“I don’t have a clue,” Wynn admitted. “Not yet.”
Azh wrapped an arm around her shoulders, tugging her close. “She’s completely unique.”
Saxton wasn’t satisfied, but he was smart enough not to press the issue. “At some point we’re going to discuss your habit of taking things that don’t belong to you. But for now, we have bigger problems,” he conceded, once again glancing toward the impeding dawn. “I need to get going.”
“Don’t try to battle the power on your own,” Azh reminded the vampire. “Call for me if you get it cornered.”
Chapter 15
Wynn melted into the buttery-soft cushions of the limo as the demon driver put the car in gear and headed down the narrow path. Her body was so drained she’d barely managed to walk the short distance from the destroyed castle to the waiting vehicle. Not that she was going to let Azh carry her like a helpless damsel in distress again.
Not unless they were headed to a soft bed with satin sheets...
She swiftly shoved away the tempting image. There was still too much to do to think about the things she wanted to do to Azh. When she finally got the dragon naked, she wanted to make sure she had plenty of time to explore and savor and indulge in their heated passion.
“How did you make friends with Saxton?” she asked, as much to keep herself awake as out of genuine interest.
“Hardly friends. More like enemies temporarily forced to work together,” Azh corrected. “It was Saxton’s demons who discovered where you’d been taken.”
She shuddered. Memories of being trapped in the dungeon with Malis were going to give her nightmares for years to come.
“I’m glad they did.”
“Tell me what happened,” Azh commanded.
“It was Pheral who created the fissure that took me to the castle.”
“Why?”
“He spotted a poster hanging in one of the demon bars offering a huge reward to locate me.” She made a sound of disgust. “Luckily it had an image of me from my earliest days in London. Not many demons knew about me back then, which is the only reason I wasn’t captured before I realized I was being hunted.”
“Was he infected?”
“I couldn’t detect any corruption. He’s just a greedy jerk.” Wynn’s words faltered as she recalled Pheral collapsing at her feet. She didn’t know what sort of spell had been used against him, but he’d died instantly. “Or he was until Malis killed him.”
“Malis is the demon who put up the Wanted poster?”
“Yes. I think he’s been infected for a long time.”
Azh tapped a slender finger on his leg, frustration smoldering in his stormy gray eyes as her words reminded him that Pheral and Malis might be dead, but the evil magic had escaped.
“But he’s not the original source of the magic?” he asked.
Wynn shook her head. “Not the original source, but he was something more than the zombie demons that have been popping up,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“I think he’s been infected for so long that the magic is able to communicate through him.” She struggled to find the words to explain the sensation that she’d been talking to something inside Malis, not to the actual demon. “It was like he was an empty shell that the corruption was using to move through the world.”
He stilled, as if shocked by her words. “You were talking to the corruption?”
She wrinkled her nose. “It sounds ridiculous, but he claimed that we’d been together long ago and that he’d rescued me. And then he did something that allowed me to remember my past. Or at least a portion of my past.”
“You remember?”
She held up her hand, sensing his surge of hope. “I’m not sure if the memories are mine or if they were put there by the magic,” she warned, “but yeah, I suddenly had a vision of when I was still human.”
“Tell me,” he insisted, leaning toward her as he struggled to contain his eagerness to know more about his people’s nemesis.
