A Demon's Dark Embrace: An Elite Guards Novel (4 page)

“Nice mental picture, Demon; can I go toss my cookies now?” she said, wincing forcefully.

“I’m serious. She’s so far from my type that I’d rather bend a Light Fae over and go to town. Better one of those insufferable pricks than that little wench. At least they’d know what to do with a cock,” Ristan continued, trying to shore up his weak argument.

“Now I need ear bleach! But, on a serious note, I think you’re protesting a little too much. Maybe you have a slight Demon-type crush on the poor little mouse?” she cried with a grin on her full lips. He quailed inwardly at that thought. He couldn’t have a crush; he never crushed on anyone before, and he damn sure wasn’t about to start now.

“She could be in league with the Mages! Who knows anymore? I can’t abide betrayers, and I have had more than enough of them lately,” he growled the last out firmly.

“I doubt it, but anything is possible,” she finally said after she considered it for a moment.

“She’s a fucking she-Demon in pretty pink heels,” he grumbled.

“Oh, here now, Demon, maybe you just want her to play with your Lego parts, and tinker with your big blue balls? Just once,” she said wickedly. Her eyes were alight with unshed laughter as she teased him.

Her words pulled a belly laugh from Ristan, which felt damn good considering what he’d had to deal with lately. “My balls are not blue, and I will even volunteer to show them to you for proof; can’t let you go around thinking my boys are from a toy store and shit.”

“Ristan,” Ryder growled as he materialized behind them, and for a moment, Ristan had to remind himself that it was only Ryder, as his brother now held the same power as their father had. “You have somewhere else you need to be?”

“Not really,” Ristan said absently as he stood up and began working the buttons of his pants. He loved fucking with his brothers’ minds, and it was easier to hide his problems behind a wall of laughter than it was to deal with it all.

His smile grew as Synthia covered her eyes and squealed with laughter, and Ryder smiled at her reaction as well. She’d worked a miracle and she’d made him love her, even if he didn’t realize it yet.

“Don’t do it!” she cried between giggles.

“You show her, and I will promise to make them blue for real, brother,” Ryder growled.

“She accused my boys of being blue! I only offered to let her inspect them to assure her I suffered no such disorder,” Ristan said between a snort and a laugh as he watched the woman hold her belly through the laughter.

“Enough, children,” Ryder said as his eyes fastened onto his woman’s huge midsection with love. “You’re too exposed out here, and I’d like to feed you, Pet.”

Ristan stared at the space they’d stood in long after they’d sifted out and realized he’d taken too long at home. He needed to get back to Alden soon and finish his research in the archives. He knew he was close to finding the right scrolls, which could hopefully lead them to the rest of the relics. 

He watched as Ciara approached him. Her dark hair bounced with each step she took. The little minx was up to something, even he could see that much. It was in the bounce of her walk, and the smile in her eyes.

“Rissy,” she purred.

“What do you want, Minx?” he asked as he continued to watch her and the small fairies that filled the sky, making it glow with their frenetic dancing.

“You like her,” Ciara said, and turned her eyes on him.

“Who?” He played dumb. When dealing with his sister, it was best to play stupid and let her announce what it was that she was digging for.

“Synthia,” she said, and folded her arms across her chest.

“She’s not like most Fae women, and she’s refreshing. You’ll like her once you actually try to. Stop being a spoiled brat, because Ryder is keeping her,” Ristan said softly, reminding Ciara that Ryder was the King, even if it was only a subtle hint.

“I’m not spoiled. I’m simply tired of being hidden away and treated like I don’t exist. Seriously, you guys act like I’m a child, and I’m not. I don’t even know if I’ll like her because I’m not allowed around her. It’s not fair; he released the entire pavilion, and yet I only traded one prison for another.”

“You’ve been given free rein to go wherever you want in the castle,” he said, watching as she rolled her eyes. “Baby steps, Ciara. He’s got a lot on his plate right now.”

“Claire seems to think that Synthia will end up gone soon,” she puffed and watched him.

“I wouldn’t place merit on what that one says about anything. If she says the sky is falling, sister, look for it first before you run.”

Ristan stood up and shook his head. He loved his little sister, but she was hot-headed and as stubborn as any of his hundred and twenty-seven half-brothers. She had been sheltered, and that was because she was the only acknowledged sister they had. He had his suspicions about a few others that were probably other unacknowledged half-sisters, such as the Brownie Malinda, who had followed them to the mansion outside of Spokane. He watched Ciara silently as she moved away from him and started dancing with one of their other brothers.

No men approached her, and for good reason. He’d watched his brothers remove those who approached her, and it hadn’t been done gently. She had successfully made it through Transition, but since then, her feedings had been watched, as well as her activities. She was, after all, the only daughter born to their murderous father. Well, that they knew of.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” Zahruk asked as he returned silently.

“Alden is safe for the night, and I needed to feed,” Ristan answered as he brought his eyes back to his brothers. “Don’t you have pussy to chase? She’s sending you imaginary knives, and I’m pretty sure they’re being aimed at your back…or junk.”

“She isn’t happy with anything I do,” he grumbled, which caused Ristan to smile.

“Have you tried fucking her?” was his sage advice to his older brother.

“That seems to be the issue,” Zahruk grumbled unhappily.

“Really? You tapped that?” Ristan asked trying to conceal the surprise in his voice. Zahruk normally fed from women who didn’t mind being shared, but Darynda didn’t fall into the category. She was far from it, and came from a prominent family.

“She seduced me,” he growled, and made an animalistic noise from deep inside his chest.

“Did she now? How
did
she manage that?” Ristan teased, enjoying the sight of his brother growling deeply as Ryder had when he’d met Synthia.

“She fell on my cock—how the fuck you think it happened? She caught me hungry and shit happened quickly. The next thing I know, she started talking about a relationship, like I’m that type of asshole,” Zahruk explained, and Ristan struggled to try to keep the smile from his face.

“She fell on your cock, and shit just happened? Hitting the ambrosia too hard there, brother?” he asked, finally losing the battle with the wicked grin that he’d been barely holding back.

“Fucker,” Zahruk said before he sifted out of the Fairy Circle.

“Right back at ya, bro!”
Ristan voice was filled with laughter as he said it via the mental path he and his brothers typically spoke on.

Chapter Five

Olivia set the box of files to be archived on the mail counter, her eyes watching the hall and entryway for any sign of Justin. Her mind wandered to Cyrus and his weird obsession with her reports on the visiting Enforcer. As if the man actually wanted to be here, in this place. As far as punishments went, research and pushing papers was as bad as it got for an Enforcer unless you included death.

She had spent most of the morning pulling scrolls and other items that Alden and the Elder from New Orleans had requested for Justin to dig through. She’d written down the contents, and Cyrus had gone through the lots as she’d pulled them.

His cryptic words and calls to a higher-up left her with a bad feeling, but she was only a mere librarian, so who was she to question an Elder?

She typed in some numbers for the archives she was working on and looked up as Kendra appeared at her desk.

“Hey, girl,” she said, her smile genuine; she really liked Kendra.

“Hey, did you get a chance to pull those files?” Kendra asked, her eyes scanning the library.

“I did, but I’m still not sure why you’re even bothering with Demons from the 1600s,” Olivia probed; she may not understand it, but she wanted to.

“Alden said he approved for me to look at them; he said I could make notes of whatever I wanted. Just no pictures and no taking them out of the library,” Kendra supplied, even though it wasn’t an answer to Olivia’s question. She’d blatantly dodged the question. Olivia paused as she considered asking it again, and then decided to let it go since it was obvious Kendra hadn’t wanted to answer it.

She was curious by nature and loved history. No, she was actually obsessed with the history of pretty much everything. She’d spent hours of her childhood; hidden in this library, scouring through books. They took her to worlds she would get lost in, and sometimes she needed it.

Her parents were a mystery to her, for the most part. Her father was unknown, but suspected to be high up in the Salem Guild. Her mother had died giving birth, and there hadn’t been anyone, or any family to take her in. Without family to take her in, Salem had shipped her off to Spokane as soon as they were able to, as it was the only Guild in North America with the ability to care for an orphaned child that had magical talents.

“Here are
The History of Demonology
,
The Unclaimed Witches
, and
The Dark Witches
,” Olivia said, her mind taking note of how thin the third book was. All the books had been covered in an inch of dust when Olivia had taken them from the bowels of the catacombs. “You have two hours before I close the doors for the afternoon class, but after that you’re welcome to come back.”

“I won’t need much longer than that; I’m looking for specific events,” Kendra said as she pushed her honey-blonde hair from her face and checked her notes on her phone. She was a pretty girl, the kind the boys would go after and chase for her classic beauty.

Unlike Olivia’s own gaudy red hair and porcelain-pale skin. Her body was slim in a way no sandwich could fix. She would know; she’d eaten enough of them. She’d tried anything to gain some curves; she tried a lot of different techniques, some more than a few times. Her small breasts weren’t even a handful, and unlike Kendra’s, hers didn’t make men turn their heads the way some of the male librarians were currently staring.

She scratched absently at the sprinkling of freckles on her nose. They came back in spring with the first rays of sun, faithfully. She was invisible to the men, which was probably a good thing considering how clumsy she was around them. Justin, God, he made her tongue tie in knots that no magician could magically untie.

She’d never been one to go out partying when the other girls did, and she was a hopeless romantic at heart. She spent her off hours either poring through books from the Guild or rereading her favorite romance novels. It wasn’t something she was proud of, this introvert nature she had, but it was something she dealt with.

She placed Kendra’s items into a bin and watched as the girl walked away, her eyes scanning the library as if she was afraid she’d be jumped. Weird. She was normally really talkative, and Olivia loved the warm vibe Kendra gave off that made her feel more like one of the girls, rather than the shy mouse she normally felt like around the others.

Olivia went back to working, her mind firmly back on Justin. He was late, as was Alden. Maybe they’d gone out to coffee? She liked coffee. Recently her daydreams included going out for coffee with a certain visiting Enforcer. Yeah, right, like that was ever going to happen. She sighed heavily and jumped as Mildred dropped a thick volume on her counter.

“These need to be returned, and Cyrus wants you to alert him the moment Alden gets in. He also said to be watchful today, and that you should just suspend the afternoon class. Those kids will riot if you do, so please don’t. The rest of us would rather not take over the primary class.”

Mildred was thirtyish, with drab, yellow straw-like hair. Her parents were both Elders, kind people. It was a wonder that their daughter was so serious and sour. Olivia took the heavy volume—one she had just fully archived and taken from about thirty tomes—and dropped it onto the lower part of her counter.

“I’ll still teach it, and Alden hasn’t been in yet. He’s usually not this late,” Olivia politely pointed out, her hands coming back up, and folding on the counter. “Is there anything else you needed?” she continued.

“No. Make sure you file that, and be sure to note that I took it for only a day,” she said flippantly as she turned and left.

As if I don’t know how to do my own job?
Olivia just barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes as she went back to cataloguing the archive she was working on. Distractedly, her mind wandered to the hours she’d spent last night looking into the description of the Demon the kid had given her, and yet the Guild held so little information on Demons that it was like looking for a ghost.

Two hours went by before the kids started coming in and the visitors started leaving. She looked to where Kendra had been and noted that Sadie was talking to the girl now. She turned and watched as the last of the kids entered.

She smiled. She loved this part of her job the most. Teaching History to eager little minds, well, mostly eager. Some hated being here, and those ones normally could be brought around easily enough with the right lesson.

“Miss Olivia,” Matilda said as she slipped her tiny fingers into Olivia’s hand. “No monsters today, okay?” she begged with her small lip trembling.

“Monsters are why we are here, Matilda. They’re why we need to learn about them, so we can hunt them down and protect others from them.”

“‘Tilda is afraid of them,” Clarita said, her brown eyes challenging. “I’m not afraid of them; I want to kill them, and protect people!”

The kids started sounding off, and Olivia felt her heart twist with the reality of it all. They would go out into the real world, and some of them would make Enforcer, unlike her. Some of them would die protecting the Human race from very real monsters.

“Let’s sit on the carpet today,” she said, her eyes searching the faces and taking a mental head count. Having an eidetic memory came in handy at times like this. “Bryan, Kandice, and Burt, front row please. Today I’ll be getting your full attention, or Alden and James will be making you run additional laps tomorrow morning. Do you understand?” she chided.

She wanted kids, but she wanted the kind that didn’t happen. The kind of kids who listened, loved to learn, and behaved. She’d once confided that to Alden, and he’d laughed. He’d responded with, “A child is only silent when they are in trouble, and they only behave if bribed to do so.”

“Okay, ladies and gentlemen,” she said as she took her seat at the head of the class, on the small chair which could barely fit a child. Not that she was much bigger than the oldest kid here. “Today we learn about the Fae, and some of the breeds. We’ll start by asking each other some very important questions.”

She waited until they all looked in her direction before she continued.

“Who can give me the names of the High Fae castes? And why are they the most dangerous?”

“That’s easy,” Daniel called out. He had a light complexion, with freckles that covered both his cheeks and his nose. He was a smart ass most days, being the oldest of the group.

“Well,” Olivia said after a moment, “enlighten us.”

“Blood, Light, Dark, and the Horde. The Horde is the ugliest and vilest of the monsters and I’m going to kill them all when I get bigger and become an Enforcer. You won’t see much of the Horde here because they’re ugly buggers. Dark is smart, and deadly, but unlike the others, they like our world and stay in it. They don’t hide, like the Blood Fae do. Those ones don’t come here. They’re probably afraid of us and our Enforcers. The Light is the most beautiful, and you know it’s them because they draw you in with their pretty eyes and looks. Then they eat you,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Good description, but those aren’t facts. The Blood don’t come here because it’s believed they prefer to stay hidden in the shadows and remain in Faery. Little is known about them, other than that. The Horde is the ugliest of the Fae, but they don’t appear so when they use glamour. They’re monsters, ones without rule because their King has been missing for a long time, which makes them the most dangerous. The Light Fae, while alluring and attractive, are truly stuck-up and self-absorbed.” Olivia made a face that made the kids giggle. “Or so I am told. And the last is the Dark Fae, the most well-known group of the Fae. They don’t hide in the shadows, you’re right about that Daniel, but you forgot to mention that they, too, are amazingly beautiful. Each of the four castes feeds on the Human race,” she said, and then paused, hating the next part. “Can anyone tell me why that is bad?”

*~*~*

Ristan watched her from the shadows, her delicate features crinkling when she didn’t like something. She enjoyed teaching; that much he was sure of. Her eyes had gazed on the children with love, and he found himself wondering what it would be like for someone to look at him like that.

He grinned to himself at the Guild teaching she was passing on to the children. The Humans hadn’t gotten word yet that the Horde King wasn’t missing anymore, and would have flipped if they’d known that he’d been masquerading as the Dark Fae Heir for years with the support of the Dark King, no less. Nor did they know that the real Dark Fae Prince had been hidden in this very Guild the entire time. Yep, that wasn’t going to go over well when they realized the extent of the trick that the Fae had pulled on them.

He listened as the children answered each question she asked, and then as she corrected them. He liked the soft lilt of her voice, as if she had a hint of the South in her, not that he was actually from the South himself. Just the small twang, which she’d probably picked up from a book or a TV show.

He’d told Synthia that the little redhead was a Demon, but the truth of it was, she was more angel than anything else. She didn’t fit the mold of a traitor, and yet, did anyone? She’d be too scared of doing it. She was too small, and very meek, as Synthia had described, but Ristan was sure she had a fire in her, just itching to get out.

Most freaks were the ones no one expected, the quiet ones. He grinned. His eyes slid further down to her plump breasts. Most men would say too small, he’d say just fuckin’ perfect. Impeccable size for clamps, in his opinion. And her red lips…fuckin’ hell, he’d like to see them wrapped around his cock, as those beautiful dark blue eyes watched his pleasure as it spread across his face.

Those small hips were perfect because it wouldn’t take much to rock them, and he would. He’d take her hard, relentlessly, for hours. Those elegant fingers, small, and yet big enough to get the job done…

“Justin,” Alden said, his voice making Ristan jump from where his filthy ass mind had gone.

The problem with actually fucking Olivia? She wouldn’t know what to do if a cock came with crayon-written directions, and he wasn’t into teaching as much as he was into doing.

He turned to the old man and glared. “Let’s get those archives,” he growled as he led the way to the study carrel. His mind firmly dismissed thoughts of what he ‘wanted’ to do and couldn’t fuckin’ do. Because when it came to that little librarian, it wasn’t rocket science. He wasn’t hitting it, period.