Sympathy for the Demons (Promised to the Demons #1) - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,24

had even greater defenses. It was one of those laws of the magical world. To succumb to a call was to give yourself over to the one who summoned you, and the spell that brought me here also protected me. This was not my fight, after all.

I really wasn’t sure what this Ethereal was doing here either. They never meddled in wizard affairs. I shot her with dark energy and she crumpled.

However, there was another demon here as well, and that was more of a concern. He was smaller than me, and he was mucking around with some magical object in the background. Hmm. It had been a long time since I had seen anything of the like. They seemed like magical maps.

“Stop him,” the blonde warlock told me. “He’s doing something with that thing again.”

Oh, great. He summoned me to this fight and he doesn’t even know what the other side is up to? “Stop him yourself, worm,” I said. “I am Lord Variel the Devourer. I’m just here to feast on your spoils.” Really, now. He should have summoned Orithel the Cudgel if he wanted that sort of action.

The young dark-haired man whose soul I’d eaten was passed out now, and I picked up his body and slung it over my shoulder. Although he was small compared to me, he was taller than most of my other servants, and I would be pleased to make use of him.

The witch was not happy with this turn of events. Although wounded by the warlock, she was glaring at me and surely considering an attack. The House of Soundhunter, I thought. It sounds like an animal line. Is this young man her familiar? But it was already too late for her to stop me.

“Bevan!” she called to his unconscious form. “Let him go.”

“You can’t bring Bevan back into Etherium now,” I said. “I have devoured his soul and it belongs to me now.”

“No…,” she said. She looked at her own demon ally. He wasn’t doing a damn thing except moving his fingers over the maps.

“Helena, get him,” the demon said.

Helena held out her wand with a shaky hand and attacked the blonde warlock. “Fire…!”

He blocked it so easily that I almost felt a little sorry for her. She was dying. Her familiar was really very fortunate that I had devoured his soul. Now his life would be saved instead of dying with hers.

But I was a little concerned with what the other demon was doing. He had something powerful in his hands, a pyramid shape formed from three rocks fit together that had thousand upon thousands of tiny lights glowing inside them. I could tell that it was important even though I didn’t know what it was.

“What have you got there?” I asked him, leaving the wizards alone.

He didn’t even look up at me.

I dropped the familiar on the floor and shook the demon. “It’s a map, isn’t it? You could at least do me the courtesy of telling me what you’re up to.”

He didn’t even acknowledge my presence, so I struck his face hard. I was astonished that even this didn’t break his concentration. He used his tail to steady himself so the blow didn’t knock him down.

This is getting downright creepy.

“What is this odd little man doing?” I asked the blonde warlock.

“I—I don’t know, but you should probably stop him!” he said, flinging a magical blast that did very little.

“Oh, I am to stop him?” I muttered. “This is not my job either.” But I was starting to get intrigued. Maybe this was more than a family squabble after all. I wrapped my hand around the demon’s neck and squeezed.

He still did not stop moving his fingers over the pyramid.

“What on earth are you doing?” I growled.

I kept constricting my fingers ever-tighter around his neck, and he was working his magic frantically.

The room suddenly exploded with familiars in animal form. Hundreds of them. They were no threat to me, or at least they shouldn’t be, but there were certainly a lot of them. I lost my grip for a moment. They seemed to be defending the witch against the warlock, and mostly ignoring me.

This witch has something to do with the familiars, I thought. Not just her own, but…all of them. Something’s up.

I couldn’t imagine what I was in the middle of, and I was sure it didn’t concern me, but…

A toad, I thought.

It clicked in my mind, reluctantly. A familiar could be a toad and a woman at