Void Domain, Book 10 полностью

“I have no such plans beyond occasional experimentation. It may be interesting to see if we could cause a reverse of their consumption ability. Perhaps injecting a subject with enigma blood and seeing if they turn into an enigma, though I doubt they will. In fact, your…” he trailed off, face curling into a sneer. “Your Elysium Order friend—who, I might add, has been rushing in here day in and day out, begging for me to open the cells so she might collect some blood samples or perform some tests using that white magic of hers like some kind of menace—believes that the blood is barely related to the enigmas.”

Eva waited for a moment, but Devon didn’t elaborate any further. With a sage nod of her head, she said, “I might know what she means. When I tried to use my blood magic on them, it barely reacted. Explosions didn’t explode so much as they fizzled and controlling it felt sluggish.”

At least, that was true as far as she could remember. She had really only tried the one time in Hell. The same time that she had her foot bitten off. That it didn’t work as well as even her own diluted human blood was about all she really recalled.

“No problems keeping them contained?”

“Not with these.” He thumbed his tentacle over his shoulder back towards the hellhound-enigma. “That thing was a little trouble at first, but I think we got it under control.”

“Good. I don’t want to stop by one day only to find everyone eaten and the prison overrun with enigmas.”

Devon snorted but didn’t get a chance to respond. Loud clicks of high heels against the stone floor echoed up the hallway. Catherine—wearing tight-fitting pants and an almost translucent shirt, which were the first clothes that Eva had really seen her wear since she took up residence at the prison—stopped just to the side of Devon. Not behind him nor in front of him. Though, Eva did note Devon stiffening his back, glancing at the succubus out of the corner of his narrowed eyes.

While he instantly snapped to a guarded stance, Catherine barely took notice of him. She didn’t so much as glance in his direction, just stopping at his side with a hand on her hip.

“Hello, Eva. I’ve been trying to teach the demonoid one to speak,” she said with a sad shake of her head. “I had hoped that we might be able to acquire first hand information directly from an enigma. With a proper mouth and vocal cords, it should be able to speak. However, it might not have the brain capacity to vocalize any coherent thoughts.”

“You’ve only had it for a few days. Were you expecting instant results? Learning a new language takes months of dedicated study.”

“For a human,” Catherine scoffed. “Demons have innate skills with language. I can speak to you as easily as I can speak to someone on the opposite side of this planet. The enigma clearly consumed demons. A hellhound and another demon with wings. While a number of demons possess wings, I concur with your initial suggestion that it ate a succubus. But while it took on physical traits, it did not utter a single intelligent word during my attempts. Neither does it appear to possess any graceful traits common to succubi.”

Humming in thought, Eva moved around the two. Approaching the enigma’s cell, she could hear noise. Not the high-pitched whine into a cannon explosion, but the screech of twisting metal. It stopped the moment Eva moved in front of the cell door. The creature within, which had been right up near the bars, flipped over its own back in an attempt to scramble back behind the bed frame.

Except for one little problem. The bed frame had been crushed and thrown to one corner of the room. Likely what the noise had been as soon as they left. The more recent noise had come from the broken bar on the cell door. Another inch was missing from the top. Teeth marks lined the top.

As soon as Devon saw it, he started scowling.

But Eva wasn’t too concerned. Devon and Catherine would figure out how to properly keep it contained. She focused on the creature’s back. Its wings, specifically. With it having further damaged the bed frame, it couldn’t even hide properly. However, Eva couldn’t tell the difference between the enigma’s wings and Catherine’s wings. Both were almost identical to the wings of a bat. Leathery and with a little claw poking out right at the midpoint.

The only real difference was the angle. Catherine’s wings perched behind her back with the clawed tip pointed high above her head. When spread, the ends pointed outwards almost perfectly perpendicular to the rest of her body. The enigma’s wings, if it were standing upright, would have been pointing down towards the ground.

“A lot of demons have bat-like wings, don’t they? Is it possible it ate something else?”

“Demon-like wings, Eva,” Catherine said with an air of haughtiness. “Bats have demon-like wings. In fact, there is a theory that bats are actually demons—or were once upon a time—that simply found their way to earth and bred out of control.”

“But they don’t have black blood, do they?”