Series Firsts Box Set

by Laken Cane

  And I wasn’t the only one affected by the demon’s influence and the magic of the trap. Amias crumbled, hitting the ground with a thud, his fingers clawing at the air, his eyes wide.

  He reached for me. “Trinity…”

  We were all pulled toward the demon and that circle of power.

  The vampire master, bleeding from his nose, his mouth, and his eyes, began to slide across the ground toward the demon trap.

  Somewhere behind the trees where I’d hidden her, Derry screamed. The supernaturals with me stumbled, milling around, confused.

  Even Shane dropped his shotgun and fell to his knees. Rhys stumbled back and tried to pull his gun, but his hands wouldn’t obey him. Clayton, closest to the demon trap—and to the demon—shook his head, hard, and took a halfhearted, slow swipe at the blood pouring from his eyes.

  I saw everything. I felt everything.

  The night was too bright, the darkness too heavy, the fear too vivid, the end too near. And the need was too, too fucking much. Lust battered me, claimed me, controlled me.

  And Joseph faltered beneath the reality of the situation. His face paled, and his eyes widened behind the crack lenses. He shook his head. “What is this?” he asked. “What is this?”

  Only Miriam, for whatever reason, remained unaffected by the demon magic swirling through the air. She screeched and ran at Clayton, her switchblades in her hands. “Your fault,” she screamed and began to slash at the man she hated.

  Blood flew, ribbons of red blood so thick they hung in the air before floating slowly toward the incubus, who grabbed them and shoveled them into his wide-open mouth.

  Clayton, his arms raised against Miriam’s blades, fell across the invisible lines of the trap. He fell into the circle with the demon.

  The incubus did not hesitate. He grabbed Clayton by the back of his head and slammed his bloody, open mouth against Clayton’s, sealing them together.

  He shoved himself into Clayton. He possessed him.

  Joseph crumbled, sobbing, and then began to crawl away.

  I let him go. I hadn’t the strength to do otherwise, and anyway, it was too late for him to help.

  Seth Damon’s physical form fell to the ground and began to change.

  Devoid of his spirit and its glamour, his body was twisted and deformed, burning and red, with long, white horns and sharp, curved fingernails. Between his legs hung a swollen, jutting appendage that lay on an enormous, bloated sac.

  Hooves ended his legs, and a thick tail twisted around his body. Smoke drifted from his mouth and rose lazily into the softly lightening sky.

  As the magic dissipated, we all turned to stare at each other, shocked and dazed. Derry raced from the thick trees and I holstered Silverlight before catching the girl in my bloody arms.

  Amias, his body beginning to burn with the imminent arrival of dawn, stumbled away. I hoped the sun would kill him before he found a place to hide, but the hope was halfhearted and meek.

  I wanted to want his death more than I actually wanted his death. And that was a secret I would carry to my grave.

  Too bad I couldn’t hide that fact from myself.

  The trap was no more.

  Clayton walked slowly from the circle, his hands to his face. The wounds Miriam had given him were visible through the tatters of his shirt, but they began to heal even as I caught sight of them.

  Miriam threw herself at him. She dug her fingernails into his flesh and tried to rip it from his bones, her face a mask of agony.

  “On your knees,” she screamed. “Get on your fucking knees!” She pulled one of her switchblades in such a hurry she dropped it, so she reached for the other one. She flicked it open and sliced it across his abdomen. “On your knees, Golem!”

  Clayton stared down at her, motionless, and his stare was not quite his own…or maybe not just his own. There was someone else in there with him.

  “Fuck you,” Miriam whispered, and began hacking at him with her knife. “Fuck you.”

  He took her by the throat and she dropped the blade as she grabbed his hands, clawing, gagging, her face filling with blood.

  “No more,” he said.

  I set Derry away from me and ran toward them. “Clayton, no,” I cried. “Please. Let her go.”

  He turned his head to look at me. He said nothing, but finally, he opened his hand and let Miriam fall to the ground. She lay there, unable even to cry.

  She’d brought Clayton back from the land of the dead, had tormented and enslaved him, had never imagined she might lose him. That she might give him the gift of a second chance at life and freedom while her father rotted in the ground.

  “I fucked it up,” she murmured, then fell into silence as Rhys lifted her to her feet.

  Clayton watched me with a stare so…hungry, so hawkish, that I could not look away. There was a battle going on behind those eyes.

  A battle between Clayton and the incubus with whom he now shared his body. The tradeoff was freedom from Miriam.

  I wondered if it would be worth it.

  And I was nearly certain it would be.

  Rhys walked Miriam to me. “We need to get the demon’s body to the captain and calm the city the fuck down.”

  I finally managed to look away from Clayton, and I nodded. “Yes.”

  “And save my dad,” Derry begged. “Please save my dad.”

  “I’ll get the body.” Clayton turned toward the dead demon corpse on the ground.

  Shane glanced at him, then leaned forward and put his lips against my ear.

  I jerked, because I knew what he would say, and I did not want to hear it.

  “Kill him, Trinity. Pull your sword and kill the motherfucker.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I looked from him to Clayton and finally, I lifted my chin and shook my head. “No. Clayton will control the incubus. If there comes a day when he can’t, we’ll revisit this conversation. Right now, we’re leaving him alone.”

  And I stared him down.

  He shrugged. “We’ll see how it goes.”

  “Everybody okay?” Rhys asked.

  No one appeared to be injured too badly—Clayton had been the hardest hit, in more ways than one, but an apparent perk of having a demon inside you was the healing ability it brought along.

  “Load the body into my truck,” Shane told Clayton. “I’ll take it in and test the waters.”

  “We will take it in,” I said. “It’s not safe for the rest of you. We’ll report back after we’ve given the demon’s body to Crawford.”

  “I have things to do,” Rhys said. “You’ll let me know how it goes with the captain.”

  “Fine,” I muttered. “Clayton, you should—” But Clayton was already halfway back to our waiting vehicles, and I had no doubt that after he’d dumped the body into the back of Shane’s truck, he’d disappear.

  None of the supernats were going to hide in the woods while Shane and I tried to sort things out. I blew out a slow breath, suddenly exhausted.

  “What about Derry?” I asked. “She isn’t safe in the city.”

  “I want to see my dad.” Derry crossed her arms and leveled a narrow-eyed frown at me. Her resemblance to her father was unmistakable.

  “No, sweetie.” Miriam took her arm. “You and I will wait out the storm together.”

  “Where?” I asked her. “Will you wait here?”

  She refused to look at me, and I wasn’t sure why. “No. I have a safe place prepared. Rhys will drop us there.”

  “Come on, then,” Rhys said. “Let’s get you two out of here.”

  I heard him asking, as they walked away, “Do you have any food in your safe place?”

  “Of course I do.” And maybe there was a hint of a smile in her voice. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part.

  Who would Miriam be without the extension of Clayton? I wasn’t sure even she knew the answer to that. And I understood that she was grieving the loss.

  “Supernaturals are complica
ted,” I murmured.

  Shane jogged away. “Come on, baby hunter.”

  “Really?” I hurried to catch up with him. “Really?”

  “What?” he asked, all innocence.

  “I think I’ve proven myself.”

  He only grinned.

  “Asshole,” I muttered, and his grin widened.

  We stopped for coffee and a couple of bags of breakfast, despite the fact that a corpse lay in the back of the truck. The day ahead would be a long, hard one, and we’d need all the fortification we could get.

  The city was creepily silent in the early morning light, and I wondered how many cops patrolled Bay Town, keeping the remaining supernaturals inside its borders.

  I had no doubt that some of the supernats would be injured and in special holding cells—Angus, for one—and some of them would likely be in the morgue. When the day was over, if things went well and the supernaturals were cleared of the murders, their doctor was going to be one busy guy.

  I couldn’t let myself think that Angus might have been killed.

  I called Captain Crawford as Shane drove us toward the police department, and finally, he answered.

  His voice was gruff and hoarse with exhaustion. “Where have you been, Sinclair?”

  “I’ve been with my friends killing the demon responsible for the murders,” I said. “I’m in the city now with the body. Is it safe?”

  “I’ll see that it is. Come to the back.”

  When we arrived at the police station, Shane dragged the canvas-wrapped body from the back of the truck, then threw it over his shoulder. The captain and three of his men had walked out of the building when we arrived and stood silently watching.

  The fact that the policemen’s fingers lingered near their guns wasn’t lost on me. They circled us and herded us into the station, then led us to an interrogation room. Shane dropped the body to the table, and finally, when no one moved to unwrap it, he took out a blade and slit the tarp up the middle.

  He pulled back the edges and as one, the cops—even the captain—took a quick step back.

  “Holy shit,” one of them murmured. “That’s…”

  “That’s a demon,” I said when he fell into silence. “He’s the one responsible for the women’s deaths. Not the supernaturals. A demon. This demon.”

  Shane pulled something from his coat pocket and placed it on top of the demon’s naked, twisted body. “The capture was recorded.”

  I’d completely forgotten about the camera. And the exorcist. The first was extremely important. The second, not so much.

  But Clayton.

  They’d see the incubus crawling into him. Possessing him.

  That would not be good for Clayton.

  Shane’s eyes were blank when he met my glare. Yeah, he’d known. He believed Clayton should die, just as the exorcist would have, to kill the demon.

  Maybe I believed it too, but I’d be damned if I let it happen. At least not until we had proof that the incubus was going to be trouble.

  He was trapped inside Clayton’s body, and Clayton had strengths I doubt any of us were aware of. He could control the incubus. He could beat it into submission.

  He could.

  So I made a preemptive strike. “One of the supernaturals took the demon’s spirit inside him.”

  “He ate it?” one of the cops asked, after a moment of confused silence.

  I nodded. “He devoured it. The situation is handled.” I looked at Shane. “And the incubus is dead.”

  The captain sighed and rubbed his face. “I’ll call in the team. They’ll go over the tape, the body, and the facts. It’ll be a long road, but things will calm down. Bay Town will survive this.”

  “I just hope the ones who live there will,” I said. “Captain, can I—”

  “I’ll let you see him, but you can’t take him home, Trinity. He put three of my men in intensive care.”

  “They attacked him,” I said. “He was defending his daughter.”

  He relented, but only a little. “A doctor has been in to see him. That’s all I can do.”

  “He’s a supernatural freak who nearly killed three of us,” one of the cops said. “He’s lucky we brought him in alive.”

  “You’re lucky I don’t suspend you for a year for what you did to him,” the captain said, glaring. “Keep your mouth shut or leave the room.”

  I put my hand to my chest. “Take me to him, Captain,” I whispered. But I wasn’t really sure I wanted to see him.

  I couldn’t see a way out for Angus. Not even a claim of self-defense would get him out the hole into which he’d so brutally flung himself. Supernaturals didn’t attack humans, and they especially didn’t attack human police.

  We’d lost him.

  The captain really had tried to make things a bit easier on Angus. He’d put him in a private cell on the mostly unused top floor instead of the reinforced and guarded basement cells in which supernaturals were normally thrown.

  Human criminals had the second floor which consisted of roomy pods instead of cells, and they were a hell of a lot more comfortable than what the supernats got in the basement.

  Angus’s cell contained only a cot and a toilet. I wrapped my fingers around the cold, grimy bars as I waited for the cop to open the door.

  When it clanged, I expected Angus to sit up and glare at all of us.

  He didn’t move.

  “Angus,” I whispered, and slipped to his side. “Oh, my God, Angus.”

  “That’s fucked-up,” Shane said, glaring at the captain.

  “I don’t disagree,” Crawford said. “I don’t disagree at all.”

  Despite his massive injuries and his unconscious state, they’d fastened a thick cuff around his right ankle. A chain that looked like it’d be too heavy for me to lift snaked from the cuff to an iron post embedded in the floor.

  Three cops milled around the bed, electroshock batons in hand, as though the thing on the cot might miraculously rise and take them all out.

  Oh, if only.

  If only.

  I turned and sucker punched the cop closest to me. The blood from his shattered nose sprayed my face, mixing with the tears that ran from my eyes in a cold, steady stream.

  He yelled as he slammed back against the brick wall, then lifted his baton and started toward me.

  “You touch her,” Shane said, his voice as icy as my tears, “and I will kill you.”

  The cop wiped the blood from his face and looked at his captain.

  “Get out,” Crawford told him. “All of you, get out.”

  The captain waited until they were gone, then gestured at Angus. “I’m sorry,” he said, simply, then followed his men from the cell. He hesitated at the doorway. “If anything will get him off for attempted murder of a human, that will.”

  “Always good to look at the bright side,” Shane growled.

  I sat down beside Angus, gingerly, unable to breathe past the pain in my chest. I wanted to look away, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. “We should’ve stayed to help him.”

  “Then we’d be dead,” Shane said. “We’re not like him. We can’t take damage like that and live through it.”

  “I’m afraid he can’t, either,” I whispered.

  Yeah, he was that bad. That beaten, burned, and broken.

  He was that bad, and the humans were that angry. That afraid.

  “What will Bay Town do without Angus?” Shane asked.

  I swallowed my thick tears. “I don’t know. I don’t know what any of us will do without him.”

  “Maybe Miriam can—”

  “No.” I wiped my eyes. “You don’t bring back the ones you love. And he’s not dying. Don’t say that again.”

  He pulled his phone from his pocket.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Their doctor.”

  I nodded. “Put him on speaker.”

  And then I looked, really looked, at Angus Stark. Or what was left of him.

  They’d beaten hi
m so badly he resembled a huge cut of raw, bloody meat. I was pretty sure that after they’d brought him in, most of the cops had taken turns abusing him some more.

  It was ugly. So very ugly.

  I’d never seen someone so brutalized.

  The doctor finally came on the line.

  “Dr. Zahn,” he said.

  Shane cleared his throat. “This is Shane Copas. Trinity Sinclair and I are—”

  “With Angus,” Zahn said. “Yes. It’s bad. I did the best I could, but he won’t survive the attack. The only reason he’s still alive is because he’s Angus Stark.”

  “You can’t let him die,” I blurted, angry.

  “I’d have put him out of his misery if they’d have allowed it. As it is, I did everything I could,” he said. “Absolutely everything.”

  I stared down at Angus, my tears rolling off my nose and falling onto his face. “You didn’t do enough. You have to come back, Dr. Zahn.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’ll likely end up behind bars as well, if I try. It’s a dangerous time for supernaturals, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Doctor, please. You have to help him. He needs to be in a hospital.”

  “He’s not human. He doesn’t need a hospital.” There was no anger or outrage or pain in his voice. Dr. Zahn had seen everything. He’d seen a dozen Angus Starks. “Say your goodbyes, Ms. Sinclair.” He hesitated. “If he lives, he’ll spend the rest of his life in a prison worse than anything you can imagine, my dear. He’d rather be dead. I swear that to you.”

  And on that note, he ended the call.

  Shane and I looked at each other, realizing at the same moment exactly what was going on.

  “Angus was prepared for this eventuality,” Shane said.

  I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “The doctor won’t try to save him because Angus doesn’t want to be saved. He doesn’t want to go to prison.”

  “Better to rest in peace than to live in hell.” Shane nodded. “I can understand that.”

  “Well I can’t. Get another doctor in here. The supernaturals have more than one doctor.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Get one,” I shouted. “Get one, Shane!”