“It’s a viper,” he muttered.
Her mouth quirked in amusement. “It is not.”
“Look, I can’t heal your cat-lizard if you stab me.”
She didn’t move. He was just starting to run what-if scenarios through his mind when she pulled back.
“Admit it is a worm,” she demanded as she skirted out of his reach.
“What? No. It’s a snake. A venomous one.”
“You lie.” Her eyes flashed as she thrust the limp creature at him with the arrogance of a queen. “But I want this animal healed. If you say you can do it, do it. If you harm him, I will have you butchered in the festival square and your parts sold at my clan’s fleshmeat booth.”
Wow. For a moment there, he’d almost forgotten how much he hated Neethuls.
Thanks for the reminder, lady.
And yet, there was more to this female. The authority in her voice and her confidence with her dagger didn’t match the sadness swimming in her eyes and tugging at the corners of her mouth.
Gently, he palmed the creature’s forehead and summoned his gift. Heat bloomed in the center of his chest and spread like fire through the glyphs in his right arm. Power surged from his hand into the animal, where it probed for injuries.
In Tavin’s mind’s eye, he could visualize broken bones and damaged organs as clearly as he could see the laceration in the cat-lizard’s hind leg where the skinning had begun.
The bastards had beaten and tortured the poor animal before starting to skin it alive.
He fucking hated Neethuls. He couldn’t wait to waste the one he was supposed to assassinate. Maybe he’d take out a few more of the royal family just for fun.
He glanced at the female as his power knitted bone and flesh back together. Her piercing blue eyes were locked on his patient, her hand making long, soothing strokes over its fur. Worry put shadows in the hollows of her cheeks and along the harsh line of her jaw. She really did care about the thing.
“What are you going to do with it when it’s healed?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
“I do not know. Meeries are not a sanctioned species.”
“Sanctioned species?”
“To feel for.” Her lips were a pale grayish-pink and glittery, almost as if they were frosted, and they turned up in a tender smile as she gazed down at the critter. “Neethul cannot afford to feel affection or love. It is actually forbidden outside of family and a very short list of sanctioned animals.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Meeries are not one of them.”
“Sounds lonely.” And he was an expert on the subject.
Her head came up sharply. “You have not told me your name. Who are you?”
“Name’s Tavin,” he said, launching into his cover story. “I volunteer at the first-aid tent over in the neutral zone.” Yes, Underworld General Hospital sponsored a booth, but he wasn’t part of it. Hell, he’d never even stepped inside the place. “I’m on a break. Figured I’d see some of the festival.”
“Really?” One delicate blond eyebrow arched. “You do not seem like the type to be strolling in a Tier-Five zone.”
That made two of them, despite the fact that she was a Neethul.
He affected a sheepish smile. He could play at being a doofus as well as anyone. “Yeah, ah, I kind of got lost. The festival is huge. I was following this big guy hauling Tyrantus tentacles, and next thing I knew, here I was.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “Here you are.”
The glowing glyphs in his arm flickered, signaling that he’d healed everything he could. He gave the critter a scratch under the chin and stepped away.
Cocking her head, the female raked Tavin with her gaze, which no longer held even a drop of softness. She was all sharp-eyed, stone-cold Neethul now. “You’re a sex demon, yes?”
His dick twitched like it wanted to answer the question with a demonstration. “Why?”
“I want to know if your kind uses sex as a weapon.”
Well, that was a first. “A weapon? No. But I guess it could be, especially after we go through our final transition—”
“Final transition? How many are there?”
He paused as a big Neethul in hide armor led a hell stallion to a stall nearby. When the guy was out of earshot, he continued.
“Seminus demons go through two transitions,” he explained, even as he wondered why he felt the need to educate this Neethul on the lives of his breed.
He had a job to do, and he should be the one asking the questions. But something about this female intrigued him. Besides, it was lunchtime now, and his intel indicated that his target would likely be with family members. He had some time to kill before the kill.
He cracked himself up sometimes.
“The first transition happens at around twenty. It’s basically puberty. It makes us sexual but not fertile. We need sex a few times per day, or we lose our minds and die. We also get our supernatural abilities and personal symbol.”
He absently touched his fingertip to the worm glyph under his jawbone. When he first awakened after the hellish days of transition, he’d crawled to a mirror to see what symbol he’d been given.
What a letdown.
“The final transition, s’genesis, happens at around a hundred years. It makes us fertile and even more sex-crazed. If we don’t take a mate, our entire existence revolves around sex, and we turn into raping monsters.” He shrugged. “So…I guess you could call it a weapon, but it’s all part of our breed’s biological drive to reproduce.”
Thankfully, he didn’t have to worry about s’genesis for another sixty years, but it was always in the back of his mind. He’d met a couple of post-s’genesis Sems, and he understood completely why other species hunted and killed them.
“Interesting,” she said, keeping the little animal tucked snugly against her shiny black breastplate. He wondered what she looked like with all that armor on the floor. Next to a bed. “For Neethul, sex is primarily a weapon. We are taught to use sex as a weapon, always.”
“So…not for pleasure?”
“Using a weapon to cause pain is pleasure.”
Man, Neethul were fucked-up. Time to bounce. He needed to locate his target and get the lay of the land.
“Okay, well, that’s my cue to get going. Do you want me to take the Meerie? I can release it in the Carnage region. That’s where Meeries are from, right?”
She looked at him as if he’d grown horns. The joke was on her though, because he’d seen a Sem with horns once, passed down from his mother. Poor dude.
“You…you would do that?” she asked.
“Sure. Why not? I didn’t save him just to send him back to slaughter.” He could stash the critter in a cage and go back for it after he’d finished the job.
She stood there for a long time, just staring at him. Finally, she took a tentative step closer. “You fascinate me, Tavin Seminus. I…would like to see you again.”
Ah, shit. No fucking way in hell was he getting involved with a Neethul female. “You know, I’m not in your neck of the woods often, so…”
“I am hardly a prisoner,” she said in a soft voice that somehow dripped with arrogance. She must be of noble blood. “I can go to you.”