“Yes.” And then more firmly, “Yes, I’m okay. We got out.”
“Yes, we did.”
Finally, she glanced over and then flung her glare back to the road ahead. She waved a hand in my general direction. “Can you er… can you do anything about that?”
I looked down. “About what?”
“You’re er… you’re naked. It’s… I mean, you know, it’s… you’re…”
“Socially unacceptable. Yes, I realize that, but I did just wrangle several hundred lesser demons, and now I’m riding in a car, which is on my short list of things I don’t like, right up there with campfires, so if you don’t mind, while I concentrate on not filling this tiny car with my wings, you can either admire my nakedness or ignore it.”
A moment passed, and then she snorted the laugh she’d been holding in. “We survived.”
I smiled, dropped my head back, and thought, No demon will ever hurt you, Anna Ramírez.
Chapter 13
“They attacked. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Anna was saying. Her voice carried to me as I “rested” out of sight in the bedroom. It wasn’t eavesdropping if I had no choice but to hear—words carried astonishingly far on air. “Not since the Fall. There were so many, and Li’el… he was…” Chips crunched and a bag rustled.
“Was what?” Noah asked around a mouthful of food.
“He was everywhere. I couldn’t keep track of him. When he’s like that, all demon, it’s like I can’t understand what I’m seeing, you know? But he stopped them. He drove them back. I… He was light and air and…” She laughed the kind of feminine laugh I hadn’t been sure she was capable of. “It’s really hard to explain.”
“Sounds awesome,” Noah said. Awesome was surely too small a word for me. Magnificent, glorious, resplendent—those were adjectives I could get behind.
“The first time I saw him, yah know… the wings and him… was when he got caught. I knew what he was, but to see it—”
“It wouldn’t have been awesome had Anna died, which was a real possibility,” I said, striding in from the bedroom. Unable to summon enough power to materialize clothing, I’d taken a fresh pair of jeans and sweatshirt from a closet and dressed like a human would. A ridiculously complicated process when one was accustomed to cladding one’s vessel with a single thought.
“I was about to say the same.” Christian emerged from the back hallway, timing his arrival perfectly with mine. The hunter had probably been waiting for me to emerge. “She could have died.” And clearly that was my fault, seeing as I was the only demon in the room. Never mind that Anna had decided to meet me outside the zoo.
I tossed the tiger’s jawbone on the table in front of Noah. It skidded across the polished surface and bumped against his glass of water. “What does a lion do when it sees off a rival male and claims the pride for itself?”
Noah swallowed. “Did that belong to a lion?”
“He kills the males in the pride.” Christian stopped behind the couch, placing himself behind Anna and Noah in a position of power. They were looking at the bone and didn’t notice Christian fold his arms and rake me over with one of his holier-than-thou challenging gazes. It was possible he wasn’t conscious of his body language, but the protective posture was a clear warning. If this hunter had been demon, his wings would have been embarrassingly small and hardly worth mentioning.
I strode to the windows, showing Christian my back. Two could play the posturing game. Humans weren’t as far removed from demons as many assumed, especially human males. There was a dance here, one of strength and non-verbal warnings. It was pathetic that he believed he could compare with me in any way.
“It’s not a lion’s jaw,” I replied. “It belonged to a four-year-old male tiger. The lion, in this analogy, ate the tiger.”
“Wait, there’s something out there that’s… bigger?” Noah asked.
I let that question fall unanswered. LA barely glistened beyond the glass, where once the city had dazzled. There was enough of my city left to save, but what if I couldn’t? As Christian had once rightly pointed out, I was not the demon I had once been despite the posturing.
“The lessers were either driven to the zoo or compelled to go there,” I said, admiring the sprinkling of lights. “When lessers gather to that extent, it’s usually from a surplus of chaos energy. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to investigate the grounds, but I didn’t detect any rogue chaos element.” That kind of power would have been difficult for me to miss, even in my reduced state. But I also hadn’t noticed the lessers until it was too late. An unacceptable mistake.
“You’re saying there’s a bigger demon out there?” Anna asked.
“It’s possible.”
“If it’s going after rivals, why hasn’t it attacked you?”
“Have you forgotten where I was for the last two years?” I turned in time to catch Christian’s incensed nostril flare and Anna’s flash of guilt. “Until recently, I was concealed inside a box with my element suffocated by a barrier of glyphs. The demon couldn’t detect me, the same way I couldn’t sense the shift in the veil. You benched me, taking me out of the game entirely.”
Noah leaned away from Christian and toward me. “Wait, so… it’ll come now?”
“Perhaps. But this behavior, killing wild animals, is not normal. If a higher demon breached the veil—”
“A what?” Noah asked.
“A prince, for example.”
His face paled.
“Killing caged animals is very… unprincelike. And the princes don’t often act alone, not when the stakes are this high.”
“I thought they were all solitary hunters?” Anna asked, checking over her shoulder with our resident demon hunter because he knew more about demon princes than the prince standing a few feet in front of her.
“They are,” Christian confirmed. “Unless it suits them to combine forces. That’s why they waited until the veil fell before coming through in force. They’re higher demons because they’re capable of complex strategic planning. They’re also very capable of getting along when they all want the same thing. After they have it, they go back to trying to slaughter each other.”
“Just so.” Christian had paid attention in hunter school. “The lessers I killed were all fresh from the netherworld.” The wounds they had inflicted still smarted. “It takes a concentration of chaos energy or a higher demon to organize them that way. Since we don’t have a surplus of chaos, we have to assume they’re gathering at the command of another demon.”
“Can’t you, you know…” Noah waved a hand, suggesting I should somehow be able to pluck answers out of the air. “Do your thing and find this bigger demon?”
“I’ve been doing my thing. There are no higher demons in LA.”
“Unless it’s shielded like you were,” Anna said.
I nodded. “But unlikely. No demon likes to be caged.”
“Aren’t you a higher demon?” Christian asked rhetorically.
“It’s been a while since I checked.”
He leered like he’d gotten one up on me. “Wouldn’t that make you the prime suspect?”
“It would.” I paused, adding a few seconds of silence for dramatic effect. There’s an art to silences too. “Do I look as though I enjoy wrestling tigers and collecting lesser demons in my spare time? There’s also the fact you had me neatly packaged in a plastic box while the lessers first attacked. You, Christian, are my alibi.” His face fell like I’d taken away his favorite toy. “Sorry to disappoint,” I drawled.
“Maybe one less demon in LA would be a start,” he suggested.
“You tried that,” Anna snapped, “and all you did was take our best defense against the demons out of play. If Li’el had been around when all this started, he could have stopped it.”
The hunter laughed. “Don’t let him fool you. You think that when he wipes all the demons off the city map he’ll just sit back and give us LA back? Look at him.”
I s
pread my arms. “Please do.”
“He wants this city. For all we know, his presence is attracting this other demon. He could have started it!”
“If there is another demon,” I reminded him. “And you’re right. I do want this city. But what use is a war zone? I’ve been there, and it didn’t work out. If you spent as much energy searching for the source of these attacks as you did trying to turn me into your killer, you may actually be useful to us.”
“I don’t need to turn you into a killer when you already are one.” He glared, waiting for me to deny it. He failed to understand I had never denied or hidden what I was. “You almost got Ramírez killed—”
“Are you done?” Anna interrupted.
“I told you this was a bad idea, and I stand by that. I’m here to put him down when the time comes, and that time will come.”
I smiled at my hunter’s outburst. “I do hope so.”
He shook off the combined stares of Noah and Anna and retreated to the kitchen where various glasses and plates felt the hunter’s wrath. Such a wasted opportunity. He’d be good at his job if he could get past his prejudices.
With Christian attacking the cutlery and Noah examining the tiger’s jaw, Anna approached me and asked, “How does this help with the veil?”
“According to Noah’s timeline, the attacks became more common right until the veil started to crumble, and then they stopped. It’s not much, but at this point, all we can do is assume the attacks and the appearance of the veil are connected.”
“What does it take to weaken the veil exactly?”
“An imbalance in the elements. The last Fall originated in the netherworld when those elements were grossly swayed toward chaos. When chaos reigns, the veil falls. That’s how it’s always been.”
“But how? What unbalanced chaos to begin with?”
I hesitated. The answer wasn’t simple, and it cut close to home. “The princes killed the demon queen—the chaos queen—unleashing chaos in the netherworld.” I remembered it well. With demon civilisation built on a survival of the fittest mentality, killing the queen had been our greatest achievement and worst mistake. It had been glorious and terrible and wonderful, and everything I despised about my kin—about myself. Power corrupted in both worlds, demons just took corruption to a whole new level.
Anna must have seen some of those thoughts on my face. She quietly asked, “Did you help kill her?”
“I remember it well.” I kept my expression level. Smirking while discussing murder was something Ramírez didn’t react well to.
“Why?” she asked. “Why did you kill her?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time. She died. The princes split her power. Win-win if you happened to be an upstanding member of the Dark Court.”
“Only it didn’t happen like that, did it?”
I remembered the flood of strength spilling into my veins and being able to stretch my senses far throughout the netherworld. I had been air and everywhere, in everything. I had known all, felt all, heard all.
“The power was divine,” I whispered in reverence, careful to keep the others from hearing. “It didn’t last. The king objected to having his queen slaughtered. He doled out punishments, and with chaos unleashed, the netherworld went to hell soon after. It’s been dying ever since. Then, during the last Fall, another queen was...” How to describe the Mad Queen’s forced ascension? “Well, the king found another queen. The veil was put right. And humans and demons all lived happily ever after.” Until humans screwed it up again.
She paused and considered the irony dripping from my tone. “You talk like you’re not a prince, but Christian said you were the Prince of Pride.”
Oh, Christian and his unsurpassed demon knowledge. “He believes he knows me. He is mistaken.” I hesitated in saying more. It was one thing to think of how far I had fallen, but quite another to admit it. I had told Anna enough.
She fell quiet and admired the subdued city alongside me. As an expert in silences, I knew this one was soft, undemanding, and didn’t need to be filled.
“It’s dark out. We should close the blinds and turn the lights out. Get some rest,” she told the others. “We’ll approach this fresh tomorrow.”
They retired to their rooms, Christian tossing me one last look that said he’d be sleeping with one eye open. I might have delighted in haunting his room if talk of the old queen hadn’t doused my mood.
Rest. Yes. They would need it. I, on the other hand, had another flight ahead of me.
Once my humans were secured in their rooms, I took to the air and spread through LA, stretching farther and wider, seeking any sign of another higher demon in my city. As I sailed on the breeze, the conversation with Anna played over in my mind. Over two years ago, the veil had fallen when the princes had disrupted the chaos elements. The same had happened here, but could the cause be human? I needed to find out. Christian had worked for the Institute and the military. It was time he and I had a heart to heart, apex demon to demon hunter.
Chapter 14
Subdued morning air had crept over the roof when I pulled myself back into the illusion of a man and approached Christian. He stood three feet from the roof edge, rifle slung over his shoulder, his back to me as he observed the street below.
It would have been simple to push him off the edge, but where was the art in such a clumsy kill?
“Careful—” He jumped at the sound of my voice. I caught his shoulder before he could do something foolish like trip over the lip and plummet to his death by accident. He stumbled and whirled. “Wouldn’t want to fall.”
“Fuck!” He reached for his rifle but paused when he realized I could have killed him and hadn’t. “Fuck,” he muttered again, shaking the shock out of his hands.
I leaned out over the edge. “You would have made a terrible mess.”
“Why didn’t you?” he snarled.
I rolled my eyes. This again. “Come inside. You and I need to talk.”
He followed me in through the fire escape to the back of my apartment. It was early. My element informed me, by the pitch and pace of their breathing, that Noah and Ramírez still slept. I led Christian into the elevator and soaked up the prickly silence as we rode down to the restaurant level. The doors opened, and a memory flashed of the hunter standing over me.
“Sit,” I told him at the bar. He considered arguing, but common sense prevailed, and he slid onto a bar stool. “What’s your poison?”
“I’ll take a whiskey. Make it the best you have back there.”
He set the rifle down on the bar, within his reach, while I dusted off two glasses and a bottle of fine whiskey. He watched me pour two glasses, set the bottle aside, and push his drink toward him.
Lifting my glass, I saluted him. “To enemies. May they keep us honed and true.”
He arched a brow but went along with it and downed his whiskey in one. The kick hit him, and he spluttered, but he offered up his glass for a refill. I obliged. We could get along like civilized males.
“I’m not buying it,” he said, scratching his chin.
“Buying what?”
“You.” He swept a hand at me, and I assumed he was referring to my general appearance, currently wrapped in dress pants and a V-neck sweater. “The whole normal act. I know what you’re doing.”
“Perhaps you can enlighten me?”
“Noah idolizes you. Probably has Stockholm syndrome since he’s worked for you for so long.” He took a generous gulp of his drink. “Ramírez is smarter than that, but after the zoo, there’s something…” He pointed a me. “Something happened, and now she’s warming up to you. But you already know this because you’re playing them both like guitars.”
“Fiddles.”
“What?”
“Never mind. What’s your interest in Ramírez?” I hadn’t planned to discuss our four-person group, but with Christian so enamored with me playing the bad demon mastermind, I decided to play along.
“Me and Ramíre
z? Nothing,” he replied firmly. “She came to me. I helped her out. That’s it.”
His downturned gaze told me he wasn’t, but if he wanted to lie to himself, that wasn’t my problem. “You’ve often been right during your life…”
“Sometimes. Most times,” he agreed. “And when it comes to demons, I’m always right.”
Well now, there was a challenge if ever I’d heard one. “So, what happened? What made you Christian the demon hunter?”
“I suppose you would have to ask since you don’t experience life like humans do.”
Only about 3.4 million lives I’d encountered, loved, lost, admired, feared, hated, misunderstood, and more, but sure, whatever Christian said, because naturally, he was right, being the demon hunter and all.
“Pops fucked off before I can remember him. Later I figured he was in jail. Ma raised me and my brothers to be upstanding American citizens. Daniel, my youngest brother, died of an overdose at sixteen. Right after that I went into the military. I know what it’s like to lose someone. I wanted to protect people. Protect America. Do the right thing. I was young and stupid.”
Was?
“It toughened me up. And I was damn good at it.”
“Joining the forces had nothing to do with the desire to kill to feed your hero complex?”
That earned me a burning scowl. “You wouldn’t understand. I don’t even know why I’m wasting my time talking to you. Your demon brain can’t wrap itself around human values.”
“And you know that because you know everything about demons.”
“Damn straight.”
I downed my drink in one. The alcohol wouldn’t affect me the same way it would him, but the warmth briefly combated the heated beat from my phantom wings. “Who taught you everything you know about demons? Was it the Institute?”
“I started there, sure. Bagged and tagged a few hundred demons until the veil fell and it all went to shit. Then, I got recruited somewhere else.”
“By the elite military team you mentioned?”
He shifted on his stool and chuckled a dry laugh. “See, it won’t work on me. You sweeten me up and then ease in a few subtle questions, and before I know it, I’m telling you everything you want to know? I don’t think so.”
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