Among Monsters Read online

  GODS AND DAEMONS

  BOOK 3

  AMONG MONSTERS

  QUINN BLACKBIRD

  GODS AND DAEMONS

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  BLURB

  Koal: A Daemon, a wicked creature from the Underworld.

  Silver: An ancient and cold aniel, a powerful child of the God, Prince Poison.

  Keela: A sickly mortal who lives on borrowed time.

  Keela is whisked away by Silver, the deadly aniel, to the Wild Woods. There, she must find the Three Sisters, hoping they will lead her to the First Witch—the only one who can sever the mate bond between her and the evil Daemon who hunts her.

  No journey is simple in the Wild Woods, but even less so when it’s taken alongside an ancient aniel like Silver. The farther into the wicked Woods they venture, the more Keela suspects that the secrets he keeps are far darker than she ever imagined.

  But in the Wild Woods, Silver should be the least of her worries. The Woods themselves set out traps and lures for her, desperate to destroy everything she thinks she knows and all the hidden desires deep inside her heart.

  Didn’t anyone ever tell Keela, mortals don’t survive in the Wild Woods?

  A dark fantasy mini-series set in Quinn Blackbird’s GODS AND MONSTERS world. You do not have to read Gods and Monsters before reading Gods and Daemons.

  See inside for content warnings.

  Paperbacks available on the box-set page.

  CONTENT INFORMATION

  Gods and Daemons is a dark-themed fantasy romance mini-series. There will be dark romance, twisted relationships, explicit sexual scenes, explicit language, angst and betrayals.

  GLOSSARY, TERMS, PLACES & OTHER THINGS

  Don’t be discouraged. This is for reference only. All will be explained in the series!

  GLOSSARY

  Divine Ones - Gods

  Malis - a malevolent God

  Beniyn - a benevolent God

  Aniel - a hand-crafted offspring of a God

  Vilas - a mortal

  Scocie - land of the Gods

  Capital - Scocie’s city

  Commos - isles of the common vilas

  Skripta - religious texts

  Daemons - evil entities that rule the Underworld

  FIRST GODS

  Prince Poison - malis, lover of Princess Monster

  Lover Lust - malis

  Gaia - beniyn

  Blaze - malis

  Keeper of Lost Souls - beniyn

  Mistress Mad - malis

  Swordsman of Scales - malis

  Loki - malis

  Trident - beniyn

  SECOND GODS

  Aphrodite - beniyn, deceased.

  Zealot - malis

  Syfon- beniyn, deceased.

  Father Fettle - beniyn

  THIRD GODS

  Princess Monster - beniyn, love of Prince Poison

  Phantom - malis, deceased.

  SCOCIE:

  Wild Woods

  The Capital

  Mist Creek

  Palace of the Gods

  Gods’ Gardens

  Twisted Wood

  Place of the Daemons

  The Capital

  East Side:

  Shadow Quarter

  Lost Square

  Scholar Square

  Merchant Market

  Textile District

  West Side:

  Emporium Quarter

  The Port

  Worship Street

  The Gardens

  Spa Square

  First District

  GODS AND DAEMONS

  AMONG MONSTERS

  BOOK THREE

  GODS AND DAEMONS

  The Gods came in two waves.

  The Firsts—the most powerful and ancient of the Divine Ones—were made with the world. They are as old as the dirt, the grass, and the stars. They emerged from the Waterfall, deep in the Wild Woods, where most who search for it never return.

  The First Gods are our creators. They fashioned mortals—the vilas, as they call us—from the life surging through this earth. And we were created as nothing more than toys, entertainment in a bland newborn world.

  Next, they created aniels. The aniels are unlike the vilas—they are the children of the Gods. They are magical and powerful and wicked and immortal. It is said that to create an aniel, a God must peel away a sliver of their ancient power, fashion a hand-crafted marble statue of a child, and bond the magic to it. Then, the marble turns into flesh and blood and hair and eyes and power, all under the full moon on the starriest night.

  The child grows, fast. Within a year, it is a fully matured aniel, a dangerous child of the God who created it, and bound to its God for all eternity.

  In creating the aniels, They rectified the errors they made with mortals—they cannot breed.

  But the vilas breed. The vilas multiplied fast and spread too quickly.

  It took centuries for the First Gods to tire of mortals. When they did, they split the land into isles and pushed the vilas out to sea, separating us from them. As the land was broken into pieces, new seas were created and, out from the new seas, crawled the Second Gods. Less powerful than the Firsts, mostly less malevolent, but Gods all the same.

  The Gods kept some mortals close to them on the largest isle, Scocie. It is on this most magical, haunted isle that the Gods live. Their stardust palace sits on a bone-white hill that looks over the whole of the world.

  We, the vilas, worship them from the city built on the shore, the Capital. Every day of our lives, we are reminded of the Gods with that midnight-blue, glittering palace looming over us. So that we may never forget them.

  1.

  Always when I pictured pirates in love, it was a pirate stealing away a Capital girl, star-crossed lovers who defied the odds of society’s hierarchy and lived an adventurous life on the seas. Never did I picture two pirates in love with each other. So I’m completely taken by the display in front of me.

  I sit alone on the wooden steps that rise from the deck to the open well above where the cockpit is manned by three pirates. I lean my side against the damp wall of the ship and watch the enamoured pirates canoodle by the bay of barrels across the deck. Two male pirates. It shocks me, but no one else onboard seems to pay the pair any mind. Not even as the tanned one brushes a strand of long hair out of the skinny pale pirate’s face and tucks it behind his ear. Not even when the tanned dark-haired one scoops off his hat before leaning into the pale one’s ear to whisper things that bring a ruby-red blush to his cheeks.

  I wear a blush of my own to match.

  If those two canoodled like that on the streets of the Capital, there would be an uproar. And yet, I can’t understand why. Same-sex couples aren’t unheard of—but rarely do they happen amongst the vilas. When same-sex lovers are revealed, they tend to be aniels, or even sometimes the Gods.

  I’ll be the first to confess I don’t understand love all that well. To me and my upbringing, it’s a word we throw around when we want to arrange marriages and pin our hopes of the future on someone else. But even in my hazy concept of love and what it truly means, I can’t summon a single reason for these two pirates to not be married. In fact, as I watch them in my silent fascination, I decide I want them to be married. They might be the only pair with true love between them that I’ve ever known.

  And yet their love would be challenged by the mortals in the Capital, unless they were among the Divine Ones or their offspring, the aniels.

  As I think of anie
ls, the soft thuds of bootfalls breaks into my thoughts.

  I squint up as Silver slips into my sunlight and swallows it up, becoming a broad-shouldered shadow. He stands there for a heartbeat or two, obstructing my view of the ship. Amidst the dark silhouette, sea-foam eyes gleam down at me, sharper than scrapes of flint.

  He fishes out a cigarette from his shirt pocket then bows his head as he lights it with a match he strikes over the side of the ship.

  Black cigarette hanging between his lips, he flicks the match overboard.

  Silver steps over the lump of my bag that sits on the bottom step with his black-leather satchel, then twists around to sit beside me on the stairs. A small seaweed-wrapped parcel sits on his palm. He offers it to me.

  As I peel apart the leaves of seaweed, the stink of fish is quick to waft up at me. I crinkle my nose. Never been partial to sea-bass before, but on a pirate ship, there’s hardly a variety when it comes to meals. Being fed is the best one can hope for onboard.

  I pick at the flakes of smoked fish. “Want some?”

  He faintly shakes his head. Smoke clings to him. His impassive face wears a distant veil as he stares out at the calm seawater.

  I study his profile for a moment. It’s hard not to when he looks just as he was—carved from marble. Every feature of his face, sanded and smoothed to perfection, a fine nose to compliment his sharp jawline and full mouth, forever lowered eyelashes to cast shadows over his metal eyes, not a wrinkle or crease in sight. He has the face to a steal a maiden’s heart and make the stars weep.

  And since boarding the pirate ship yesterday evening, we have been pushed so close together that I have come to recognise his scent; a faint trace of caramel mixed with a coffee and ink concoction.

  Everything about him screams predator. The scent and face to lure one in, only to devour those who come too close. It’s his eyes that are his give-away. Those cutting eyes gleam like swords, ready to strike. And even as he watches something as mundane as the gentle waves rolling over the calm waters, his eyes wink like weapons. A warning.

  I force my gaze to peel away from his face and turn it down to the black bags deposited at the toes of my boots. I finish off the fish flakes, then toss the seaweed wrapper over the wall, back to where it belongs.

  Today, Silver seems to spare little interest on me. It’s pushing midday and he’s spoken few words to me since I woke up from my short, broken sleep at sunrise. After I woke, he disappeared for some hours, leaving me alone on the deck. And since I’m not too keen on familiarising myself with any pirates on board, I stuck to myself, keeping our bags close to me on the steps, and wishing the day away.

  Do you regret helping me?

  Was it worth risking your life for whatever price you might force me to pay in future?

  I want to utter those words to him, but each time they burn my tongue, there’s a wretched feeling in my chest that warns me that I might not want to learn the true answer.

  Besides, it’s best not to question him. He told me himself, back when we first made this precarious deal, to not question him. It was one of his few conditions, and I can’t risk pushing him away from me before I’ve even reached the border of the Wild Woods. It wouldn’t do for him to abandon me and his promise to me so early on, because then, there would be no point to any of this, and I would wind up back in Koal’s clutches. A place I would rather die than be again.

  With a sigh, I bend forward and heave my bag up to the space between my spread legs. Not exactly a lady-like position my status would approve of, legs spread beside an aniel on a pirate ship, but given the things I’ve seen onboard—like love-struck aniels taking up shadowy corners to kiss and whispers secrets to each other, and a particularly drunken scruffy pirate heaving up his breakfast into the sea—I don’t think that the way I sit will raise many eyebrows. And it doesn’t.

  I unbuckle my bag before I rummage through it. From the lumps of dresses and undergarments and jewels, I pry out a small phial of remedy (half-full) and a green bottle with mere drops left in it.

  I don’t need my remedy right now. Yesterday, I took enough that it still feels fresh running through my veins, and this day has done little to wear me down. Still, I check my store just to busy myself in the suffocating silence rolling off Silver.

  “Why are you so quiet?” I turn to him.

  His eyes darken before he drags his gaze to mine. He considers me with a bored mask stuck to his face, then takes a long inhale of the black cigarette. Grey vapours lash around him as he exhales slowly. “You have greater worries than my disfavour of idle chat.”

  I drop the remedies back into the back, then slump against the wall. The sea waves remain calm, and the gentle sound of them rolling over the edge of the ship soothes me some.

  “How much longer until we are there?” I wonder aloud.

  Silver might not be partial to idle chat, but I’m trained in it. It’s what I’ve been raised to favour if only to appease others in our social circles. A moment’s silence to me is as unbearable as a day without remedy.

  “Some hours. Perhaps before nightfall, if the water works with us. I sense that it wants us to be delivered to our destination.” He rinses his distant eyes over me. “It seems fate might want you to seek out the Originals.”

  The magick of the sea drops a veil of wonder over me, and I study it with a newfound appreciation. How it’s all connected; the lands, the seas, the winds. And how an aniel can read it all so easily.

  “Tell me about them,” I demand, leaning my temple on the ship’s wall.

  I watch the pirates busy about their chores; scrubbing the deck, churning buckets of chum that stink out the fresh air, pulling on ropes before climbing up to the crow’s nests above. Lives anchored by mundane duties, yet free of the restraints that bind us in the Capital.

  “What more is there to tell that I have not already told?” He twists to recline against the stair’s barrier, and watches me. He’s smoked the cigarette down to the butt and, with slender fingers, flicks it over my head. It disappears overboard.

  “Do the Originals all live together?” It’s the first question that springs to mind. “Are they all friends?”

  He scoffs a curt noise. “Friends,” he echoes, and I don’t have to look at him to sense the smirk ghosting over his lips. “A vilas concept, if there ever was one.”

  I throw him a scowl. I might be vilas, but I have only one friend to speak of, and even then, Mikhael can hardly be shown off as a friend. It’s a relationship buried in secrets and shadows.

  “Among my kind,” Silver says with a sigh and leans his head back against the wood railing, “there are allies, but no friends. The Originals are much more complicated than that. No, they do not live with each other in the Woods. And to my knowledge, they do not possess relationships with one another, for there is no reason to.”

  “Imagine that,” I mutter, almost to myself. “An eternity of life without any relationship, without anyone to love or love you in return. It sounds miserable.”

  “No less miserable than a life of pain and heartbreak,” he says, tone bitter and low.

  I blink at him.

  For a moment there, I was almost convinced he knew what he was talking about, as though he himself has felt pain and heartbreak. But his stony face betrays nothing, not even his eyes hint at echoes of a life lived before now.

  Silver says, “You are not understanding what I am telling you about the Originals, and that will not serve you in our quest to find them. They are not like your kind. Nor are they like mine. Even our Gods differ from them, because even our Gods feel.”

  I turn to flatten my back against the ship wall and face him. I bring my knees up to my chest, wrap my arms around my legs, and rest my chin on my kneecaps. “How do you mean?”

  “My father, for one.” His jaw tightens fleetingly at the mention of him. “He has loved—and he loves now—and he has endured the pain of loss, and felt the rush of rage, and been devoured by blinding jealousy. He is a God
, a First one, and yet he could spin tales of his heartache.”

  “He loves Princess Monster?”

  Silver nods. “And she has hurt him in the past. A pain he carries with him still. But the Originals,” he says and flattens his mouth into a thin line, “are not driven by emotions. They might have echoes of distant emotions, but do not feel as we do. Their existences are detached in a way. What they feel—what rules them—is the connection to the world, their bonds to the winds and the seas and the lands.” He lifts his chin and looks down his fine nose at me. “They are the world.”

  I echo, “They are the world,” as my mind churns the idea of them.

  A chill runs down my spine as I remember that I’m to meet these creatures. Not only that, I’m to plead for their help. And why should they help? To them, I am some lowly vilas planted on this earth by the Gods who have since come to regret us. What could I possibly offer to an Original to motivate them into helping me?

  I glance up at him.

  He has returned to watching the sea pass us by, and I wonder if he has any trick cards up his sleeve for later. Will he have ideas that will earn me the help of the Originals? Or will my defeat somehow fall into his own scheme?

  Not knowing what Silver wants is the darker part of our alliance. It could be anything that he will demand from me when the time comes. And, now that I think on it, he never made a promise to bring me out of the Woods when we bonded our blood oath.

  An icy flutter rises in my chest. There is so much I don’t know about Silver and so much more that I cannot trust about him. And yet, here I am, sitting on some sail-less pirate ship with a deadly aniel, venturing off to the Wild Woods to hunt down the Originals.

  It only cements the fear within me that he must want something terrible from me in return for his aid. Otherwise, he would have no business doing all of this for a mere mortal.