Defying Instinct (Demon Instinct Series) Page 9

  “The reason you’re a one-way radio is you have not been through the Blooding ceremony yourself. Your mother’s blood connects you on a basic level. When you personally blood bond with a member of all six castes, then you’ll be able to telepath with all demonkind, through the connection with your advisors.”

  Considering this, I absently said, “I never liked the term advisor. Sounds so…political.”

  “Isn’t it though?”

  “Do demons consider the Royal position a political one?”

  “I’m not sure. Do you consider human royalty a political position?”

  “They can make decisions that influence the country.”

  “Is that all it takes in human politics?”

  I shrugged, questioning if the definition and job description of a position that held ultimate ‘realm power mattered. I decided it didn’t.

  “What about the Royal advisors? What purpose do they even serve other than connecting the Royal to demonkind?”

  “Whether their involvement is seen or not, they are a Royal’s right hand, their trusted council.”

  “Not very trustworthy if one of Iliana’s advisors went blabbing to Faction about me.”

  Rowan’s tone changed to something I hadn’t heard from him before when he said, “You know, Faction isn’t…all bad. I have friends who live there.”

  “Faction is a place?” I asked, keeping my other question—Rowan had friends?—to myself. “Like, somewhere we could visit?”

  “It’s not the safest place for you, but if they were trying to kill you, I believe they would have succeeded when Hadrian lifted your glamour.”

  “That’s what I was thinking too,” I smiled. I actually smiled at Rowan. And it didn’t feel wrong. “What if I wanted to go some day?”

  “If…big if…I…or some demon…were to take you, you’d need safe passage from one who lives there. Only a member of Faction can be a true guard for you.”

  As my brain raced with the idea, I rambled, “Where is it? What’s it like? Have you been there? Why did you act like it was some sinister society out to assassinate me before?”

  When my questions went unanswered, I realized, maybe at the same time Rowan did, that we’d stopped training at some point and slipped into an actual conversation. For the first time, I’d felt like the Hammer didn’t hate me.

  He was so open. There didn’t seem to be any ulterior motives in him like there was in Grayson. Wasn’t reluctant to tell me things half-castes wouldn’t normally know. Rowan gave straight answers to questions, even looked me in the eye, once he let himself relax a little.

  Rowan relaxed had been something I’d completely missed, and that disappointed me. When had he lowered his arms? Softened his stare? Quirked his mouth into a casual grin? And, had his words seemed…excited?

  But that was all gone now. Back was his defensive posture, his evasive eyes. And he was backing ever so slowly away from me. We’d been stepping closer as we spoke, and when he stopped talking, only then did I see he was only a few feet away.

  Gotta take what I can get from you, huh? I telepathed without censoring the thought, and struggled with an odd, fluttering sensation in my belly.

  Rowan’s ears went crimson, his neck a little pink instead of the normal, sun-kissed tan, and I couldn’t help but let the sides of my mouth rise. Self-conscious was a good look for him.

  And that flutter thing happened again.

  As I was about to say something, or telepath something I might regret later, Grayson appeared in the open doorway, obviously reading my projected emotions—even though I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling.

  Your purity, you wear it like armor. As you become more knowledgeable in the ways of the flesh…ahh, you will be a worthy female to pursue.

  As he telepathed, the private, practically intimate thoughts made me go red, my pulse kick up, but it wasn’t because of Grayson like the demons would probably read it.

  What the Tempter said aloud was, “I like the colors of your home, Savannah.”

  Tempter tricks.

  “Yeah, I think I clash now,” I said, feigning lightness, looking down at my golden brown skin and my copper and gold flecked fingernails.

  “No, no. You stand out, no longer fade into your surroundings. Like you were meant to.”

  “What did I tell you about that?” My eyes snapped up from my fingernails to his face. “Don’t be nice to me.”

  “Does that request still apply? I thought perhaps, since—”

  “Since what? Nothing’s changed.”

  “You have changed, Savannah. You want me now. I can tell you feel my thrall.”

  “Your thrall? Okay, Dracula. Maybe putting that comparison in my head wasn’t your slickest move.” I considered my emotional-prone disposition, my temper which had doubled within a few days, and knew the male willing to pursue me would have to be an extremely patient creature. “Besides, you couldn’t handle me. I’m gonna go with the phrase, biting off more than you can chew.”

  “Mmm, I do like to bite.”

  In a vicious tone, I snapped, “Don’t tempt me, Tempter.”

  At that, Rowan jumped away. I’d been looking directly at him. There was no sound, no effort, no distortion of the air around him. Nothing to warn me of his departure or suggest where he had been. He was there one second, and gone the next.

  Satisfied with yourself? I accused Grayson, recognizing something had been exchanged between the males while Grayson baited me.

  Always, the Tempter telepathed back with a wolfish smile.

  But when he spoke aloud, his words were velvet and silk, and borderline formal. “I’ve come to inform you your human male has returned bearing coffee.”

  Because I was anxious to see Benn, or because I was desperate to get away from being alone in a room with Grayson, I shooed him out the door, locked it behind me—even though I knew the Hammer demons could jump in without effort whatsoever—and raced down the stairs.

  Rowan stood, looking up at me with badly-veiled, questioning eyes as he said, “We will return to our training, girl.”

  Hell yeah, we would. I was going to get this down so fast, grumpy Rowan with his lack of faith in me would even be impressed. I did not want every demon in the general vicinity to be keyed into everything I was feeling. And since I was feeling so much, and as Grayson crassly pointed out, my lack of experience was projected right along with my emotions, I needed to get this down. And fast.

  I would succeed.

  As Rowan read my projections, he smiled a full smile for the briefest second, and in awe, I fell down the last stair.

  CHAPTER 12

  A half hour after my exercise in frustration and confusion ended with Grayson and Rowan, Benn and I escaped and went to our Demon History and Defense class. I planned to tell him I wasn’t going to go, since I knew I’d never convince Benn not to, but getting out of The Bookstore for a few hours, without demon sentries evaluating my every move and reading my every emotion sounded like exactly what I needed.

  I hadn’t thought it through.

  The hush that fell over the class when we entered the gymnasium made me want to blink out of existence. Probably better that I couldn’t jump like the Hammers could.

  It was Benn’s urging nudge that made me shake it off. I wasn’t going to forget this life I’d made because of the way I looked. If the way I’d looked before hadn’t stopped me from doing things, then the way I looked now shouldn’t either.

  As we took a few more steps into the gym, I panicked, and reacted without thinking. Upon recognizing me, Dmitri bent at the waist.

  Dmitri, don’t bow.

  I hadn’t followed protocol. Demons, at least ones not on openly friendly terms, were supposed to ask for permission to telepath. Grayson was a bad influence, because he never followed that protocol with me. And, I realized, I wasn’t following that protocol with any of the sentries either. But with them, it seemed acceptable.

  Not with Dmitri. I sent him the informat
ion, the order, and the full-caste Razer obeyed. I didn’t like that one bit.

  I apologize for my intrusion, I telepathed, trying to put the dynamic between instructor and student back in place. He was my superior. He was older, a full-caste, my teacher. That had to stay the same.

  Scion, his internal voice was absurdly reverent. You honor me with your mercy. The telepath is always open for…he began to bow again, and this time, there were a few students watching him with furrowed brows.

  I switched my tactics. You can’t show your allegiance. You have to treat me the same, or thirty humans will know what I am.

  Sound reasoning got through to him. Dmitri rose to his full height, straightening his spine and meeting my eyes, however reluctantly, with cobalt blue I’d never seen looking so sweet before.

  I considered how ridiculous it was that a chance of birth meant demons who disregarded me completely as the nothing I was were suddenly compelled to honor me. What a laughable system this was.

  Within my analysis of demon hierarchy, Camille, ever the bold and confident, walked over and smiled at me, her pretty, dark brown skin and big, brown eyes looking lovely, even to my more acute eyesight. She was lucky, how naturally beautiful she was.

  But then she spoke, and I remembered all the times she’d been cruel to me, and she didn’t look so beautiful anymore. The feelings I hadn’t had then struck me now.

  “Hey, Bennett,” Camille said, mock politeness on her face and in her false words as she inspected me. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Camille…” Benn began, but he looked at me before going on and I read his expression loud and clear. He wanted to know if I’d rather be anonymous. He knew me so well.

  I shrugged, and Benn chuckled. “This is Savvy, Camille.”

  The way her jaw dropped made me warm inside. I wanted her to hurt, to cringe at the sight of me and wish she’d been kinder. My Razer half, as smoke-and-fire played on the borders of my thoughts, liked seeing her confused and uneasy.

  “You’re lying,” Camille practically screamed when she picked her face off the floor.

  I laughed, not with humor but with satisfied malice.

  Didn’t seem necessary to stall the facts. Since the entire class was waiting with their breathes held in, I figured I should take care of everyone’s curiosity now before they all passed out from lack of oxygen.

  “I’m a half-caste Razer and had an involuntary glamour cast on me as an infant. Yesterday, it was lifted.” It was the most I’d ever said to anyone in the class.

  “I know she’s gorgeous, but try not to stare.” Benn stood up a little straighter. “Savvy’s not used to it yet.”

  A sense of extreme weirdness formed in my chest. Benn calling me gorgeous. It was so unnatural, I didn’t know what my reaction was supposed to be. I decided to act like it didn’t happen, that I’d heard him wrong.

  The class began chattering, some giggled softly, many gave my body a evident once-over, apparently able to look past my rabbit-fur socks, flip flops, poofy knee-length skirt, and giant sage green sweater which I knew looked mismatched and bizarre.

  Someone whistled. As my face and chest burned, eyes cast to the gym floor, I wondered what it would have been like to live my life like this.

  I didn’t like being on display, having the attention of a room filled with people who hardly acknowledged my existence a few days ago. But my demon half preened under their admiring stares. My human half still pictured me with frizzy hair, a boy’s body, a pasty pale complexion, and read their attention as cruel.

  “You knew all along, didn’t you?” the rude accusation changing Camille’s face from shocked to offended. “That’s why you were friends with such a…such a…”

  She looked at me, then at Benn, and instead of feeling hatred for the girl, I felt pity. “I believe your previous assessment was to call me a fugly uggo. Wasn’t that it?”

  Her face said what her mouth couldn’t. But, you were ugly, she was clearly thinking.

  “You know,” I mock-whispered, wondering where my sudden lack of discomfort with thirty pairs of eyes focused on me was coming from, “fugly and uggo are redundant.” In a patronizing tone, I added, Idiot.

  Camille sputtered as she looked at my new face, my real face, and pondered how I could have heard what she said in private to her friends, and how I’d called her an idiot without opening my mouth.

  “I may have been ugly, but I got over it.” Too bad you’re unlikely to get over what makes you so ugly, bitch.

  I didn’t mean to, but apparently this time I mentally broadcast to the entire class, including a watchful and stern-faced Dmitri. The place erupted, because half of the humans had been looking directly at me and knew my lips hadn’t moved, but they’d heard me.

  Benn confirmed he heard my telepaths during our walk to the community center, though they were faint and somewhat distant for him. At about ten feet, he couldn’t hear my telepaths at all. And he didn’t feel my projected emotions.

  He said it freaked him out, so I was planning to make an effort not to telepath around him, and be determined to get the hang of controlling it.

  Not five minutes after I told him I’d try not to, I slipped up. I was such a moron. Rowan was right. I had to learn to control this thing. I hadn’t even considered the humans in the gym hearing my quick conversation with Dmitri when we first walked in. Telepathing with humans seemed to come and go, or maybe it was more voluntary. But I screwed up.

  How was I going to explain this to everyone? What was I supposed to do now? I couldn’t be sure everyone in the class wouldn’t go blabbing what I’d done. And humans simply couldn’t know I could telepath with them. I needed to stay as anonymous as possible for as long as possible. What a disaster.

  Before I was through berating myself, the class fell silent. No one’s eyes were focused on me. No one’s eyes were focused on anything anymore. Even Benn was dazed next to me, swaying slightly as he stood, looking at nothing.

  Dmitri, bowing low now that everyone else was preoccupied doing…whatever it was they were doing, said, “Scion.”

  My first impulse was to tell him not to bow again, only because it was so weird I knew I’d never get used to it. But I didn’t, because I was too interested in what was going on.

  “Dmitri, what happened?”

  “They mustn’t know who you are. You were correct, so I took care of it.”

  “It’s that easy?” I asked, then touched Benn, who swayed. “You can undaze Benn. He knows.”

  “I had to be cautious,” Dmitri said, slightly panicked, and Benn unfroze.

  “Awesome,” he said, grinning at me.

  I sputtered a snicker. “What’d it feel like?”

  “Like I was asleep.”

  “Do you remember what I did?”

  “Telepathed to the entire class. Dummy.”

  “I know,” shaking my head. To Dmitri, I asked, “Can you undo it?”

  Grayson had planted thoughts in Benn’s mind when they left him at the bus stop. Could any demon do that? Dmitri wasn’t a Tempter. Was it just a Tempter thing?

  “I can…” he paused, considering his words carefully, “take the memories from them.”

  A chill played across my neck. Sure, I knew my caste could breach. Razer demons could tear into minds, rearrange them, devour then destroy them at will.

  “I’m not sure it’s worth that,” I said, appalled that I was even considering it.

  “Grayson could,” Benn suggested.

  “But I can’t contact him. I don’t have control enough to telepath that far. At least, without telepathing with everyone between here and there.” I knew I could call The Bookstore, and one of the demons might answer. I knew there were things we could do to try to track Grayson down. But I didn’t want to ask him for help. It seemed vital, for some reason.

  “I can rewind their memories, and have their new ones…overlap,” Dmitri offered, hopefully. He wanted to help. Desperately. As if his life depended on it. “They m
ay recall seeing you here tonight, that something happened, but won’t be able to pinpoint what.”

  “Okay,” I finally said, after seeing Benn’s expression. It was the only option. I knew that. Something had to be done and we had a way to accomplish it that didn’t totally rape their memories. I had to take responsibility for this mistake, and do what had to be done, even if I knew it was wrong.

  “I will rewind them when you’ve left, and reschedule tonight’s class.”

  Nodding, I said, “and next class, I’ll be smarter.”

  I knew Dmitri was about to agree, but caught himself. It made me uncomfortable, having someone like him being so cautious around me. I’d liked that he didn’t avoid me before all this happened. He may have pummeled my face into the floor on several occasions, but he didn’t ignore me. Or find a reason to kick me out of class on the first day like he could have, and I think a lot of demons would have.

  “Scion…”

  I huffed, “mind calling me Savannah?”

  “Yes.”

  I laughed despite myself. “All right.”

  “Demons can’t telepath with humans.”

  He said it like he was scared to voice what needed to be said. What did he think I could do to him? I was still essentially the same as before.

  During our walk to the community center, Benn and I decided, since I was part human, I was connected to humankind by blood. By my father’s blood. I didn’t get any of those waves of something from Benn, or from any human that I’d noticed so far, but I could telepath with them.

  I told Dmitri, “there’s never been a half-caste Scion.”

  “Can you telepath with halflings as well?”

  Tilting my head, “I guess…probably, right? I haven’t been around any to try.” I’d never met someone like me.

  He nodded thoughtfully, the full-caste Razer’s cobalt eyes contemplative, calculating. For some reason, the look made me envious.

  “You don’t yet carry the Imperial Mark,” Dmitri said after moments of thought, while Benn and I watched with puzzled looks. “Other demons do not know who you are upon sight because you don’t emit the low-level of energy Royalty emits.”