AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That’s not usually how these things go down.” Azimuth’s lips thinned. An icy aura emanated from all around him, long blades held in both his hands. Nadir couldn’t help drinking in his spicy vanilla-laced scent as her eyes feasted on his tall, muscular form wrapped in a long-sleeved, cashmere black sweater and black leather pants. No doubt that lovely sweater she’d bought him would get ruined today, but it was completely worth it.
She rolled her shoulders, an all too familiar heat wafting around her body. “We need totry, boys. Discretion and all that, remember? C’mon.”
“We can’t enforce their behavior, Nadir,” Orias replied, striding past her up the stairs. She caught up, soon matching him step by step.
“Are you picking up anything?” She searched his impassive features, yet his focus appeared completely on today’s hunt.
“My powers serve no one’s whims. They come when they will.”
“I just asked because you had another vision this morning. At least I thought you did?”
Orias glanced her way, shadows haunting his features. “If it had pertained to our activities, I’d have shared.”
Nadir flushed and looked away. What had gotten into him today? “I didn’t doubt you would have.”
As they reached the 17th floor, a powerful smell pricked their noses. By her estimation, there were at least twelve daemons inside, but no guard was stationed at the door. The few surveillance cameras in the stairwell had been painted or vandalized. No doubt the building maintenance had a hard time keeping up with their efforts, and who would have expected a daemon nest like this in the middle of downtown?
Orias held out his hand, blocking Nadir. “The door is warded. Allow me.”
She’d been too caught up thinking about Orias’s abilities and doing a daemonic headcount of their enemies to notice the wards. Looking closer, she caught traces of them in the crevices between the door and the frame. Nothing too complicated, as they weren’t intended to hide the door, but the energy read was beyond uninteresting.
If it hadn’t been for Nadir’s heightened sense of smell, she’d never have picked up traces of daemons from the door itself. It read as innocuous. Boring.
Had the daemons expected others of their kind to come looking for them? Why not hide their scent, too?
“Can any of you smell them from out here?” Nadir whispered. The other three shook their heads.Right.They didn’t know any hunters could sniff them out.
“There’s a problem,” Orias said softly, his hands mid-gesture, focus absolute. “I can sense another ward tied to this one on the other side. As soon as I deconstruct this one, the other will trigger. It’s encapsulated, and I can’t access it to work.”
“You’re saying we need to blow the door and go in, weapons hot?” Kobol replied. A single swing of his hammer swished through the air with a momentum destined to crush bone. The eager look on his face made Nadir wonder what he’d done before being recruited into this cabal. Sport fighter? Athlete? Whatever it was, he appeared born to bruise.
“That’s an accurate assessment, yes.” Orias’s face was grim. He didn’t bother to say that going in blind wasn’t ideal. He didn’t have to.
Nadir tried to remember back to ‘ideal’. It was another lifetime, literally. She shook off the funk before it dragged her down into the past.
“We’ll go with the disorientation tag and bag,” Azimuth said, eyes crystalline blue in focus. “Nadir, throw the bolt on the door. Kobol, you’ll be first in, wrapped in invisibility while you do your thing. Orias will be next. Cast your shadows about and attack them while they don’t know what’s real and what’s not. Nadir and I will take the rear, and she’ll bar the door, preventing any exits.”
“Won’t they just port to escape?” Orias asked.
Nadir shook her head, hanging her free hand on her hip, causing the various metal weapons on her belt to clink. “This is a large nest. They’re here for a reason. I’m betting they’ll stay to protect whatever it is they’re hiding.”
“Can we get to it now, before they hear us?” Kobol sighed.
Azimuth looked at Nadir, and she gave a quick nod. Manipulating the handle and lock on the door took less than a second. She arched a brow at Kobol, and he winked out of sight. Damn, how she’d like that power.
Nadir took a deep breath, watching as Orias spun shadows around him in a circle, casting outwards for visions, yet with no intent this time, and when the hallway was filled with his black shroud, she swung the door open.
No audible alarm sounded, not to human ears, but there was a sense of prickly wrongness which slid over her skin and a tremor which shook her to her core.
She scented Kobol as he flew past her and felt Orias move by a moment later. Azimuth’s light brush of an arm against hers grounded her and set her feet into motion. In a handful of steps, they were through the darkness and into a dimly lit room. Nadir closed the door behind them, bolting the door and fusing the metal into place around the frame. Only someone with her gifts, or someone able to blast through the door, could get out that way.
“I’ll look for other exits to block.” Nadir palmed two thin, sharpened daggers in her free hand. She still held the sancre in her right hand. “You do what you do best.”
“We could hunt together.” The light crease of a frown graced Azimuth’s brow.
“I’m not likely to dieagain. Now go, before I stab you myself.” Nadir picked a direction and crept off, leaving him to his own devices. He seemed to need a kick start lately, else he tended to hover over her. How could she prove to him she’d be fine hunting alongside the rest of them, if he never let her go on her own? Belial had faith in her, and in this one instance, she agreed with Mr. Big Blue.
She heard Az’s faint protective growl behind her, yet continued onward. Her feet stepped through wisps of conjured shadows which swirled in eddies at her passing. Nadir refused to allow her gaze to drift over them lest she become mesmerized. The air in the dark space was thick with scent, making it difficult to pinpoint any singular daemon. Instead, Nadir focused on getting her bearings and gleaning what she could from the foul stench of the nest.
