And if the two rooms on either side of him quickly emptied out as soon as their occupants saw who checked in next door, it only bothered him a little.
Ignoring the way the dull yellow light flickered when he passed beneath it, Dom sank onto the edge of the large bed and examined the m-siphon in his hands.
Aside from knowing what they were and having a rough idea of how they worked, he had no idea what one did with the things, or how to go about dismantling one. A cursory search on his phone provided nothing useful aside from a series of articles detailing the stories of rescued victims and the havoc a sigilworker could wreak with one at their disposal.
There was no information on how to release the stasis spell that kept the person within it captive, only the clear warning that, should a person come across a stray m-siphon, they should call the authorities.
Dom gently turned the globe around in his palms and brought it up to his face so he could peer through the thick, slightly warped glass. Would he be able to see the person inside?
There was nothing. Not even a hint of movement. If Dom couldn’t feel the magic coursing through his body, he would have been fooled into thinking it was just a cute little terrarium full of dirt, pebbles, tiny blue flowers, and a lush green fern.
Smoothing the pads of his callused thumbs over the warm glass, he eyed the deceptively normal-looking cork that sealed the terrarium from the outside world. Tiny sigils had been seared into it — totally incomprehensible to someone like him, who only barely passed the state required sigil classes in middle school and who had the wrong sort of magical pathways to use them properly anyway.
Was there some sort of lock? A magically reinforced barrier that would burn his hand to a crisp if he tried to uncork the thing?
Dom grunted, not exactly enthused by the idea. He was no stranger to pain, but if he could avoid being cursed or permanently losing the use of one hand, he’d rather do that.
“Can’t break the glass, though, can I?” His gaze dropped to watch the progress of a droplet of condensation as it slid down the inner curve of the globe. Was that a flash of silver he saw as it disappeared behind the fern? He squinted, trying to make out the shape that—
A leg.
It absolutely was a leg. Tiny, half buried under moss and leaves and flower petals, but with all his jostling, the person trapped in the m-siphon had to scramble to stay hidden beneath the fern. Dom only caught the flash of a slim ankle and a metallic silver pant leg before it was gone again.
“Fuck this,” he grunted, his blood coursing hot and furious. He wasn’t the most sociable demon in the world, no, but he was a compassionate one. He couldn’t bear unjust suffering. Whether it was an animal caught in an illegal snare or a person locked away in a quaint little prison didn’t matter. He wouldn’t let it go on.
Gritting his fangs, Dom prepared himself for pain as he pressed his thumb against the side of the cork. The zap of magic that singed him wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was also a lot milder than he anticipated when he pushed the cork up and out.
The cork resisted for only a moment before it gave way with a loud pop! It flew across the room to ricochet off a generic black and white photograph before landing somewhere on the cheap carpet.
The scent of green things, of rich soil and bright citrus, permeated the room. Dom sucked in a deep breath as he held the terrarium out, as far from his body as possible. His inner animal, already roused by all the magic in the air, turned its full attention to the source of the scent — recognizing the smell of home and something far more tantalizing.
Dom watched, confused by the feeling of recognition and the sight of smoke curling from the open mouth of the globe. The smoke carried that scent of citrus and clean, soft skin. A woman’s smell.
He had only a moment to consider that before two things happened: The glass began to crack, and the shadows that were the very root of his soul lunged.
What happened after that was chaos.
The light overhead popped and went out. The terrarium shattered in his hands, exploding in an arc of glass and soil. The air appeared to crumple in on itself, twisting and scrunching in front of him before snapping back into place — this time with a fully-grown, very pissed off woman where there once was nothing. She was small, decked out in a silver jumpsuit streaked with dirt, and howling with rage. Dom’s shadows, always more calm than most demons his age, burst outward to coil themselves around her in the split second it took for her to appear on the motel floor.
He watched, too shocked to do much else, as his shadows moved around her, holding her captive as she struggled to kick them off. The more she moved, the more shadows joined in, creeping from under the bed, the darkened bathroom, inside the drawers of the generic dresser that stood next to the bed.
It wasn’t a violent hold. It wasn’t meant to harm at all. It was instinct — the ingrained impulse to snap up his mate and keep her close, to let his darkness seep into her skin until every demon this side of the Atlantic and beyond knew she belonged to him and him alone.
Oh, fucking— My fate, my ass! His Nan didn’t send him on some ridiculous quest to save a trapped fey. She sent him out to bring home a mate.
Dom lurched up from the bed to throw himself down beside his struggling mate. His hands shook as he tried to soothe her, to calm her so that he could in turn calm himself. The more distressed she became, the more his shadows would react to a threat that didn’t exist.
No wonder his shadows reacted like they did, he thought, daring to crawl across the filthy, glass-strewn floor to where his mate was trying and failing to tear herself free. She was so small; so very fey, with her short black hair and fine bone structure. Even covered in dirt and spitting fury at him, she looked like spun glass.
“Hush, hush now,” he crooned, like he would for one of the many animals he rescued and rehabilitated every year. “You’re safe, little one. You’re safe with—”
“Let me go!” His mate twisted her body sharply to one side and made to stand, shadows clinging to her like great, silken scarves. Dom moved to help her up, suddenly hyper-aware of all the glass on the ground, of her small bare feet and hands, but he misjudged both his shadows’ ability to hold onto a slippery fey and said fey’s desperation to be free.
Seeing him near, she whipped her head round to hiss at him, eyes lit with rage, and slammed one of those wee feet directly into his nose.