Damien made direct eye contact with her from across the room. “Be mindful.” Then he glanced down to Kaz, still in her arms. “And keep a better eye this time.”
He swept back around to watch Morel cross the room. The boy picked up a statuette from the nightstand beside the bed, looking down at it as he turned to the others. His fingers slid over the wooden piece, carved into a vaguely feminine shape, eyes locked onto it.
Amma watched as Damien covertly slipped his dagger from the sheath on his forearm. Her eyes widened, afraid of what he might do, but then his other hand came around behind him, and he slid a finger up the edge of the blade to nick his thumb before sliding it back into its sheath where it was concealed. Then he crossed the room in two long strides and ripped the idol away from Morel with the hand that had been cut.
Morel stared at his hands where it had been, shock on his face that quickly turned to malice, snapping his head toward Damien who had taken a step back. But Damien didn’t notice, now appearing enthralled by the idol. His thumb moved over it, and Amma only saw the droplet of blood he smeared across it because she knew what he had done. Then he let out a low chuckle.
“What are we doing?” asked one of the guards, patience worn thin as the other one glanced warily around the room.
Damien gripped the idol fully in his hand, squeezing until there was a crack. “Taking care of your little pest problem.”
CHAPTER 17
IDENTIFYING ARCANA AND ITS USES
“I
don’t know exactly what’s going to come out of this, but it’s not going to be a bushel of grain.” Damien tightened his grip on the idol, and a hazy smoke wafted up from his hand.
The surlier guard readied himself, gripping his hilt, and the other followed suit, though much shakier.
“What’s happening?” The harsh look Morel Stormwing had been giving Damien melted off his face. His arms pulled in around him, hands clasped against his chest.
“Something fairly unpleasant, I imagine, but it should be short-lived.” Damien gave the idol a final squeeze, and there was a louder crack. The wood splintered in his hand, and from it a shadow shot up into the air with a human screech.
Amma covered an ear, her other hand wrapped tight around a growling Kaz as she backed fully into the Morel boy’s bedchamber corner. The noise stabbed through her mind painfully, but then the feeling was gone as the sound was sucked from the room. When she looked back up, the beam of light coming through the balcony door was falling squarely on Morel, but everything about him had changed. He held himself straighter, chin up, arms and stance wide. There was no expression on his face, drawn down pallidly, but his light eyes roved over to Damien, taking in the broken idol at his feet, and then his entire form sprang across the room.
In a bound larger than he should have been capable of, all limbs spread out like a spider, Morel threw himself at Damien, but the blood mage lifted the hand he had previously sliced on his dagger, and, fingers spread, allowed the boy to slam his chest against his open palm. Morel’s body jerked around the hand, falling forward with a sharp breath. From his back, a dark shadow was thrown out of Morel’s body. The shade flew backward to fall on the bed, and both guards pulled out their swords at the room’s doorway. Amma pressed harder against the wall.
“The fuck is that?” the more brazen guard shouted as a mass of darkness tumbled over the sheets. It spread itself out, and three forms rose up from the odd, black haze. The guard straightened, tip of his sword rising.
On the edge of the bed were perched three creatures that, if Amma had to put a name to them, she would certainly call women, if an almost comical exaggeration on the idea. Skin in vastly different shades, they were otherwise identical with wide hips, tiny waists, and breasts that strained against the thin binding strap barely holding them in. The light from the door fell squarely on the center one. Her crimson skin and the set of black, spiraling horns jutting backward from her temples were monstrous, but her features were human. Lips drawn into a deep pout, she looked on Damien and heaved an ample chest, spreading her knees slightly, and she crooked a finger at him.
Damien dropped Morel into a heap on the floor. “Interesting choice,” he said, unsheathing his dagger fully this time, “if predictable.” He turned to the guards. “Well?”
Both men’s sword arms fell, the fear and shock on their faces replaced with goofy grins. They each took a step forward as the other two women with blue and green skin in kind, stood, one waving to them, and the other licking full lips.
“Don’t you recognize a succubus when you see one?” Damien growled, and he sliced into his palm, tightening a fist around the blood that oozed up. Amma watched him call up a spell, throwing some sort of violet energy at the three, and then their faces changed. The sultry, heavy-lidded eyes flew open, flashing a hateful yellow, and jaws unhinged with a hiss to reveal rows of sharpened fangs.
The guards cried out in unison, swords back up, and just in time. The standing succubi rushed them with a flap of wings that burst out from their backs with a bone-snapping crackle. One guard was knocked out into the hall and the other into the wall, splintering the wood paneling. Amma shrieked, pressing hard into the room’s darkened corner, Kaz still growling in her arms.
The third, red-skinned creature finally stood, her wings slower to unfurl as she kept her sights set on Damien. She’d been unhappy with the spell he cast, but the other two appeared to have taken the brunt of it. She raised an arm, and Morel’s body raised with it, limply lifted up as if on strings.
“Oh, please.” Damien rolled his eyes, not even taking a step back from Morel. He held his dagger up to the body’s throat but kept his sight set on the red succubus. “If you think I won’t—” Then his eyes flicked to Amma, and he clamped his mouth shut.
There was a crash from the hall and a flurry by the door as a guard threw off the green succubus, slashing blindly through the air at her. She used her wings to slow herself as she was thrown back, cutting between Damien and the other succubus. Black blood squirted out of her arm where the blade had sliced across her. She screamed in that same piercing way, and with a flap, went toward the guard again. She grappled him off the wall and tossed him across the room like he was a sack of flour where he crashed through the glass of the balcony door.
In the distraction, Damien had called up another spell. Amma watched blades form from the blood he flicked into the room. They tore into the succubus’s wing as she tried to dodge them, and she hissed, raking an arm through the air.
Morel’s hands shot out to wrap around Damien’s neck. Again, he rolled his eyes. “He has the grip of a—” Then his eyes widened, and even Amma saw the strain in Morel’s forearms as he squeezed. The succubus cackled as Damien begrudgingly sheathed his dagger and went for the boy’s hands. He choked out words in that sibilant tongue Amma didn’t know, and another hazy black shadow crept up Morel’s back.
There was more of a scuffle from the hall on the opposite wall that Amma had herself pressed against, and a scream from the guard as well as a cheerful laugh from the succubus. Amma quickly knelt and put Kaz on the ground. “Go help him,” she said, but the dog only huffed back at her. “They don’t care about me,” she insisted. “And Damien might need their help in a minute.”
Kaz glanced back, the guard on the balcony still up and taking slashes at the third succubus in the late afternoon light, Damien working some spell on Morel, and the red succubus willing her puppet on. Kaz skittered to the chamber door.
Amma stood back up, watching as the darkness left Morel once again, hands falling off Damien’s neck, leaving it red. This time, Damien took him by the shoulders and angled him away as he fell, but the succubus was prepared to take his place. She was hovering off the ground without flapping her wings, bringing herself to his height. Shooting out a hand, she took him by the collar of his tunic and ripped him backward.
Damien’s large frame was thrown onto the bed. Before he could block her, the succubus was on him with a single flap of her wings. She planted a knee on either side of his hips, and clawed hands dug into his shoulders, pinning him down. He grabbed her arms, but instead of casting on her, he simply fell still.
