Slaying Monsters for the Feeble - Annette Marie Page 0,53

clutching his back. I felt his arm move. “There is old blood here.”

“Are there vampires close by?”

“They have walked here, but not in many days.” Rising, he hitched me higher on his back and continued on. “I can hear voices. They are close but I do not know how to get to them.”

We must have come in the wrong door. I was betting there was a closer stairwell to wherever the owners of the voices were stationed.

“We’ll find a way eventually,” I assured him. “We don’t need to rush.”

“The longer it takes, the longer I have to carry you.”

“Oh, come on. I’m not that heavy.”

His shoulders twitched in annoyance. “You are not heavy at all, but you keep talking in my ear. Mailēshta.”

I smiled into the darkness and leaned close to his ear again. “So why would you run away from a trapped female demon?”

“Because she might kill me.”

Oh, right. He’d told me that female demons had magic more powerful than males. “Maybe she would be grateful to you for saving her.”

“Or she would kill me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, fine. Let’s say it’s a female human. What would you do?”

“Hnn.” He walked a few steps in silence. “How is she trapped?”

“Under a tree. You could lift it no problem,” I added to make this easy for him.

Another thoughtful silence. “Why is she there? In the woods under a tree?”

“Does it matter?”

“It is suspicious.”

I huffed with impatience. “Pretend there’s nothing suspicious about her. She isn’t armed or dangerous. She’s just a trapped human who needs help or she’ll die.”

He rounded an invisible corner and prowled onward.

“Well?” I persisted. “Would you save her?”

“You want me to say yes.”

“Of course I do!” My heart was sinking, leaving an unpleasant burn in my chest. “Why wouldn’t you? You could save her life with almost no effort. It would cost you nothing.”

He crouched again, inhaling through his nose. “Your hypothetical does not make sense, drādah. I cannot be seen by any hh’ainun or you would be in danger. You told me this.”

“What if you could save her without being seen?” I asked desperately.

He held himself still, either thinking or listening. “Why are you upset?”

“I’m not upset.”

A soft scuff behind us, and I imagined his tail swishing across the floor.

“You are lying.”

Damn it. I’d forgotten he could tell when I lied. “I want you to say you would save the woman, because if you wouldn’t save her, then you’re …”

“I am what?”

“Evil,” I whispered.

He said nothing, and in his silence was the answer I feared. He wouldn’t save a helpless person from certain death. His questions revealed his thought process. Did he know the person? Were they dangerous? Why were they there? In other words, he wanted to know the risks or rewards for him.

Selfish. A selfish demon who only cared about himself.

“Why?” I whispered miserably. “Why wouldn’t you help someone who was hurt or trapped?”

Another scuff of his tail. “I hear voices behind this door.”

I gripped his shoulders. “What door? Where?”

“The one right here. If I open it, they will probably see.”

Pushing the hypothetical scenario out of my head—he was right, it had been stupid—I focused on our mission. How would we get into the room without being seen? Squeezing my eyes shut since I couldn’t see anyway, I tried to think of a different way in. The unfinished lobby materialized in my mind’s eye.

“Zylas,” I whispered. “What does the ceiling in here look like?”

He looked up, his head so close that his hair brushed across my cheek. His muscles tensed, then he stood.

“Var,” he whispered. “Good idea, drādah.”

Finally, there was light. It streaked up from the room below through rectangular openings where the ceiling’s plastic panels were missing. Thick wiring and shiny gray ducts wound among steel crossbeams, and a metal grid stretched into the farthest corners of the building, unbroken by the rooms and halls underneath.

The crawlspace, hidden between the ceiling of the room below and the floor of the level above, was barely two and a half feet high, forcing me to lay face down with my arms and legs braced on metal supports. The steel bruised my skin as I held my torso off the flimsy white panel under me. Zylas had disappeared into the darkness, crawling noiselessly across the beams. The ceiling was too low for a piggyback ride.

As I waited, voices drifted to my ears, their words inaudible. One male voice, one female. Conversational tones.

Crimson eyes appeared as Zylas crawled under a silver duct. He moved cautiously, navigating