by Angie Fox
I was alert almost to the point of being strung out as I led the way into the unknown. With every click of my heels against the linoleum of the forgotten passage, I felt like a rabbit lured into a trap. I could sense the demons below us, waiting until we had no chance of escape before they unleashed their fury.
Of course that’s when the hallway dead ended into a gaping stairwell. The black maw led straight for the mass of evil.
I stopped at the top, the toes of my boots peering over the edge. Sulfur scoured my nose, along with mildew and decay. “I hate this part.”
Dimitri stood at my back. “Want me to go first?”
“No.”
I didn’t want to go at all. Therefore, I rumbled straight down before I had a chance to dwell on it. It was like diving into cold water.
Our lights dimmed against the overwhelming darkness as I led us down the first stairway, the second, the third.
The orb burned brighter.
“You done this before?” Grandma asked, as if we were playing trivia.
She could pretend all she wanted. I didn’t miss the breathless undertone in her voice.
“Yes,” I said, chest tight as we reached the concrete floor of the prison basement.
“Your job sucks.”
Oh yeah, now she tells me.
I flipped on the lights with a sudden, blinding brightness.
When my eyes adjusted, I saw more blood against the stained concrete walls. Just what were we walking into?
“Get behind me, Lizzie,” Dimitri said.
Nice thought, but, “you don’t know the way,” I reminded him.
These walls had been aqua once and still were in some places. In others, large chunks of paint peeled away like dead skin onto the floor. A massive network of pipes loomed overhead.
“This way,” I said, following the splotches of shiny dark blood, leading us through what had been the prison laundry. The walls held ghostly outlines of machines ripped from their stations, leaving bare concrete and rusted pipes jutting from the walls.
My heart fluttered when I realized where the trail of gore was leading.
“Max houses his demons in the old steel cells. He picked this place because the cells have an unusually high iron count.” It certainly wasn’t for the décor.
Would the steel cells still hold the demons if Max ceased to be?
And what would I do if I found Max had finally turned into the enemy?
I forced myself to breathe steadily, in and out, as we crept down the last hallway, to the prison hole, put out of commission long before modern renovations. The overhead pipes didn’t even reach this far into the underbelly.
Door upon door, at least twenty, led to a dead end. Each was a perfect steel box.
“Welcome to hell on earth,” I said, stopping in front of the first set of massive steel doors. The wards in this place were amazing. I couldn’t even sense them until I touched the door in front of me. It stung like dry ice.
On the other side, a demon shrieked and pounded against the metal, screaming when it came into contact with iron.
The second door held the same.
I lifted my hand against the third and was greeted with silence. I drew a switch star as I pulled it open. “We’ve found him.”
A figure lay huddled in the corner of the cell. His honey blond hair hung in tatters over his face. Blood caked his temple and ran in dry rivers down his neck.
I drew a switch star. “Max?”
He raised his head, his angular features even sharper in the harsh shadows cast by my light, his eyes devoid of emotion.
Max dipped his chin by way of greeting. “Lizzie Brown.” The platinum cross, designed to draw succubi, lay sideways over his bare and bloodied chest. “You look worse than I do.”
Chapter Nine
I ducked under one of Max’s arms. Dimitri took the other side as we pulled him to his feet. “What happened to you?” The man was a dead weight.
He groaned, dirty blond hair tumbling over his eyes. “Ate something that didn’t agree with me.”
“What? Like a demon?” I stumbled and Dimitri pulled more of Max’s weight his way.
Max angled his head toward me. His lips curved in a slow, sensuous grin.
Oh for Pete’s sake.
Max wasn’t a demon slayer. He was a hunter. That meant he couldn’t kill demons. He had to consume them. I watched him draw the life force out of a succubus once and it was the most erotic and disturbing thing I’d ever seen.
Of course, given a choice, he captured and imprisoned them down here in his holding cells.
Every evil being Max took into himself corrupted him. No one knew what his breaking point would be. Eventually, the wickedness he consumed would overpower what good he had left in him and Max would turn as evil as the things he killed.
I didn’t want to be around when it happened.
Dimitri and I dragged Max out of the demon holding area, with Grandma guarding our rear.
“Whose idea was it to come visit?” Max asked, as if we’d stopped by to have a glass of lemonade on the porch.
“Mine,” I told him.
That’s all it took for the hunter to be way too satisfied with himself. “You see? She needs me.”
“Fuck off,” Dimitri growled as he pulled Max further away from me.
Well it seemed these two had taken up where they left off.
Dimitri didn’t approve of the way Max consumed demons, or the fact that Max’s mom had been a succubus. I could understand his point. But seeing that the sex demon had also killed Max’s dad, the hunter had a huge chip on his shoulder when it came to evil beings. I liked that.
I kept my face neutral as Dimitri and I shuffled Max down a narrow cinderblock hallway to an old guard’s station turned bedroom.
Yes, he lived with these things.
“In here,” I said, kicking open a flimsy metal door. Next to it stood a stack of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup cans.
Grandma gave the room a quick once-over. “You do what you have to do,” she said. “I’ll stand guard.”
I hesitated. “Just you?”
She patted her brown hide bag. “I brought some friends.”
I loved my grandma.
Max’s bachelor pad hadn’t changed since I’d seen it last. A narrow military-issue camping cot hugged the far wall. Underneath, shoved to the back, was a steel lockbox. Other than that, it was clear that nothing else in the fading office belonged to Max.
We deposited the hunter onto his cot. It crackled under his weight as he eased his way down. He was near collapse, but he still managed to radiate power. I’d never seen Max lose control. He carried himself like a Navy Seal. Even now, he refused to lie down in front of us. He remained upright with great effort, his back ramrod straight against the wall.
“Come for some demon target practice?” he asked, out of breath. “I got two in the back.”
I’d sensed three. And the fact that he was lying sent a chill through me. Either he was hiding one, which I doubted, or Max didn’t have much time.
“We came to ask you to look at something. But first,” I said, bracing myself, “what did you mean back there when you said I was worse than you?”
“Lizzie, Lizzie.” He pulled himself off the wall, wide shoulders shaking from the effort. “Come here.”
I took a step forward, then two. A minute ago, I trusted this man. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
His eyes were still amber. The small bend on the bridge of his nose tilted harder, as if he’d broken it again. Demons didn’t heal crooked. The ones I’d seen had coal black eyes as well. He was still part human. For now.
Still, something about him wasn’t entirely right.
He took my hand, running his thumbs along the soft spot under my wrists. “You’ve been touched. You don’t feel it?”
“No.”
Max’s fingers radiated warmth. I resisted the urge to pull away as they lingered on my wrist.
His jaw set hard as
he studied me. “I can tell it was inside you.”
God bless America.
“How?” Dimitri demanded.
Max released my hand. “She’s tarnished.” He fixed on me. “What did you do?”
I had no idea. “Take a look,” I said. My fingers shook as I untied Grandma’s jar from my demon slayer utility belt. The rubbery disk shot straight up toward the lid and bounced off with a sizzle. The rope cowered.
Max held the jar with both hands, like a rare piece of art. “Where did you get this?”
“It attacked me after I took out a horde of banshees. The disk can morph. It was a pressure bug when I found it. It changed when it hit the neutralizing magic in the jar.”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “Fascinating.” He turned the jar over and over in his hands, sending the former bug into fits and the zombie rope into a dead faint.
He held the jar at eye level. “Your witches should show me this neutralizing magic.”
Somehow I doubted that would go over well.
Dimitri wasn’t amused in the slightest. “Lizzie’s father is mixed up in something evil. We need to know how evil so we can be ready. Are you going to help us or not?”
Max didn’t bother to hide his satisfaction.
“How bad is it?” I asked. “And why did it need to hide behind a half dozen banshees?”
The former insect slammed into the jar at every point Max’s fingers touched. It was as if it wanted him more than anything.
The hunter didn’t seem alarmed – or surprised.
“This, my dear Lizzie, is called a dreg.” He tapped at the glass as the creature slammed into the other side. “I’m willing to bet it hid so it could get a good shot at you. Apparently to mark you.”
“Mark me?” I hadn’t seen any marks. But Max had.
Max glanced up. “So a demon can find you,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
I had to think about that. “What? Like “X” marks the demon slayer?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He tipped the jar over so the creature conked its head on the lid. Max seemed to enjoy riling it.
“A dreg is,” he searched for the words, “a vestige of a demon meant to compel.”
“Wait.” I needed this in English. “You mean this is a piece of a demon?” I didn’t even know they could break apart. This presented a whole new set of problems.
“No,” Max said. “Think of it as a demon’s personal assistant. In miniature form. It does what the unholy one wishes and holds much of its power.”
Dimitri moved closer. “As in the ability to morph.”
“Exactly,” Max said, quite satisfied with himself. “Now here’s the bad news –”
Oh mercy. “Because what you just told us was so fun.”
He ignored my attempt at distance, drawing me closer, as intense as I’d ever seen him. “Dregs mean you should run, love. Run far, run fast. Because -” His breath touched my cheek as he moved to whisper in my ear. “- you don’t want to know what’s after you.”
I couldn’t move. “I’m not your love,” I said low and angry, in case he was getting any ideas.
Naturally, Max didn’t listen. He leaned back, giving me space. “It takes immense power or immense conflict to create a dreg. I haven’t seen one since the Great War of ’66.”
“1966?” I asked.
Max shot me a look. “1866.”
That’s it. I was going to corner him for a demon slayer history lesson. Later.
Right now, I had my answer. “If it takes some sort of fantastical power to create a dreg, that means my dad couldn’t have sent it.” He hadn’t slipped into demon status yet. I hoped. The idea of losing my dad before I even found him was too awful to imagine.
Of course, that meant we had a badass demon after us. I took a slow, shuddering breath, then another. I’d suspected as much after the creature had attacked me in my hotel room. It was another thing to have it confirmed.
Max still hadn’t answered our most important question. “What level of demon are we talking about?”
Max tipped the jar, sending the dreg into another frenzy. “That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?”
“Stop playing, Max.”
He looked at me with mock innocence. “You said it changed into a pressure bug. That’s not a very serious creature. They barely skim the first layer of hell.” He returned his attention to the jar. “We’d have to watch it change again to see if it was toying with us, or if it can turn into something more fierce.”
“What do you want to do?” Dimitri grumbled. “Ask it to change?”
Max gave a small smile. “I think it would like to attack me very much.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Dimitri wondered aloud.
“We’ll take it to one of my holding cells,” Max said, “and let it loose.”
He had to be kidding. “We barely captured it the first time.” It might be too powerful to be contained again. “We could have gotten lucky.”
Max glanced up at me, the guile gone from his expression. “It’s the only way we can observe it. You want answers, don’t you?”
Yes, I wanted to know how bad this was, and if it could teach us more about who was after my dad. But let it out? We didn’t know what level of hell we were dealing with.
I’d barely killed the fifth-level demon that had gone after Grandma. And I’d only eliminated the Las Vegas succubi after a struggle that I wasn’t sure I could go through again. I couldn’t imagine how powerful this new demon could be or what it wanted.
“My holding cells are secure,” Max said, groaning as he planted both feet on the floor.
“Dimitri?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Lizzie,” he said, “it’s a calculated risk. We need to keep moving forward on this.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
“Okay. Let’s do it.” Dimitri and I hoisted Max off the cot. With one of us on either side of him, we led him down the dark hallway and into the demon holding area where we’d found him.
“Wait. Where are we going?” Grandma asked, trailing behind us.
“Max wants to show me something,” I said, not about to explain. If I had to lay out the details, I might change my mind and we couldn’t afford that.
“There,” he instructed, “last cell on the left.”
“Any particular reason?” I asked, eyeing the lone bulb casting dark shadows on the wall.
“It’s my lucky cell,” he managed.
I didn’t want to know why.
We eased Max down onto the floor. He still gripped the jar. “This will be an intimate exercise. It’s best if it’s just me,” he gave me a penetrating look, “and Lizzie.”
“No,” Dimitri and I said at the same time.
Dimitri closed an arm around my shoulders.
“You don’t know how to have any fun, Lizzie.” Max cringed against a wave of pain.
“Max. Answer me straight. Do you have enough power to deal with this?”
If he were a beast he would have snarled. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
I glanced at Dimitri. “Grandma’s outside,” I said. “If things go south in here, we have backup.”
Dimitri swore under his breath.
I knew what he was thinking: my seventy-eight-year-old granny as backup. It didn’t matter anyway if we had one witch out there or fifty. It was time to act. We needed to get a leg up on this new threat – and whoever sent it.
“You know I’m right,” I said. We needed to do this.
He shook his head. “Damn you and your need to know everything.”
“It’s part of my charm,” I said, realizing I’d won.
He trailed his fingers up my spine. “It’s going to be the death of me.”
“Probably not today.”
“Is that a promise?” He leaned in close enough to kiss.
I couldn’t help but smile. “No.”
Max cleared his throat. “When you two are done havi
ng verbal intercourse, I’d like to get back to the dreg.”
Dimitri closed his eyes. “Tell me again why you wanted to find this guy.”
“Brace yourselves.” Max began to twist the lid of the jar.
“It’s not going to open for you,” I said. He didn’t have biker witch magic. “Only with me.”
“Have it your way.” Max shrugged, planting his elbows on his knees. “Again.”
I reached for the jar. Dimitri let me go. Still, he eyed me nervously “Be careful. Remember what happened the last time that bug got loose.” He’d had to dig it out of me.
I found myself wishing I could hold a switch star and open the jar at the same time. I’d just have to be fast.
It rattled in my hands as the dreg lunged for me.
The demon hunter dragged himself to his feet.
I didn’t know what was going to come flying out when I opened the jar. The dreg might become a pressure bug again and fly straight for my face or neck this time. Or it might change into something worse.
My palms slickened with sweat.
Opening this jar, freeing these creatures, went against every instinct I had.
What would I do if I didn’t have enchanted glass between me and the monster?
“Second thoughts?” Dimitri asked.
“And third and fourth,” I said, twisting the lid.
“Lizzie?” Grandma banged on the door.
“We’re fine,” I called, right before all hell broke loose.
The disk shot out of the jar like it was on fire.
I drew a switch star as it dove straight for us. But my shot went wide. It was too small, I saw, horrified as the dreg slammed into the floor, shattering concrete. I leapt backward. Dimitri surged forward as it reared for another attack.
He was going to get himself killed.
My fingers closed around a second switch star. Focus. Take it out. I didn’t think I’d get another chance.
I fired as it shot straight up.
Hells bells. Another miss!
My first switch star zoomed back to me and I caught it as Max plucked the dreg out of the air with inhuman speed.