The jarring sense of her world heaving forced Charlotte to open her eyes. Her stomach roiled as the demon’s fist closed around the tiny glass jar, wreathing her world in darkness. The feeling of her prison moving wasn’t something she’d forgotten, but it had been so long that Charlotte wasn’t prepared for the motion sickness that came when the demon pulled her off of the shelf and began to walk.
“Don’t drop me,” she croaked, digging her fingers into the moss like it might steady her heaving world. “Don’t you drop me, you jackass!”
Not that she knew what would happen if he did, exactly, but the likelihood was high that it would kill her. A drop from that height onto the floor would surely shatter the glass, but it would probably also break her body.
Charlotte gritted her teeth as the swaying, heaving movement seemed to go on forever. Her world became nothing but darkness and endless nausea. The smell of moist, upturned soil clung to the back of her throat and inside of her nose. The moss, once a comfortable place to take refuge from her captivity, crumbled under her grip.
A flash of light broke through the shadows to blind her. Charlotte threw up an arm to shield her eyes as light — real sunlight of deep orange and butter yellow and that particular lavender of a summer sunset — burst through the swaying leaves of the fern.
She choked on tears, at once overwhelmed with joy and horrified by what it meant to see the outside world again after so long. It didn’t last long, though. The demon was merely adjusting his grip as he opened the door of his truck. Charlotte had only a moment to bask in the light before he popped the glove compartment box open and shoved her prison inside.
* * *
Domhnall wiped his sweaty palms on his thighs, told himself to buck the fuck up, and pulled his truck away from the curb outside of Millie’s Magic Shoppe at a totally normal, non-suspicious speed.
He might not have been so worried about being seen if his truck didn’t stand out so much. Large, well-loved, and splattered with a thick layer of dried on mud, his vehicle stood out starkly amongst the zippy little m-enhanced town cars that filled United Washington’s streets. Not that he fit in much better out of the truck, of course. With his height and his antlers, there was no way for him to go incognito. Even in a place like the New Zone, where all the races were welcome to start fresh — for the right price — could a demon walk the streets unnoticed.
That was why he normally stuck to the forest and his own little homestead on the border of the Orclind. No one except his clan bothered him there, and the wildlife he looked after for the Iron Chain didn’t think twice about his unusual heritage. The orcs that passed through didn’t either, for that matter. Not that he saw them much.
But he didn’t see anyone much, which was why he was so viscerally uncomfortable with this little quest his Matriarch sent him on.
Damn prophetess, he swore, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. I love the woman, but this was too much.
But one simply didn’t say no to the Matriarch of a demon clan, let alone a prophetess. Amongst the superstitious demons, that was considered the worst kind of insult and the quickest way to bring down Blight’s hand on them all. Dom had no patience for superstition, but he had even less for the inevitable fallout that would occur if his family found out he didn’t do as his Nan asked.
Sighing heavily, Dom checked his rearview mirror for pursuers, but wasn’t surprised to find no suspicious vehicles tailing him as he wound his way back to the small motel he called home since he arrived in the New Zone. Millie’s Magic Shoppe might have traded in the most illegal and vile merchandise, but it wasn’t exactly a high tech criminal enterprise. There was no back-up coming to hunt him and the stolen merchandise down.
Still, he didn’t breathe any easier until he pulled into the parking space in front of his rented room. The run-down motel was on the very edge of the sprawling city and nestled into a small wooded area — the only reason he was able to tolerate being so close to the city at all.
It was dark by the time he pressed his thumb to the keypad to turn off the truck. Dom sat back in his seat for several long moments, his amber eyes fixed on the middle distance as he considered just what in Blight’s name he was doing.
Find the shop. Find the terrarium. Find your fate. His Nan’s words stuck like a bur in his mind. There was little else to go on, aside from a hastily scribbled address she penned while in one of her trances. It seemed like a hassle, but easy enough.
Except when he walked into the shop, Dom knew it wasn’t so simple. Magic hummed in the air — bright and sharp on his tongue, like cold, fresh citrus. Not from the aging proprietress, but the shelf behind her.
M-siphons.
Onem-siphon. One small, globe-like terrarium. A pretty trinket disguising a prison that kept a living, breathing creature locked away for the use of another. A wildly illegal item sitting pretty on a shelf, out for all the world to see. A crime so vile it made his skin crawl just to think about it.
Cursing under his breath, Dom fiddled with the latch on the glove compartment and tried to rein in the urge to hunt the arrant woman who ran the tourist trap down. The desire to rescue whomever was trapped in the m-siphon meant he only knocked her out, but the animal in him demanded more.
Demons already had a bad reputation, so what would be the harm of a little bloodletting? Surely it wouldn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what the woman really deserved.
Gnashing his fangs, Dom sucked in a deep breath through his nose. Calm. Help the victim first. That’s why Nan sent you.
He reached into the glove compartment to gently extract the small, palm-sized globe. A zing of magic coursed through his palm and up his arm, sending a rush of goosebumps over his body. The glass was warmer than a real terrarium would be — almost hot, with a prickly energy humming through it.
Whoever was locked away in the globe had magic that fizzled across his senses in ways that made his inner animal perk up, hackles raising. It was a rushing, wild sort of energy that made his heart beat faster and the skin around the base of his antlers tighten.
Shaking his head, Dom cupped the m-siphon against his chest and got out of his truck. Gravel crunched under his steel-toed boots as he stomped back to his little room in the blue-black shadows of the summer evening.
Annoyingly bright lights buzzed overhead, tucked into the awning that stretched over the row of motel rooms. They dimmed slightly when Dom stepped close to his door and fished for his key. The shadows that were an inherent part of him, the wildness of a dark woodland and all its most vicious creatures, coveted that light and reached for it on instinct.
Demons came in all shapes and sizes, from all over the world — Dom’s clan originally hailed from the northernmost edge of Siberia, for instance — but it was that inner shadow, that very real hunger for the light that made them all the same.
It also made them pariahs for most of history. Blight, the god of disease and all forested places, blessed demons with their many gifts, but no one wanted to get too close to his chosen people.
Stepping into the modest motel room, Dom kicked the door shut with his heel and turned on the lights with his free hand. There wasn’t much to be said about the room itself. He wasn’t one for luxury, so he didn’t care that the feed screen didn’t turn on, or that the sheets were scratchy. His antlers fit through the door and the water in the shower ran hot. That was all he needed.