by Gaja J. Kos
As Elsa had once told me, a person could carry a lot. But we weren’t designed to be solitary isles.
“Alec, I’m so happy for you.” I dumped my empty coffee cup into the trash. “How are you with all of this?”
A cyclist breezed by as Alec gathered his thoughts. I stepped a bit closer to the buildings to evade the trail of oversaturated perfume left in her wake.
“Well…” Alec heaved a breath that turned into a disbelieving laugh. “Confused but also not? I mean, I guess I’m still having trouble coming to terms with what I’d always believed about myself isn’t true, but when I was with Jaxon…”
“You felt right?” I stopped by an oversized cement planter and tilted my face into the sun.
“Yeah. If anything, I felt like a bit of an ass for having all these doubts.”
“When it comes to you and me,”—I turned around and let my gaze drift along the Spree—“I think we’re chock-full of doubts as soon as any kind of relationship pops on our radar.”
Alec barked out an unguarded laugh. “Understatement of the year.”
“Do you think we get bonus points for at least trying?” I asked as I kicked my body into motion again. The Berliner Dom was just up ahead on the other side of the river. ICRA HQ a short walk beyond that.
“You mean the kind where if you collect ten you get a free beer?”
A tightness coiled in my gut as an errant thought touched the meeting I was about to have, but I was too damn adamant about enjoying the few more minutes I had with Alec to let it govern me.
“A free beer doesn’t sound bad at all.” I chuckled and drifted closer to the bridge connecting the two banks. “Hey, that reminds me—you didn’t say when you’re having your next date.”
But whatever Alec said was lost on me as awareness shot up my spine.
It prickled the nape of my neck and stirred the hot coals of anger I’d hoped to have left behind in Munich.
Should have known life wouldn’t throw me even the tiniest fucking bone.
I swallowed down my growl. “Alec, I’ll call you soon, all right?”
The years of friendship made sure he read the subtext. I’d never blow him off like that unless trouble was on the horizon.
“Be careful, Lotte.”
What few pedestrians I could see and scent remained oblivious to the tingling of misplaced energy. Maybe their ignorance would be a sufficient shield, keep them from harm as they went on their way. They all certainly emitted a sense of purpose—the kind that said they had places to be.
But relying on them clearing the area before shit hit the fan wasn’t a risk I was comfortable with.
Even if it made things on my end a bit harder to pull off.
As I put my phone away, I adjusted my course, pretending that it had only been my immersion in the conversation that had lured me closer to the river, then veered into an empty side street as if that had been my intention all along. The swirl of energy annoying the fuck out of me didn’t change. Nor did it cease its pursuit. Good.
Buildings pressed in from both sides the deeper I went and created corridors of information-rich currents that made it easier to map out my course. I might not have been a stranger to Berlin, but I didn’t know every nook and cranny, either.
Once I was as certain as I could be that I had everything figured out, I cut a sharp left and bolted down the street before my shadow could follow.
Greta had been right to question my inaction.
And while my previous attempts at a confrontation might have fallen short, I wasn’t about to half ass this one.
It was time this shit came to an end.
6
I sprinted down a short passage between buildings and emerged on the very same street I’d been on earlier. I took cover behind a rusty white van as a BMW with music blasting from the rolled-down windows sped by. As soon as the beats of the popular rock song scattered, I cut across the road and squeezed through the tiny gap between two parallel parked sedans.
Though the wind continued to blow in my favor, I didn’t want to risk staying on the same side of the street. Even if the demon up ahead was oblivious to his surroundings.
Precisely as I’d planned, the asshole tracked my energy signature—the one I’d deliberately left in my wake while setting up the stage. If he believed there was no fucking way he could lose me, there was no reason why he couldn’t hang back, stay off my radar.
A cold smile spread across my lips.
Playing it safe didn’t always turn out the way people expected it to.
As I prowled forward, I let my inner predator take the reins. Though I couldn’t actually see the prick, my demonic feelers picked up his presence well enough. It was the same fuck who’d loitered outside my parents’ house yesterday.
Demon fire whisked over my fingertips, but instead of giving in to its desire to burn, I amped up my other-sight instead.
Where there had been nothing but an empty Berlin street before, my stalker asshole’s particle form manifested as a fuzzy, graphite gray splotch hovering just above the parallel parked cars. I cranked the knob on my other-sight to the max.
The drifting atoms became a clear, tangible thing—as if they were painted right on the canvas of morning air.
Perhaps not the most common way of sensing matters among demonkind, as Lena had informed me, but it certainly got the job done.
My sneakers made no sound against the sidewalk as I crept alongside the row of parked cars on my end of the street. The abundance of metal dulled my output somewhat, but still I kept a tight leash on my power, mindful of any leaks.
So far, the demon’s speed and signature remained unchained, suggesting he hadn’t noticed anything off, but with less and less distance separating us, I was starting to push my limits.
Lena had taught me how to make myself harder to sense, but I’d never be entirely invisible to my Shadow World kin. Right now, though, I’d gotten what I needed.
Right as the demon reached the turn I’d taken earlier, the wind caressing my cheeks flipped around. My presence must have hit him, because his gray aura flared and swirled, the blotch hovering in the air as if uncertain—
Blue energy speared from it in two slender, yet potent threads of blue.
While particle form was the safest a demon could take, it didn’t strip them—us—of sensory awareness. All I needed was that jolt. That flick that would ignite the impulse all of us treading the somewhat more violent side of life carried within.
To fight back, not flee.
Air shimmered blue and cast a gentle sheen across the white facade of the nearest building as my demon fire found its mark.
In a blur of motion, a reedy man with long blond hair materialized on the sidewalk right next to a short no-park zone. I struck before the first flicker of red could form at his fingertips, then vaulted over a car and broke into a sprint across the street.
The demon blocked my fire, but not before a hiss rode the air, followed by the spreading stench of scorched skin.
He snarled, face contorted into a vicious mix between agony and anger. He lunged towards me, unleashing a blaze of red. I threw myself sideways. His fire licked my side, but the only thing it touched was the messenger bag that dropped to the ground as its strap disintegrated.
For a second, I doubted myself.
Had I misread his intentions?
But when I caught sight of the predatory gleam in his eyes, I realized I hadn’t gotten it wrong. The demon was simply still working in full fight mode. Efficient when you needed to keep your ass alive, but unless you spent years training to retain clarity even when your mind went red, it was also careless.
I was willing to bet a year’s salary his liege wouldn’t be pleased if she knew he’d gone for the kill just then.
As he readied for another attack, I rolled back across the mercifully still traffic-free street and used the parked cars as cover while I built up my power. Briefly, I considered shifting, but that would have been too much
of a nuisance given the long day I still had ahead of me. While werewolves might have been accepted into the society, our nudity was not.
I skirted around the rear end of a black Audi right as the demon walked out onto the road, his gaze trained on the cars ahead of me where I’d been moments earlier. Crouching, I rushed forward to get behind him—
The asshole sensed me.
It had only been a matter of time before he did, but that second it took him to turn around gave me the opening I’d been edging for.
I unleashed my flames.
The demon swore in what sounded like their native, ancient tongue, and took the brunt of the hit. But even as his clothes burned away and exposed red, blistering skin beneath the sheen of blue, he cast a ball of fire my way. I swerved sideways, then ducked behind a bulky Volkswagen as the demon flung another shot. The distinct jangle of keys sounded from behind, barely audible beneath the crackling of demonic flames—
A scream hit my ears.
Fuck.
I cast a look over my shoulder, fury and trepidation swirling within me as my gaze fell on the writhing form of a woman who must have crossed from the building to her car. Coffee trickled onto the ground from her fallen cup, but it was her arm I couldn’t stop staring at. The mass of angry skin where the demon fire I’d evaded had singed her flesh from elbow to shoulder.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
As her screams bounced off the buildings, I could smell the fragrance of humanity drifting closer. Shit. I needed to finish this before someone else got hurt.
Bringing the full strength of my flames to the surface, I wrapped myself into their blue embrace and barreled towards the demon. Surprise briefly touched his eyes, but quickly vanished as he matched me ember for ember. Too bad for him he couldn’t do the same with my wrath.
I launched myself at the asshole with unbarred force.
Pavement darkened as we rolled across the road. I didn’t bother to curb the heat of my fire—not until I felt the waning of his. I reined in some of the potency, blocked his thrashing attempt to throw me off as I straddled him, then delivered a hard blow to the side of his head.
His fire fled with his consciousness.
I punched him again for good measure, then rushed back to the woman. Three humans already loitered nearby, but none dared approach. Wise or cowards, I couldn’t tell. And it didn’t matter.
“ICRA.” I flashed them the badge secured to the waist of my ripped jeans. “Call the paramedics.”
The short woman standing in the middle sprang into action first. As her voice drifted on the light wind, I crouched beside the writhing brunette. Her cries had died down to helpless sobs.
“I’m here to help,” I said, using my best comforting voice, which, I suspected, wasn’t all that comforting since it still carried distinct traces of my anger.
“There’s an ambulance on its way,” I added as the bystander ended her call. “You’ll be all right.”
And that was no lie.
Now that I could see the wound up close, smell the extent of the damage, there was no mistaking the demon fire had only touched the surface. Though I didn’t doubt it hurt like a sonovabitch, I also didn’t believe there would be any sort of scar left once the paramedics patched her up. There was always at least one witch on duty who could heal such injuries.
I motioned to the woman who’d made the call to come over.
“Keep watch over her. I need to take the demon in before he regains consciousness.”
The woman’s gaze skimmed to the asshole’s felled form, and I could tell by the look in her eyes that she wouldn’t mind getting a punch in. Got to love humans with fire in their souls.
“Tell the paramedics to get in touch with ICRA and ask for Agent Lotte Freundenberger.”
“Agent Lotte Freundenberger,” the woman repeated, then gave a curt nod. “Got it.”
“Thank you.”
I quickly hurried over to my discarded bag, tucked it under one armpit, then hauled my ass over to the demon. He was still out cold and, despite his reed-thin body, not the lightest of people to lift. I shifted my bag from under my arm to between my thighs, then, with a growl trickling from my lips, hoisted the bastard into a fireman’s carry. I hated how exposed the position left me, but I also knew I could trust my senses to ring the alarm the second the demon started to wake.
Once I had the asshole secure, I grabbed my bag from between my thighs and made a show of carrying the demon right past the crowd that had gained numbers while I’d been busy. They needed to believe I was taking him in. That he was minutes away from ending up in a tight little ICRA cell, a hazard to society no more.
What I was about to do would have enough consequences to sort out without dealing with the population’s loss of faith in the Agency.
I was almost by the bridge spanning across the Spree when I took a right turn. A slightly awkward look over my shoulder confirmed no one saw the change in direction. Good. I carried along the empty street until I found a secluded, dirty patch of ground behind some garbage bins, and tossed the demon among the trash where he belonged.
The omnipresent scent of humanity wove around me, but even with the almost overpowering reek of rotten food—with a pinch of baby diapers thrown in—clogging my nostrils, it wasn’t hard to figure out no one would crash this particular meeting. I set my ripped bag on a fairly clean patch of ground, then straddled the demon.
He came to on the third slap.
“Try anything and I’ll fry you.”
My demon fire sizzled—a rope of it around my stalker’s neck, a mean orb just above his heart. Even if he brought up his defenses, I’d be faster.
After a second when he appeared to be contemplating whether there was merit to my words, he ceased resisting. “What do you want.”
He didn’t phrase it as a question. Nope. He threw the words out like a damn insult.
Charming.
I arched an eyebrow and lowered the flickering blue fire until it almost touched his skin.
“What I want is to throw your ass in ICRA jail where you could spend the rest of your rotten eternity. But”—I leaned in, staring right in his light brown eyes that couldn’t mask the flare of terror—“I have a feeling you’ll be a good little demon and carry a message back to your liege if that means you get to flit around for another day.”
His silence might have been sulking, but it was also a concession to my terms.
“Tell Raya to stop sending her lackeys to monitor me. Tell her that I don’t want anything to do with her wretched court. She might think she’s untouchable in the Shadow World, but this is my realm. If she’s delusional enough to try anything again”—which the damn demon lord definitely was—“she’ll have a long, long time to think about her greediness when I dispatch her to the underworld.”
The demon tilted his head. “Message received.”
Sensing no power surge in him, I rose and lifted my fire just enough for him to book it back to the Shadow World without getting singed. The demon didn’t disappoint. Between one second and the next, the asshole was gone, leaving me alone in the eye-watering stink.
I grabbed my bag off the ground and hurried from behind the dumpsters. The reek seemed to cling to me even when I left the alley behind. I dug around my bag for my phone, then swore a nice blue streak when I pulled the thing out.
A nasty crack spread from the bottom left corner of the screen.
Great.
To think I’d believed I’d broken my life-long streak of destroying gadgets…
I sighed and pressed the side button to bring the screen to life as I retraced my steps towards the Spree. At least the phone still worked. But that was about the only good news I could pull from the entire ordeal.
Not only did I let a criminal go, I was bloody late.
By the time I reached the Spree and hurried across the bridge, the ambulance had already arrived at the scene I’d left behind. From what my wolf ears caught before the sounds of the city coming to
life whisked away the whispers, the woman would, indeed, be fine. Just as I’d predicted.
The same, unfortunately, couldn’t be said about me.
While agents had a certain amount of autonomy when it came to dealing with criminals, letting someone go after they scorched a civilian was usually a no-no. At the very least, I should have let Berlin PD take the demon in, though we all knew the bastard would have given them the slip sooner rather than later. Equipped to deal with particle form, the police were not. Even ICRA needed to employ some heavy-duty magic to keep demons restrained, which is why they usually went straight for execution if the crime justified it.
I pursed my lips and hurried towards the hulking ICRA building that stuck out like a sore thumb among the beautiful architecture.
Maybe that was my ticket out of this mess.
Regardless of how dreadful I felt that a civilian got hurt, the demon’s crime wasn’t execution material. I made a mental note to work on my defense in the background, then flashed my badge at the pair of security guards standing on either side of the dimmed glass doors.
The werewolf on the left gave me a lingering look, no doubt smelling everything I’d been through already this morning, but waved me on right as her vamp partner dipped her chin.
Not unlike our own HQ back in Munich, several more security checks slowed my progression through the lobby. I was more and more aware of the minutes piling up with every time I had to stop and allow magic or tech to probe me. By the time I was done and my gaze caught on a familiar figure lingering beside a wide stairwell, I was a good twenty-five minutes late.
“I’m so sorry, Agent Brent.” I hurried up to the werewolf who…
Looked as if she were holding back a smile.
Her nose wrinkled, though amusement continued to paint her brown eyes golden. “You certainly had an eventful morning…”
“An understatement,” I grumbled.
This time, the werewolf’s smile broke across her face. “Please, do call me Gina.”
Right. She’d said as much last night.
“Gina.” I started to raise my hand, but thought better of it. “I’ll skip the handshake until I can clean up.”
