Walter leaned in to get a different angle of the dead plant. He stripped off his T-shirt, revealing just enough of himself to make me smile. We weren’t each other’s type, and even if we were, I’d never get involved with a vamp again—but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the view of dark skin, rippling muscles, and warrior grace.
Wrapping the shirt around his left hand, Walter touched something with it, then lifted whatever it was from the pot. He returned inside, sealed the door, and headed for the staircase. On the cam, he was smiling. He looked…happy.
“Shit!” I whispered.
I met him at the top of the stairs outside the workout room. Before I even processed what I was seeing, I said, “Walter.Stop.”
He didn’t argue, instead ceasing motion with that preternatural vampire efficiency and grace.
Dark energies surrounded the thing in his T-shirt, smutty orange and sickly green.
My precog kicked in with a single warning. Demon energies.
“Slowly, very slowly,” I said, “set that thing down.”
Walter blinked several times, took a slow breath as if waking up for the night. Gently, with utmost delicacy, he bent and placed the T-shirt with its burden on the top step. It settled, no bobbling, no wobbling.
A demon in post–Witch War parlance wasn’t like demons in religious history, because they didn’t flee from people of faith, didn’t claim to be angels, fallen or otherwise, and couldn’t be banished like scriptural demons could. But they were similar to demons in the sense that they could and did possess other creatures, which never ended well for anyone. In reality, all so-called demons used by enemy witches in the war, were extraterrestrial, extradimensional beings—the military called them EEBs.
I waved Walter inside and shut the door. Raced to the weapons wall, where I removed my staff. I had made it myself when I learned how to create and manipulate null energies. Most people had null sticks. I had a null staff, like Merlin, except my staff negated magical energies instead of containing and utilizing them for workings. And it had a little somethin’-somethin’ extra. Pain shot through my left thumb and up my arm when I touched the staff.
There was always a cost.
I rested my thumb on the innocuous-looking, steel-and-silver-wrapped blue tigereye stone. Thethinghidden beneath the tigereye was a yellowish bit of material, neither stone nor resin, full of blood-tinted impurities, and surrounding and trapping a tiny bit of utter darkness that might be a pocket universe.
I had “borrowed” thethingfrom my Aunt Jane when I was eight. And no one but me, until now, had known about my theft. I was giving it all away.Ifthe staff worked.
My fingers curled, gripping into the carved shape of my hand on the wide end of the staff. Pain spread up my wrist.
I didn’t know if I could use the darkness of the pocket universe in thething. I had never been around a demon to test it. “Hell’s hounds,” I whispered.
From the same wall, I took my cloak and slung it around my shoulders. It was neon blue velvet Agric on one side and what looked like black leather on the other. The faux leather was Dyneema, with an inner Kevlar mesh resting between the outer layers.
The outer blue velvet was made from surplus agricultural products and was imbued with null energies. Like handling the staff, it hurt to wear for any length of time. Just as it protected me from the magics of others, it constrained my own energies, like tying a tourniquet around my throat.
I wore the cloak to events where armor wasn’t practical and attack was possible. Like now. I adjusted and secured the cloak, velvet side out. My magic stilled. My bones ached. Nausea boiled in me and climbed up my throat like oily poison. Suffocating. Any benefit I had from battle magic was lost when I wore the cloak. Even my precog died.
I was aware of Walter, half naked, watching me. He was also sending video out to someone. It had to be to the queen’s security team at HQ. Probably also to my parents.Damn it.
I’d deal with that later.
I rushed to the door and opened it a crack. The gray disk lay on top of the black T-shirt. The energies that had been pale had darkened, whirling like a mini-tornado. Using the cloak and the steel fire door as protection, I leaned out, gripping the staff, the labradorite capstone facing me. My thumb carefully rested on the blue tigereye trigger stone. Gently, I stretched the staff’s narrow tip toward the disk.
The staff bucked. Green and blue energies, the colors of emerald, peridot, apatite, and labradorite, flared from it. Darker energies rose from the disk, smutty orange and sickly green EEB energies.Demon. Maybe achort.
A trapped demon was officially called a????? ? ???????inRussian, or demon in a box. This was a demon bomb. Just like in the war.
I pressed the tigereye, activating the amulet beneath. But I wasn’t quite fast enough.
As my thumb tightened, thechortgrowled awyrdof power in a language so twisted, the sound was little more than a vibration of filth and hate. The demonwyrdiced the walls of the stairwell. An obscene wailing came from nowhere and everywhere, rising in pitch until my ears ached.
It had air magic like EJ’s. He’d hear it from his ice bath and come running.
It was taking longer than I had anticipated for the staff’s trigger to initiate.
Thechortwas smarter and stronger than I had expected. Maybe it was aBes, instead, a middle-sized, middle-powerful, extradimensional demon.
Its energies snaked up my staff, not quite touching it. Smart. Yes. ABes. TheBeswrapped around the exposed flesh of my hand.
