Pharon's Demon by Anne Marsh Read Free Book Online

excellent demoness.
“Brothers,” she spat, looking at Mkhai, clearly willing him to
understand. “You can’t kill them.”
    He sighed. Even he knew that that would have
been the simpler course. Who wanted their sister to mate with a
demon?
    There was a sharp cough. Bennu’s brothers
looked away, a dark flush crawling over their respective collars.
“Lost something, Bennu,” one of them muttered.
    “Clothes,” the second added. The third was
too busy laughing. Bennu smacked him as she pulled on the blacksuit
she’d abandoned on the sand.
    “Mkhai,” she said, “Meet my brother. Anhur,
Kneph and Kontar.”
     
    ***
     
    Apparently, fetching a demon from the
underworld was not necessarily grounds for being dismissed from the
Agency, nor did it count as too much of a black mark against her
piracy record. Amazing.
    “The demons mentioned a vortex.” She shot an
inquiring look at Mkhai. He stopped examining the console and
shrugged uncomfortably.
    “It is possible,” he admitted, “that Pharon
will be able to send me back to the vortex. He has sent others when
they displeased him.”
    “ Will he be displeased?” Anhur leaned
back in his chair and stared at the demon.
    Mkhai grimaced. “Most likely. We—his
demons—are charged with protecting his mines. We are not permitted
to leave. I have not only done so, but I have allowed a known thief
to escape and am now consorting with her. It is worth the
risk.”
    Anhur looked at Kontar and Kneph. “There must
be a way to prevent his return.”
    “Research,” Kontar said.
    Kneph nodded slowly. “If Research can’t
answer this question, then it’s time we fired the lot of them
anyway.”
    “What is this research?” Mkhai asked.
    Bennu explained, with Kneph adding pithy
asides as he felt warranted. Apparently, Bennu noted, Kneph had
either attempted working his charms on the Researchers or had
pursued dating opportunities within the organization—neither of
which had worked out. The Researchers had handed him his ass.
Interesting. She made a mental note to explore that happy little
event at a later date—when she knew that her demon was safe from
immediate disintegration in a painful but powerful vortex. She did
have her priorities, after all, and torturing her brother would
have to wait.
    “Research,” she said, “gathers intel.
Intelligence,” she elaborated.
    “Know-it-alls,” Kneph muttered. The other
brothers nodded their heads in chorus.
    “It’s their job to learn anything and
everything they can about possible targets in the various galaxies
that we work.”
    “They tell you what to steal.” Mkhai eyes
darkened. Really, his law-abiding streak was going to pose
difficulties.
    She grimaced. “Think of it as puzzles,
Mkhai.”
    “Treasure hunting,” piped up Kontar. “We’re
looking for unappreciated objects and relocating them to a
more—appreciative—location.” He smiled with legendary charm.
    Mkhai shook his head, unimpressed.
“Theft.”
    “Whatever.” Bennu plowed ahead. She’d work on
softening up her demon later. “Our recovery operations—theft,” she
said hastily, catching Mkhai’s dark look, “involves less brute
force and more puzzle-solving than the Agency leads the public to
believe. Most of the clues are riddled out in the Agency’s
laboratories, by their hired squads of computer geeks and
researchers. Research,” she summed up.
    “Yeah, they tell us where to go and how,”
Kontar said.
    “Kind of like traffic cops,” Anhur
muttered.
    Kneph added something uncomplimentary and
highly pornographic under his breath. His brothers arranged their
faces into sympathetic portraits.
    “So we ask these—traffic cops—for what?” for
the first time since he had plucked her from the rope in the
mineshaft, Mkhai looked unsure of himself.
    “For whatever it takes to keep you here, with
us, rather than being pulled back into that vortex and dismantled
into demon parts.”
    Shock flitted across his face. “They can