[M__M 03] Misery Loves Company (18 page)

Lucen had explained to me that Dezzi had turned Devon, and that was why he was so loyal to her. Why he was willing to remain as her lieutenant instead of moving on to become a Dom himself. “So you’re saying most people don’t know what they’re getting into? Does that mean they don’t have a choice? It’s just done to them?”

This was the answer I wanted most. To know that Lucen hadn’t chosen this life.

But Devon’s expression shot down my brief moment of hope. “I’m sure some don’t choose it. Some Doms are cruel like some people are cruel. But no Dom that I’ve ever met tells people what to expect after the change. What Dezzi did with me was an exception because she was trying to talk me out of it. If people knew, I doubt most would go through with it.”

I should have been sober for this conversation because with every word Devon said, I had a hundred new questions. Trying to keep myself focused on the main point was difficult. “Why not?”

Devon rested his head in his hands and glanced up at me with an oddly—and endearingly—wistful expression. “You don’t need addicts, Jess. Do you know how lucky you are? Has Lucen ever explained why we need addicts?”

I rubbed my eyes, confused. “I’m not that buzzed, which means you’re not making sense. You need addicts to feed on. Everyone knows that.”

“No, not just to feed.” He stood abruptly and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Why do lust addicts crave sex all the time? Why do greed addicts covet everything they can’t have? Why do vanity addicts feel so worthless? Why are rage addicts perpetually angry?”

“Because your addict bond makes them that way so you can feed off their misery.”

“Partially.” He knelt in front of me. “But we can feed off all kinds of negativity. So why does the bond do that?”

Devon had gotten way too close to me again, but I did my best not to fidget, and concentrated on his words. “You’ve lost me. I assumed it was just how the bond worked.”

“You were in that fury’s head, Jess. You know from experience that the bond goes two ways. It’s a circuit.”

“And your point?”

He stood once more and moved away. “We don’t just feed on an addict’s emotions. We dump
our
emotions on
them
.”

Devon paused a moment to let this sink into my thick head.

When I didn’t respond, he continued. “We dump our emotions on them, they chew them up internally—so to speak—and suffer for them, and then we can feed on their misery, as you so eloquently put it.”

I floundered for a response to that. “So it’s not the bond magic itself that creates the misery. It’s you?”

He paced against the far wall, seemingly too agitated to sit or stand still, despite the lack of space. “Remember how you felt under Lucrezia’s curse when it combined with the F? You said it was like you were going to tear off your own skin with uncontrollable lust. That’s us, every day, unless we can get rid of it. And we get rid of it by giving it to our addicts. The misery we feed on is, essentially, our own. The magic that created us makes it. We’re the miserable ones, and we need to get rid of that pain to survive. It’s just convenient how we can offload it on others and feed on their suffering.”

I swallowed and stared at the floor. Needing to tear off my skin with an insatiable lust—that was exactly what it had been like. Not a pleasurable pain, but one so overwhelming and all-encompassing that I could barely think straight. One I’d have done anything to get rid of. Only I couldn’t.

I was having a hard time comprehending what Devon was telling me because nothing I’d ever learned about preds had so much as hinted at this. It changed everything. Lucen didn’t just need his addicts to feed on. He needed them to take away his pain. To live.

I wasn’t sure what I felt about that. Pity? Anger? Shock at this revelation, for sure.

“The Gryphons never taught you any of this, did they?” Devon sounded amused, but his smile wasn’t as bright as usual.

“Nope. Maybe I’d have learned it if I hadn’t gotten kicked out.”

Devon sat, rubbing his neck. “Now do you see why it’s so traumatic when you’re first changed?”

“You don’t have any addicts to take away the pain.”

“No, you don’t. So you’re so filled with this intense, insatiable lust, and you remember what you gave up to become this way. For what? Power? You have none yet. A longer life? Who wants to live like that? It hurts to remember the past, so people choose to forget.”

I picked at the seam on my pants. My heart ached for Lucen. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk about his past. I just wished he’d have been the one to explain.

“Except you,” I pointed out. “You didn’t choose that.”

“Because I knew what to expect, unlike everyone else. Because I wanted it in spite of that. I wanted to remember because for me, remembering what I left made it easier to suffer through the pain, not harder.”

“So you’re saying you had a shitty life as a human, huh?”

Devon’s face finally broke into a real grin. “You could say that. So have I satisfied your desperate curiosity well enough for the evening?”

“I suppose so.” I had other questions, but he’d given me plenty to think about. Possibly too much, considering I had to research entirely unrelated questions tomorrow, and my head felt stuffed.

“Good. Then how about satisfying my curiosity now.”

I quit picking at my seam, a cold dread creeping over me.
Please don’t go there.
I’d just gotten my body back under control. “About what?”

“At the meeting when you told us what you were and what you could do, you mentioned that you were largely immune to our power these days. That explained a lot, and it certainly seems to be true. You were sitting so close to Angelia and her bodyguards, and yet I didn’t notice an effect on you.” He crossed the space between us in less than a heartbeat and stood inches away. The heat from his body radiated onto mine.

My breath caught in my throat. I could close that last amount of distance just as fast. I could feel how hot his skin truly was. My lips were dry, and I struggled not to wet them. He could do that for me.

But I didn’t move. I was determined to keep a nonchalant expression even though my body betrayed me.

“So why is it—” Devon didn’t move either, yet I could have sworn he was touching me, “—that I can sense so much lust in you when we’re together these days?”

Don’t twitch. Don’t flinch. Don’t give in.

“Wishful thinking?”

In the second it took Devon to think of a witty reply to that, I darted around him, banging my shin on the table, and re-entered the VIP room. There, I took a deep breath of Devon-free air. I could hear him laugh behind me.

On the sofa, Angelia was talking with one of her dealers, so I waved good night and got the hell out of Purgatory before anyone tried to stop me.

Chapter Twenty-One

I was hellaciously tired the next day. On the way home from Purgatory, I’d stopped by The Lair, filled with the delusional hope that I might grab a moment with Lucen to discuss my conversation with Devon, but the place was jammed and he was busy. Apologies and a quick kiss were all I got. I went to bed frustrated, mentally and physically.

Armed with coffee, I’d arrived at Gryphon headquarters this morning and checked my inbox. But although I’d been cc’d on a bunch of emails so I knew Bridget and company were busy shaking down their pred informants, there was nothing for me to do.

From my computer, I went straight to the library, which was where I’d been hanging out for the last several hours. When I wasn’t thinking about everything I’d learned from Devon last night, or how close I’d come to kissing him, my eyes were glazing over as I searched the Gryphons’ database for anything to do with Gunthra’s Vessels.

Tom had told me once that World had storage rooms full of books, manuscripts and equipment that was too rare to keep in the regular collection. Not all of it was even catalogued. If he were here, I might have asked him if he’d heard of the Vessels, but he was still gone.

Mostly, I was grateful for that, but I was becoming less so as the day wore on and my search proved fruitless. Logically, it shouldn’t matter if I learned nothing. Gunthra had worded her end of the deal so poorly that if I found nothing and told her that truthfully, it ought to count as upholding my end. But deep down, I wasn’t satisfied with nothing, and maybe Gunthra had me figured out well enough to know that I wouldn’t be. She’d put me on the hunt, and it had become a mission. I had to know why
she
wanted to know.

The single history book I found that actually contained a reference to the Vessels in its index treated them more like a legend than a fact. They were, apparently, the Holy Grail of the magical world.

According to the book, the Vessels of Making were five objects of such significant power that their very existence had been deemed a threat thousands of years ago. A group of magicians had once created them to do “great works”, whatever that meant, and had then destroyed them.

Or that was one theory for the reason of their disappearance.

Other theories were that they’d merely been lost. And still others were that they’d never existed in the first place, and this had become the dominant theory. They were a legend, something to drive fortune hunters and conspiracy freaks mad with over the millennia.

And just who were these magicians alleged to have created the Vessels anyway? The book didn’t say, although the way it was written suggested they were either gifted humans or magi. Maybe both.

I slammed the book shut in annoyance and checked my coffee cup, but I’d drunk the dregs a while ago. It was time for more, but first a phone call. Thinking about magi had given me an idea. The last time I’d gone looking for information that didn’t exist in the Gryphon library, I’d checked in with Olef. Granted, he hadn’t been able to help then, but that was Gryphon-specific information I’d been searching for. These Vessels sounded more like general folklore, and general folklore sounded right up Olef’s alley.

I got out my phone and jumped when it rang in my hand. As my heart returned to normal, I frowned at the caller ID. Unknown number. Probably it was a telemarketer, but I picked up anyway. “Hello?”

“Hi, is this Jessica Moore?”

The voice was vaguely familiar. “Yes. Is this Shawna?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.” Her voice sounded higher than I remembered. Taut. Like she was scared shitless.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine, yeah. You said to call if I could think of anything, and I did. It’s just…wow, this is kind of scary, you know? I’ve been thinking about what you said about those other vanity addicts, and I’m freaked out.”

I closed my eyes, steadying my breathing. I needed to project calm so she held it together, but damn. I needed her information. “Okay, just relax. What do you know? Anything you tell me is going to help keep you out of danger. I’m at Gryphon headquarters. If you know the names of the people involved, we can head out immediately.”

That wasn’t exactly truthful, but we could do something. I’d call Bridget the moment I got off the phone with Shawna.

“I’d rather not talk on the phone, you know? Could you come here, to me? I have questions too, and I’d feel safer doing this in person.”

I grimaced, not liking how long the travel would take. But then, I’d made a good start on my research task. I could afford to follow leads on Eric’s case. “Okay, sure.”

“Alone?”

“If that’s what you want.” I had no one with me anyway.

“It is. It’s just, you know, I feel like an idiot about this whole addiction thing, and talking in front of Gryphons…” Her voice trailed off in a nervous laugh.

Hence why Bridget hadn’t wanted to send Gryphons to the support group meeting. “Yeah, sure. Give me the address. I can leave now.”

Shawna gave me an address in one of the outlying towns, and I hung up. After looking up the directions, I sent Bridget a text to let her know I was following up on a lead, and headed out.

Gunthra and her Vessels were going to have to wait a little longer.

Shawna lived on a quiet street about half an hour outside the Greater Boston urban sprawl. I found her house easily and parked my Dragon’sWing next to a sign by her driveway that advertised her yoga studio. Without the rumble of the motorcycle’s engine, the air was eerily peaceful.

The street dead-ended at an elementary school, which throughout the summer had a playground doubling as a park. Kids shouted as they raced across a baseball diamond. I tore my attention away from them and traipsed past the white farmhouse to the carriage house in the back. Shawna had said she’d be in her studio stretching because it kept her calm.

I knocked once on the large door, and no one answered. Noticing it was slightly ajar, I pushed it open. The hinges creaked, and the scent of sandalwood incense wafted outside.

“Shawna?” I stepped in and discovered an enormous and airy space. Part of one wall had been hung with mirrors, but the ceiling was high and open. Another temporary wall divided the room, and a desk stood in front of it, as did a stereo that was playing relaxing music.

Shawna herself sat on one of the mats by the mirror doing some pose that required her to touch her toes. Her chest rose and fell with peaceful breathing, but she made no move to acknowledge me.

“Shawna?” Annoyance colored my voice, and I spoke louder. She might be meditating or whatever, but she wasn’t deaf, and she’d asked me to drive all the way out here.

When she didn’t answer a second time, suspicion cooled my blood. Shawna had sounded one breath from a heart attack on the phone, but this did not seem like the reaction of a scared woman.

Now it was my turn to get worried, and I swore silently at my stupidity as suspicion hardened into certainty. She’d lured me out here, and I’d walked into a trap.

With one hand, I reached for my knife. With my other, I took out my phone.

Still, nothing happened. Maybe I was being paranoid, but so what? I’d call for Gryphon reinforcements. Just in case. Every sense on alert, I adjusted my grip on my knife so I could bring up the Gryphons’ phone number.

That was when they struck.

Sylphs, at least three of them. They were white-and-silver blurs in my vision, decked out in some serious charms to make them move so fast. Before I could finish dialing, the phone flew from my hand. I swore again, not so silently this time.

One of the sylphs went for my knife, but I managed to maintain my grip. Ducking as a pale object streaked by me, I swung out my arms and slashed at anything within my vicinity. Someone cursed. All at once the blurs formed into people.

There were three as I’d first guessed, a woman and two men, although with sylphs it could often be hard to tell the difference. They circled around me at a safe distance. None appeared willing to get too close, although they were armed as well.

Blood rushed by my ears. Three on one—not good odds, especially when they had speed charms. The only point in my favor was that the sylphs had seen Misery’s black blade and were wary of it. But dragon shit on toast—I’d been tricked by a sylph. My opinion of my intelligence took a hard blow.

I swallowed, regathering my wits before they had a chance to regroup. “What did you do to Shawna? Is she a ghoul?”

The taller of the two men gave me a deranged smile. He stood closer than the others, but the knife he held was longer than Misery, as was his reach. “She served her purpose and is being punished for her insolence.”

“Which was what? Why try to get me here?”

He raised a perfectly formed eyebrow. “To see if you’d come. Assym told you to leave this Gryphon business alone. When he found out Shawna had spoken to you, he decided to test you. See if you would take his advice.”

Great. Just what the world needed. Sylphs that were growing brains. “So I’m here. What does Assym expect, a trophy for you to take back and prove it? None of you seem eager to get any closer.”

I spun slowly in place as I spoke, trying to get a better bearing on my surroundings. Eventually the sylphs were going to remember they had the upper hand and attack again. One knife versus three, and all that. I needed something else to defend myself with, but the carriage house held no promises. The walls were bare and the floor empty.

“You’re going to drop the knife and come with us,” the sylph said. “We’re taking you back to Shadowtown.”

“Um, no. You want the knife, you’re going to have to pry it from my hand.” I backed my way into the wall opposite of the mirrors and adjusted my stance. Now they would all have to attack from the same side, and unless they moved together, there was a good chance I’d get in a couple hits first, even with their charms. We were far from Shadowtown, and they’d be in deep shit if they hadn’t brought anything with them to stop the bleeding. Those wounds wouldn’t clot on their own.

The sylphs, on the other hand, wouldn’t want to kill me because Assym wanted me alive. They’d have to be careful not to do too much damage.

This realization didn’t even the odds, but it made me feel a bit more confident. Judging by the sylphs’ faces and their reluctance to attack, they’d had the same thoughts. I hoped like hell that my less-than-cowed reaction was pissing them off. Angry people made dumb mistakes.

The sylphs glanced at each other. How soon until the tall one ordered the others to disarm me? It didn’t look like anyone was willing to volunteer.

“I can make you drop it,” the tall sylph said.

I bent my knees, keeping loose. “I’m trembling. So have at it, or are you afraid you’ll damage me too much for Assym?”

Drop the knife.

The words slipped through me, cool and sharp, like taking an icicle to the brain. Chilly hands seemed to wrap themselves around my chest, constricting me. Since they were too wary to attack me physically, the tall sylph was attempting a magical assault instead.

Do it. Listen to me. Make this easy on yourself. You can’t fight three of us, and you can’t fight Assym. You know it, Jessica. Cooperate and you won’t get hurt. You need us.

My muscles clenched. Every instinct screamed at me to fight, to throw off this sylph’s hold on my soul. I could do it too. In spite of the insecurities the sylph fed into my head, I was stronger. I had more resistance than they’d be expecting because I wasn’t human.

Get…
But I cut myself off even as I prepared to throw all my willpower at the sylph.

I didn’t need to release his stranglehold on me. I could use him. Use his power. Maybe he knew where to find the sylphs who’d fled the other day, or which goblin had attacked Eric. But to find out, I needed to let him in completely so I could take control.

Breathing heavily, I sank to my knees, cold with terror. I could do this. I’d done it before, but I so did not like the idea of doing it again.

Above me, the sylph grinned, sensing my will collapsing, and his icy, magical fingers probed what was left of my resistance. I closed my eyes, struggling with my own revulsion at letting him forge a bond with me.

“Assym wants her,” the female sylph hissed. “You can’t have her.”

“I’ll release her to him when we get back. She’ll be easier to deal with this way.” The sylph lowered his blade, returning his attention to me. “Won’t you? Be good, and put down the knife.”

My grip tightened on the handle, but only for a moment.
Listen. Obey. Let him in.

This wasn’t like when the red-eyed fury had made a play for me. His power had been strong and hot. The power washing over me now was cool and steady. Then, I’d been hurt and badly. I’d also been filled with rage. Giving in had been easy because my body had wanted nothing more than relief from the pain and an outlet for my vengeance.

This time, my body rebelled. There was no pain relief in this sylph’s touch, only humiliation. But if I could do what the sylph asked, that would be enough. I would open myself to his power completely, and that was what I needed, loathsome as it was.

My hand trembled, but I set the knife on the mat.

Good, weak little human.

The act of obedience blew open our connection. The bond between us formed and solidified. As I had the first time, I could see it in my mind’s eye, a circuit of glowing power between us.

I reached out with my will and grabbed at the connection.

As I raised my head, the sylph shuddered, but whether from the force of my pull or the shock, I didn’t know.

More—that was all I understood. I needed more.

I yanked harder on his power, and the circuit changed direction. Cool and forceful, the magic poured into me and over me like the wind. Hair lifted off my neck, and my pores tingled. I let it fill me, propelling me to my feet, and that was all I could do to keep from raising my arms and throwing my head back in delight. I was caught in a windstorm, carried above everything by a glorious gust of sheer power.

I was a goddess, and the three sylphs in front of me gawked, immobile with panic. Unbidden, laughter bubbled up from my lips. I barely felt my body move as I reached down and picked up my knife. It was as though my head—my soul—was disconnected from the rest of me. It was almost too much.