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I placed his license on the stone near his hand, then pulled out the other cards. There were four credit cards—two in the name of Henry Mack, and two in the name of Jason Marks—a transit card, and various receipts from shops. Mainly for clothes and grocery items, although interestingly, there was a small receipt from a place called Esoteric Supplies, which I knew from Ilianna was one of the main suppliers of wiccan items in Melbourne.
There was little else in the wallet except cash, so I placed the remaining cards on the stone, took a photo of both them and our stranger, and shot both off to Stane with a quick note to see what he could uncover.
“Well,” said Jak, “he’s only got a couple of numbers in his address book, and his last call came from a blocked number. I don’t suppose we can take the risk and call it back?”
“And let whoever is behind this know we have his Razan? Not a good idea.”
Jak flicked through other screens. “They’re going to know something went on, anyway. I mean, you knocked him out.”
“True.” I hesitated, awareness suddenly prickling across my senses.
And suddenly remembered the Razan’s last words. Yes, I’ve released them.
I spun around. The stones’ circle was complete again, and its fading glow did little to light the immediate darkness. The pillars had fallen completely silent. There was no escape that way—not unless we could get the gate open again.
A low growl reverberated around the darkness, raising the hackles along the back of my neck.
“What the hell was that?” Jak’s voice was filled with trepidation as he studied the tunnel behind us.
“That”—I grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the northern end of the stones—“is a hellhound. We need to get out of here—fast!”
We reached the northern entrance and stopped. The runes didn’t react to our presence. They just continued to glow that same sickly color.
“Now what?” Jak’s voice was grim and there was fear in his eyes.
“I don’t know.”
I remembered the gesture the Razan had made when he’d reentered the cavern, and repeated it as best I could. Nothing happened. The runes continued to glow ominously.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
The air began to stir, became a thick scent of malevolence. They were coming.
I grabbed one of the bottles from Ilianna’s satchel and popped the cork. It flew toward the still-glowing runes but never made it across them. There was a sharp report, a flash of fire, and the cork was little more than cinders falling harmlessly to the stone floor.
That would be us if we weren’t very careful.
The smell of death, decay, and ash began to fill the air. I licked dry lips and looked around wildly. There was no decent place to stand and fight. Our best bet was to try to keep them in the tunnel.
And the only way to do that was to use the holy water as some sort of barrier.
But I’d barely taken two steps when evil flowed into the room. The creatures were big, bigger than the ones I’d seen previously, their large heads held low and their red eyes glowing brightly in the shadowed darkness. Thick yellow teeth gleamed eerily as the pair of them snarled. The sound echoed like a death knell.
I flung the water at them.
It flew across the air like a silver ribbon, hitting the first one on the snout and splashing across the coat of the other, sizzling and bubbling where it struck.
The first hound twisted and howled as its face began to disintegrate. Flesh dropped from its cheeks in chunks, until all that was left was bone. Soon that began to crack and shatter, until nothing remained of that half of its face.
But it didn’t die. It was disfigured, but still very much alive.
It would be just my luck to get a stronger breed of hellhound this time around.
And then I remembered that Azriel had killed the hounds with his sword when they’d been distracted by the burning water.
I had no choice but to do this the hard way.
I switched Amaya to one hand and carefully reached for more holy water. Her kill, kill, kill chant was fierce and rapid, matching the pounding of my heart.
