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“Sounds a little like a vampire.” Aside from the part about stringing prey upside down, but some vampires had their kinks. “Are you sure you’re not confused?”
“No confusion here. It has wings, but it isn’t a vamp. It’s been killing all their livestock. They’re worried the spells on the house won’t keep it out for long.” The longer he spoke, the more his breathing shifted toward a pant. “It’s something new, I’m telling you. Nothing like it has been seen before, at least not around here.”
“I highly doubt it’s a new demon.” But Darien’s mind flashed to the missing girls who had been turned into monsters by the Arcanum Well replica—mutated by the curse. Was there a possibility that this new creature the clerk spoke of had anything to do with that? He hoped it didn’t, but with everything he’d seen lately… Well, there wasn’t a lot that could surprise him anymore. And if he was being honest with himself, this task might be exactly the kind of thing he needed tonight. “What’s their address?”
Greg waved the question away. “Don’t bother. They don’t have the money to pay someone like you. They can’t even afford Budget Pest Removal.” Budget Pest Removal was a joke, just like their name. They couldn’t catch a rat if they tried, let alone a demon, even one of the small guys that were chewing on garbage out back at this very second.
“Just give me the address, and I’ll worry about the numbers.”
Greg studied him over the top of his glasses again. “You serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. Write it down for me.”
He promptly grabbed a pen and a sticky note, scrawled down the address, and handed it over.
Darien snatched it out of his thick fingers. “Thanks, Greg. You’re doing me a favor.” There would be no Pit for him tonight, no screaming audience, no Antonio Perez clapping him on the back, as if fighting in that cesspool was something to be proud of. He winked at Greg, grabbed his items, and made for the door. “Have a lovely night.”
—
The drive to the rural community of Whitebridge took over an hour. Darien kept the windows down, the cool evening air rushing into the car in gusts that caught in his hair and clothes.
As he sped down the highway, he concentrated on breathing deeply, the fresh scent of rain-dampened earth and the spice of night-blooming flowers filling his lungs. He used Loren’s trick of counting backwards from a hundred, which did wonders at keeping him calm, as if she was right there with him, talking him out of the dark.
She was the sweetest thing for trying to help him, and it killed him that he’d had to leave. The thought of her sleeping alone in his bed, night after goddamn night, while he left the house to kill, to shed the blood of monsters and criminals when he should be beside her instead, giving her the kind of love and attention she deserved…
He forced the thought out of his mind and returned to counting backwards, starting over from one hundred. Staying calm was a must when he was behind the wheel.
According to the navigational system displayed on the screen that was set in the dash, he wasn’t far away now. Another few minutes, and he would be able to cut a monster into tiny pieces and get rid of this Surge once and for all.
What a thought to have. Normal people didn’t look forward to ripping apart sentient creatures to curb the darkness festering inside them. Normal people didn’t need to leave their woman in the dead of night to go to fighting rings only to emerge hours later, covered in blood that wasn’t their own.
His eyes flashed to the rear-view mirror—the eyes that sometimes felt like they belonged to a stranger.
He smacked the mirror aside with the back of his hand and slumped against his door. “You’re a joke,” he muttered. “Just like your dad.”
Eventually, he reached the address the clerk had given him. It was an old farmhouse on a dirt road in the middle of ass-fuck nowhere, complete with a chicken coop, a red barn, and a flowerbed to go with the endless, rolling fields of crops. Despite how different it was from the lively atmosphere of the city, he had to admit it held a certain charm.
Darien got out of the car and made his way to the back of it. The crunch of dirt beneath his boots was the only sound in the area, and it carried far. He popped open the trunk with the remote and lifted the mat and hardboard to reveal a compartment underneath. It was where he kept most of his weapons, the magic spells that made them invisible to the naked eye fading away as soon as they recognized his touch.
“You’re going to need all of those.”
Darien jolted at the sound of the voice. Forming a fist with his right hand, he whirled on a heel, wound his arm back—
And froze. Right in the nick of time.
“Shit, old man,” Darien breathed.
A rail-thin human in his late sixties was shuffling toward him, hunting rifle dangling from his shoulder. The weapon was useless. Laughable, even. Demons were the most common form of danger in secluded areas like Whitebridge; a rifle like this wouldn’t do shit.
Darien lowered his arm and loosened his fist, his tense fingers barely cooperating, as if they wanted to be in a fighting ring just as badly as he did. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that,” Darien said. “I almost decked you.” If he had, he certainly would’ve killed the guy, he was that old and brittle.
The man paused beside him, closer than most people dared to get, especially considering his eyes were black again. The eyes of a demon—a monster who struggled to control himself. A demon who hunted demons. What irony.
Darien wasn’t sure where people went after they died, but he hoped his mother wasn’t burdened with having to look down upon her failure of a son. Before she died, she had done her best to steer him away from Randal’s path and onto a better one, a life without needless bloodshed. Somewhere along the way, he’d got lost, and most days, when he looked in the mirror, he couldn’t tell if he was looking at himself or his dad.
“You’re having a Surge,” the man said, his tone heavy with understanding. “Aren’t you, son?”
Darien busied himself with the contents of the trunk. “Look, buddy, let’s not make this personal. I’m here to slay, not talk.” He sensed the man nodding, his aura taking on a warmth that suggested he felt sorry for Darien. Darien tried not to be irritated by this, but he didn’t want sympathy. He wanted… He wasn’t sure what he wanted.
