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And do what with her exactly?I asked, folding my arms.
We still haven’t replaced Geniene.
Ah - Geniene, our former Sarnas eyes and ears in western Europe. Her loss the previous year while investigating an experimental demon organ harvesting ring had been most trying, especially for my half-brother Warrick, who favored the girl’s skills with electric manipulation.
Perhaps.I allowed.If it makes sense to take her, we will, but right now the sole focus is on Aeryn. You’ll do well to remember that.
Felix bowed slightly at the waist in affirmation of my command.
My Thief did stay long, extricating herself before her friend’s first signs of rosing. She had slipped back into the halls seamlessly, yet again demonstrating her skills to move around undetected, and down into the catacombs where we watched her enter a hidden corridor that smelled of rot and earth.
Follow her. I commanded to Felix, who eyed the passage warily.
There is no way I’m going to fit in there. And look at it - it's filthy!
Wimp.I said, disappearing into shadows to where I had found her outside the previous night. I could not sense the hellcat's lingering presence- but she still had to be here somewhere. That cat had been missing her young and would not have been dissuaded from her search by a mere windstorm of wrath.
Just another oddity that surrounded this keep and made me even more deeply suspicious of the humans within.
Before my Thief had emerged, my cell began to play the song “Too sexy for my shirt” in a 90s model accent, a joke set by Felix to tell me exactly who the caller was. The tone served a dual purpose: to annoy me and poke at Thad, whose powers over lust made him a superior form of the fabled Incubus.
“Yes?” I clipped, hating the distance limitations on psychic speech. I’d never loved verbal communication, preferring to convey messages through less conspicuous means.
“I have a report on the naga in the South Pacific,” Thad got straight to the point.
I waved my hand for him to continue before remembering he couldn’t have seen the movement. “Go on.”
“The villages are under lockdown. They didn’t even want to let Liv enter.” Thad’s seriousness came through the line as he continued. As demons of the envy line, the naga should have been more than receptive to the presence of the Emissary of Envy. “She’s gone to Naja to try to speak to the Overseer, but he’s not being very hospitable.”
“And what of your own reconnaissance? Have your snakes picked up anything?”
“Some of their nests are empty, and those with shells have no hatchlings. There are no signs of younglings anywhere.”
Reminders of the Mediterranean incidents came to the forefront of my mind - the pure devastation the naga had wreaked in the name of their young. In a short three days time, they had wiped out three villages and coated the shores of the Mediterranean with the blood for harm done to a single clutch of three eggs. If someone had taken all the young from their nests there would be devastation of the likes that we could not contain, and no decry from Livia or me would do a damn thing to dissuade them.
“Keep looking, report what you find.” I hung up my phone and highlighted Liv’s name. It took four full rings for her to answer, something I was irrationally annoyed by.
“Your Highness,” she answered, her voice missing the sarcastic edge she usually added to the title.
“What have they said?”
She sighed, her normally cool facade slipping. She truly cared about the demons that derived from her cardinal tier, and their reticence to speak to her clearly unnerved her. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” She weighed her next words carefully, as if giving up a secret. “But I can tell you the islands are clearing. The normal population is diminished, and few of the warrior bands are still here. Whatever is going on has them ready for war.”
“Best guess how many remain?”
“About a third give or take.” If only a third of the warrior outfits remained, then potentially hundreds of the extremely lethal fighters were out of their confinement. If this was true, yesterday’s trial combatants would not be the last mortals to die.
“Keep me informed. I want to know the moment the Overseer speaks.”
“Of course,” she replied.
“And Livia,”
“Yes?”
“I don’t need to tell you what will happen if they don’t go back to their islands.” I hung up on her, nothing further needing to be said. This naga situation would need to be contained immediately. In the age of cell phones and satellites, entire communities of humans slaughtered by naga would not be swept away as mere myths as they had been thousands of years ago. Humans were nowhere near as susceptible to stories of vengeful Gods as they had been during the time before Christianity.
I needed to leave Red Pines immediately and find out what was going on. But there was one human who may be able to shed some light before I did - that ambassador with the lascivious gaze for my Thief. Kingston had indeed stared at her with contempt, but a pure vein of lust ran underneath the contempt and greed. He was my only concrete lead on what had happened with the naga, as he had provided them for the trial in the first place. But how to get that information from him without killing him or drawing too much attention was another matter altogether, especially given casters had a natural resistance to direct mind manipulations from demons. Oh sure - we could compel them, but they would remember the entire event no matter what we did.
