by Angie Fox
“But you are the exalted—”
“Shut up and let me finish!” Criminy. No wonder this guy had to date she-demons.
I took a calming breath. “Every three generations, my family produces twin slayers,” I explained.
“Of course. You and…” he said.
“Me and nobody. Try my mom and my aunt,” I corrected. “And while my mom’s amazing family brought her up, loved her, flew instructors in from all over the world to teach her everything she needed to know, she spent the whole time figuring out a way to beat the rap.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“Well, now you have,” I said, with a tenacious hold on my temper. “My Aunt Celia died like a heroine while my mom passed her powers to me, dumped me off to be adopted and thought it would be the end of our line. Well,” I said, my anger filtering to my mom, “until the next poor saps a few generations later, which would actually be her great-granddaughters, not that she cared.”
Max watched me intently. “It must have been quite a shock as a child to learn that this, we, existed.”
Try last month. But I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“And you have no twin,” he said slowly.
I hoped it was finally sinking in. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” I said, none too charitably. “Now you mind telling me something?” I rubbed at the shoulder I’d jammed into the wall. “What in sweet creation are you doing down here? You don’t seem like the type to take prisoners. Why are you letting these things live?”
He sized me up, as if deciding how much to tell me. Considering the heaping helping of demon surprise he’d served back there, he’d better lay out the facts.
“When I was young, I was more rash.”
I had a girlfriend back in college who used to take forever to get to the point, but this guy took the cake. “Abridged version, please,” I said, planting my back against the wall. No way were these things going to get the jump on me again.
Max considered. “Maybe we should go someplace more comfortable,” he said. “Come on. My quarters are right through here.”
I couldn’t have been more shocked if a demon flew out another door. “You live with them?”
He didn’t answer, leading me instead to an old guard’s station turned bedroom. At least that’s what I assumed from the cot and stack of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup cans. The man existed like a monk. His narrow military-issue camping, cot nudged against the far wall. Underneath, a steel lockbox. Other than that, I doubted anything else in the fading office belonged to Max. He’d better have an apartment somewhere.
The cot crackled under him as he took a seat. I preferred the old aluminum desk in the corner. I planted my butt on a stack of papers, back to the wall, and waited for him to speak first.
“I joined the fight when I was eighteen,” he said, threading his fingers together. “He wouldn’t take me earlier.”
“Who?”
“My trainer,” he said smoothly, with reverence, “my mentor.”
Great. He had a friend. “Will he be here tonight?”
“No.” Max stood and walked the short distance between his cot and a map on the wall. “They killed him years ago,” he said, absently studying the map. Clusters of red and green pins dotted the map like a macabre Christmas display.
“Are those kills?” I asked.
He nodded. “And captures. We fought together.”
What sort of creature was this mentor? “He trained you to do this?”
Max shot me a look that could have hung me up on the wall. “I didn’t need training in order to kill.”
I felt myself tense. His admission shocked me at first. I didn’t understand how anyone could kill without remorse. Regret was a requirement. You were a monster if you wanted to annihilate another living thing.
Until a horrible realization sprouted deep inside me. I didn’t regret him killing the demon at Pure. It was one less supernatural locust. Come to think of it, I didn’t regret the fifth-level demon I killed last week or the unholy monster in the hallway outside. If I wasn’t any better than Max, what did that make me?
“Why don’t you kill them?” I asked.
“I can’t,” he stated simply. “There are too many.”
He hesitated, almost imperceptibly, but I caught it. “What else?”
We locked eyes. Max, deciding if it was worth the risk to tell me. Me, wondering how much worse’ it could get. But I wasn’t about to go in without all the facts. Never again.
“Tell me or I walk out of here,” I said. He’d searched me out. He needed me. I’d use it. Heck, it was the only thing I had.
He drew a red switch star, slower than before. Still, I took it as a threat. I whipped out one of my own, the blades casting pink against the florescent lights of our dubious retreat.
Max smirked. “I could kill you faster than you’d see it coming.”
“Want to try?” I shot back. Damn. I was starting to sound like Grandma.
He sheathed his star. I kept mine out.
“I can’t kill them,” he stated. “Not with stars, anyway. I’m a half slayer. A hunter. I can stun them, but to kill them, I have to consume them.”
I found myself blinking uncontrollably, trying to process, “What are you?”
He seemed surprised. “Don’t you know? I’m a cambion.”
Max said it as if I should understand—which meant I had to let him in on a dirty secret of my own. “I have no idea what that means.”
He frowned. “You’re kidding me, right? I never picked you for an elitist.”
I wanted to cringe. But explaining would cost me more than I was willing to give. “Are you going to enlighten me or what?”
He suddenly seemed much older. “My father was human,” he began. “My mother was one of them. She ate him.”
“Oh,” was all I could think to say.
He bristled. “I’ve taken out my share. My slayer killed more.”
Holy h-e-double-hockey-sticks. “Where are they all coming from?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Max said.
He warmed when talking about his mission, which must in fact have been his life’s work. “We’ve never had this many. They’re going to pull more in before it’s over.” He watched me. “Something big is going down. Right before it happens, I think they’re going to try to break out their prisoners.”
“Then what?” I croaked.
A predatory smile lit upon his mouth. “Well, slayer. Then all hell breaks loose.”
I couldn’t imagine what one succubus could have done in Pure, much less an army unleashed on Vegas.
For the first time, I wished I had a twin—or more power. I didn’t know if what I had would be enough.
Max paced, all business once again. “They’re killing people, and sucking up an unprecedented amount of energy. I think they’re using it to open up a portal, a one-way ticket to hell and back. Problem is, it’s been impossible to locate.”
He seemed to look to me for ideas. Lovely. Last time, I’d gone to hell, I’d had to jump off the back end of an enchanted riverboat.
“I don’t know how two of us can take on twenty-five demons.” It was impossible.
“I don’t care.” He ground the words between his teeth. “I’ll take out as many as I can until I’m dead. But I can’t stop this alone. I’ve gone without a slayer for almost sixty years, but now I need a slayer.”
Great. Immortal servitude. Or if he was mortal, he wasn’t like anybody I’d ever known. “What happened to your other slayer?” I asked, not really wanting to know.
His gaze wandered past me, remembering. “She slipped.”
“Oh.” My stomach fluttered, but I forced myself to ask more. “And her twin?”
“They turned her.”
My veins iced over. “What do you mean?”
He searched me for some sign of comprehension. “You really don’t know anything, do you, Lizzie?”
“Not as
much as I’d like,” I admitted in the most colossal understatement of all time. “I came here trying to get rid of one succubus.” Oh, for the days when I thought there was only one.
“You’re going to have to fight with me, Lizzie.”
“We can’t kill them all,” I insisted.
Max stood, the desk screeching backward. “I’ll give you a day to think about it.”
My life suddenly seemed like a minor battle in the middle of a great big war.
Chapter Fourteen
Max’s sleek black Mercedes roared into the circle drive of the Paradise Hotel. He paused long enough for me to step out, a shiver jolting through me as the cool desert air touched my skin. I barely had my door closed before he zoomed off into the night.
The lights from The Strip bounced off the X30’s tinted windows, unable to reach the man inside, as Max disappeared into the endless stream of traffic on Las Vegas Avenue. He’d never pretended to be a gentleman. He was a soldier in the middle of a great big war. And now I was involved too.
A startled bellhop rushed to greet me. “Are you all right, miss?”
Which was code for you look like hell. Fitting, since I’d indeed caught a glimpse of it tonight. I smoothed my dress, wrinkled and torn from my encounter with the demon. “Sure,” I lied. “Everything will be fine once I get to my room.”
I wished I believed that.
The bellhop didn’t buy it, either. But he allowed me my fantasy, escorting me to the entrance and opening the smaller glass door next to the massive, revolving one. The unexpected gesture made me pause. “Thanks,” I told him. “You’re sweet,” I added impulsively. I don’t know why I wanted him to know, except that seeing the darkness always made me want to look for the light.
Even at three thirty in the morning, the Paradise Hotel lobby seemed brighter, the slot machines louder, the patrons more boisterous than I’d seen them before. Of course compared to Max’s prison, Frankenstein’s lab would have felt cozy.
The wards at the entrance practically sizzled with energy. Battina and Jan had been busy. I reached out with my mind to see what kinds of creatures I could detect. Several unknowns scattered throughout. I’d have to get better at sensing, along with everything else.
If Max was right and the demons were planning something big, I wondered how on earth my gentle fairy godfather could be involved.
At the twelfth-floor maintenance entryway, I slipped my key card out of my black utility belt and quicker than you can say, home, sweet, hotel room, stepped into the lapping waters of our hallway. My shadow stretched over the glistening water.
It would feel good to hug my little doggie. I hoped he hadn’t gorged himself too bad on Paw Lickin Chicken. I even looked forward to dealing with Dimitri and Grandma. Sure, they’d be ticked that I left with Max. No question it’d been worth it. Max’s demon war would affect us all. They had to see it.
My thoughts lingered on the ageless half-demon vigilante and his Spartan devotion to the cause. I didn’t know how Max did it, alone every day. Come to think of it, he wasn’t alone anymore. He had me.
What a terrible thought.
The hallway smelled like pizza again. I hoped someone on the floor just really liked pizza, because if Pirate had learned how to order room service, my meager savings could go from stretched to nonexistent in the space of a couple of dozen hotel platters.
My hand had barely touched the knob of my door when it came crashing in on its own. Dimitri stood in the entryway. His eyes sliced into me, dissecting every scrape, bruise and broken nail I’d suffered tonight.
“What the hell happened to you?” he demanded.
He was on me before I could answer. Devouring me in a superheated, melting kiss that chilled me to the core. It quickly grew harder, possessive. His fingers slid up my shoulders and neck, into my hair, gripping me and forcing me to understand exactly how worried he’d been.
I felt myself weaken as my energy flowed toward him. I pushed him away before I melted into his kiss.
“Are you hurt?” he asked against my lips, his caresses turning to inspection as he frowned at the growing bruises on my arms. His touch was light, but his eyes hardened as he scanned the remains of my dress. My body didn’t quite get the message. Pleasure seeped through me every place his fingers traveled… and even a few places where they didn’t. Call it denial at its most delicious. Was it that much of a sin to want this escape? Who wouldn’t want to forget Max, his demons and everything else that had happened tonight?
One of Dimitri’s superlarge hands rested on my waist, while the other traced a particularly nasty scrape that disappeared into the lilac silk of my bodice. It would have been the ultimate distraction, only his eyes glowed yellow again.
“Lizzie!” Pirate jumped up and down against my legs. “You hear me, Lizzie?”
His claws caught a cut on my leg I didn’t even know was there until, “Ow!”
Pirate intensified the assault. “I don’t think you hear me because you’re not saying anything and I’m your dog and I’m right here. Lizzie!”
Good. Yes. Think about the dog—and not Dimitri, who is being corrupted right in front of your eyes.
“Baby dog!” I broke away and reached down for my Jack Russell terrier.
Pirate’s spindly legs wriggled as fast as his tail. “I was starting to think you’d never come back,” he said, digging his wet nose into the crook of my elbow.
“Yes, well.” He also thought that when I walked out to the mailbox without him.
Pirate could sniff, lick and talk at the same time. “And Grandma,” he said, “I don’t know where she went.”
My body froze.
“She and Ant Eater are working on something,” Dimitri said.
“Oh no.” I shuddered to think. “They aren’t chasing Serena, are they?” I was the only one who could defeat her, and frankly, they’d be more of a hindrance than a help.
“Don’t worry,” Dimitri said. “Battina and Jan have them tracking down ingredients for extra wards. Something about stinkbugs and more turtle knees.”
“Fine,” I said, clutching my dog to my chest. “Excuse me.” I edged past him and deposited Pirate onto the nearest bed.
“Now that you’re back, we have some things to discuss,” Dimitri said to my back. The alone was implied.
“Yeah, well me first,” I said. “Let’s move.” His room would be better than mine, especially if Grandma showed up.
“Oh, now you know I can keep a secret,” Pirate protested as Dimitri clicked the door shut behind us.
“Let’s go,” I said, splashing backward down the hall, waving Dimitri on.
Before I could turn around, Dimitri lit upon me like I was on fire. “What is this?” He seized my right hand, turning it over. Gone was the insistent touch of a lover. In its place, a hardened griffin warrior whose power I was only beginning to understand.
He held out my right hand and there, in the center of my palm, pink slashes swirled across my unbroken skin. I squinted at them in the dim lights of the hallway. They looked like the wounds Max inflicted on Dimitri. They were about the only thing on my body that didn’t hurt. In fact, I didn’t know what had happened.
Had Max marked me?
I flexed my palm, stretching the marks out over my skin. He couldn’t have marked me without my knowledge. Could he? It could have been something I’d touched—the banister leading down to the basement, my switch stars, the steel door that held back an ancient demon.
Three parts of a whole swirled, in almost a floral pattern. Squat sides together, lines reaching out. I didn’t understand the significance at first, until Dimitri traced each symbol that marked my palm—6-6-6.
I stared in horror at the fluid numbers etched over my palm. I fought the urge to rub them against my stained dress, to keep rubbing until there was nothing left. If I thought it had a chance of working, I would have done it.
A sudden realization made me go brittle inside. What if it wasn’t Max?
&nbs
p; They killed one slayer and turned the other.
Voice unsteady, I asked the question I feared the most. “What does it mean?”
I didn’t like Dimitri’s somber expression one bit, but I knew I could count on him to lay it out for me. “It seems you’ve made a deal with the devil.”
My heart thumped hard, threatening to take over my rib cage. “That’s impossible,” I gasped. “I didn’t agree to anything.”
Dimitri cut me off. “Evil comes whether we invite it or not. What do you want, Lizzie? Are you really looking for things to be fair? A demon isn’t going to wait for an engraved invitation to strike. You of all people should know that. Don’t kid yourself about the hunter, either. He’s out to use you.”
“Max is on our side,” I insisted.
Dimitri gave me a hard look. “So now he’s Max?”
“Yes, that’s his name.” I wanted to say Max didn’t mark me, either. But I couldn’t go that far. I just didn’t know.
No question about it—something had happened to me down there. I couldn’t change it, but I could do my very best to fight it.
Dimitri looked like he wanted to smash something.
“Open your eyes, woman. And do it fast, because I’m not going to stand around and watch you destroy yourself.”
“Look who’s talking. You need to leave this city. Now!” This wasn’t the way I’d wanted to tell him, but… “I have a confession to make.” My insides churned at the thought. “The night we went to hell and you were really hurt”—I searched his face—”remember?”
Of course he remembered. I was stalling, racking my brain for a better way to say it. But there was no way to say this right. “You were going to die. I gave you part of my demon slayer essence to save you.”
Dimitri looked like I’d hit him with a brick.
“That’s not all,” I said quickly. “It tainted you. It opened you up. Whatever protection you think you have—you don’t. I’m sorry, Dimitri.” I reached for him. “I’m so sorry.”
He backed away, shock etched across his features.
“I didn’t tell you because, well, I didn’t know how. I didn’t want you to feel obligated to me. I never thought in my wildest dreams this could happen.”
