Page 11 of Craving Demons

Everything was her pleasure. That was Harmonia for you.

“Shall I show you out?” I asked Ramsey. My tone made it very clear I hoped he’d leave. Harmonia was one of the few here with whom he hadn’t slept, and I’d prefer if he didn’t try now.

“Yeah, sure. Harmonia, it’s always an amazing pleasure to see you,” Ramsey said, and his words oozed with blatant lust.

She smiled at him. “And you, Master Ramses.”

“Ramsey, call me Ramsey.”

“As you wish, Master Ramsey. I bid you both a good day.”

I followed Ramsey out.

“One of these days I’ll win her,” he breathed as I closed the door to her office behind me.

“Already forgetting about the silver-haired woman?”

“Hell no!” He gave that sly grin of his. “I see no reason I can’t have both.”

Of course.

I sighed as I escorted him back to the lounge. He left me there, heading to the bar. I had hoped he’d leave, but alas, that wasn’t to be. I needed some fresh air after dealing with that man, so I went out onto the high terrace and leaned on the railing, once again looking out over the park.

I couldn’t get too mad at Ramsey. Ihadspent a few centuries where my “conquests” had been women, not animals or businesses. But I’d gotten over my lust by the end of the seventeenth century. Yet Ramsey was a younger daemon, only about three thousand years old, and probably still feeling the pull of his hormones.

I looked out over the city and idly wondered if there was anything in this vast world that could soothe my aching avarice. The hunt and animals had worked for a while. Women had worked for a while. Business had worked for a while. I’d tried my hand at a few other types of acquisitions and conquests, but more and more I was finding nothing worked. I had this growing emptiness inside me that yearned to be filled with the object of my desires.

But I had no clue what it was I desired anymore.

And I needed to find something before this gnawing hollowness consumed me entirely.

FEN

“Hey Boss, got a tough one here!”

I heard Corey’s voice and looked up from the paperwork I’d been going over. The foreman was waving me over, pointing at a concrete wall.

I sighed. My guys wanted another show, but I didn’t mind. The beast-wolf within me wanted to destroy something.

I put down the papers and strolled over to Corey and a few others.

My crew was demolishing two floors of a building on East 37th Street. I didn’t know what had been here before but knew they’d be putting in some open-concept office space and we were meant to tear it back to just the support pillars.

Usually, that would have been an easy job, but for some reason, the previous owners — or someone long in the past — had added a few concrete walls to the space, thick and well-reinforced. And while my demolition crew were all strong men, they were still only human and a thick concrete wall like that would take them a bit of time to bring down.

But for me…

“What do you think, Fen?” Corey, the foreman, asked motioning to the wall. “They must have had a vault here or something. The door’s gone, but the rest is two-foot-thick concrete and steel. You wanna give it a go?”

I did.

I really did.

And I didn’t much care that I’d be flaunting my daemon abilities in front of these guys. They loved it. I wasn’t sure what it was with strong men admiring even stronger men, but these gruff construction workers loved to see me sweat and break stuff.

“Yeah, sure, I was getting a bit bored anyway,” I said and picked up a sledgehammer in each hand.

Someone gasped. Must be a new guy.