Asher
“Did you forget she was a demon?” Pacing in front of Brad’s miserable self on the couch, I jammed my fingers through my hair. “Are you insane? No, seriously, are you literally insane?”
“Oh, shut up.” He zipped up his fly and reached for his shirt. “I thought she was being serious. They’re supposed to be crappy liars.”
“Have you seen her try to lie?” I gestured toward Lana’s cage. “She’s got like a billion tells. She’s a freaking open book. But no, you weren’t thinking with your brain, you were thinking with your dick.”
Reinstated in her cage, Lana shielded her chest as she stretched on her skintight jumpsuit, her lower lip quivering as she tried not to cry.
For a split-second I felt bad for her, and it made me bristle.
I jabbed my finger at her, averting my gaze with a clenched jaw. “Lana, put your goddamn clothes back on and quit trying to make us feel sorry for you . . . I know your tricks.”
“I’m not . . . I’m not doing anything,” she whimpered.
Brad frowned. “What’s your problem, man? She’s a freaking healer. She had no problem with humans until you went and made a problem. Now she hates us. All of us. You know, it’s people like you, you and your stupid hate . . . and you wonder why demons despise us.”
“Brad, even if, by some fluke, you did score a quick lay,” I said, doing my best to ignore the shame and sadness wafting off her, “demons mate for life. She would have been bonded to you. You think Dominus hates us now, imagine how he’d feel after you boned his daughter. I mean, shit, compared to you, I’d seem like a saint.”
“You would have fallen for it too, you ass.”
“No, I wouldn’t, because she’s a demon and she terrifies me, and I’d rather be stuck in a cage with a giant Anaconda.”
“Look, my bad, alright? At least we figured out her minor affinity is seduction.”
“Seduction?” I shook my head in disbelief. “No, you oaf, her minor affinity is taking on other people’s bodies. Major affinity—healing. Minor affinity—taking on different bodies.” I counted them off on my fingers. “Two affinities accounted for. No seduction. That’s not even a thing. Why? What’d she say to you, anyway? What got you all hot and bothered?”
“Uh . . .” he scratched behind his ear, “to be honest, she was spitting some pretty mad game there, she might have thrown in some hypnosis, kind of lost track . . .”
I peered at the demon, who was slumped forlornly against the bars like a wilted flower. I could hardly fault Brad for falling for it, for her. Just look at her. Unlike other demons, she hardly seemed capable of evil. Watching her fall apart, I had to fight the sudden urge to comfort her, to protect her, like I would a human girl.
My nostrils flared. Careful, Asher.
Like a siren, it was her very nature that was seductive, tempting, poisonous.
I opened my mouth, but never got the chance to respond.
The ceiling creaked.
I stilled and pressed my finger to my lips, my senses on high alert.
Slowly, footsteps crossed overhead, loosening thin streams of dust.
“What’s up there?” Brad whispered, easing himself to his feet.
“We’re right under my bedroom,” I replied, licking my dry lips.
The footsteps halted, and after a moment of silence, trudged on.
There was someone—something—in my house.
“No one make a sound,” I hissed. “It doesn’t know we’re down here.”
“It will,” Brad said. “It’s sniffing us out.”
I glanced at Lana, who gaped up at the ceiling with just as much wide-eyed fright as I did. It was her fear, more than anything, that terrified me.
“Brad, stay with Lana.” I ejected the ammo clip from my Glock and slotted in a new one. “I’m going up.”
“The hell you are,” he said. “We’re in a bomb shelter. What’s it going to do?”
“I don’t know.” I holstered the weapon on my hip as I charged into the armory, walls lined with racks of guns and ammo. “That’s what I’m going to find out.”
He followed me. “Then I’m coming with you.”
“Stay with Lana,” I ordered. “Guard her. We need her alive.”
I yanked an M4 carbine assault rifle off its rack and pulled on an ammo vest, icy adrenaline buzzing in my fingertips.
Fighting demons, I could already tell, would be very, very different when they were hunting you.
“You need backup—”
“I’ve been doing this solo for two years,” I said. “Now move.” I barged past him and strode into the garage, where a trapdoor exited into the backyard behind a hedge.
What I didn’t say was he had already risked his life coming to help me, so if he died, his death would be on me.
God knew I had enough guilt in my life already.
I never should have called him.
At the top of the ladder, I unlocked the trapdoor and heaved it up, uprooting the carpet of dead vines that had grown over it, then crawled out into the garden, lungs heaving.
Every window in the house was dark.
Crouching below them, I slunk toward the back door, the dry husks of dead bushes scraping my cheeks. I’d fired the gardener after Nikki died.
I tried the handle. Locked.
Opening any door or window in my house should have tripped the alarm.
The demon—if it was, in fact, a demon—had either magicked its way past the alarm or slithered in through a chimney or something.
I unlocked the back door with the key under the third flowerpot, now full of yellow weeds and rotting leaves, and inched the door open into the shadowy kitchen, creaking on its rickety hinges. Then I slipped inside and switched off the M4’s safety.
Mounted on the wall, the alarm control panel lit up and flashed a warning.
I keyed in J-O-Y, my daughter’s name. The LED turned green.
Joy Asher, scarcely two when demon magic cut her life short. She would have been four, now. I could barely remember what her smile looked like.
My face tightened. I needed to focus.
Cleavers and knives glinted in the dark kitchen. Backing into the shadows, I listened.
No more sounds. No more footsteps.
Yet I could feel its presence, tugging at the hairs behind my neck. Something evil here.
I took a deep breath and tiptoed up the hall, flattening myself against the wall outside the master bedroom suite. Directly below me, Brad and Lana would be hearing my footsteps right now—where the demon had passed minutes earlier.
From inside the doorway, a faint scuffle pricked my ears.
My hands tightened on the assault rifle’s grip.
It’s just inside . . .
Lana didn’t realize she needed only to scream to give away the presence of my underground hideout.
She had been in position to kill me—and Brad—yet she hadn’t, and it bothered me. Demons might not be conniving, but they were vengeful. Always. Surely, she hated my kind as much as I hated hers.
So why hadn’t she?
She had every reason to slit my throat. I had sworn to exterminate her species.
She had chickened out. I knew then. I’d been able to sense the shame in her body language—she’d chickened out, and in so doing had doomed her entire race, and now she felt worthless, guilty, dejected. She’d given up.
I chewed on my lip, more bothered by that than I cared to admit. Every hour she seemed more and more human, and it messed with my head.
A scratching sound came from inside the bedroom, jerking me back to attention.
Later, Asher.
Right now, I was about to pump a demon full of lead. The scratching continued, moving
around the room’s perimeter. I recalled the suite’s layout, trying to picture it. Like Brad said, the creature was sniffing out the entrance to the shelter, which it would find at the back of the closet.
But not if I killed it first.
Then, ever so faintly, came the telltale scrape of the sliding closet doors retracting. Gotcha.
I spun into the bedroom doorway and leveled the assault rifle at the closet, my finger ready to squeeze the trigger.
But the room was empty.
The closet, now open a crack, appeared abandoned. The fuck?
Heart pulsing like crazy, I strode inside it, sweeping the weapon to each of the corners. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
I crossed the room and pushed into the bathroom, and my reflection in the mirror nearly gave me a heart attack.
Empty.
Oh man, if there was a demon that could make itself invisible, I was going to shit myself.
A shadow flittered in my periphery.
I whipped around, just as a figure stepped into the doorway of the bedroom.
A man.
But no man.
His eyes glowed a dull crimson in the darkness, smoldering from within. He wore a black suit and tie which, like him, seemed to dissolve and reform around him like a swarm of insects.
Blocking the doorway, he’d cornered me in the master suite. A trap.
He’d laid a trap.
Before I could squeeze off a shot, the demon gripped the doorway, his fingers splintering the wood frame, and his mouth opened wider than any human jaw—aiming at me.
Crap. I dove behind the bed.
Fire roared from his mouth in a white-hot jet. In an instant, the room blazed in an inferno. Rippling heat rolled up the walls, the blankets caught fire and combusted, flames singed my hair. Making an ungodly screaming noise, the demon swept the stream of fire around the room, incinerating everything on contact.
Major affinity: fire breathing.
They wanted to burn me, like I burned them. As retribution.
The bed made a tiny bubble of shelter, but already flames licked around the edges, nipping at my extremities. I laid low, eyes watering from the heat, and I choked on a lungful of blistering ash.
Through tears, I risked a peek at the top of the bed, where the fire parted around me like a river of lava.
I had to reach up into that to shoot.
Nuh-uh, I’d lose my hand and the gun.
But I couldn’t do nothing. The whole room had turned into a furnace. I’d get roasted alive.
Already, the edges of the steel bed frame were beginning to glow. My skin tightened and began to prickle, then sting.
He had to run out of breath eventually. I just need one shot . . .
Yet his flamethrower mouth continued to spew fire.
This was magic. With seven billion humans on Earth, and five liters of blood apiece to cull from, demons had a near infinite supply. And this demon, he appeared to have stocked up before he paid a visit.
My gaze darted to the window behind me, my only escape. To get to it I’d have to walk through fire.
Cornered like a rat.
No, I refused to die in my own house.
Lightheaded from the smoke, I locked my fingers under the bed frame—hot to the touch—and gave a mighty heave. The bed lifted, deflecting the fire over my head. Grunting, I drove my shoulder against the underside and tipped the massive bed on end. I muscled it toward the demon. With a wrench of metal, it toppled against the doorway, blocking the creature’s attack.
Blue flames slithered around its edges. As I stared, the center of the mattress caught fire and began crumbling to ashes.
He was burning right through it.
Fanning away the scalding fumes, I flung myself to the window and gripped the sill through the fireproof fabric of my ammo vest, then yanked it upward. Clean, cool air swirled up my nostrils. Behind me, the mattress went up in flames. I kicked out the screen and threw myself clear of the structure just as the demon stepped through the cinders and the room once again filled with fire.
I landed in a thorny rosebush, and winced. Crawling free, I staggered to my feet and took aim at the demon through the windows.
“Suck on this, fucker!” The M4 lit up in my hands.
The demon receded into the flames.
I circled the suite, tracking him and firing on full automatic. The stream of bullets blasted out shards of plaster and wood, and it blew out glass until the gun fell silent. I reloaded and emptied a second clip, my finger numb from squeezing so hard.
As I fired, the inferno spread to the rest of the house. Either the demon was burning to death inside or getting mowed down outside. One way or another, this bitch was toast.
Except it wasn’t.
My bullets could have been BBs. Ignoring the gunfire, ignoring the flames blazing around it, ignoring everything, the demon strolled through the burning bedroom and crouched in front of the closet, then blew out another blue-white jet of fire, focusing it like a laser beam at the floor.
I let go of the trigger, and the gun sputtered and died in my hands.
Of course. The demon breathed fire. Part of its major affinity must be immunity to heat—it couldn’t be burned.
Fuck.
They’d sent a demon after me that couldn’t be burned.
Or shot at.
No sign of a hit whatsoever. I doubted I had enough bullets in my armory to bring this beast down.
If Lana was healing this thing, she’d have hell to pay—no, she didn’t have nearly enough blood. And of course she would try to heal any demon in sight. That was simple survival instinct. In her position, I would do the same.
But she wasn’t healing it.
Which left only one possibility.
Major affinity: breathing fire.
Minor affinity: some sort of immunity to bullets.
Still wheezing to catch my breath, I planted my palms on my knees and watched my house go up in flames around the creature.
Only one way to kill a demon like this. Don a fire proximity suit, rip off its head to deprive its lungs of potency, then do the next best thing to burning a demon—dissolve its flesh in acid.
None of which was happening tonight.
I’d gotten my ass kicked.
I squeezed off a few more halfhearted shots, which the demon ignored. Crouching on all fours, it continued to blast the floor.
The floor.
With a twist in my gut, I realized. It was going through the floor.
Below the floor lay my safe house, all my weapons, my machine shop, my Hummer, and Lana—possibly the most valuable prisoner I’d ever captured.
That kind of fire, its bluish color . . . it would be hot enough to melt the rebar in the concrete slab.
My insides turned to ice.
I’d once thought it would take weeks to dig me out of my cave. With a major affinity like that, it would take minutes.
And I could do nothing but watch.
Brad. He was still down there.
Once that slab broke, he’d get fried.
Shit. I sprinted back around to the trap door, where I dropped back into the basement.
“Brad,” I called, charging up the corridor. “Brad, get your crap, we’re gone! Let’s go, go, go!”
The room was empty.
Huddled in the corner of her cell, shivering, Lana watched me from behind a curtain of her long, iridescent hair, which seemed to be weeping greens and blues under the fluorescent light. Her eyes glistened.
I felt a pang of sympathy. It was a reflex, not an actual emotion. Seeing another creature in distress, no matter if they’re your mortal enemy, it affects you.
I shook it off. “Where’
s Brad?”
“He went up to help you,” she whispered, “after we heard shooting. By now, he’s surely dead. That Infernarus up there—”
The ceiling shuddered, yanking both our gazes.
“No, Brad’s tough,” I said, fighting the growing weight in my chest. “Which door? Trapdoor or stairs?”
“No, you don’t understand—”
“Which door, Lana?” I shouted.
She pointed to the stairs.
I bolted up them and wrenched open the metal blast door.
Waves of heat rolled over me, singeing my eyes. Angry white flames clawed at my face, forced me back, coughing. Shielding my face, I stumbled back down the stairs as smoke billowed down from above. Brad, no . . .
He’d walked right into a burning house, right into a blast furnace . . . he must not have realized we were facing a fire-breathing demon.
I pictured him passed out from the fumes, skin bubbling and melting off his face, frozen mid-scream. Dead.
My brother was dead.
Before it could sink in, a crack formed in the concrete above me, the sound hitting my ears like a whip. Pebbles broke loose from the ceiling and pelted the floor.
As I stared, too numb to react, the crack widened, exposing glowing rods of rebar deforming in the blackened concrete. A red-hot fragment landed on the couch and sizzled a hole in the leather, sputtering up wisps of smoke.
If I didn’t leave now, I would end up dead too.
Lana seemed to realize this. Her gaze fell to the bars of her cage, and a deep sadness welled in her eyes. She assumed I was going to leave her to burn to death.
By now, wisps of smoke hissed through cracks in the ceiling, burning my lungs. The ceiling groaned and lurched an inch downward, blasting out more dust and debris. Inside the cage, the ceiling caved in over Lana in an avalanche of sizzling shards, which rained down around her. She shrieked and swatted the cinders out of her hair, scrambling back into the corner, where she let out a pathetic cough.
It was now or never.
She was too valuable a prisoner to leave behind.
Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1) Page 9
