraid of Meph now that he’d shifted into this reaper-like creature. Iris couldn’t help but shudder at the prospect of him being free to roam about.
The monster’s head turned, and she knew he was looking at her. She couldn’t see his face beneath his hood, but she could feel his attention crawling over her skin.
And then... he approached her.
