The satyr clicked loudly as she kicked at Jes’s raptor feet with her hooves. Which led to a footsies battle, talons against hooves. Caera rolled her eyes and groaned.
“I’ll be your damn parent,” the tiger said, “for all of you. Get some damn rest while I take first watch. Bunch of kids.”
“Hey,” David said. “Why don’t I dream anymore? It’s just gone, completely. I close my eyes and then I wake up.”
After a long, very cat-like full body stretch, Caera sat up again, and turned to face the exit to their small cave.
“Your guess is as good as mine, David. Something with the way souls on the surface do their thing? I don’t know. I once found some runes that talked about it, and that dreams were powerful things. But nothing about why, or how they worked.”
Dreams were powerful things. Special, then, maybe? More than just the biological brain firing off random crap when sleeping? He lost a lot of things with this afterlife body, things he didn’t miss, needing to eat and drink, in particular. But dreams? Dreams he missed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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~~Mia~~
She woke up like a cat who’d just been nailed in the forehead with an elastic band. It was a wonder she didn’t smash her forehead into Hannah’s, but the girl dodged back like she’d done it a million times before. She grinned down at Mia, and held up a finger to her lips. Quiet mode, then. Alright.
Mia got up and looked around. Diogo and his brutes were asleep. So were the two men, the two sex demons, and Loria the gargoyle, bodies laid out against stones, the mountain wall, or lying on the ground as if it were perfectly comfortable. How Mia managed to fall asleep lying on the mountain path, she didn’t know, but she was damn thankful she could. One of the best parts about her new afterlife body.
But Scilra the tiger and her fellow tiger were awake, and so was Adron. His shift was over, and he walked toward Hannah and Mia with his usual pleasant grin, tail flowing left and right behind him.
Hannah held her finger up to her lips again. Adron raised a brow, but nodded, once some hidden meaning clicked, and he motioned for them to follow. And considering the evil grin on Adron’s demon lips, Mia wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to follow him. Him not wearing his armor anymore, meaning his lean physique and muscles were all fully visible, didn’t help matters.
A smart woman would just say no thanks and not follow the demon around a big boulder into a small crevice along the mountain wall. A smart woman would lie back down near all the other sleeping demons, where she was safe. Safer. But Mia followed him, leaving the two tiger ladies behind, pretty much confirming she was doomed to be one of those women who found serial killers oddly intriguing, and listened to true crime podcasts all the time.
The crevice wasn’t very wide, maybe four feet. It merged at the top ten feet up, and it looked about ten feet deep. Just a cozy little cave for someone that might want to hide, and considering they had to go a little ways down the path and around a curve of the mountain wall to get to it, they couldn’t see the group anymore. It was dark save for a few dim amber veins, and they were alone. Yeap, she was doomed.
But she followed them into the crevice anyway. And to make matters worse, Adron stood at its entrance, waited for Hannah to go in, and then Mia, before finally sitting down. She was trapped in there unless she wanted to jump over the demon’s legs, and considering the reflexes he’d already shown, that wasn’t happening.
“Should be safe to talk here,” he said.
“Oh. Talk, right.” She nodded. That was all they were going to do, talk. Diogo said the demons weren’t allowed to touch her, and she definitely didn’t want them to. Nope, she did not.
“I wanted to thank you, for doing something,” he said. “When that basilisk came out of nowhere.”
“You saved my life. Seemed like the right thing to do, right?”
“You say that like it’s perfectly natural or normal. This is Hell, Mia. You’ve noticed by now what demons are like.” He pointed a claw at her and twirled it in a small circle. “Don’t think I don’t know you’ve been analyzing everyone.”
“I have?”
“She has?” Hannah asked.
“I’ve been around for a while, fresh meat. You pick up a few things with some decades under your belt, like how to notice other people when they notice things. Inquisitive eyes figuring things out, figuring people out.” He poked her naked shoulder. “Zel likes people like that. I’ll make sure she knows.”
“You’ll… make sure?”
He grinned as he leaned back against the wall, relaxing. Which of course meant he had to bend his legs a bit since his big raptor feet hit the opposite wall, putting his knees up and in Mia’s way even more.
“Keep a secret?”
Mia gulped, and looked back at Hannah. She nodded confidently and looked back to Adron.
“Okay,” Mia said.
“I know Zel,” he said. “Intimately. I’ve worked for her. I work for her.”
“But, she rules Death’s Grip, right? Don’t you all work for her?”
“Not exactly. Demons in Death’s Grip have to listen to her, because she can enforce her will if they don’t. But I work for her, directly.”
“Oh.” Mia adjusted a little, and sat down against the wall beside Adron’s talons so she could face him. “Diogo doesn’t know?”
“Nope.”
“Then, why are you telling me?”
“Because I like you, and I’d prefer Zel didn’t kill you. I’ll make sure to tell her you’re worth keeping around, special or not.” He winked at her. He really had no business being as charming as he was, but damn it he was. It was so frustratingly classic, Mia half hated herself for being so easily enticed by him, like Hannah was.
Plus, he was handsome, in that scary-but-awesome kind of way. The horns and tail and huge size and stuff only made it worse.
Fucking christ. After seeing Adron fuck Hannah and Diogo fuck that succubus, all only a few feet from Mia, sex was the only damn thing she could think about and it was driving her nuts.
“It’s a shame Diogo says you’re off limits,” he said. “Every demon and human in this little group really wants to have a taste of you.”
Uh oh.
She pulled her knees up to her chest, hiding her breasts from view. Hannah did not, her eyes locked on Mia, and Mia’s body, same as Adron’s.
“I don’t understand why,” Mia said. “That succubus Zalria, she’s a thousand times prettier than me.”
“Or me,” Hannah said, shrugging. “Demons got their tastes though. And besides,” she gestured to Mia, “just because you don’t have giant tits doesn’t mean you’re not fucking gorgeous. Diogo and the brutes have all looked at you, and you know what they want to do.”
Mia shut her eyes hard. “I’m trying to not think about that.”
“Are you?” Adron asked. “Because I can see your body react. All the time.”
“You…”