the real pit is several hundred miles north from the keep. It’s a no-man’s land. Nothing survives there, and the air is toxic.”
“Sounds like the perfect place to hide out.”
Azazel and Conah joined us.
“We never considered it as an option,” Conah said. “Not many daemons or demons can process the air there.”
“Mammon obviously can,” Mal said.
“Lilith would be able to,” Keon said.
“And he could have the others on Limarax,” Conah said.
“Oh, shit,” Mal added.
“What’s Limarax?”
“A rare herb that can counter the effects of the toxic elements in the air,” Conah explained. “We’ll need to harvest and create a tincture.”
“How long?” Azazel asked.
“From what I recall, it can take a week to steep; that, coupled with the time it would take to locate and harvest…probably ten days to two weeks.”
Two weeks? “We can’t do nothing for two weeks.” I looked from Conah to Keon. “Mammon has Lilith. He could attack Imperium at any time.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Conah said. “We need the tincture to go after her.”
“I might not need it,” Azazel said.
Mal rolled his eyes. “You’re not a one-man army, Az. We need to play this smart.”
Azazel made a sound of exasperation. “Fortify the city and find plans of the pit.”
“I’ll get on it,” Conah said. “You should get back to quarters. Rest up, and I’ll send a phoenix when the tincture is ready.”
Azazel’s jaw clenched. “I’m not sure I can fly just yet.”
“Me either,” Mal said.
“I have a group of men stationed east of here,” Conah replied. “I’ll bring them to us. That should give the drug time to work its way out of your bloodstream, and then we’ll have an escort out of here.”
“You can’t go alone,” Mal said. “Mammon’s men are out there. They’re probably looking for us.”
“I’ll go with him,” Keon offered, wiping his bloody hands on his pants. He caught my eye. “I’ll take my brutalness with me.”
Oh, shit. “Keon, I didn’t mean—”
“Yes. Yes, you did.” He shrugged. “But I’m fine with that. It’s who I am. You’d do well to remember that.” He turned and headed for the door. “I’ll deal with the body when I get back.”
The body? He’d killed the man?
He shot me a cold smirk over his shoulder, and then he was gone. He hadn’t needed to kill the man. He’d done it to prove something. To show me he was a killer. To push me away.
Conah was watching me with a focused expression, as if he was trying to decipher the interaction between Keon and me, and then his eyes flared.
“Fee…”
“Don’t. Just go and get your men.” I turned my back on him. I didn’t need his judgment.
He left, and I was alone with my guys.
“Fee?” Azazel said softly. “What the hell is going on?”
Azazel was waiting for an answer, and I didn’t have one to give him. Keon had gotten under my skin, and I hadn’t even realized.
I wasn’t ready to talk about it, because I wasn’t sure there was anything to talk about.
“She kissed him,” Mal supplied on my behalf.
Azazel’s nostrils flared. “Fee…”
“I did it to snap him out of a trance. He was trying to kill me at the time.” I waved a hand in the air. “I’m tired. I don’t want to talk about it again.”
Mal closed the barn door. “Sit down.”
Azazel pulled a crate across the room. “Here.”
They’d gone from being annoyed to nurturing in the span of a second, and I couldn’t help but be relieved.
I parked my butt on the crate. “I just want to go home now. Climb into my bed and sleep.”
“We could wrestle,” Mal suggested to Azazel.
“What?” I looked up at them in confusion. “Why would you do that?”
“Work the drug out of our system.”
The drug, of course…wait… “What about feeding? Would drinking blood help?”
Azazel and Mal stilled, and then both turned to look in my direction.
I’d take that as a yes. “So, um, who wants to go first?”
Azazel and Mal faced each other, fists out. Wait, were they about to—
Yes, they were going to play rock paper scissors. Oh boy.
Azazel won the first round, and Mal won the second, and then they drew on the final one. They went again, and this time Mal won.
Azazel inclined his head and walked out of the barn, leaving us alone. Feeding was an intensely private thing and often sexual in nature, but there was a dead body on the upper level of the barn, so there was no way this was going to get sexual.