“But here? In your home?”
“I turn on the lights when I’m in the bathroom or cooking in the kitchen.” Nicolas reeled him closer. “I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.”
“You deserve light.”
“Ash, baby?—”
A curl of delight went through Ashmedai at the term of endearment.
“—being in the dark with you makes me feelgood.”
Ashmedai tilted his head. “Oh?”
“Yeah. It almost feels like… the darkness is a part of you. A part ofus. When it’s dark around me, I know I’m safe, because you’re probably close by. Even if you aren’t actually near me, the potential is there. You could appear at any moment. That’s not scary. It’s relaxing. You’re the biggest, baddest thing in the dark, and it feels like I belong here with you.”
“You do,” Ashmedai said with conviction. “I feel that way, too.” He lifted one of Nicolas’s hands and pressed it to his chest. “Just needed to check. Don’t ever want you to regret.”
“I could never regret this,” Nicolas whispered.
Ashmedai kissed him quickly, and then sighed. “Wish we had more time, but we should go. They’ll be waiting.”
“Right, yes.” Nicolas grabbed his coffee, and then Ashmedai teleported them to the apartment.
Everyone was already there when they emerged from the darkened bedroom. A lone light above the kitchen island provided illumination for the humans, who sat around the living room in a loose circle with various degrees of worry and pensiveness on their faces. The demons looked far more relaxed, if eager. There was an undercurrent of excitement in the air, thrumming from person to person. Ashmedai’s jaw ached with hunger.
“Tell us what you saw,” Talon said immediately.
Ashmedai explained as best as he could. The abandoned building, the warded threshold, the multiple cars hidden out of sight of the road.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Nathan said. “Even if they don’t have the kids there, they most definitely have something worth hiding there.”
“Ira,” Luke said, “do you remember anything about our surroundings in that vision of yours?”
Ira frowned at a distant point on the floor. His dark curls were loose, spilling around his shoulders. “I don’t know. It was dim, like they were somewhere poorly lit.”
Ashmedai nodded. That sounded right.
“The walls were… bare brick, I think. I don’t remember what the door looked like. It seemed heavy, like it took effort for you to haul it open.”
“We have enough reason to storm the place, I think,” Nathan said. “This is our best lead yet. The only question is how we want to do it.”
“We go in and kill them all,” Valac said.
“Wecan’t,” Ashmedai said. “Wards keep our kind out.”
“So the humans go in first,” Talon suggested. “They can distract the paladins while one of them hangs back to invite us inside.”
Grimacing, Alex said, “I think the demons should stay behind.”
“Hell no,” Talon said immediately.
Alex sighed. “It’s too dangerous.”
“But it’s not dangerous for you?” Talon countered.
“They’ll be expecting us to use the demons in our group,” Alex said. “You’re powerful; it would make sense for us to take advantage of that. And that’s exactly why weshouldn’t. If you’re stabbed with one of their blades, it’ll heal very slowly, if it heals at all. We don’t have that vulnerability. If we’re stabbed by a holy blade, our bodies still heal quickly with your blood in our system, because wearen’tdemons. They don’t affect us the way they do you.”
“You can’t seriously expect us to let you go into this fight without us,” Malachi said, looking from face to face. “You think we don’t know how to handle a few paladins?”
