“Wanted to... be better. A better father.” The words sounded distant.
My breath hitched, and I choked on a sob that tried to claw its way out at the unexpectedness of his confession. My hands tightened on his shoulders.
“It’s okay, Dad,” I said hoarsely. “Listen to me. It’s not always going to be like this. There will be better days for us, all right?”
The furrow between his heavy eyebrows got deeper, and he raised a hand to stroke my temple, once. Then he let it fall.
“You remind me of her,” he said. “So much.”
The lump in my throat grew harder and heavier, but the lucidity in his gaze faded, his eyes growing unfocused. I knew that was all I was going to get. And maybe that was just as well. Those few words had been more than I expected. They were also dangerously close to being more than I could handle, as my blurring vision proved.
I was saved by Li Wei’s knock on the door, and I blinked the tears back ruthlessly as I went to let him in. He took one look at my packed bag, and his eyebrow rose.
“You are leaving us now?” he asked. “I wondered, after our conversation of a few days ago.”
I nodded. “If I can make it through the gate, yes,” I said. “Thank you, Li Wei—for everything. Please look after him. I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back.”
Li Wei gave a shallow bow from the neck. “You know I will, Zorah. Safe travels, then. I hope you will find what you seek.”
Me too, I thought. But I only said, “Goodbye.”
I forced myself not to look back as I left the little hut. Behind me, a single, faded photograph lay on the table, rescued from the ruins of my house in St. Louis. It showed three smiling faces—Mom and Dad, with me at age four, held protectively between them. It was the only part of me that I could leave behind for my father.
The morning was already a warm one, and I was sweating by the time I reached the cave. The guards were a different pair than were here in the afternoons, but they’d all been informed that I could come and go as I pleased. The inside of the cavern was dark with shadows, but I’d been here so many times by now that I didn’t even bother with the hassle of a torch. As I stood before the misleading stone wall, my heart racing with nervousness, I wondered what the heck I was supposed to do if this still didn’t work.
I couldn’t bond with a demon. I didn’t dare, after what I’d discovered. All of which meant that this would have to work, I decided. I stretched a hand forward, and to my relief, it seemed to slide in more easily than it ever had before. My glut of animus last night had... just possibly... done the trick. I was psyching myself up to lunge face-first into the wall when a dry voice at my shoulder made me nearly jump out of my damned skin.
“Going someplace, dear?” Myrial asked.
TWENTY-THREE
THE DEMON LEANED casually against a jutting rock, another shadow among shadows. She was in female form, not that I supposed it really mattered. I heard a click as her fingers snapped together, and flames erupted from a bare patch of the rocky floor a few feet away, lighting our surroundings with flickering, reddish-orange light.
My first thought was, ‘Oh, shit,’ and my second was, ‘Quick, you idiot—think of something.’
“Just testing again,” I said, striving for nonchalance and falling short. “I had a real buffet meal last night, so I thought this would be a good time to check, while I’m topped up.”
Myrial’s eyes fell pointedly to my suitcase.
“I, uh, was curious how it would work with an inanimate object,” I stammered, feeling like a moron. Christ on a crutch. I seriously needed to work on my lying if I was ever going to be any good at this whole being a demon thing.
“Indeed,” Myrial said, though she might as well have said bullshit.
“So,” I hurried on, gesturing at the wall “I’ll just, uh, give it a try, shall I?”
“Not just yet.” Every iota of fake friendliness had leaked out of Myrial’s voice. “We never did have that chat we’re due for. Not properly.”
Her eyes flared the same color as the flames she’d summoned from nothing. My hand tightened around the handle of my suitcase reflexively as an odd sensation tugged at me. It took me a moment to place the feeling of life energy—animus—being drawn from my body.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, slapping my free hand across my lower abdomen, as though I could somehow stem the flow.
Myrial’s mouth formed a shape that might have been a smile, but wasn’t. “I’m doing what succubi do, dear—I’m drawing your energy so you won’t be able to get through that gate.”
My jaw gaped. “But—how can you do that? I don’t exactly have the hots for you, Grandpa,” I managed.
Myrial sneered. “You really are an ignorant pup, aren’t you? Even after a month here. I may not have managed to trick you or your pitiful excuse for a sire into a soul-bond, but I still have a connection with you, whelp. Through your mother.”
The fact that Myrial had some kind of power connection with me because of our shared bloodline was news to me, but not something I could afford to worry about right now. I considered charging for the gate in hopes of getting through before I was too drained, but Myrial could just stroll right through it after me.
I needed to stop the energy drain, and I needed to slow her down.
There was only one way I knew to keep my energy separate from other people’s energy. As a succubus, I might have been a one-trick pony, but I slammed the shield in place that I used to filter out some animus and allow
