by Jus Accardo
“The Tracker is actually quite short where I am from. The average height—”
I held my hand out to stop it. “Honestly? Don’t care.”
With a nod, Azi nudged me out of the way and positioned Jax’s body in front of the door. It knocked once and, without giving her a chance to answer, gripped the knob and twisted. Hard. The hardware broke in several pieces and clattered to the floor at our feet.
Azi turned to me, and the smallest hint of a smile spread across Jax’s lips. “The door is open.”
I pushed past and gently nudged my way inside. “Savannah?” A single step confirmed the apartment wasn’t quite as bad as the outside. The walls were pristine white, and the floor, blanketed in thick beige carpet, was in good condition. The entry spilled into a tiny living room area with only a small couch and an antique looking end table. There was no television. “We just need to talk to you for a sec,” I tried again. Still nothing.
“This is foolish and wastes time.” Azi knocked me aside and stormed toward the doorway on the other side of the room. The demon made it halfway across before stopping, mid-stride, and turning back to me. “We are too late.”
“Too late?” No. That wasn’t possible. Her heartbeat—only a minute before—
Without responding, the demon started forward again, but someone stepped into its path.
“I’m warning you,” Savannah said. She eyed me, then settled a menacing gaze on Azi. “I don’t know what the hell you two are doing in my house—or how you even found me—but you saw what I did to that thing. If you come at me, I’ll do the same to you.”
Azi laughed and took a step closer. “No. You won’t.”
Savannah spread her legs a little wider and squared her shoulders. “Really? You don’t think so? Then you’re either suicidal or delusional. Never fuck with an all-powerful—”
Azi laughed again, this time louder. “All-powerful?” It sucked in a deep breath. “You’re barely able to conjure a simple curse.”
She blinked, and some of the fierceness drained from her expression. “You’re wr—”
Jax’s arm lashed out, grabbed the witch by a handful of her shirt, and yanked her downward just seconds before a carnivus soared over their heads. She screamed in surprise and struggled against his hold until she caught sight of her new guest. That’s when I understood what the demon had meant by too late.
They’d found us.
The beast landed between Azi and me. With a single snap of its imposing jaws in my direction, it pivoted and charged the other way, directly at Savannah. Azi let out a guttural growl and hefted the girl roughly from the line of fire. She stumbled across the floor and crashed into the small end table just as the carnivus touched down at the demon’s feet.
As Azi tangled with the thing, I raced for Savannah. “You have to listen to me.” I dragged her off the floor. She wasn’t looking at me, her attention glued to the colossal dog-like creature trying to gnaw on Jax’s body a few feet away. I snapped my fingers in front of her face. “Focus!”
“What the hell is that?” Her voice wobbled.
“That’s something that would love nothing more than to use your bones as chew toys. That’s why we’re here. We’re trying to help you.”
That time she looked at me, and her expression morphed from terrified to suspicious. “Help me against what?”
“You and I are kind of in the same boat right now. Hell is itching—”
“Samantha Merrick!” The carnivus that had attacked Azi moments ago was down, but it was no longer the only uninvited guest at this little party. The Tracker—or, rather, Trackers since there were now two—had appeared in the doorway. They took a step forward, into the room, eyes trained on the witch. Azi positioned Jax’s body between them and us and roared, “Get out!”
Savannah cursed. “More? There are more of those things?” Before I realized what she was doing, before I could stop her, she stepped around me and extended both arms. Something like static electricity filled the air, and a burst of light erupted from the tips of her fingers, a trail of it seamlessly skating around Jax’s body and zeroing in on each Tracker. The moment the light touched them, they collapsed, like someone had flipped their off switch and shut them down.
“Stupid human!” Azi roared so loud that the walls quaked. “What have you done?”
“Took care of the problem—feel free to thank me now.”
The demon reached out and, glaring at the girl, dragged me away from her. “You can’t kill a Tracker like that. All you’ve succeeded in doing is pissing it off and multiplying our troubles.”
The girl backed away a single step. Her gaze fell from us to the bodies of the two Trackers on the other side of the room. As we watched, their fingers began to twitch. “Did that thing—”
Azi snorted and grabbed the girl’s wrist. Watching in horror as the Tracker started to split down the middle, she allowed the demon to drag her to the doorway. “When you fail to kill a Tracker, it becomes two. Thanks to your carelessness, we now have four Trackers to contend with.”
Chapter Thirteen
Azirak/Jax
As soon as we made it out of the apartment building, the girl jerked out of Azi’s grip. The demon was furious about what she’d done to the Tracker. It’d been concerned about the carnivi tracking us down and getting in the way, but this was an entirely new level of bad. Now instead of two, we would have four on our asses. One was hard enough to deal with. “We need to leave this place quickly. Before they reassemble.”
The girl straightened and squared her shoulders, putting on an air of confidence that she couldn’t quite sell. “Good luck and all that, then.”
“You misunderstand,” Azi said. It moved my body to block her escape. “You’ll be coming with us.”
Why don’t you drag her to the car by her hair and stuff her in the trunk? Asshole. Let Sam handle this.
She looked from me to Sam, then back again. “That so?”
Azi wasn’t concerned. It was confidant she was coming with us—one way or another. “It is, witch.”
“I already told you,” Sam said, eying me with an obvious irritation that Azi found alluring, “we’re here to help.” She jabbed a finger at the building, then turned it on the girl. “Those things in there are literally from hell.”
Savannah slapped Sam’s hand away. “You have no idea what I’m capable of. Get in my way and you’ll find out.”
The demon took a menacing step toward her, and the corner of my mouth lifted with a wicked grin. It was angry that she’d struck Sam, but more than that, it found her bravado amusing. “I know exactly what you are, but unfortunately for you, you don’t know what I am.”
She tensed. Azi could sense the shift in her. She was still confident she’d be able to walk away, but there was caution now. She was a powerful witch, but there was something off about her energy. Something blocking the full force of it. “And what is that?”
“Please,” Sam said, pushing my body out of the way. Azi made a sound like a growl, but she ignored it. “We just need to talk to you, and this isn’t a safe place to do it. Trust me, there will be more of these things coming.”
The girl grimaced, and a cloud of gray rose from her shoulders. She scanned the area as though expecting to see the armies of hell converging on us. “More of them?”
“More of many things,” Azi supplied. It took in her fear, let it spread through me, and let out a contented sigh.
She glanced back at the building again, probably weighing her options. There was one of her and two of us. Her magic—what little Azi sensed—might even the odds, but she wasn’t quite as confident as she’d been.
With a sigh she said, “I know a place that should be safe—but don’t get any ideas. I don’t know what it is you want—or are—but you don’t wanna fuck with me.”
…
Savannah, who’d told us to call her Van, brought us to the Magic Bean, a small coffee house about twenty minutes from her apartment building. Sam
couldn’t sense it like Azi could—like I could—but this was no ordinary coffee joint. There was power within these walls. Strong magic.
Don’t do anything to get us killed, please.
Sam wrapped both hands tighter around her coffee cup and glanced around nervously. Her eyes kept going back to the door. “I’m not sure you understand the meaning of the word safe.”
Van simply chuckled. “Trust me, this place is safe. Nothing would dare touch us here.”
Sam wasn’t convinced. She scanned the room, eyebrows high, and shook her head. “And why is that?”
“Powerful magic guards the building. Intentions to harm cannot enter.”
“So if one of those things tried to walk through the door, it would, what, get vaporized?”
“Nah. It’s nothing that dramatic. Those things could walk in the front door, but the second one tried anything violent in nature, it would be incapacitated.”
Sam looked suspicious and I couldn’t blame her. I could think of a million methods of incapacitation right off the top of my head. “Incapacitated, how?”
Van shrugged and took a pull from her cup. “Beats me. No one has ever been stupid enough to test it.”
Sam wanted to argue—her eyes were wide and she was tapping her pinkie against the edge of the table—but she sighed. “We’re looking for something called the Brim Stone.”
“Sorry.” Van looked from Sam to me and shrugged. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
The demon tensed. I felt my fingers ball tightly and the unmistakable itch in my limbs as my body was about to pounce. She was lying.
Just fucking chill. Give Sam a chance.
I didn’t think it would listen, but slowly the tension eased from my body.
“Look,” Sam continued. She shot an uneasy glance my way before continuing. “You don’t know us from a hole in the wall—”
“Even though we came to save your life,” Azi added.
Van’s smile never wavered. “Did you? And how exactly, I have to wonder, did you know it was in danger in the first place?”
“The Brim Stone, the thing you’ve never heard of? We aren’t the only ones looking for it. There are some…people…who want it. Badly. They know you have it, and they’re coming for you.”
She picked up her cup, totally unconcerned by Sam’s revelation, and took a long pull. “And by people, I assume you mean demons.”
My back hit the chair, and Azi picked up the fork in front of me. The demon turned it over several times and, while contemplating several unique ways it could use the utensil to get the information we needed, it said, “You don’t seem surprised.”
Van snorted. She eyed the silverware in my hand with an air of caution, then set her cup on the table. “You mean by the whole demon thing? Oh, buddy, I’ve seen much worse.” She leaned forward, elbows planted on the table. “I’ve been through worse.”
Azi matched her and leaned forward as well. She was only partially lying. The girl had seen hard times. But demons? These had been her first. Still, Azi decided to go with it. “Then perhaps you haven’t met the right demon.”
A shrill whistle cut the air, and Sam dragged my body away from the table and shoved it back in the chair. “This isn’t a contest.” She refocused on Van. “And it’s not a game. These things will kill you—and they won’t make it quick.”
“They can try,” she said with a gleam of challenge in her eyes. “My own sister tried to cut me down to gain my magic. She failed. They will, too.”
While Azi admired her resolve—and given my history with Chase, the demon found it almost ironic that the person who had stolen its stone was a victim of attempted sororicide—I wanted to choke the bitch. We didn’t have time for this shit.
This is getting old.
Sam sighed. “It sucks that something like that happened to you, and I’m really sorry, but you can’t compare a human and demon.”
“My sister wasn’t a human.”
“Witch,” Sam corrected with another sigh. She was losing her patience, reverting back to tapping the side of the cup. “Whatever. My point is—”
Van slammed her hand against the table, and Sam jumped. The girl eyed her with defiance. “She wasn’t a witch, either.”
“Well, if she wasn’t a witch, then what the hell was she?” Red seeped into the air around Sam’s shoulders. She’d stopped tapping her pinkie, and was now pressing the nail into the tip of her thumb. Much harder and she’d break the skin. It was something she’d started doing since Azi had taken over, a nervous tick to combat the frustration she felt. “A Smurf?”
No answer.
“Well?” Sam snapped.
“My sister was a goddamned demon,” she fired back, gripping the edge of the table until her knuckles went white.
You’ve gotta be shitting me…
Azi made a sound, so strange that it was almost hard to believe it’d come from my body, and a rush of images assaulted me, all of the same voluptuous, raven-haired woman.
“Sadie,” it said, keeping my voice low. I hated that despite being the reason—unregretfully—that the demoness was dead, I felt a profound sense of loss, a grief so overwhelming that it nearly suffocated me. It just proved that my ties to the demon went deeper than I could have ever imagined. “Your sibling was Sadie Gray.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sam
Van watched Jax’s face for a long moment, then narrowed her eyes. She tried to be subtle, but I caught her reaching into her pocket for something. I couldn’t see what it was, but odds were it wasn’t a pack of gum. “You know my sister?”
“Knew,” I said. Was it my fault that the word came out a little cheerier than it should? The bitch had caused me nothing but trouble—and that was all before I found out she thought she had some freaky demoniac claim on the guy I loved. “Sadie is dead. A few weeks ago.”
Some of the tension on Van’s shoulders eased, and she set her hand back on the table. “You’ll have to excuse my lack of tears. She and I weren’t BFFs. How’d it happen?”
“My human killed her,” Azi said. I wasn’t sure if she could hear it, but there was poison in Jax’s voice. Apparently Malphi’s death was still a sore spot.
“Your human killed her,” she repeated. “Is that…” She glanced back to me, brows drawn, and cocked her head. “Is that code for something?”
A lump formed and caught in my throat, and I had to swallow it back before I could push the words past my lips. I’d been living with this reality, but talking about it, saying the whole thing out loud, was an entirely different thing. “It’s a long, complicated story. My boyfriend, Jax, killed your sister to save my life. The demon Azirak locked him away as punishment.”
Van turned and leaned a little closer to Jax, squinting like she was trying to see inside his head. “Locked him away? Like, in a cage?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Azi replied. It tapped Jax’s head. “I have taken control of our body.”
“As in you’re a demon?” Azi nodded and Van looked dizzy. She leaned back in her chair. “And as a demon, you don’t want to cause her pain, right?”
“Of course not,” it said, annoyed. “I am fond of her.”
“Fond of her…”
“She makes this body feel good.”
Van’s eyes widened, and her mouth fell open. She jabbed a finger at me. “Are you—do you screw the demon?” She threw herself forward on the table, and her expression went from horrified to wickedly curious. “What is it like?”
White-hot embarrassment washed over me, and I couldn’t help glancing around the room to see if anyone had heard her. The café was mostly empty though, thank God, except for two women seated at the counter, talking quietly.
“I do not screw the demon,” I whispered and slapped the table for emphasis. “That’s—”
“We consummated once,” Azi interjected. The deadpan expression on Jax’s face, along with the word consummated, was almost enough to make my head implode. My face had to be
a striking shade of red by this point.
My life had veered from deadly to surreal all in the span of an hour. I sighed. What the hell was the point? “Not like it sounds, but I guess, technically, yes. I did. But so we’re clear, the demon wasn’t invited. It just happened to be there, and there were no locks on the doors if you get what I’m saying.”
Van seemed to be enjoying this far too much. There was curiosity in her eyes and wonder in her expression. “So the demon lived inside your boyfriend, then took over when he pissed it off?”
I leaned back. “About sums it up. But really, we’re getting way off topic here. The Brim Stone…?”
Van was thoughtful. She sat back in her chair again, folded her arms, and watched Azi for a moment before shrugging slightly. “Let’s assume I had this Brim Stone. Why do you want it?”
“Because it belongs to me,” the demon said. There was menace in its tone, and if I had to guess, I’d say that what little patience Azi had when we started out was nearly gone. “And I want it back.”
I held up my hand and turned back to Van. “How about we start at the beginning. You said Sadie tried to kill you. Obviously she didn’t succeed, but how did you end up with the stone in the first place?”
Van narrowed her eyes. “You should know that I don’t have it. The stone. It’s too damn dangerous.”
I snuck a peek at Azi through the curtain of my hair, then focused on Van. I had to move this along. “We know. The problem is, what you have is only half the stone. The other—”
“You’re not slipping me intel I don’t already know. I’m the one who broke the damn thing to begin with.”
“Why break it?” Azi curled Jax’s fists tight and leaned forward. “If you stole it, then you must have understood its power. Why not take the entire thing?”
“I didn’t have much time—or choice. Sadie tried to kill me with that stone.”
“How?” Azi was losing its patience—and so was I.
Van surveyed the room. Her gaze snagged on the two women at the counter for a moment before returning to us. “I didn’t know what she was. Not at first. In fact, we grew up really close. But, I always knew Sadie was resentful. She was the first Gray in centuries to be born without her magic. It made her bitter, and as she got older, it only got worse and worse. When I was sixteen, she told me she’d found a way to tap into our line. To summon the power that should have been her birthright.”
