Demon's Fire (4 page)

“At the least,” he agreed, the fondness in his eyes catching at her breath.

It is enough,
she told herself. Charles might not be the easiest soul to be friends with, but as much as he cared for anyone, he cared for her.

Contrary to her intent, the thought saddened her. She had chased her ordinary beaus away—their numbers greater even than her family knew—because the kind of life they represented didn’t interest her. Her relationship with Charles was probably the closest she would ever have with a male, and she knew better than to think he’d want to marry her. Why, in ten long years, they hadn’t shared so much as a peck on the cheek!

There must be more than this,
she thought, her unfamiliar surroundings giving the old desires new clarity.
These can’t be all the choices a woman has. Married or a spinster. Fallen or alone.

I wish I were different,
she thought.
I wish I were as bold as a Bhamjrishi.

Charles led her beneath the market’s arching sandstone gate, his hold on her protective and secure. She had a sudden urge to throw off his hand, to run like a wild thing into the ancient city and disappear.

I wish,
she thought, her third of the day,
that I were as strong and icy as that demon.

If she had been, she’d be bold enough for anything.

Pahndir waited until the Ohramese had left to rise from his chair. He made no pretense where he was headed, though the sari vendor watched every step with a knowing smile.

He considered slipping her a coin to get the answers he desired, then decided she might take insult.

“I’d like to know where those two were from,” he said.

“Ohram,” said the woman, her head turned down to hide her amusement.

Pahndir fought an urge to grind his teeth. “I meant, where are they staying here? Do you know if they’re part of the dig?”

“They didn’t tell me,” the woman said—honestly enough, he judged. Her expression turned humorous again. “Couldn’t you go after them and ask?”

He could, but such directness wasn’t the Yamish way.

“Thank you,” he said instead. “I appreciate your time.”

All that day, Charles thought about the Yama’s offer to feed from him. People came in and out of the cook tent buzzing with excitement, but he did his job of overseeing the excavation’s meals like an automaton.

Hhamoun, as this site had been dubbed, was a big operation. Two hundred local diggers were employed by Herrington, plus a number of archaeological experts from Ohram. All of them had to eat, preferably well—which was Charles’s responsibility. Most days he thrived under the pressure, but today his head was caught up in its own demons.

As far as he could tell, no one had noticed his distraction. Whatever he forgot to do, the local undercooks remembered. They were as quick as he was, and more adept at curries.

All the workers here loved curries, regardless of their national origins.

His mouth slanted with humor at how little his culinary expertise had been missed. He might have been better off had his crew needed more guidance. With nothing to keep his mind from wandering, the thought of going to The Prince’s Flame obsessed him more than ever—and the brothel had occupied his thoughts quite enough since he’d learned of its existence last summer.

Bhamjran had a pleasure house run by a demon, with demon luxuries and demon whores. Charles wondered if the Yama’s human employees let him take their energy, if maybe they wanted the improvement in their looks the exchange could bring. Charles didn’t want his looks improved; his looks had brought him sufficient grief as it was. He certainly
shouldn’t
have wanted the act itself. On his own since the age of twelve, he’d spent a good portion of his youth doing things that shamed him in order to avoid becoming a “demon’s boy.” Other street children had sold their etheric force to the Yama in return for food. Charles had only sold himself to his own kind. He’d thought it the lesser of two evils, but he’d ended up here all the same.

He was obsessed with them. Aroused by them. Tossing in his bed each night and wishing he could physically peel off the taint. Yes, he wanted things besides to feed the demons, wanted clean, warm, normal things. Hell, he wanted Beth enough to ache. He simply couldn’t exorcize that old dark desire. It was embedded, like coal dust, deep in his erotic nature, and had been since he’d known what it was to feel any arousal at all.

Those three years, before Roxanne rescued him at fifteen, had scarred him for life.

“Boss?” said his head dishwasher, finding him staring blankly at the now cold grill in the dig’s cook tent. “It’s time to close up.”

It was time. Battered tin plates stood in tall, clean stacks ready for tomorrow, the utensils no one but Northerners used shining now in bins. The dishwasher was holding the tent’s flap open. He had pulled on his outer robes in preparation for leaving, and—to Charles’s eyes—the garment turned his polite gesture into a regal thing. The idea of Southland being conquered occasionally amused him. Charles’s people were simply the latest who’d convinced themselves that they’d mastered this country.

Charles liked knowing they were wrong, liked the stubborn
differences
of this place. He’d been coming to Hhamoun every season for the last six years, grateful for the job at first, and then grateful for the escape. He felt less of a freak in Bhamjran, less of a broken, twisted misfit trying to fit in.

Wolf,
he thought, blinking at the waiting dishwasher.
I’m a bloody wolf who wants the sheep to love him.

“I’ll be along,” he said out loud. “You can go.”

“Miss Philips leaves her tent around this time,” the Bhamjrishi remarked slyly. “Maybe she’ll want to ride back to the
haveli
in your motorcar. Maybe she’ll want to celebrate today’s success with you.”

“Miss Philips know how to suit herself,” Charles said crisply, not knowing what success there was, but tired of the staff trying to push him and Beth together.

“Right, boss,” said his underling, “but here in Bhamjran she may realize she doesn’t need to wait for a man to chase her.”

Charles snorted through his nose, too aware of the desires pulsing deep inside him, desires a girl like Beth would have been appalled to hear about. He only wished he had the right to chase her, only wished he might deserve to be more than her friend.

Beth wasn’t certain when she’d fallen asleep at her portable camp desk. The heat was drowsy-making and her copying dull—especially since the novelty of the demon-invented “scanning” machine had worn off. Some days, the draftsmen brought her interesting drawings to slide into Herrington’s magic recording box, but this morning there had been nothing but dry descriptions on the preprinted forms.
Scrap of sandal leather found with Old Kingdom sherd, two meters from stone doorway.

If she’d found the artifacts herself, Beth might have been excited, but she was stuck in this stuffy tent with the prohibited technology, hardly close enough to the action to hear the diggers’ shouts.

This wasn’t what she’d dreamed of doing when she’d bullied her way into coming to the site.

Somewhere in the distance jubilant cries rang out, but they did not penetrate her doze. She woke just a little at a camel’s bray, but only enough to turn her head the other way. Her lackadaisical village schooling lay at fault. Well, that and her equally lackadaisical response to it. None of her siblings were as poorly read as she, and her older brother, Adrian, could be quite brilliant. Beth, on the sad other hand, wasn’t qualified for more than babysitting paperwork.

That prospect unappealing, she slipped into a slow, thick dream in which a man with long blue-black hair swept it back and forth across her naked legs. Higher and higher he went, to her knees, her thighs, his silver eyes gleaming like mercury set aflame.
You’re what I want,
he whispered against her mound.
You’re the goddess I’ve been yearning for.
And she was a goddess, so lovely, so powerful she had only to crook her finger and he’d crawl panting up her body with his sex erect…

The sound of a loud throat-clearing yanked her up on her stool.

Good Lord
, it was Lord Herrington, standing like a tall red-haired mountain in the formerly sealed tent door. Because of his atypical coloring, you couldn’t tell he was a demon unless you looked at his eyes. They were the solid silver of all his kind, broken only by the jet black shine of his round pupils. Those eyes had nearly hypnotized her when she first met him. Now, remembering the burning silver gaze from her dream, she was doubly mortified. Herrington was not a person she wanted to associate with anything like that.

Unlikely as it sounded, he was the father of her brother’s wife, Roxanne. Humans and demons weren’t supposed to be able to inter-breed, but somehow he and Roxanne’s mother had managed it. Beth being here at all, in Herrington’s employ, was very much a favor to his son-in-law.

Thoroughly embarrassed, Beth peeled the recording sheet she’d been lying on from her sweaty cheek.

“Hm,” Herrington said with an uncertain gesture of his right hand. “I think you’ve got a bit of ink on your chin.”

“Hell.” Beth licked the heel of her palm and scrubbed at it…until she realized she’d probably disgusted him. Yama were notoriously fastidious.

Fortunately, Herrington had grown accustomed to human ways. Something that might have been a smile tugged at his lips.

“I believe the stain is gone,” he said.

“Lord Herrington!” she burst out. “I’m so sorry for falling asleep!”

“Not at all.” He shifted uncomfortably at the passion of her cry. “I put you here because you’re family, and you could be trusted with the machine. I should have realized a young, active human would find these duties dull.”

Herrington thought of her as family? Herrington trusted her? Surprised and touched, Beth took a moment to shut her mouth.

“It’s not really dull,” she hastened to assure him. “Or only a little. And it’s still much better than being home.”

“Well.” He rubbed his big, freckled hand across his mouth, and this time Beth really did think he was smiling. Evidently, his spirits were high tonight. “We must endeavor to ensure that remains the case. I was wondering…” He paused, the hesitation almost human shyness. “We have succeeded in clearing a route to the queen’s chamber. I thought you might like to see the end to which all this paper leads.”

“I’d love to,” Beth exclaimed, “but I’m so behind!”

“Your work will keep,” Herrington said, though the glance he cast around the stacks seemed dubious. He squared his shoulders as if bracing. “Tomorrow is another day, and this is worth seeing.”

“Then I’d love to,” Beth said more softly. “Really, really love to.”

His face appeared to darken just a tiny bit. Beth supposed her effusion had embarrassed him. She couldn’t doubt Herrington liked humans. His devotion to his daughter was unmistakable. Also unmistakable was that humans, especially those to whom he had personal ties, made him feel awkward. As much as Beth enjoyed traveling far from home, she couldn’t imagine spending her whole life among a culture alien from her own. It must be nearly impossible for Herrington to relax, and perhaps he didn’t unless he was alone.

Naturally it wouldn’t do to let him know she was dissecting his character—and in this sympathetic way! Determined to keep her musings to herself, Beth pushed from her chair and shook out her bothersome long skirts. For the thousandth time, she wished she could have worn native dress. A muslin tunic and trousers would have been delightfully comfortable—if only her parents would have understood. She swept her hand around her hair, confirming that it was not in as frightful a state as it might have been. She was lucky it grew so straight. She could tie it back again as they walked.

“I’m ready,” she said, pulling the draggled ribbon off her ponytail.

In answer, Lord Herrington offered her a bow that had
her
fighting awkwardness. Beth was not a woman anyone had to do honors for.

Leaving the confines of her tent to face the golden sweep of the desert was an actual physical shock. The Vharzovhin was an ocean made of sand. Dune after dune rippled to the seeming edge of the world, where the setting sun melted like crimson treacle into the horizon.

The other tents and structures of the excavation lay behind them, clattering with the hastened bustle that invariably met the loss of their working light. Diggers called to one another in at least three different dialects. Sand trucks rumbled, camels groaned in protest at being urged up or down, and behind it all—as if the absence of noise had more power than sound—the endless silence of the desert stretched.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Herrington said, pausing for a moment to gaze over the great expanse with her.

“Yes,” Beth agreed. “I can believe God is real when I look at this.”

She flushed a little, recognizing what she’d said. Demons were…well, she wasn’t certain, but atheists, she thought. Nor was the confession appropriate for an Ohramese. She was supposed to believe in God all the time, not just when she was here.

Herrington cleared his throat to break the brief silence. “If we’re going to visit the queen’s chamber, we had better grab a torch or two while we can.”

“Electric torches?” Beth asked hopefully. “Oh, I love them!”

They were walking then, back through the busy anthill of the site, which she registered as being more animated than usual. The cook tent was halfway across the canvas village. Beth’s shoulders tensed as she wondered if Charles would be there. Had his mood improved since morning? Would he ask her to ride home with him?

She was so intent on not betraying the direction of her thoughts that it took a moment for her to realize what she was seeing. Charles was
outside
the cook tent, where Herrington’s demon water spigot was installed. Charles had stripped off his shirt and was dumping a bucket of water over his head. He didn’t see her approaching, but she certainly saw him.

She had never seen him with his shirt off, had never been given a chance to admire the rippling muscles of his chest and belly, or the shading of darker hair on both. She stopped in her tracks, speechless with surprise. Charles wore native dress to cook in: a finely woven cotton tunic and loose trousers. The shirt was gone, as she’d already noted, and the trousers…Transparent from their soaking, the fabric clung to the strong round thrust of his bum, hanging from his narrow hipbones as if to tease her with the prospect of it falling off. He was a full tent-length away, but the curving weight of his sex was visible beneath the wet cotton.

It was
long
, she thought, and not a little thick—especially around the head.

She swallowed in reaction, her hands curling into fists as a heat worse than that caused by any daydream coiled between her legs.

“Ahem,” said Herrington, the sound startling her. “I’m certain your mother would advise me to encourage you not to stare.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Beth and covered her face.

When Herrington turned to lead her forward, she was pretty sure he was grinning. Her only consolation was that Charles had not seen her ogling him.

“You won’t tell him, will you?” she begged, and Herrington chuckled audibly.

To her relief, he had regained control of himself by the time they reached the active part of the site.

Hhamoun was large palace complex—a small city, really—from the period known as the Old Kingdom. Approximately two thousand years ago the complex had been swallowed in its entirety by a freak sandstorm, allowing its inhabitants time to flee but not to save their belongings. Now it was an archaeologist’s dream come true, preserving a picture of a bygone era that was unmatched. During the preceding season, Herrington’s team had uncovered a beautiful temple adorned with graceful alabaster statues. On its own, the temple was the find of a lifetime, but Herrington claimed to hold even higher hopes for the residence of the queen, where he’d been focusing his team this summer.

A sandy ramp led down into the partially exposed building, clear now except for a pair of burly guards, who nodded at Herrington. Some waterboy had left his empty goatskin lying at the top. At the bottom, a solid square of blackness loomed. Beth was no coward, but seeing that gaping mouth made her grateful for the torches they’d picked up.