Read Immortals After Dark 04 - Wicked Deeds on a Winters Night for Free Online

sounded lower class. And his bearing was altogether different from Rydstrom’s—as if he hadn’t been raised a demon royal, or even a noble.
    In short, Rydstrom acted like a stalwart king but looked like a ruthless mercenary, and Cade was just the opposite.
    Tera angrily adjusted the bow and quiver at her back. “MacRieve must have known Mariketa would use magick to escape, and that you demons would just teleport yourselves outside. With the entryway so high, the three of us can’t even try to lift the slab.”
    Without the ability to lever themselves against the ground, there was no way even the demons, much less the elves, could raise it. As it was, they couldn’t even reach it without leaping up.
    Tierney looked enraged, his pointed ears flattening back against his blond head. “He must have sought to trap only our kind!”
    Rydstrom said, “If I could trace, I would take you from this tomb—I would make sure you were out of the Hie for good, but not by leaving you in this place.”
    Cade unsheathed and studied his sword—clearly he wouldn’t have done the same.
    Hild, the quiet third archer, asked, “Why did you say if you could trace?”
    “There’s a binding placed on Cade and me that makes it impossible to teleport.”
    Just as Mari decided she shouldn’t ask why they’d been bound, Rydstrom smiled gravely. “A coup that didn’t quite take, as it were. We were reprimanded for it.” His eyes flickered black as he shot a glance at Cade. “Severely.”
    So that was what they sought in this competition—to go back in time and keep Rydstrom’s crown.
    “My brother might have been willing to help others,” Cade began, “but after seeing what Mariketa did to the Lykae, I bet the witchling will leave us here to rot.”
    “Is that true?” Rydstrom asked Mari.
    Possibly.
    “Of course it’s not,” Tera answered for her. “Mariketa wouldn’t leave us any more than we would desert her. She’s part fey. Look at her ears. The Hie be damned—somewhere in time, her ancestors are our ancestors.”
    “Oh, then by that reasoning, she won’t leave me either,” Cade said, sarcasm in his voice. “She and I are both mercenaries. There’s a code there.”
    “It’s incidental if I would leave anyone behind,” Mari finally said. “I don’t know that I could lift it.”
    “What do you mean?” Rydstrom said. “You’re strong. I can feel your power even now.”
    “I... I blow things up,” she admitted. “And I mostly don’t mean to. Mostly.”
    Cade shook his head. “The entire structure’s resting on the portcullis. If you explode that stone, the tomb would come down like a house of cards.”
    Rydstrom said, “Let’s look at odds and make a rational decision—exactly how often do you accidentally blow things up?”
    “The times I can get my magick to work?” she said. “Ninety-nine out of a hundred.”
    As Tierney swore under his breath, Cade said, “So we look for another way out. Did anyone find an exit in any of the chambers?”
    “There aren’t going to be any exits,” Tera said, her attention riveted to a frieze above the portcullis. Intricate animal signs and hieroglyphics were carved into the stone.
    “Why do you say that?” Rydstrom asked.
    Tera squinted up at the carvings, seeming to somehow make sense of the animal and geometrically shaped glyphs. “Because this is... a jail .”
    “You’ve deciphered those marks?” Mari asked Tera.
    Tierney answered for her, “She knows all languages.”
    Tera translated for them. “It says this tomb is a jail holding six demon essence stealers—incubi—for their unnatural crimes against the daughter of a powerful sorcerer.”
    “They probably all seduced her, then pops gets pissed,” Tierney said. “Locks them away here.”
    Tera nodded. “The Mayans were custodians for them, of a sort. Kept them locked up—and fed periodically.”
    “That explains the sacrificial headdresses,” Cade said. “Mayan females were offered