Phoenix Broken (15 page)

He shrugged, removing his shades. "Of course, I noticed. I'm just not interested in an
omno
-cursed telepath."

Des held her tongue as the maître d stepped forward and smiled warmly at Guido, escorting them personally to a table. Once they were seated in the shiny black and white dining room, she couldn't help but press him again.

"Did someone surgically remove your libido or what? I haven't seen you look at a woman properly—or rather improperly—since I got here. What's the deal?"

"I told you, your friend is simply not my type. I don't do
paras.
" Guido's words were cool, disdainful.

"Oh, for a second there, I thought you might've found your mate." She teased deliberately. "Only explanation for you not checking out a hot female." Des looked away to take in the ultra-modern decor. Her gaze returned to catch a hard glint in the dark eyes staring at her over the wine menu. It was an unmistakable warning. One that said clearly,
Don't go there, Dee.

Despite the chill, she went there. Immediately. She had to, no matter what was going on with Guido, because he was the only one she could talk to about this. "Do you think you'll ever find yours? Don't you want to?"

"No." One word. So cold and abrupt even she didn't dare ask him to elaborate which question he was answering. Guido set the menu down with a scowl, looking away from her. What in
omno
was this?

Des reached for her glass of water. Taking a slow sip to cover the sudden awkwardness as she studied him; that familiar chiseled profile.

There had never been
anything
they couldn't talk about. Not since she'd gotten through puberty, anyway, and rid herself of the awkward crush she'd had on him since she was about two.

He'd always been her sounding board, and she his. Until Guido had left Jamaica two years ago. He'd come back for her mother's funeral, but only that once. They talked and texted almost daily but it hadn't been the same.

When they'd met up at Centaries the other night though, it had
felt
the same. She'd been as comfortable and easy with him as if they hadn't been a moment apart. Now though…

She couldn't help but feel his emotions. What she was getting was regret, tinged with fury. Along with a gut-wrenching desire that fired up her cheeks and made her pull away from his aura, desperate to give him privacy.

Guido couldn't have met his mate. And not said anything?

Nah.

Surely not.
Guido was particularly gifted at the demon skills of evasion and deception, but even he couldn't hide a secret that big. Not from her.

True mating wasn't a given in the demon world. It wasn't even necessarily sought after. Because mates were cray-cray. Only two of the shade races acknowledged predestined mating as a real thing. Werewolves and most shifters were unapologetic about it, but demons…they viewed it as a quirk, and a weakness. A potentially dangerous one.

Look at my father.

The waiter came to pour the wine Guido had chosen. While they waited, she could see him watching her, his gaze hooded. When the waiter finally left, he picked up his glass, swirling the ruby-red liquid idly. He took a sip, then set it down with a sigh.

"Spit it out,
polteriitae saed
." His pet name for her. "Something on your mind about mates, is it?"

Yes, Des desperately wanted to talk about this subject with Guido. She needed his perspective and experience. Someone to set her straight on what she suspected. But his reaction had thrown her. Studying him carefully, she decided to proceed, but take it slow.

"It just made me wonder, do you think half breeds even have mates? True mates?"

He shot her a frown, a line forming between his thick brows. She'd surprised him.

"You have everything else that makes a demon, a demon. Why not that? Though why one would welcome such madness…" he muttered the last under his breath, taking a quick sip of wine.

Fuck it.

She took a breath.
"Have
you
ever felt it?"

Something subtle shifted deep in Guido's eyes, a shadow dancing in all that black. It vanished as he smiled thinly. "If I had, don't you think you would know?"

Damn demon double speak.
Like all demons, Guido didn't have the ability to lie outright. Supposedly none of The Blood could.

Saanis legend held that it was because
angels
had cursed them.

Now, none of the shade races actually believed angels had ever existed. Most thought the old legends of a race before the demons were nonsense. That the stories about a millennia long conflict between the two were nothing more than myth, or possibly just a battle between two demon factions. Demons themselves sneered at the very idea of a race that pre-dated them.

There were whispers, though. Demon versions of old wives tales.

The most far-fetched claimed to explain why demons never lied. It held that once it'd been foretold that the terrible war between them would be lost because of a demon's lie, the angels had worked a curse before vanishing from the earth forever.

A curse that would make a demon's very soul catch fire if they breathed even one falsehood. A simple curse perhaps, and none too horrible, except for the particular demon in question. But the legend
also
claimed that once that one soul caught fire, they would
all
burn, one by one.

Until every demon alive fell to ash.

If asked, demons would sneer and purport that angels were a myth. That all of Christian mythology was so much drivel, loosely based on mankind's experience with demonkind and other shade races. But to this day, demons wouldn't outright lie.

They were masters of evasion, manipulating words with more deadly skill than wraiths swung their scythes, but they never, ever lied.

She needed to hear Guido's take on mates—not because of what he might be hiding—but for herself. And what she had begun to fear about a certain human…

Her father had mated her mother; a human, something very literally unheard of in the Saandon. Like
ever.
Demons fucked humans, sure. Even got kids off them—ones that the majority tossed away like trash. But mate them?
Never.

It'd nearly destroyed Augustine's standing in the demon world, choosing her mother. Some said it had.

Though never to Augustine's face.

Hesitantly, she asked, "What is it—what do you
think
, it's like?"

There was a sardonic twist to Guido's lips at her hastily amended question. They knew each other too well. He took his time answering.

"It is said we feel true desire for the first time when we meet our mates." He spoke slowly, his normal rasp even deeper than normal as he stared into his wine. "That we cannot help but want to do anything for them, to be whatever they need, or desire."

"And lust?"

"Yes, lust, but not alone, Dee. It is… like nothing you've ever felt before. To be mated is to be utterly consumed."

Des shivered, thinking of how she'd been pulled to Scott that first night, a magnet so powerful, it couldn't be resisted.

"…but I think sometimes we don't recognize it. Not at first. We fight it."

"Why would you say that?" Des swallowed, running her finger round and round the condensation on her glass.

Guido seemed to shake himself. His voice turned hard. "Fear.
Pride.
Look at my father."

She winced, his words echoing her recent thought so clearly, but for Guido, those words held a very different meaning. Everyone knew the story of Valencio Calimente's mate. It was the exact opposite of her mother and father's tale.

All demons were blood proud, but Guido's father was one of the most extreme. The Calimente bloodline was one of the purest in all the Luuisdon.

So it might've been expected that when Valencio met his mate, and found her to be a mere
metus
; a dream eater living on the fringes of the Saandon, he'd been furious.

Dream eaters were among the lowest castes in the Saandon, barely considered demon at all by some. He'd refused the woman, rejecting the bond between them, even though dozens had borne witness to their initial connection. In a demon, a pure blood, the eyes would glow intensely at the sight of their one true mate. It was said Valencio's eyes had shone pure gold when they'd fallen on the
metus
female.

Unlike a demon mating a human, rejecting a mate bond had definitely been heard of before, but it was extremely rare. Refusing one's mate once found was said to be so excruciating that the demon who tried would lose their mind, their very spirit torn in two. Des shuddered. Valencio had done more than try, he'd succeeded. And while Guido's father could not be called insane, he was surely the cruelest demon she'd ever met.

His mate had killed herself in the pain and shame within a year. Valencio wed Guido's mother, Shae, the very same day the
metus's
funeral was held. By all accounts, he'd done so without a tear in his eye.

Guido had been born not long after. Some said it was fate that Shae had died before his first birthday. Valencio had taken no wife or publically acknowledged partner since. Guido had been raised by his father alone. Des knew they had their issues, her being one of the biggest. In many ways the father and son couldn't be more different, though in others, they—

"Why the questions,
polteriitae saed?
Have
you
found
your
mate?" He raised an eyebrow, giving a smirk when she blinked at him.

She willed herself not to flush. He couldn't know what she had begun to suspect, not when she was sure of nothing herself. "Don't be silly!
Omno!
I was just curious. I do have a little problem with a male, though. I was hoping you could help."

Both dark eyebrows shot up. One area he kept well out of was her love life. After a second, as astute as ever, he scowled. "It's that human, isn't it? From the other night." A string of absolute filth in Saanis followed. Des patiently waited it out.

"I do not like him, Desdemona."

"Color me surprised. Funnily enough, he isn't fond of you either. I need you to let him back into Centaries, Guido."

"Why should I do this?"

"Because I like him? And we're seeing each other?" She tried the cover story, already knowing it would never fly. She’d deceived Guido exactly once in her entire life.

"Don't,
Dee. Supposedly you have the ability to lie, unlike me. But you are appalling at it. I don't know what you're doing with the human." His tone was cool. "But
dating
is not it."

She sighed. "Okay, okay. We're not dating…or anything else. At the moment."

He rolled his eyes and grabbed a breadstick, shaking it at her. "A succubus who minces words. You’re one of a kind, Desdemona. If you want to fuck him," he shrugged, even as his eyes glittered. "Just say so. And
fuck
him then. I have no patience for your men, this you know."

"Yeah, because there have been so many of them." She rolled her eyes right back at him and snatched the breadstick from his fingers as their entrées arrived. "Just
do
this for me, Guido."

"I don't think I will."

She stared at him. Guido had never refused her a thing in her life. He scowled at her expression. "He uprooted a tree at my club, I don't know how but I
know
it was him."

"What are you on about?"

"That night on the dance floor," he said. "Remember the moaning outside, that rumble?"

"Yeah." She lowered her hand, feeling a chill as she remember that sound and Scott's eyes. "What of it?"

"Next day that big oak out front was on its side. The enormous one that shades the whole northwest side? Rot, they tell me. It was nearly dead inside and would have fallen in the next big storm, but I…it was him, Des. I know it."

She was skeptical, but shrugged, munching on Guido's breadstick. "He won't mess with your landscaping again, I promise." He grumbled at her smirk. "Will you let him back in Centaries?
Please?"

"Tell me, Dee,"
Guido said, "why is this human so interested in getting into my club, hmmm?" Something in his eyes told her he already had an idea of the answer.
Omno.

She looked at him, chewing the last of bread stick slowly, making a decision she knew could end many lives. Most especially her own. She didn't know if it was the right decision, but it had to be made.

Taking a breath, Des made it.