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I rubbed my arms and glanced at Quinn. "Doesn't look as if there's anyone inside."
His gaze was on the building. "There's nothing visible on infrared, but that doesn't mean the place is empty."
I raised an eyebrow. "It doesn't?"
"Demons don't show up on infrared."
"That's a comforting thought." I paused. "So how do I combat a demon?"
"Demons can be killed when they materialize." He walked to the trunk of his car and opened it up. "All you need to do is chop off their head."
"Which will be positively easy, no doubt."
It was dryly said, and he smiled. "About as easy as chopping off a vamp's head."
I waved a hand. "A walk in the park, then."
"Yeah." He handed me a long silver knife, waited until I'd strapped it on, then gave me two bottles of water and a box of salt.
"What am I supposed to do with these?" I asked, a little bemusedly.
"Holy water and salt are both weapons and purifiers." He slammed the trunk lid shut. "They can either keep the demon off you long enough to use the knife, or contain the circle so that it cannot be used for summoning again."
"We're not going to destroy it?"
He shook his head. "By making it unusable we force her to make a second, and therefore drain her of a little more power. We need every advantage we can get."
"Can I just point out it's two against one?"
"No, it's two against five. She will call the others if attacked and they can respond quicker than you could ever imagine."
He touched my back again, sending little shivers of delight lapping across my skin as he guided me toward the house. "How? They're in human form, and therefore restrained by human limitations."
"They can shed their human forms if they wish. It just means they have to find new bodies to take over."
"And would that be easy?"
He glanced at me, obsidian eyes giving little away. "No human can withstand them."
"In which case, there'd be no need for a willing victim acquiescing to evil then, would there? They could just take whatever they wanted."
"There is a difference between feeding to maintain existence and taking over the body. One has to be willing, the other does not."
"Could a nonhuman resist them?"
"Not if we're talking about a usurping of body ownership."
A tremor ran through me. I hadn't really wanted an answer to that particular question. Not when I probably had to face the bastards sooner rather than later.
I opened the gate and ran up the steps to the front door. It was locked, naturally, and a quick hunt around the nearby potted shrubbery didn't produce any handily-hidden key. "Don't suppose you were a cat burglar in one of your bad periods, were you?"
"I'm a vampire, remember?"
"Oh, yeah." Thresholds and all that. "Oh well."
I hit the door hard, in the sweet spot just above the lock, and it sprung open. Quinn raised his eyebrows. "That's a neat little trick."
"Courtesy of an apartment where the locks never work and the landlord refuses to replace them. It's the same sort of lock." I opened the salt and one of the bottles and held them at the ready. And felt stupid doing it.
