Something small and flaming—a wooden matchstick—arced through the air and looped down, falling neatly on the edge of the thin layer of gasoline surrounding Brynna.
WHUMP!
Her transformation to demon form was instinctive and instantaneous, almost faster than the blaze that wanted to devour her. She had to change, had to, because somewhere in the core of her being, Brynna knew this woman form would never survive the conflagration. The flare-up was hot and wild, and the flames enveloped her like an old lover, the touch of Lucifer himself. Everything earthly disappeared—hair, fragile skin, thin nails, the soft moist flesh of her lips, her eyes. She could take many forms, but this one—yes, it was best. The blackened, carbonized skin that coated her true self soaked the fire into itself and reveled in it, making the flames bigger and better and hotter; her back extended and stretched into a set of translucent, dirt-colored wings strong enough to withstand the hurricanes of Hell itself. She folded them around herself and smiled—she couldn’t help it. Then, cradled within a circular wall of flame, she distantly heard the high, cruel laughter of the young men as they ran away. Below that came Redmond’s panicked shouts—she had never heard him sound so terrified.
His voice, more than anything, pulled her back. Brynna pushed away from the lure of the fire, the siren symphony of the heat, and forced herself to reestablish her earthly form. Ten seconds, twenty, and then the flare-up dwindled to nothing but straggling flickers within the smoking, ashy remnants of the clothes she’d been wearing just moments before.
She wanted to be human flesh again, she reached for it, but it was not so easy to return, not so fast. Demon flesh would not relinquish its hold so readily. Maybe someday, with practice, but right now Brynna had to force it, push and rend and sculpt her true body until it conceded to her will. She had to do this, and as quickly as possible. As darkly sweet as being in her original form might be, every second that she remained that way increased the danger of being seen by other demons, of a Hunter being alerted, or that—
Redmond’s hoarse cries ended abruptly, choking off in shock. “What—what are you?”
—Eran Redmond, her human lover, might see her as she really was.
Most of the smoke had cleared but her metamorphosis was not yet complete. There was nothing Brynna could do, nowhere she could go to hide from his sight. She pulled her arms forward and her wings, gray-brown and veined with black, unfolded behind her of their own volition, impossibly strong, beautiful in Hell but hideous on Earth. Her flesh was still nearly as black as her veins and her body was stronger and fuller, oozing sexuality and full of the temptations experienced by millennia of men.
Eran took a step toward her. He couldn’t help it.
She held up a hand and he halted, staring at the overly long fingers tipped with razor-sharp nails the color of heart’s blood. “I told you before,” she rasped. “I’m a—” Brynna started to say demon but the word wouldn’t come out. It was locked in her throat and chest like an abomination, something that was never meant to be heard by this imperfect yet well-intentioned man.
Her skin was changing, bending to her will and melding downward toward human; she dragged her fingers across the mottled black and pink flesh below her ribs and her nails opened a furrow in her belly. There, deep within the bloodless gash, was that most precious of objects, the one thing in all of eternity she truly felt she could call her own.
Her feather.
Brynna pulled it out and held it up, almost like an offering. In the smoke-fouled air, it gleamed between her sooty fingertips like a star plucked from Heaven itself.
“Fallen angel,” she finished in a whisper.
Then she was done talking, because she had to concentrate if she was going to make herself human again, to break the connection between the here and now and her demon essence from before.
Brynna couldn’t have said if it was a minute or an hour later, but her feather was once more safely secreted and she was finally human again. Barely covered by burned remnants of fabric, shaking with the effort as she stood face-to-face with Redmond, she could see the amazement and reluctant belief—finally—in his eyes. The change had taken so long and so much effort, and had created so much potential for danger, and yet the only thing she was worried about was what he would think of her now.
How disgustingly human was that?
And when the pain buckled her knees and drove her to the alley’s pavement, Brynna realized that as rapidly as she had transformed from human to demon, it had been neither fast enough nor into the right demon form that would keep completely safe that human part of her that was never meant to touch hellfire.
ERAN HAD NEVER DONE anything so difficult in his life as reaching out and pulling Brynna to her feet so he could guide her to his car. Had he really seen … what had he seen? Already his mind was fogging over, his thoughts questioning his memory. Psychiatrists probably had some kind of fancy name for it—post-traumatic memory modification or some such crap, a switch in a person’s mind that was supposed to protect them from themselves. But that was bullshit, because nothing kept you safer than remembering, really remembering, something you damn well ought to avoid in the future.
Wings, he thought. She had wings—
“Come on, Brynna,” he managed. “We have to get you to a hospital.”
—and skin as black and cracked as the charred surface of an old, overused backyard grill.
Something whistled past their heads. It made an odd flapping sound, like a giant bat—
Wings
—sailing through the channel between the buildings.
Beneath his touch, Brynna shuddered suddenly and gasped for air. “Got to … get out of here.” Her voice was smoke-choked and thin, like oxygen was making its way from lungs lined with fragments of singed cardboard. “Hunter …”
“Hunter?” Eran repeated. “What’s that mean?” They were almost at the passenger door, and Brynna surprised him by pitching forward and clutching at the door handle in an effort to get inside more quickly. “Wait,” he said automatically. “You’re going to hurt yourself even more. Let me—”
“Must go,” she ground out. “Now, before he takes me—”
“Back to Lucifer.”
Eran whirled, his skin suddenly crawling. Everything inside him, every cell in his body, screamed Run! but he couldn’t. He was stuck, paralyzed by some sort of primeval fear he hadn’t known still existed in his lower brain’s memory. For a too-long moment, his eyes wouldn’t focus; his gaze swept the alley like a drunk’s, swinging and disjointed, making everything in front of him skewed almost beyond recognition. And maybe he wanted it to be that way, maybe it should have stayed that way, because the creature coming toward them was quite probably something never meant to be seen by a living human being.
It was tall, almost seven feet, and just short of a living skeleton. It had skin, yes, but the covering over its bones would never be mistaken for actual flesh. Its red-gold surface was grooved and rough, like hardened, living corduroy. The color never stopped shifting, even when the demon paused to study Eran. It took Eran a few seconds to identify the visual perception that flames were rippling beneath the textured covering; they glowed a darker, richer red when the creature—the Hunter Brynna had referenced—inhaled, then faded to burnished gold when it exhaled. Its hands were bigger than Eran’s head, and that wasn’t even counting the long, curving claws that tipped each finger.
It lifted its chin and stared down at him from liquid crimson eyes set wide above a skeletal nose. “Step aside, human. Astarte and I have plans for the evening.” The demon’s voice bubbled through Eran’s ears like poison seeping from the surface of his skin into his veins. Eran had a brief mental image of spidery black lines expanding throughout his body, each one drawing cold and death with it, but he shook it off. In the biggest act of willpower he’d ever managed, he stepped in front of the beast as it advanced on the cowering, burned Brynna.
“No,” he said. “Go back … where you came from.”
Suddenly something dragged at his arm, nearly making him squeeze the trigger. “No,” Brynna gasped. She had crawled forward, actually crawled, and Eran lost his aim as he instinctively leaned over to help her. “He’ll kill you. I’ll go back. I’ll go.”
“Not in my lifetime,” Eran said grimly. He stepped around her, blocking her progress as he raised his gun again. “Go back where you came from,” he repeated. “She’s not going with you.”
The creature opened its mouth and growled at him. The sound was unimaginable and it filled him with dread. All at once he understood that his gun was useless—even if he emptied the entire magazine into the beast’s head, it would still keep coming, it would grab him and do exactly what it had promised—
There was movement at the mouth of the alley, then sirens and horns echoed across the bricks on either side as a fire truck lumbered into the turn from the street on the opposite side of Eran’s car. Right behind its bumper was a squad car, blue and white lights rotating. In the space of a single second, everything was washed in red and white and blue as firemen and cops surged from their vehicles.
The demon’s face jerked toward the commotion and it hunched over, then bent forward even more. Was it trying to hide from the other humans? Did it not want to be seen? “Remember what you said, human,” it sneered at him. “Your lifetime can be made very, very short. Astarte will come back where she belongs.”
Before Eran could retort, the fiend was gone—either it had the ability to move so quickly he couldn’t see it, or it had simply vanished into the night air. Whatever the answer, he would have to dwell on it later; right now, he had to get Brynna into the car before anyone else came around to this side of it and saw her. After the fact, he didn’t think taking her to a hospital was such a great and grand idea.
Eran bent and grabbed Brynna under the shoulders, then pulled her back up. She tried to help, pushing with her feet to gain speed even as Eran ground his teeth against the mewling sounds of agony coming out of her mouth. She might be a demon, or a fallen angel, or whatever, but there was no denying that she was in the kind of pain he couldn’t begin to imagine or endure. But he had to move fast, he had to keep going. Just a few feet beyond the driver’s side of his car, two firemen were running toward the scorched circle of bricks where Brynna had been only minutes before. Their puzzled faces turned in his direction just as he managed to get the door open with his right hand and Brynna dragged herself inside and rolled into a ball on the seat, keeping her head below the tinted window. The Mitsubishi wasn’t that big and she didn’t have much room; it would get hot in there awfully fast. Could she take the heat? Of course she could. Eran closed the door and drew a ragged breath as one of the fireman hurried around the front of the car.
“Hey, man, you all right?” one of them yelled. “What the hell happened here?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied. He met the guy before he got to the car’s window then kept going, heading back to the burned spot where another fireman was squatting and examining the scorched ground. Just as Eran had hoped, the first one followed him automatically as Eran dug his star out of his pocket. “Three punks screwing around with gasoline or something, just as I turned into the alley.”
The first fireman tilted his hat and peered down the alley beyond Eran’s car. “Where did they go?”
A couple of uniformed cops had climbed out of their cars and were now poking around the area, checking the recessed doorways and the darker areas behind the Dumpsters, trash cans and boxes piled here and there. “I have no idea. They were jumping around something that was burning, and they took off when I got out of my car. By the time I checked out the fire, they were gone.”
“Yeah?” The second fireman looked dubious. “What’d they set on fire?”
“Nothing that I could make out. Maybe paper—I’m not sure.”
“Don’t see any pieces,” one said. The firemen looked at each other, then the first one—maybe he was the higher rank—glanced pointedly at Eran’s hands. “You’re bleeding. You get burned?”
Eran started and inspected his fingers. They were covered in soot and a glint of Brynna’s blood showed here and there. “It’s nothing,” he said. “A few scrapes. I tripped at the edge of the fire. Trying to see.”
“Uh-huh.” The guy looked like he wanted to say more but the two cops were closing in. Eran knew they’d want to talk to him, get the details on what had gone down. Saved by the badges, he thought, but he hoped they wouldn’t take too long. He really needed to get Brynna out of that car, take her somewhere so he could clean her up and see how badly she was hurt. The where of that was going to be the biggest challenge.
“So what happened here?” One of the policemen stepped up, notebook in hand. “One of the guys back there said you’re on the job. I’m Jade, and my partner is Steckley.” He offered his hand, but Eran held up his in apology.
“Sorry. I got into the ashes,” Eran said. “Anyway, yeah—Detective Redmond. I was driving down the alley, just doing a drive-by, when I saw these three guys. They had a fire going, but I couldn’t see what was burning. I got out of the car and ran over, but they took off. I smelled gasoline but by the time I checked out the fire, they were gone.”
“Ever see them before?”
“No.” At least he could answer that truthfully.
“What brings you down here?”
“I know the guy who runs this taco place,” Eran said. “He’s a friend of my girlfriend’s.” The word came easily, but in retrospect it also felt strange, especially after what he’d witnessed. “Sometimes I check on him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ramiro Cocinero.”
“That’s me,” a familiar voice interrupted. Cocinero must’ve come back to see what was going on when Eran and Brynna hadn’t caught up to him. “I own this restaurant.” Cocinero pointed at the back door of his shop, then looked at the fire truck and the police cars—there were two now—that blocked one end of the alley. “Señor Redmond, what happened here? I thought you and—”
“Some hoodlums,” Eran interrupted. “They set something on fire right behind your place. But no one was hurt.” He put a little extra emphasis on no one, hoping Cocinero would keep his mouth shut about Brynna.
The restaurant owner blinked and looked confused, but only for a moment. “You said there were three of them? I think maybe they were the ones who tried to rob me two or three weeks ago.”
“Yeah?” The second cop’s interest picked up. “What happened with that? Did you file a police report?”
“No. They ran off and didn’t take anything. I had a friend in the store with me—”
“Detective Redmond here?”
Cocinero shook his head. “No, not him. My friend knows martial arts. She scared them away. Like I said, they didn’t get anything.”
Officer Steckley raised an eyebrow. “She?”
Cocinero shrugged, his gaze flicking nervously to Eran. This, Eran decided, would be a good time to turn the conversation in another direction. “Maybe these are the same guys,” he suggested. “Maybe you can ID them.”
“Would you be willing to come down to the station and look at some photos?” Steckley asked.
“We wouldn’t make you go through all the mug books, but there’s a certain group of perps who are always causing situations around this neighborhood. I bet it wouldn’t take you more than twenty minutes.”
“Sure,” Cocinero said. “I would do that.” Eran had been around the man enough to hear the slightest hint of relief in his voice. He didn’t want to bring Brynna into this, either.
“And you’ll come with us, Detective?”
“Let me head home, get cleaned up, and I’ll come by later,” he said. “I smell like smoke. An hour, ninety minutes tops. We’ll see if I peg the same guys as Ramiro.”
The cops nodded and Jade put away his notebook. “You’ll want to take care of those hands too.”
“Scrapes,” Eran repeated. “No big deal.” He made a point of glancing at his watch. “I’ll see you at the Foster Avenue Station.”
They nodded, watching as he went back to his car and got in. The area was filling up with people, residents who wanted to know what the hell had happened, gawkers who were just curious. The more the merrier—they would keep the cops and the rest of the crew busy. Eran tilted his head in acknowledgment as he shifted the Mitsubishi into reverse and backed out, hoping they wouldn’t think of something and wave at him to stop. He couldn’t let them come up to the car, because he couldn’t roll down the window.
He’d just have to breathe through the heavy, nauseating smell of burned flesh.
“Brynna? Brynna, can you hear me?”
A Hunter stabbed her in the shoulder, sending a rivulet of fire down her arm. She almost struck back, but at the last minute a sliver of logic wormed into her flame-ridden thoughts—
Brynna, the voice had said. Not a Hunter, no—it was Eran, not stabbing her, just a tiny touch to try to rouse her. Just that.
“Y-Yes,” she managed. “I … yes.”
“I’m going to take you to my place,” he said. His words were soft and regulated, but strained. He was under pressure, nervous—of course he would be. He had seen her in true form, hadn’t he? No, not her true form. That image was painful in its own way, glorious to behold, but it was also one she’d left behind long ago. The one into which she’d instinctively changed was one of many she’d evolved after countless millennia in Hell, the one best suited to endure flames. Each fallen angel had her own form, her own indescribable monstrosity. In that respect, Brynna—no, Astarte—was no different, and yet she was. She was so much more sexual, ever darker and more dangerous because of it. Any reasonable person would see one of her brethren and flee, at least try to save his or her sanity and soul. But with Astarte … oh, no. She was mankind’s innermost, irresistible addiction: she was lust.
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