"Daemon." I hadn't meant to say it aloud, but there was no sucking it back in once I did.
"Vampire girl," he greeted, giving me a big smile. "Looking... healthier," he decided, nodding. "Must be all the sex," he added. "Come in. I'll call Daddy Ace. Oh, Pops! We've got company!" he yelled up the stairs as Arick and I moved in behind him. "So, who's your friend?" Daemon asked, turning back to look at us, giving Arick a quick once-over. "He's not human."
"Well, not entirely," Arick agreed, holding out a hand. "Arick," he said. But he didn't offer his hand to Daemon. Instead, he waved it over the bowl.
"Did you just de-soggify my cereal?" Daemon asked, eyes wide.
"I did," Arick confirmed.
"Shit. You're a warlock. Holy fuck. I never thought I'd get to meet one of you," Daemon gushed, doing the guy equivalent of fan-girling over the man at my side.
"What do you mean we have compan—" another man said, coming down the stairs, pulling on a chunky gray sweater.
He looked nothing like Drex either. What with his blond hair and clean-cut face.
But this was the biker president, the boss of this demon group stuck on the human plane. And Ace would be stuck permanently, I recalled. Since he'd Claimed a woman named Jo.
"So, you're the one worth going to war over," Ace said, gaze moving over me, making me instantly regret the simple leggings and tee that I'd put on.
"I, ah, well, I don't know about that. Nova," I added, not offering my hand because I wasn't entirely sure he wouldn't want to break it. There was a coldness to him that I wasn't sure about. Not like Daemon who kept sneaking glances at Arick like the man might do a magic trick at any moment.
"Nova," Ace repeated. "And Arick, if I'm not mistaken."
"You're not," Arick agreed.
"I called the fucking clubs, and didn't think about your ass," Ace grumbled.
"Drex bought my silence anyway," Arick said, shrugging.
"With what this time? Mushrooms? Acid?" Ace asked, and Arick gave him a smirk.
"He's always known how to have a good time."
"Right, but he's not having a good time right now," I interrupted, frustrated. Why did he care about what Drex used to bribe Arick with instead of where Drex himself was?
"Which leaves me to wonder why you're not there beside him having a bad time," Ace said as another set of footsteps came in from the back of the house.
Another man with dark hair and a harsh sort of beauty.
Judging by the general dark cloud hanging over him, I figured this was Daemon's unhappy older brother, Bael.
"Seems like whenever women are involved in this club, there's trouble," he said, giving me a brief once-over, then looking at Ace.
"Drex's trouble, yes," Ace confirmed.
"Does nobody here care that Drex is being tortured by vampires?" I snapped, frustrated with all of them and their laissez-faire attitude. "Should I call up Bat instead? Maybe he'd give a damn about him."
"Bat, huh?" Ace asked, a brow arching up.
Crap.
I shouldn't have blurted that out.
The last person I wanted to get in trouble was Bat, who seemed completely unaware that he was friends and cohorts with actual, real-life demons. Or that vampires existed, let alone kept thralls. And that I was one of them.
"Can't trust a biker as far as you can throw 'em," Daemon said, giving me a knowing grin, trying to diffuse any potential anger. "Hey, my man, another zap?" he asked, nudging his bowl toward Arick.
Arick obliged, to which Ace shook his head, and Bael looked wholly unimpressed.
"Tell me what happened," Ace demanded, looking back at me.
"Right. Well, do I start at Sanctuary, or do you mean like... what happened very recently that led to Drex being chained and tortured?" I asked, stomach knotting at the words, at the reality attached to them.
"Both, preferably," Ace said, waving a hand toward the front room, and walking toward it slowly, like he had nothing pressing to deal with. Like, you know, the torture of one of his men.
Growing more and more annoyed by the moment, I launched into the story, cutting every corner I came to, shortening it down to a few sentences.
"And that brings you back to the vampire compound," Ace said when I finished talking.
"Yes."
"Continue," he said in that cool, arrogant tone that rubbed me the wrong way. Especially given the situation.
"They put Drex in the basement. What else do you need to know?"
"You'd be surprised what might be useful information," Ace explained. I thought I grumbled in my head. But, apparently, I'd done it out loud, getting a smirk from Daemon and a brow arch from Ace. Bael seemed to have no emotions whatsoever aside from a sort of seething hatred for life in the human realm in general.
"And why are you growling?" Ace asked.
"Your utter lack of people skills?" yet another man asked, moving into the room.
He, like all the others, was tall, fit, and handsome. He had black hair slicked back away from his face, and rich, golden skin that seemed to speak of Middle Eastern heritage. If demons had things like actual heritage, places of origin. I still had a lot to learn about them, I guess.
"You'll excuse him," the man said, giving me a friendly smile. "He's been here just as long as the rest of us, yet hasn't successfully integrated with the humans."
"Gee, I wonder why," I grumbled, getting a chuckle out of the man.
"Aram," he said, holding out his hand.
"Nova," I said, giving his hand a shake.
"And what has Ace done to piss you off, Nova?"
"I—" Ace started, only to get a tssking sound from Aram.
"I was asking Nova," he reminded his boss.
"He doesn't seem to care that Drex is being tortured," I said, waving an arm out. "He's just demanding all sorts of meaningless information instead of going over there and helping him."
"Ah, yes, that sounds like Ace."
"Aram," Ace growled.
"But perhaps the information isn't useless to him. He is a grizzled and old leader, need I remind you," Aram said.
"Really, Aram?" Ace asked, snorting.
"It makes him cold and cynical and seemingly unfeeling."
"The bastard brought it upon himself," Bael interjected. "Do the crime..." he added.
"Yes, very helpful," Aram said, sighing. "But Ace is just trying to figure out how best to handle the situation. Trust me, he will handle it. If for no other reason than that he'd like to torture Drex himself instead," he added.
"Thank fuck this one isn't a witch," Daemon said, grimacing. "She looks like she'd flay you with a wave of her hand. Can they do that?" he asked, looking at Arick. "I mean, I saw it on an episode of Buffy but I figured they took some artistic license."
"You're watching human shows about our kind?" Bael grumbled. Since grumbling seemed to be how he spoke.
"A witch? No," Arick said. "Not unless she was the kind of powerful that I haven't seen in a long, long time."