“Thanks for the information, Tanza,” he states. “You have been very useful.”
“We will see each around soon,” she replies, bowing her head.
Caspian walks away a bit while I follow him but he lightly touches my arm. “Stay here a second and don’t move.”
I sigh. He heads back over to Tanza and talks to her quietly for a second. I look around while I wait, trying to ground myself in this busy place. I hear so many different pack wolves, so many scents of different demons, and all of it is extremely overwhelming but still amazing.
Caspian is back at my side in seconds, and we head down the streets. He seems to know exactly where he’s going, and I trust him. We come around two alleyways before he stops at a house where the door has been kicked open.
“It seems like the marketer has left already or someone else got the bounty before us. We’ll be lucky if there’s anything left,” he mutters. “Fuck.”
“That’s not good.” I sigh.
“Yeah, you’re telling me. We will need to catch one hell of a demon to build up points after today’s loss.”
“I’m sorry. I’m going to make you fail.”
“No, at this point it only matters you’re not dead,” he answers. “I can always enter the trials again.”
“Don’t tell me you’re finally liking me, Caspian,” I tease.
“Don’t get cocky, songbird,” he replies with a strange look in his eyes.
If I didn’t know better, I think he realised he likes me more than he thought he did.
“Gun out,” he warns, and I instantly unclip it, taking the safety off.
“You’re going to have to teach me how to use this one day,” I warn him.
“True. Try using your wolf’s senses to aim,” he suggests as he quietly moves through the door. He pulls out two guns, holding them both in his hands in one swift, and fucking sexy, movement.
“Your wolf has amazing eyesight and can see better than you. If you could learn to just shift your eyes and then shoot, you’d never miss.”
“I’ve never thought of that,” I whisper back. It’s actually a brilliant idea, but telling him that out loud seems dangerous. He already thinks he is the best thing ever created in Hell.
We slip into the house, and suddenly my senses are overwhelmed before I get a real look at the room. Death. The room stinks of death.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, almost stumbling back. I can smell all the pain and death this room has witnessed. It all reeks of death, and my wolf howls in my head. Dozens of wolves have died in this room, not just demons. Their blood is coating the walls and floors.
The pain seems to shoot straight into my heart.
“So it seems like they weren’t just trafficking demons,” Caspian growls out. “Fuckers.”
“No alpha anywhere around the world would let wolves be trafficked. They need to know about this,” I say.
“Agreed, but it can’t come from us. We can’t have alphas looking our way, songbird,” he warns me. Shit, he is right. “I sense something alive in the back room, but otherwise it’s empty.”
We go to the back together, and Caspian opens the flimsy door. It’s a long room, and the back wall is filled with cages. The cages are all broken and dirty, and it stinks. The doors are all open except for a few at the bottom. I try not to look at the piles of bones and red dust in the open cages as I head to the closed ones.
“Careful,” Caspian warns me.
“Got it,” I reply.
I get to the closed cages and I have to kneel to look inside them. In the first one there, there’s nothing but dust. I move to the second cage, and something moves under a dirty grey blanket. I hook my finger in it through the cage and give it a quick pull. Underneath is a small creature, all bundled up.
“I’m going to cover the door,” Caspian tells me. I pull the blanket out of the cage through the gaps. When covering is gone, I see bits of eggshells all around the cage floor, and on top is a little creature curled into a ball. It must have just hatched, and it’s a literal golden demon dragon. It’s tiny, only the size of my hand, with a little mouth and bright-gold eyes that look at me with fear. Its gold tail flickers out as it gazes up at me and slowly stretches its silver wings out at its sides. I tug the lock off the door and reach it, picking the dragon up who curls into my hand.
So cute.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” I whisper to the dragon who has closed its tiny eyes and is napping in my hand. The cage next to the dragon bangs, and I jump out of my skin, nearly falling over. I glance over to see something that reminds me of a gnome, but it’s clearly demonic. The gnome is a tiny thing, and he has a tiny hat on its orange head. Despite having orange skin, it is covered in little dots of green blood from various cuts that look painful. Something that I think is a napkin is tied around its waist, but for some reason, the gnome seems strong.
The gnome is no bigger than my middle finger, and it glares up at me. It puts its hands on its tiny waist. “Don’t you touch that demon, you red-haired witch!”
“Witches don’t exist, dude,” I tell him. “And no need to be rude to the people helping.”
“Helping?” He huffs. “I’m still in a cage, woman.”
Caspian glances back and arches an eyebrow with a small smile.
I shake my head
