Defying Instinct (Demon Instinct Series) Read online

“All right,” I bowed my head and closed my eyes. “Then we need to talk.”

  If there weren’t going to be any lies between us, I wanted to get it all out.

  “I’m gonna go shake hands with a Tempter,” the gleam in his expression making me smile my first real smile all day. “Coffee after closing time?”

  “Definitely,” I said, grinning and imagining what it was going to be like to tell him. It would be a first for me. I was excited.

  The idea of telling Benn, having a true confidant about every detail of my unusual life was a gift I’d never expected. I wished I could go back in time and make all the right decisions with him. I wished I’d found the nerve to tell him what I was years ago.

  Before Benn made it across the room to where Grayson and Cyrus sat, red flashed before my eyes. A creature stood before me on the other side of the check-out counter. He hadn’t walked in from the frosty afternoon air.

  He just appeared.

  Red smoke wafted up to the ceiling, making me suspect it had something to do with the sudden appearance.

  If Sorcerer demons had the ability to use glamour, then this one was choosing not to. It clarified why when he ambled up to the counter like any old patron in the place, uncommon shock forced me to hit the telepath panic button.

  “Greetings, Savannah Cole, Daughter of Iliana,” the Sorcerer said, his voice abrasive, like metal grinding on stone.

  Classic images of the Devil flashed through my mind as I stood frozen. This full-caste demon had waxy, red flesh and beady, onyx eyes. Black, jagged horns took the place of hair on the top of his bald head. A mouth filled with yellow, pointed teeth, like a piranha’s, a forked tongue and I was willing to bet a forked tail too, topped off the image of true evil.

  All I could manage to say was, “Hi.”

  It delighted the creature.

  I was in danger. I could feel it burning into every instinct, human and demon. This thing, this Devil was not here for a social call.

  My eyes darted to where I knew the three demons who had been tailing my every move since last night for this very reason were supposed to be. Why hadn’t they intervened? Why hadn’t they tackled this black-eyed Sorcerer and gotten me out of here?

  “Your guards cannot help you,” he said, either watching my eyes or literally reading my thoughts. At this point, I couldn’t rule anything out.

  Benn and the three demons frantically punched and clawed at an energy field around me and the Sorcerer. Each blow radiated a distortion in the field and rippled outward all around us. I wondered if they could still see me or if whatever the Sorcerer was doing to keep them out meant they thought I’d disappeared.

  Either way, they kept fighting, all four of them, making zero progress. It made me feel a fullness in my chest, but I didn’t know what it was.

  My first panicked telepath must have gotten through, but nothing else I tried reached them. My attempts were met by a painful ping each time I tried.

  Rowan?...PING.

  Can anyone hear me?...PING.

  After the third try that felt like my head was being split in two, I gave up.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I am Hadrian,” he announced like his name should mean something to me.

  When I human-like shrugged, unimpressed, Hadrian bared his piranha teeth and spat, “I created you. This unfortunate human you see in the mirror each morning. I am the brilliance behind that face.”

  Masking the trickle of alarm I felt with words of calm, I muttered, “then I owe you twenty years of grief.”

  Whether it was my calm, or the bold words, I appeared to have pleased him.

  “There is hope for you yet, Daughter of Iliana.”

  Impatiently, I tapped my fingers on the counter, channeling Benn and his human fidgetiness. “You must be here for a reason.”

  Hadrian made a sound, and it could have been a sharp laugh. “You know what I have come to do.”

  Yes, I did. He was what my three sentries were trying to warn me about. He was the one they needed to protect me from. Yet, here he was. And I was no more emotional than I’d ever been. I didn’t want to die. But I couldn’t find the feelings inside to go along with it. Human instincts told them, fight or flight. Demon instincts told them, reason or ruin.

  All I did was stand with my hands on the counter, waiting for what was to come.

  “If you’re here to destroy me, can we get on with it?” I said, annoyed by my lack of whatever fundamental thing I’d lacked all my life.

  “With pleasure,” the Sorcerer pulled his red, waxy lips away from his yellow teeth in a wicked smile.

  Something crackled in the air around us, trapped within the protective shield the Sorcerer cast. The smell, the taste, the awful power of malevolence surrounded me, got inside me. Finally, I felt a semblance of what I should have been feeling all along. Terror.

  Agony ignited.

  It forced me forward against the check-out counter. My skin froze and burned, stretched and crackled like flesh wasn’t meant to. I couldn’t see through the brightness of The Bookstore lights. I was suddenly so sensitive, the feel of my clothes, my hair, even the dust in the air landing on my skin was excruciating.

  “Why are you doing this?” I grated out, knowing the irrationality of my pleading words considering the view of evilness looking down at my crumpled form.

  “Nothing personal,” another bolt of pure agony. “Highest bidder wanted you unhidden.”

  Only then did I realize what he was doing.

  It occurred to the part of me that could still comprehend logic even while I writhed in relentless pain that I should have seen this coming. Shouldn’t it have been obvious? Why didn’t I know this was inevitable? Maybe a part of me never fully believed the way I looked was a glamour. After all, wasn’t it more likely I was naturally ugly? Part of me resisted the hope of ever looking socially acceptable.

  Did I even want to look different? What if I were pretty under all my ugly, like that blonde human Holly had said? I wouldn’t know what to do with such a thing.

  There was a reason there weren’t half-castes walking the streets, why I’d never met another like me. Most were too obvious in their otherness. Demon genes were too dominant. We had no natural glamour to hide from it.

  As I squinted through burning eyes at the hideous demon, yellow, pointed teeth gnashing as if the sight of my lifting glamour was turning him on, or making him hungry—I doubted there was a difference in this awful creature’s eyes—I knew what I’d really feared all along. That what I truly looked like was worse, far worse than big ears, frizzy hair, and narrow eyes.

  I knew it as my body changed, as my clothes stretched and the sensations I felt became utterly alien. As my A-cup bra snapped at the clasp, and my jeans bought in the men’s section hung from my waist but dug into my hips, I knew without a doubt I’d no longer be able to hide.

  When the pain amplified, even though I couldn’t imagine it getting worse, the Devil flashed me one more, piranha grin of satisfaction, then surrounded himself with a cloud of red that smelled of sulfur.

  Hadrian didn’t come here to kill me. I couldn’t be a half-caste in secret anymore. I was truly exposed now. The Scion, and unhidden. I’d be forced away from the life I loved regardless of its disappointments. I’d never see my bookstore again. Never see Dad. Never see Benn.

  He didn’t kill me, but he did what I expected. In one, simple flick of his proverbial magic wand, this Devil took my life from me.

  As my body collapsed to the floor, the feel of the hardwood beneath my body making me scream, I knew there was no more resisting. The fight was over.

  Evil awakened, and seethed.

  The smoke-and-fire had me now.

  CHAPTER 8

  Wrath crackled under my not-my skin.

  My heart pounded in my not-my chest, threatening to rip me in half with each beat.

  Images cascaded over my mind. I’d had these thoughts before, these homicidal, vicious, chaotic desires of
destruction before, but never like this. Where before the bloodlust was a trickle, now it was a waterfall. Where before the need to tear something or someone apart with my bare hands was the size of a pebble, now it was a boulder pushing against my conscience, trying to break it.

  Fire. Blood. The ultimate, devastating power of snuffing out life.

  Anger bubbled. Molten fury flowed.

  Darkness. Ash.

  I was empty, made up of ice and soot. Fire and steam. Teeth and nails thrashed. My instinct roared, devoured, consumed in its path without discrimination.

  I lashed out without seeing what my fists struck. Every movement, every blow was amazing, and agonizing. But I couldn’t stop.

  A vaguely sane part inside me registered that Hadrian had gone, along with his impenetrable energy field he’d created. Someone was talking to me, yelling at me, begging me, but that was as far as the sane part inside could grasp.

  The insane part was so much stronger.

  Arms with strength I’d never had before struck wood, metal, and flesh. Ecstasy flirted with torment. Pleasure snuck through the din of pain.

  Big, searing bands wrapped around me, but I didn’t stop. Nothing could contain me. I was a Razer demon. A Destroyer. It was my nature to take things apart piece by piece, limb from limb, seize control of foreign land and rule like a leveling storm.

  Friends? I had no friend but the strength of the tempest within me.

  Family? I had no family but blood and rubble, fire and smoke, bones and chaos.

  The big, searing bands around me began to blaze, the sensation too much to process. Something else was taking up the lure of destruction’s place in my dark heart. The awareness of contact, of touch, of feeling more intensely, more perfectly than I’d ever felt slammed into me.

  The sensation smoldered, ached, charmed, and shattered me. I’d never felt so much of anything before. My body exploded wherever something was touching my skin with both anguish and rapture.

  I wanted to kill because of it.

  And because of it, I wanted to die.

  The world moved around me without my consent. I couldn’t see why, how the destruction I’d caused became too far away for my eyes filled with fire to see. Each movement of the searing bands around me may as well have snapped me in two. Every impact of whatever was moving me away from my destruction felt like an earthquake, threatening to open the earth at my feet and swallow me whole. But my feet weren’t on the floor.

  Clarity hinted around the edge of the inferno. Someone carried me. The searing bands were arms. The earthquakes were footsteps up a flight of stairs.

  The hot arms around my waist finally let go, and the floor hit so hard I was sure every bone had broken on impact.

  The stuff covering my flesh tormented, so I ripped at it until my skin was free of the terrible sensation it caused.

  Noises that came from my throat hurt, the vibrations misery.

  Breath that involuntarily entered and exited my lungs burned like wildfire.

  That edge of clarity appeared again. I struggled to hold onto who I was, what I was called. My name was Savannah Cole. Victor’s daughter. Benn’s friend. They called me Savvy.

  I’d never been savvy. It was my name, not a description.

  Savvy. But not.

  A voice screamed that name, my name, begged and pleaded, then screamed my name some more.

  Clarity. Cyrus held Benn at the door.

  It was a relief to recognize faces.

  I could feel their struggle as if my body were fine-tuned to detect discourse. I tasted the faint chaos of their minds and could have taken a swim within their turbulent depths. I felt the impulse to urge them on, encourage further imbalance, increase the perfection of their mind’s turmoil. It was in a Destroyer’s best interest to keep those not in power at odds with each other. A Destroyer existed for the mayhem of their minds, minds I could steal with ease.

  “Savvy! Oh God, Savannah. Say something. I need to know you’re okay.”

  An inch of who I’d been for twenty years stepped through the fire, responding to Benn’s voice.

  Benn cried for me, fought for me, even now, even after my lies.

  “If you don’t let me see her I’ll…shit…find some way to hurt…Fuck!”

  A few more inches of myself returned, and through my haze of sensation, I almost wanted to laugh. Even furious and worried, Benn knew he was no match for three full-caste demons. But he meant what he said. He’d try to hurt them and get hurt trying to get to me.

  “Let him in,” I think I said, but it sounded nothing like me. It only made me angrier, sadder, twitchier. Made me want to let the darkness pull me under again.

  “Savannah, you’re too—”

  “You will not keep him from me,” I yelled, the intensity of my voice shocking even me, and shaking the silver picture frames along my walls.

  Grayson didn’t move, so neither did Rowan or Cyrus, but I grabbed Grayson’s shirt and yanked him down so he was right in my face. I heard fabric rip, threads snapping one by one, but didn’t care.

  “Don’t you dare stop him,” I said, and my voice cracked and lower lip quivered as I added in what I hoped was a whisper. “But please…please don’t let me hurt him.”

  Silver swirled in the Tempter’s granite eyes, and without a word, Cyrus let Benn go. He flew into the room and onto his knees so hard, I knew it had to hurt. But he showed no pain. The Razer in me pushing on the inside of my skin appreciated his willingness to endure pain.

  “How you doin’, kid?” he asked smoothly, but I could see his shock at the sight of me. God, how much worse could I possibly look? It wasn’t disgust on Benn’s face, but he didn’t recognize me. That, I could tell. In a way, it hurt more than the idea of looking even more hideous than before.

  It was painful, but I swallowed hard before saying, “Did I hurt anyone?”

  Benn’s eyes flicked behind me, but returned a second later. “Everyone’s okay.”

  I whimpered. “Did I kill the store?”

  “Nothing some tools and a broom won’t fix.” He hesitated for a second, but put his hand on my arm. The sensation from his touch was maddening.

  Too-hot tears spilled out of my eyes, burned streams down my cheeks.

  “What do I always say, Sav?” Benn said frantically because I was crying. He’d never seen me cry. I never had.

  He sat down in front of me, not taking his hand away. “Your temper is like a sparkler on the Fourth of July, right? White hot and bright, but burns out a minute later. I always thought that was awesome, the way you could hate something so completely for a little while, then, after it was over, be over it. You never hold a grudge. You never bring up stuff from the past to use against anyone. Including me.”

  Benn still felt guilty for the way he treated me when we were younger. I didn’t feel bad that he was ashamed to be seen with me then. I felt bad because he still worried about it now. He didn’t know none of that bothered me at all.

  “This is no different,” he continued. “Whatever you’re feeling, whatever’s happening? The sparkler’s about to burn out. You’ll be back to your normal self any second.”

  His belief that I could get control of this got through. His words always got through to me, no matter how deep I was inside the smoke-and-fire.

  “What if I can’t?” my words thick.

  “Then we’ll dress you up like Randy from A Christmas Story and let you run around like a lunatic all you want.”

  We watched that movie probably six times total a few weeks ago, and on every Christmas day, never entirely at once since it played all day long. We’d catch snippets, and recite each line as if it hadn’t been a full year since we saw it last. The image of the little boy covered from head to toe in snow gear, unable to lower his arms made me laugh though it was sodden and odd.

  And just like that, I believed Benn. I was going to be okay.

  Only then did the most important word of what Benn said about dressing me up in snow
gear register in my mind.

  My eyes grew so wide I could feel them bulge. Eyelashes scraped under my eyebrows. My skin grew even hotter in places I imagined were turning bright red. I was remembering things I’d done while deep in the smoke-and-fire, things that seemed important to a mind that didn’t understand modesty or what was considered proper for a female in a room with four males.

  “I’m naked, aren’t I,” I said, not moving, not daring to look down at myself.

  Benn tucked something around my shoulders, and I was shocked to feel anything there. I was covered, though naked underneath, which was bad enough. But the softness of the item draped over me hadn’t even registered in my mind, which was incredible considering my hyper-sensitive state.

  I let my eyes drop enough to see I was indeed covered. It was a sage green, cashmere sweater covering parts I’d be beyond embarrassed to think Benn had gotten an eyeful of.

  Sage green.

  I looked over at Rowan. He was wearing a form-hugging, black undershirt. And I was draped in his sweater.

  Thank you, I thought, and he nodded, then jerked his eyes uneasily to the exit.

  “It’s time,” Rowan snarled, still not looking at me.

  Benn understood what the demon was talking about, but I didn’t.

  “Not yet,” Benn told them without looking away from me.

  “Her father will return soon,” Cyrus said.

  I squinted at Rowan, then Benn. “What are you talking about?’

  “You need to see yourself, Savannah,” Grayson’s velvet tone sweetening a little. He was worried I would lose it when I saw how I looked. They all were.

  And God, I didn’t want to know how much worse it could get. Did I have boils? Man, I probably had boils.

  “It isn’t what you fear,” the Tempter crooned, and I squirmed at the idea that he could get into my thoughts so easily. I couldn’t keep him out. I was too weak, and he was bred and raised to get into female minds. I hated him for it.

  I felt pure panic, frustration, fury, and the stream of words came out as a shriek that reminded me of Howard’s bitter wife. “Why work me up like this with anticipation if I’m not any worse than—”