Page 53 of Demon Unleashed

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With a last look at the sleeping dog, Enya followed Zoltan as he took her through a maze of tunnels. That Zoltan hadn’t killed the poor creature showed her that he had a heart. There was still some good in him, and she wouldn’t give up until she found a way to change him back to what he was born as. But right now, her focus was on two things: identifying the traitorous demon who threatened not only her life, but also Zoltan’s, and escaping from the Underworld.

To make sure that Zoltan knew she was with him, even if he couldn’t see or hear her, Enya put her hand on his forearm and walked beside him whenever there was nobody coming toward him. Only when she had to make space for a demon to pass them did she walk behind Zoltan.

Despite the fact that Zoltan’s reign was being threatened, she couldn’t help but notice the respect with which his underlings greeted him. Nor the slavishness he seemed to inspire in them. For the first time since she’d found out who Zoltan really was, she saw the Great One in him. He moved with purpose, with determination, with the knowledge that his word was law down here. And they all knew it. His subjects were dispensable, exchangeable, and at the Great One’s mercy. As if putting on a mask, Zoltan had slipped into this character only moments after the tender moment they’d shared outside the cell. Nothing of the man she knew was visible now. That was how it had to be. If his subjects knew what lay beneath his ruthless façade, she and he would both be dead.

Zoltan walked fast, and Enya knew why. He needed to get to the meeting in time, preferably before everybody was assembled, so nobody would suspect that he’d had time to free the prisoner. He needed an alibi.

After making a few more turns, he stopped in front of a door and opened it. He marched inside the cave the size of an upper-class dining room, not shutting the door behind him, allowing her to follow. Around a large stone table sat two men, as well as one woman she recognized: Silvana. A fourth man stood at the head of it, slightly leaning over it. The moment Zoltan entered, their quiet conversation stopped, and all faces turned to their leader.

“Oh Great One,” they said nearly in unison, and rose from their chairs.

Enya used the temporary noise the chairs made as they scraped along the floor to hide her own movements and pulled her phone from her pocket. She unlocked it.

Zoltan cast a scolding look at the man who stood at the head of the table and now moved to the side. Clearly, this was Zoltan’s place. “Vintoq, where are the others? Yannick, Ulric, and Tamara?”

Vintoq bowed. “On their way, oh Great One. In fact, I believe I hear them coming.”

Enya took his picture.

Moments later, two men and one woman entered and greeted Zoltan.

“Sit,” Zoltan ordered them, and sat down at the head of the table.

Enya took several pictures, then walked around toward the other end of the table to get a better angle on the demons who were with their back to her, then she came to a rocking halt.

Shit!

There, on the other side of the table, hidden by its stone base, a vicious-looking pit bull sat at Silvana’s feet. Its ears perked up, and its nostrils suddenly flared. Had the animal picked up her scent? A low growl came from the dog, and it looked in Enya’s direction.

Silvana snapped her gaze to the dog. “Easy, boy.”

Zoltan jumped up and pounded his fist on the table. “You brought a dog in here? Explain yourself!”

Silvana cleared her throat while she petted the animal’s head. “It’s just a precaution, oh Great One. With a Stealth Guardian locked up in the Underworld, we can’t be too vigilant. The dog is here for your protection. Surely, you can appreciate that, in case of an escape, the prisoner might seek you out to take her revenge.”

“Yes, and whose fault is that?” Zoltan glared at the assembled. “If some idiot hadn’t sent three men to Baltimore and messed up my carefully planned scheme, we’d be inside one of the Stealth Guardians’ compounds by now. But no, somebody had to disobey my orders!”

Enya didn’t dare move for fear the dog would pounce if its sensitive ears perceived a sound, forcing her to snap pictures of the remaining demons from where she stood.

“And when I find out who did this, there will be consequences.” He sat back down. “Now all I can do is try to save what’s to be saved. Getting the Stealth Guardian bitch to trust me now is impossible. She now knows that I’m the Great One. All we can use her for now is bait.”

Hearing Zoltan talk in such a degrading way about her felt jarring, but she understood why he had to call her names: if he didn’t, his lieutenants would wonder whether he’d developed scruples, or worse, feelings.

“I feel we’ve let you down, oh Great One,” Vintoq said. “I will make it my first priority to find the three demons responsible for the Stealth Guardian’s capture and question them myself to get to the truth.”

Enya studied Vintoq’s face. Was he just pacifying his leader, or did he mean what he said? She couldn’t tell. If he was the traitor, he was very good at hiding his true feelings and playing the loyal subordinate.

Zoltan nodded, even though she knew he suspected that the three men who’d taken her were long dead. “Now… Any suggestions as to how we’re going to use the Stealth Guardian female to our advantage now that my cover is blown?”

The five men and two women avoided looking in Zoltan’s direction, casting their eyes either downward to the table or to a spot in the distance. Enya wanted to snort. It was clear that Zoltan was the brains of this operation. Without him, the Underworld wouldn’t have nearly as much negative influence on the world. Except that there was one person—and she didn’t want to assume that it was a man—among the assembled who was hiding their true intelligence, their true cunning: the traitor.

“Anybody?”

“We could torture her to reveal the location of her compound to us,” a male demon said.

Zoltan gave him a bored look. “Torture, really? That’s your brilliant idea? We’re not talking about a human here. She’s an immortal. Whatever we do to her, short of killing her, will be nothing but a temporary inconvenience. We can’t inflict sufficient pain on a Stealth Guardian like her to make her reveal her secrets. Or would you reveal anything about the Underworld if you were tortured by one of them?”