Kiss of a Demon King Read Free Page B

night, Sabine doesn’t care about anything.”
    Sabine sighed. “It’s not true that she doesn’t care about anything. She cares about nothing very much.”
    Lanthe glared, her eyes shimmering a metallic blue from her recent infusion of power.
    “How amusing, Sabine,” she said, laying the words directly into Sabine’s mind.
    Sabine jumped. “Telepathy. Outstanding. Try to retain it.” Gods, she was relieved to see Lanthe acquire another power. Her sister’s persuasion had been exhausted keeping Sabine alive.
    It seemed that all those deaths had made Sabine even more powerful while weakening Lanthe—in both ability and resilience.
    “That sorceress also had the power to talk to animals,” Lanthe continued. “ Guess what you’re getting for your birthday!”
    “Oh, bully.” One of the least sought powers of all Sorceri. The problem with communicating with animals was that there were rarely enough within earshot to be helpful. “I can only hope a plague of locusts is milling about when I need them.” To her audience, Sabine said, “We’re finished here.”
    The long-haired male asked, “Wait, what happened after that burial?”
    “Things got much, much worse,” Sabine said dismissively.
    The crying female cried harder. “H-how could it get worse than dying so much?”
    Sabine dryly answered, “They met Omort the Deathless. He was a sorcerer who could never know death’s kiss, and so he was instantly smitten with the girl so well acquainted with it.”
    Lanthe met her eyes. “He’ll be wondering where we are.”
    “But he knows we’ll always return.” Omort had controls in place for the sisters. Sabine gave a bitter laugh. Had they actually once thought they’d be safe with him?
    Just then, Sabine heard the sound of wings outside.
    “They’ve come.” Lanthe’s eyes darted to the chamber’s high window. “We run, run for the tunnels beneath the city, and try to find our portal above.”
    “I’m not in the mood to run.” The building began to rock—or it appeared to—with Sabine’s anger.
    “When are you ever? But we have to.”
    Though Sabine and Lanthe were nearly as fast as the fey and were notoriously dirty fighters, the Vrekeners’ sheer numbers were unstoppable. And the sisters possessed no battle sorcery.
    Lanthe’s gaze swept over the room, searching for escape. “They’ll catch us even if you make us invisible.”
    With a flick of her hand, Sabine wove an illusion. Suddenly she and Lanthe both looked like patients. “We’ll create a stampede of humans and run out into the night with them.”
    Lanthe shook her head. “The Vrekeners will scent us.”
    Sabine blinked at her. “Lanthe, have you not smelled my humans?”

1
    Present day
    The Tongue and Groove Strip Club,
    Southern Louisiana

    A lap dance for the sexy demon?”
    With a firm shake of his head, Rydstrom Woede turned down the half-clad female.
    “With a lap like yours, I’ll make myself at home,” another told him. “For free.” She cupped one of her breasts upward and dipped her tongue to her nipple.
    That got him to raise an eyebrow, but still he said, “Not interested.”
    This was one of the low points of his life, surrounded by strippers in a neon-lit Lore club. He was on edge in this ridiculous place, feeling like the worst hypocrite. If his ne’er-do-well brother found out where he’d been, he would never hear the end of it.
    But Rydstrom’s contact had insisted on meeting here.
    When a pretty nymph sidled up behind him to massage his shoulders, he picked up her hands and faced her. “I said no .”
    The females here left him cold, which confounded him—since he needed a woman beneath him so badly. His eyes must have darkened, because the nymph quickly backed away. About to lose my temper with a nymph? Getting angered at one of her kind for touching him was like scolding a dog for tail wagging at the sight of a bone.
    Lately, Rydstrom had been a constant hair trigger’s turn from succumbing to