Immortals After Dark 10 - Demon From the Dark

Orleans could teleport. Maybe you just can't puzzle out how?" He frowned at her. "I bet you used to be able to. Must suck not to anymore."
    Now that they were seemingly out of danger, for some reason Carrow found herself talking to him. Though she knew he couldn't understand her, she asked him questions, then conjectured answers out loud. She made observations about the terrain, the declining weather.
    Occasionally he shrugged without interest.
    "I should name you Wilson the Volleyball. You understand as much as Wilson did and respond as infrequently. What's that?" She cupped her ear as if the demon had spoken. "No, no, you're right, Wilson was more hygienic."
    She didn't know why she found it so pleasing to talk at Slaine--her dirty, befanged protector--but there it was. "Once I get back ..." She trailed off.
    When he gave her a questioning glance over his shoulder, she sighed. "Well, things are going to have to change. With me. Right now, if the Andoain coven were The Love Boat, I'd be a mix between Julie the recreation chick and bartender Isaac."
    Carrow had long been connected in the city, able to uncover all the sins in New Orleans, seeding revelry, then harvesting power from it.
    "Now all that's going to be different." She'd have to budget her spells, not use them for frivolous things like better parking places or her fledgling attempts at mind control.
    Excitement lacing her tone, she said, "I think I'm going to be ready for a kid after this. If I'd been immersed in my old life when this happened, I probably would've shirked my responsibilities." As her parents had taught her. "But after this adventure, anything will feel easy. Even raising a potentially murderous seven-year-old with control issues."
    The demon seemed really keyed up, as if Carrow's chitchat was bothering him. No, that couldn't be right. She wasn't Carrow "Squeaky" Graie. She'd always been told she had a bedroom voice that men found pleasing.
    He pointed at her and asked, "Demonish?"
    "Do I speak Demonish?"
    He nodded.
    "Yeah, a little," she answered, then sounded out a few words, asking for some fermented demon brew, their beverage of choice.
    In an instant, his body shot through with tension, and he ran a palm over one of his horns. Gaze dipping to her lips, he swallowed.
    His reaction was so thunderstruck, she suddenly grasped that her demon drinking buddies had taught her something far more naughty than "Can I have a brew, please?"
    In thickly accented Demonish, she'd just asked him, "May I fellate you, if you please?"
    Would I please!
    Her look of realization, then of irritation, revealed that she hadn't meant to say anything such as this. Someone had taught her the wrong words.
    But now Malkom couldn't stop thinking about fitting his shaft betwixt her plump lips. He recalled how greedily she'd drunk from that canteen and nearly groaned imagining her working on his shaft thus. To finally know what that felt like...
    'Twas almost better when she'd been speaking Anglish!
    She crossed her arms and began to do so once more, her tone defensive.
    Malkom exhaled, ignoring a twinge in the ribs she'd broken earlier. He hated when she spoke; he loved when she spoke.
    The sound of her voice was so damned pleasing to him, especially since he'd been alone for so long. Every word she said was familiar, even with her foreign accent, but after so many years he could associate no meaning with them, only horrific memories of the Viceroy.
    Malkom's torture had begun three weeks after the day he'd died. The vampire had released him from that cell after Malkom had killed Kallen, but only to break him.
    The Viceroy had been determined to make Malkom more vampire than demon, to make him loyal to the Horde. Only so many Scarba rituals worked, and Malkom had been a valuable asset, one they wouldn't destroy until there was no hope.
    At least, not fully destroy.
    He'd tried to force Malkom to forget Demonish, to speak only the vampires' language. Each time Malkom refused, he'd had his tongue cut out. When he'd spit blood at them, he'd had his skin flayed to the bone.
    Now, to communicate with her, Malkom would have to resurrect his knowledge of that language, braving those memories. He knew he'd pay for it, would be plagued with nightmares.
    He gazed over at her, releasing a pent-up breath. Once again, he was struck by her beauty, nigh tripping over his own feet as he stared.
    She glanced up at him, pink stealing over her high cheekbones. She tucked her hair behind