Chase the Dark (17 page)

“Micah told me all about you. But that’s not why I’m here. I want the Sahar.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Where is it?”

“No idea. Go find a mirror to admire and leave me alone.”

She smirked. “No, I don’t think so. You see, I’ve been waiting here for quite a while, without the knowledge of those imbecile haemons, of course. While my kin have been hunting you, I chose to lie in wait instead. Much more my style.”

“Uh-huh. Admit you’re a lazy ass.”

Her mouth flattened. “Give it to me and I promise to kill you quickly.”

Piper snorted, trying to hide her panic. Her chances of winning against the daemon weren’t good, especially not when her head hurt so badly she was about to toss her dinner. She nudged Lyre with the toe of her boot but he didn’t so much as twitch.

The daemon curled her fingers and claws glinted at the tips. Time was up. What did she do? She stepped back from Lyre, out cold and helpless. She had to get the daemon away from him.

“All right, I do have it,” she said loudly. “But you can take it over my dead body.”

She turned and ran. The daemon yowled like an angry cat and charged after Piper. How was she running in that skirt? Piper bolted to the stairs and jumped them two at time, leaping the last five at once. She hit the floor and went into a roll. She came up on her feet and darted down the hall opposite the one where she’d beat up the haemons. The daemon came tearing after her.

Piper whipped around a corner, down a smaller hall, and saw the door she wanted. She ran right into it, managed to turn the handle, and fell onto the mats on the other side. She rolled as the daemon pounced, landing right where Piper had been. She scrambled up.

The sparring room was the size of a swimming pool, two stories tall, and covered in mats. The far end had punching bags, a climbing rope, a rock wall, human-shaped dummies, and a pulley system with moving bull’s-eyes. The opposite wall was lined with various weapons and sparring tools. The rest was wide-open space.

Piper lunged for the wall of weapons. She reached for a bladed staff but the daemon pounced again. Piper dove, rolling away, and came to her feet right beside a row of practice swords. She grabbed a bokken and whirled to face the daemon.

The woman stopped a few feet away, eyebrows shooting up at Piper’s choice. “A wooden sword?”

“A wooden katana,” Piper corrected. She hefted the polished, narrow weapon. It might not cut but it was solid, heavy wood. Better than nothing.

“Hmph. Foolishness.” The daemon raised her hand and flicked her fingers casually.

Piper threw an arm in front of her. The diluted spell knocked her several steps back but she kept her footing. Hoping for the element of surprise, she charged. The daemon smirked and lifted one hand to catch the bokken. Piper changed direction and swung low, slamming the wooden blade into the top of the daemon’s thigh. The woman yelped and staggered back. Piper swung again, aiming for the woman’s head.

Unfortunately, daemons have impossibly fast reflexes. The woman ducked and snapped out an arm. Her fist hit Piper in the shoulder, knocking her sideways. Before Piper could recover, the daemon kicked the back of her knee. Piper fell into a roll and came up again facing the daemon. Blondie smirked.

“Not good enough.” She slowly advanced.

Piper silently agreed but twisted her mouth in a sneer. “What would you know? Probably never had a real fight in your life.” She made her voice go high-pitched. “What if you broke a nail, oh no!”

Blondie stopped. Smiled slowly. “You don’t know much about us, do you? Well, let me show you something before you die. What we
truly
are.” She spread her arms out wide.

It would have been the perfect opportunity to attack but Piper was frozen with shock as the woman’s body shimmered. And then her glamour was gone and it wasn’t a woman standing in front of Piper.

It was a really big cat. Sort of.

Her face was almost the same except her icy blue eyes were huge and had slit pupils. Her hair was coarser, exactly like the yellow fur that had sprouted over her entire body. Her clothes were gone. Her legs had warped at the joints into something hideously feline, yet her furry arms were mostly human but with huge nasty claws. A tufted tail flicked back and forth behind her.

“Umm,” Piper breathed, licking her lips. “Sphinx?”

“Good girl.” The daemon ran her hands down her front, smoothing the fur. “Do you think now that I cannot fight?”

Uh, no. Definitely not. Sphinxes were notoriously vicious. “You haven’t told any riddles.”

“What?” the creature spat.

“Riddles,” Piper said, blinking away her shock. Lyre hadn’t been kidding that some daemons did not look good without glamour. Blondie wasn’t so pretty anymore. “Sphinxes and riddles, you know. Aren’t they kind of your thing?”

“Ugh,” the sphinx snarled. “No! I hate riddles. Whatever stupid human came up with that nonsense needs their spinal column removed.”

“Right,” Piper said. “You’re too dumb and blond to come up with any, aren’t you?”

The sphinx hissed like an angry cat and dropped into a crouch. “Here’s a riddle for you then, idiot girl. What has no magic, is an incubus slut, and is about to die? Hmm?”

Piper tightened her grip on her sword, trying frantically to think of a plan—any plan. “That was just lame,” she told the sphinx.

The creature sprang. Piper swung her sword, slamming it into the sphinx’s shoulder, but the cat-woman’s momentum sent Piper flying anyway. She landed hard on the mats and rolled to her feet. She scoured the room for an idea because if she didn’t get one soon, she would be shredded into ribbons. Blondie was toying with her, probably hoping Piper would give up the Sahar after a few bruises.

The sphinx stood between Piper and the real weapons, leaving her with access to nothing but practice weapons. As she backed away from the sphinx’s slow prowl, her gaze darted from the punching bag to the climbing rope.

“I have a riddle for you,” Piper said, skittering backward. “Want to hear it?”

The sphinx’s lip curled. “No.”

“You sure? Bet mine’s better than yours.”

The creature hissed and leaped six feet to crash into Piper. She managed to deflect the claws with her bokken but her aching head smacked the mat when she landed on her back. Shadows crowded her vision. She kneed Blondie in the gut and flipped the woman off her, then staggered to her feet. Oooh, woozy. Not good.

“What’s your riddle then, clever little slut?” the sphinx hissed. She flexed her furry, clawed fingers.

Piper backed toward the far side of the room, nerves twisting in her belly. Her plan had better work or she was kitty meat. “It’s definitely better. It goes like this . . .” She stepped behind a punching bag and poked her head around the other side. “Three parts. First part: What’s made from a living thing but was never alive?”

The sphinx blinked stupidly, then lunged at the punching bag. Piper danced away and ducked behind a foam man on a pole. “Second part: What binds, burns, and chokes all at once?”

The sphinx leaped on the foam man and ripped his head off. Piper jumped out of the way and grabbed the climbing rope. The sphinx growled, slowly approaching, her eyes darkening to black. She was about to start using magic again. Piper sucked in a sharp, nervous breath.

“Third part,” she said slowly. “What triumphs and defeats in the same instant?”

The sphinx went still. Piper could practically see her brain straining. “That’s not a riddle, it’s nothing but nonsense.”

“No, it’s—”

With a furious yowl, the sphinx sprang.

Piper threw herself into the rope. She swung away as the sphinx skidded on the mats. Piper swung back. She jabbed with her sword on the way by before landing behind the sphinx. She dropped her sword. With the end of the rope still in one hand, she jumped on the sphinx’s back. The creature spun wildly. Piper rolled off the sphinx’s other side, passed her end of the rope over the main length, and threw all her weight against it.

The loop of rope around the sphinx’s neck snapped tight. When it jerked taut, it momentarily lifted the sphinx right off her feet. Her eyes bulged. Piper strained against the rope until her legs gave out and she collapsed to her knees, aching and exhausted. Her right arm was bleeding with shallow scratches she didn’t remember getting. The sphinx crumpled to the mats, clutching her neck.

Piper dragged herself to her feet. “It
was
a real riddle,” she panted, one hand against the stitch in her side. “The answer was the rope. It’s silk, comes from bugs . . . rope burn and whatever . . . and it helped me win and you lose.” Sphinxes might not be obsessed with riddles, exactly, but they were fatally curious. Stupid cat had to hear the whole riddle. Thank God the bimbo had been so easy to distract.

The sphinx slowly rolled over on her stomach, holding her throat with one hand. She was down but she wouldn’t be staying that way. Time to go.

Piper ran for the door. Right as she was wondering desperately how to singlehandedly carry Lyre out of the house, the incubus opened the door and casually leaned one shoulder against the frame. He looked over at the stunned sphinx.

“Personally,” he said, “I prefer a little less hair.”

She stumbled right into him, shaking her head wordlessly. “Can we go now? Please?”

“Sure thing, gorgeous.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist and hurried her back down the hall.

“How’d you wake up so fast?” Piper asked as they came to the T-shaped intersection of halls.

“It was the wrong dose for a dae—shit.”

“There they are,” the skinny haemon from the office yelled. Casanova was right behind him at the end of hall, along with the haemons Piper had already roughed up.

“This way,” Lyre said, yanking Piper in the opposite direction. She tried to run but her legs had turned to Jell-O in the aftermath of too much adrenaline. The haemons barreled down the hall toward them, closing fast.

As they reached the hallway intersection, the sphinx appeared from the third branch of the hallway, spitting with fury and still clutching her throat. The whole group of haemons squealed as they plowed into her. A horrible cat screech filled the hall and magic blasted.

“Um,” Lyre said. “Shall we continue on then?”

“Sure,” Piper said faintly. A wall exploded as someone’s spell missed. “Quickly?”

They jogged to the front door and let themselves out. Piper waited in the trees while Lyre collected their packs of clothes, the briefcase, and his tote of food. Together they hauled their bounty into the dark trees. Ten minutes of walking and Piper recognized the little clearing where they’d hidden the car. She eagerly strode forward, shoving past a thorny bush.

The car was no longer covered in branches. All four doors hung open like the vehicle had been ransacked. The seats were empty.

Ash was gone.

. . .

Piper would’ve liked to say they didn’t panic, but she and Lyre both flipped out for a solid five minutes—searching the obviously empty car, running around the nearby woods, swearing a lot. Then Zwi showed up and led them three dozen yards into the trees where Ash was camped out on a branch. Apparently, the three haemon goons who’d burst into the kitchen at the worst possible moment for Piper and Lyre had been returning from searching their car. Luckily, Ash had been awake—wondering why the hell he was alone in an unfamiliar car in the middle of a forest—and had been able to ditch the car before the goons found him.

Reunited, they rushed back to the car, threw their things into the backseat, and drove for the next two hours. While Piper filled him in on what he’d missed, Ash alternated between yawning and eating, devouring half the food Lyre had packed before falling asleep again.

As they drove, she held the briefcase on her lap and resisted the urge to open it. She would mix up the files trying to read them in the car and she couldn’t risk sabotaging her only chance to find out who’d kidnapped her father. Well, her second chance, because she’d already blown her first chance.

Now that she was away from the Consulate and its “guests,” she couldn’t believe how much of an idiot she was. She hadn’t thought about it at the time, more concerned with staying un-kidnapped and alive, but those haemons had to be part of the plot that had resulted in her uncle being terribly injured, Piper being blamed for stealing the Sahar, and for her father being kidnapped. They knew where her father was.

Why hadn’t she made them tell her? Why hadn’t she at least tried to get some clues out of them as to their identities? Failing that, she could have gone with them. That would have been the fastest way to find Quinn—but then she would have been delivering the Sahar right into their hands and putting herself at their mercy. Maybe not a good idea.

Either way, she hadn’t done any of that. She hadn’t found out a single useful bit of information about her attackers. When they’d first mentioned her father, she’d been determined to find out the truth, but then the head-to-wall collision had happened. Nothing like a concussion to make you lose your train of thought.

Why had they tried to capture her? Who cared about her? Her only importance in this whole mess was being the true possessor of the Sahar but only Quinn knew that for sure. Somehow he had kept that secret, though she couldn’t imagine how if they’d drugged him. Drugs, magic, and a little time could make anyone spill any secret.