Silas stood by the door for several seconds, his eyes narrowed as he peered into the darkness. Like her office, the walls were paneled with wood, the windows were narrow but tall, and the furniture in the sitting room was elegant but clearly aged. The rich scent of her was strong, too, all warmth and spice that made the primal thing in him flex its claws.
And like her office, the room was bugged.
His wrist cuff vibrated twice in a specific pulsing pattern, alerting him to the number of surveillance devices it’d picked up.
Normally, he found the existence of surveillance amusing. Cameras had trouble picking up the presence of a shadow-cloaked demon even when they were the most advanced kind,and he liked the challenge of dismantling audio equipment while some unknown lackey listened on, oblivious.
But that thing in him stirred at the thought of Petra’s space being invaded. Not by him.Hehad every right to be there, but by unknown others. Who knew what they’d seen? What they’d heard? He understood why someone might have eyes on her office, where she took meetings and kept information, but in her private space…
Dissatisfaction rankled him anew.
With a flick of his claw across the screen on his wrist, a low, nearly inaudible whine broke the silence. There was a low pop, the sound of a mic’s natural feedback, and then quiet.
Silas stalked across the room, noting that, despite spending three years in the suite, Petra had no personal effects scattered around. No pictures on the walls, no throw blankets over the back of the couch. He couldn’t say it was pristine, necessarily, not when the suite had the distinct feeling of beinglived in,but it didn’t feel likehers.
Maybe she knows she’s watched in here, too,he thought, ire growing as he threaded a path around the low coffee table and toward the walnut-paneled door across the room.
His body moved differently when he took on his shadow form. While he could never manage the pure liquid grace of Tal and other wraiths, he didn’t walk like a human, either. Silas glided across the old wood floor without hitting a single creaky board. His hand, fingers unnaturally long and swathed in shifting darkness, curled around the brass doorknob of Petra’s bedroom.
An explosion of scent stopped him there in the doorway.
A deep, involuntary rumble worked its way up his throat as he savored the smell of incense, sunlight, and lush woman. He’d never been particularly scent-motivated, unlike his fully demon cousins, but this…
He now understood what’d driven them so crazy when they encountered something sweet around this time of the year.
The concentrated scent of Petra was enough to make blood rush to his cock so fast, he actually swayed.
Silas bit back a groan as he adjusted himself, trying to ease the pressure. He was there on a fact-finding mission, not to roll around in her bed and maybe paint her sheets with his come. Not yet, anyway.
Maybe later, when he had his little goddess on a pretty golden leash, he’d let her watch as he stroked his cock to the scent of her. If she wasextragood, he’d even let her sleep on the sheets he soiled.
Oh,but the primal thing inside him liked the idea of her sleeping cocooned in his scent. It liked it almost as much as the thought of her walking around in her sacred robes, her thighs and pink cunt wet with his release. Any predator would know the sharp, musky scent of come and understand the pious priestess was well-fucked.
It wasn’t in the cards for that night, but he couldn’t stop himself from drifting toward the dark shape of Petra’s simple canopied bed. The itch to stroke the pillow where she laid her golden head was too?—
A vibrating pulse stopped him in the center of the room.
Motherfucker.
At once, territorial rage crackled through his shadows, whipping them out across the floor in search of a target. The shadows that were him and yet not craved destruction, but it was as if they sensed what was Petra’s and what wasn’t. The seeking tentacles didn’t want to destroy her den. They wanted to find the intruder who’d made the colossal mistake of touching something Silas claimed.
It was one thing to know her outer suite had been bugged. It was quite another to discover her bedroom was, too.
Silas activated the sensor on his watch and waited for it to ping a signal around the room. His jaw clenched hard as he held himself still. It took less than a minute for the information to flicker across the shielded screen.
Barely warded, bugged, and watched.
Audio and visual surveillance had been detected in her bedroom. Just one device, but one was more than enough.
Silas turned slowly, until he stood facing the wall opposite Petra’s simple bed. Glory’s symbol, a blazing sun cast in polished bronze and glass, was mounted to the wall. When he lifted his wrist toward it, a quick pulse followed.
He tilted his head to one side.I’m gonna kill you,he silently promised the person behind the camera and, should they be separate entities, the one who’d ordered it placed there.I’m gonna let her watch, just like you’ve watched her.
It wasn’t fun being angry. He preferred to laugh, to do things that interested him and made him feel alive. Very little stirred him to true anger because very little made him feel much of anything at all. But sometimes, when the mood struck, he didn’t mind a bit of rage. It added a little something special to an act as mundane as murder.
This was different. This was a sort of anger he’d never experienced before, and it was about as pleasurable as having a tooth pulled.
Silas reached into his pocket and withdrew a notebook, small enough to fit into the palm of his shadowed hand. He flipped the cover over with his thumb claw, opening the notebook to the tiny, wax-lined pages he sewed in himself. Each one held a variety of tiny, clear-backed stickers, and every one of those stickers held a sigil, crafted of hair-thin wire, a battery too small to be seen, and a similarly-sized microchip.
