He watched her disappear down the street, her small stature quickly swallowed up by the throngs of people.
Darien leaned over to flick open the glovebox and retrieved a semi-automatic pistol. He ejected the magazine, ripped open a new box of cartridges with his teeth, and loaded it with ammunition.
The pistol would probably be a waste, considering how young and strangelynormalthis target appeared to be. Usually, he was approached with jobs to hunt down criminals or demons—not girls that had barely entered post-secondary school. There was a reason they were calledDarkslayers; they didn’t hunt or kill good people, innocent people—and they were rarely asked to, most of their targets having done something bad enough to warrant whatever price was stamped to their foreheads.
The simple fact that he was on the Avenue of the Scarlet Star was a joke. This was a place for families; for men with pockets deeper than their minds to take their trophy wives out for stupidly expensive lunches. Even the ground here was cleaner than the floor of his car.
He almost snorted at the absurdity of this. Were the other Devils playing some sort of joke on him, and this wasn’t arealjob?
But he found himself hesitating; found himself looking toward the street, where he could no longer see the girl, nor her aura, but knew she would be waiting in line for food somewhere.
There had to be an explanation for this. Although everything about her screamed that she was human, it was impossible.
No—there was simply no way. Absolutelynoway she was just human. And he wasn’t about to pass up three million gold mynet over feelingsorryfor her.
He slapped the magazine into place with the heel of his hand, tucked the pistol into the concealed holster at the front of his black cargo pants, and set off after her.
—
Loren tapped her foot as she waited in line at a sandwich cart across the street from Mordred and Penelope’s. She hadn’t stopped looking over her shoulder all morning, and every time the bells hanging from the apothecary door had chimed, her heart nearly jumped out of her chest.
She blamed the magpies. The stupid birds had heralded both her death and the devil, and although nothing sinister had come for her yet, she couldn’t relax. Some people claimed it was only a silly nursery rhyme, but she’d heard enough stories in her lifetime to suggest the words had some truth to them.
Dallas probably would’ve laughed at her for overreacting. But Dallas wasn’t here right now, and after Sabrine’s disappearance—and the little fact that hadn’t slipped Loren’s mind, about the Darkslayer demanding thatsheget in his car, not Sab or Dallas—Loren refused to rule out anything that might alert her to any coming dangers.
The line for the sandwich cart moved at a snail’s pace, and Loren began to sweat under the glare of the midday sun. The weather had been terribly unpredictable lately, the forecasters even more so. But it seemed that jeans and three-quarter-sleeved shirts weren’t an option quite yet.
The people standing before her shuffled forward, and when she finally made it to the front of the line, she ordered a turkey panini with mustard and extra pickles. She was handing over a crumpled banknote when something compelled her to look over her shoulder.
As she scanned the crowds behind her, her gaze snagged on two figures standing on either side of the apothecary door.
Was it her imagination, or were they watching her?
The sweaty man operating the sandwich cart called her back to attention, shaking her change in her face.
“Keep it,” she told him. She turned again to look at the pair standing by the apothecary—a blond middle-aged man and a woman with hair shorn to her scalp.
They were still watching her.
The owner of the sandwich cart began to make her panini, so she stepped out of line. As the seconds ticked by, she kept an eye on those black-clad figures.
Barely two minutes passed before they shrugged away from the brick wall of the apothecary and began making a beeline through the crowd—a beeline that would lead them straight to her.
She considered screaming for help, but she was no stranger to the news channel. She had seen horrifying stories on there that involved innocent civilians slaughtered at the hands of armed robbers and Darkslayers after stepping in to help one another. The immortal leaders of the organized crime groups that ruled from Angelthene’s underbelly were so powerful, they often couldn’t be stopped—not even by magic.
And unless she wanted to live the rest of her life with blood on her hands for involving innocent passerby, she would have to handle these people on her own.
Lowering her gaze, and desperately wishing she wasn’t wearing these blasted heels, she disappeared into the crowd. The man who’d shaken her change in her face shouted that she forgot her sandwich.
She kept walking, deep into the throng of people. Water from the misting systems lining the restaurant patios cooled her sunburned face. The cooler temperature provided a brief respite from the heat but did nothing to ease the tightness in her chest. The hot air was laden with the scents of sizzling onions, deep-fried pickle spears, and mini doughnuts dusted with icing sugar, all cooked in the restaurants and on the grills in the mobile food trucks that were parked along the avenue.
A glance over her shoulder said she seemed to have lost her trackers. But there were so many people milling about that she couldn’t be sure.
When she turned back around to continue, she found two other people—two males old enough to be her father—converging from opposite sides of the avenue. Their eyes never left her face. Their lips were moving, as though they were communicating to each other through wireless headsets. And the tattoos on the sides of their necks…
Phoenix heads.
“Shit.”Her heart was in her throat, and her mind spun as she debated what she should do.
