Speak of the Devil Read Online Free PDF

jaw working. “I refuse to call him my father when the only reason he sired me was to piss off Lugh.”
    I felt my eyebrows arch in mingled surprise and curiosity. I was never much into gossip—you have to have girlfriends for that, and I’d always related better to guys—but this definitely piqued my interest.
    “Back up one moment,” I said, despite my curiosity. “There’s something I don’t understand. You guys are incorporeal in the Demon Realm. So how do you, er, reproduce?” I wondered if that was a rude question, and I also wondered if the answer would embarrass me, but Saul answered matter-of-factly enough.
    “We don’t have bodies as you would understand them, but we are still distinct entities. It might help if you think of us as collections of energy. It’s not a very accurate description, but it works as an analogy. When we mate, the child we create draws energy from both parents. The more powerful the parents, the more energy the child draws. If the parents are of unequal power, then the more powerful parent has to contribute more energy to protect the less powerful one. Otherwise, the less powerful one can be drained completely and die.
    “My mother was a … friend of Lugh’s, although she was of a much lesser rank and was much less powerful. Lugh is egalitarian enough to care about the lower-ranked demons as much as about the royalsand elite, and he and Raphael fought about it. Raphael thought Lugh should ‘stick to his own kind.’ When Lugh didn’t agree, Raphael struck out at him through my mother. He convinced her to have a child with him. He promised to contribute the lion’s share of the energy and to protect her from the drain. But, as usual, he lied. He put in as little as possible and let my mother pour her … life force into me.
    “My mother was destroyed, and I was born a royal without a royal’s power.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
    “It’s not unheard-of for demons of such wildly disparate power to have children,” Adam said softly when it seemed that was all Saul had to say. “But it is unusual. When it happens, it is usually the more powerful parent who is most … depleted. They return to full strength eventually, but it can take centuries for them to regenerate all the energy they lost. If Delilah had known Raphael better, she’d have realized he’d never put himself in such a position. But she didn’t, and the lure of having a royal child was too much for her to resist.
    “We are something of an elitist society, I’m afraid, and had Raphael followed through on his promise, her rank would have been greatly elevated.”
    I rolled all that information around inside my head, wondering what to make of it. I’d never really speculated on demon reproduction before, but I guessed I understood Saul’s explanation—except for one thing.
    “Why did Raphael do it?” I asked. Yes, I hated him. Yes, he was ruthless, and selfish, and at least borderline evil. He was even capable of being petty. But for all of that, there was a reason behind everything he did. Not a
good
reason, mind you, at least not from my point of view, but a reason nonetheless.
    “I told you,” Saul said with a little snarl. “To piss Lugh off. And because he could.”
    My every instinct told me there was more to it than that. I glanced at Adam and raised an eyebrow. He shrugged and shook his head, which I took to mean he shared my opinion but didn’t know Raphael’s motivation, either.
    I wasn’t about to approach Raphael to ask him about it. But surely Lugh knew exactly what his brother had been up to. I sent him a mental message to talk to me in my dreams tonight. I was pretty sure he’d grant my request.

Chapter 3

    I was in quite the pensive mood when I left Adam’s place. I could clearly see that the current housing arrangements weren’t optimal, but I felt no more inclined to offer Saul my spare room than I had before. I like to think I’m a pretty decent human