As they made their way to the car, his phone buzzed in his pocket. Upon seeing his sister’s name on the screen, he swiped to answer and lifted the phone to his ear.
“Yeah,” he said by way of greeting.
Loren was walking several feet ahead of him, and when two warlocks swaggering by catcalled her, fully turning their heads to leer at her perfect ass, Darien gave them a predatory smile that had them promptly averting their eyes and scuttling for the nearest storefront.
“I’m with the others at Queenswater Rapids.” Ivyana’s voice held a tension Darien instantly picked up on. Queenswater Rapids was an old park in the heart of the Silverwood District, otherwise known as Werewolf Territory. “We found something we think you should see.”
—
Loren couldn’t bear to look at the body for long.
It was the corpse of one of those humanoid demons. The same type she and Dallas had run into on the academy grounds. It looked the exact same as the first one, with mottled and hairless skin, cracked and yellowed teeth, and bloodshot eyes.
The Seven Devils stood around her at Queenswater Rapids, a massive park overrun with old-growth trees in the Silverwood District. Darien’s car, Lace’s convertible, and Max’s SUV were idling nearby. Three of the Devils had hunted down the demon after listening in on a law enforcement radio; a man who lived in an apartment not five blocks from here had called it in after sighting it in a nearby alley. And then those Devils had contacted the others to meet them here.
Ivyana Cassel was kneeling by the creature’s head. Her shoulder-length hair, the same depthless black as Darien’s, was damp with sweat from the dry heat.
“Its eyes are unsettlingly human,” she noted. It was a challenge to hear her over the rushing of the twin waterfalls not ten feet away. “Look here, at the irises. No demon has ever had eyes this color.”
Loren swallowed bile. The demon had hazel eyes; it was a very common color, but not for demons or any other type of monster. It was a veryhumancolor. Witches and warlocks could have hazel eyes as well, but it was commonly seen on mortals. She wasn’t sure what that meant.
And judging from the looks on the slayers’ faces, they didn’t have a clue either.
Darien patted the pockets of his pants. “Anyone bring a syringe?”
Lace stepped forward, the stiletto heels of her thigh-boots clicking on slick rock. “Here.” She produced one from the pocket of her red leather jacket and offered it to him.
Darien took it from her and bit off the cap. Ivyana shuffled aside to give him room as he knelt beside the creature and plunged the syringe into a vein near the elbow.
Loren looked away, nausea twisting her gut in a fist, as the barrel swiftly filled with blood.
He stuck the cap back on the syringe and slipped it into his pocket. “Who shot it?”
Tanner raised his hand.
“Atlas,” Darien prompted. “What’d you use?”
“First of all, to be fair, it was extremely difficult to kill.”
“I can see that.” The head was riddled with bullet wounds.
“Second,” Tanner continued, “I had to use a combination of chrysolite and silver bullets.”
Darien drummed his fingers against his chin. “Interesting.” He thought about it for another few minutes. And then he rose to his feet and tossed a lighter to Maximus.
“Burn it,” he instructed. “It won’t be long before someone sees us here, and I’d rather not cart the corpse all the way back to Hell’s Gate. Arthur should be able to run tests to see if the blood has the presence of a disease. If we’re lucky, we’ll soon have some answers.”
Loren had learned about this in school: there had been cases in history when animals had mutated from an unknown disease that could change them into demonic creatures crazed by the taste of flesh and blood.
Maximus sparked the metal lighter, the flame dancing in his eyes. “Gladly.”
Lace picked up the jerrycan that sat on the ground near the front-left tire of her convertible. “Dusk brings ashes,” she sang, dousing the demon’s corpse with gasoline.
Max dropped the lighter onto the demon. The fire caught instantly, flames writhing as if to a song. “Smoke and flashes,” he added, finishing Lace’s rhyme in a low voice.
Loren looked away, the stink of gasoline and burning flesh stinging her nose.
Darien was patting his pockets, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. “Shit,” he muttered. Clearly, that lighter he’d tossed to Max had been his last.
