He nodded. “With very few exceptions, Pruosi demons are born female, and the sisters stay together for life. They mate at the same time with the same male, and the resulting young are taken care of by all the females. None of my brothers or I know which female gave birth to us. They’re all our moms.”
Huh. She’d known that Pruosi, a species of necromancer succubi, were generally born female and purebred no matter what species of male had sired them, but she hadn’t known they lived in sister-communities.
Blas looked him up and down. “I would love to study the way Pruosi and Seminus DNA battle it out to determine the resulting offspring’s species. Did your mothers know that Seminus demons are always born purebred male when they bred with your father?”
“They knew.” He shrugged. “Change of pace to have sons, I guess.” He gestured to a new soft green glow emanating from an opening in the dark wall ahead. “They’re in there. I’ll wait here. Oh, and Blas? No matter what you do, don’t lie to them.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said.
His hand, covered in the same type of glyphs that every Seminus demon bore, snapped out to catch her wrist in a firm grip.
“I mean it,” he said, his voice dripping with warning. “They don’t respond well to lies, and I promise you, they’ll know. These are demons who work in black magic and death. They’re a motherfucking four-point-five on the Ufelskala scale. Don’t screw with them.”
She swallowed dryly and pulled away. “Understood.”
Blas rubbed the scar on her wrist as she walked through the doorway. Beyond it, in a featureless dark room that didn’t even seem to have walls, ten females who could have passed as albino humans sat in a circle, their bodies wrapped in sheer fabric that hid precisely nothing. In the center of the Pruosi circle, black candles formed another circle around a wooden bowl that held what appeared to be blood.
“Blaspheme,” they all intoned at once, and her hair stood on end. So very creepy. “What do you seek?”
“I seek a necromancy spellbook.”
The females had yet to look at her. “Why?”
No matter what you do, don’t lie to them. “I’m looking for a spell to disguise myself.” Not a lie, but not very detailed, either.
“For what purpose?”
Why did they keep speaking in unison? “To hide from people who want to kill me.”
“Who wants to kill you?”
“I don’t know.” Surely that didn’t count as a lie. It wasn’t as if she knew specifics.
The females leaned into their circle, and a buzz of whispers vibrated the air like a million angry bees. Shit. Had Blas screwed up?
She waited, sweating bullets and fighting stomach cramps. Finally, just as she started to think she couldn’t take the suspense anymore, they straightened again. And still they didn’t meet her gaze.
“The book you seek is behind you,” they droned. “But we do suggest you hurry to use it.”
Hurry? Did they need it back right away? “Of course,” she breathed. “And thank you. Thank you so much.”
“We do this not out of the goodness of our hearts, healer. We do it for payment.”
Oh. Of course. “I don’t have much money, but I can borrow some, or I can offer services —”
“Not payment from you.” Every head came up or swiveled completely around, and glowing red eyes focused on her like lasers. “Payment from those who hunt vyrm.” They smiled, their pale lips stretching gruesomely over sharp, stained teeth, and Blaspheme’s heart stuttered. “So hurry, healer. Hurry.”
Terror made Blaspheme clumsy as she wheeled around, grabbed the tattered book off a wooden stand she knew hadn’t been there before, and darted to the Harrowgate, where Bane was waiting.
“You could have told me they wanted payment,” she yelled as she practically dove inside the gate.
“I thought you knew.” Joining her, he hit the Underworld General symbol with a thump of his fist. “They’re Pruosi. They don’t do anything for free. Hell, they expect their own children to pay them back for being born.”
In the darkness lit only by the brightness of the maps inside the Harrowgate, she stared at the demon. Seminus demons were considered purebred, but they always inherited gifts and abilities unique to their mothers’ species. Blaspheme hadn’t really considered what would happen if a Sem had been born to a truly malevolent mother.
“So how does your Pruosi breeding affect you?”
He shrugged. “My brothers and I can all reanimate corpses.”
Ew. “You guys must be the life of the party on Halloween.”
“I remember this one time —” The temperature inside the small space plummeted, and Bane’s skin flushed white as his eyes went red, just like all the females in the Pruosi circle. “I can see death coming,” he said, his deep voice utterly devoid of tone. “It’s all around you, Blaspheme. It’s coming, and it can’t be stopped.”
Revenant’s head was pounding by the time he reached Satan’s residence, only for Revenant to be told that the Dark Lord was waiting for him in the dungeon.
That couldn’t be good.
Revenant trudged down the claustrophobic circular stone staircase, his flesh crawling as the sights, smells, and sounds of his childhood came back to him. Inside, his organs jangled, as if they remembered as well and didn’t want to be spilled all over the floor.