I stared at the syringes, cold recognition flowing through me. I remembered Claude’s demon tossing one to Claude, the needle coated in Zylas’s blood. I remembered Zylas collapsing to his knees, clutching my waist as he struggled to stay upright, and Claude’s quiet, gloating words: A good summoner knows how to safely neutralize a demon.
“What on earth is this?” Zora asked, bewildered.
Amalia reached past me. She lifted a second metal case from the drawer and opened it. Instead of syringes, it held five sealed vials of dark liquid. She wiggled one out of the foam insert and held it up. Light refracted through the thick fluid, revealing its red tone.
Dark, thick blood. Demon blood.
“Zora,” Taye said sharply.
As one, we all looked at the blood tracker she held. The gem-like end was glowing brighter by the second.
For an instant, none of us reacted, then Taye backpedaled toward the center of the room, facing the open door. Zora dropped the blood tracker and grabbed the zipper of her weapon bag. Amalia snapped the case of blood shut and shoved it on top of the desk as she backed away.
I didn’t move, my mind spinning as pieces clicked into place—but the answers I now possessed had created more questions.
“Robin!” Amalia yelled in warning.
I looked up.
Three vampires filled the doorway. Red rings marked their eerie eyes and their fingers had elongated into deadly claws. The two males and a female, reflective sunglasses perched on top of their heads, wore jeans and jackets like every other pedestrian on the streets.
“Looky what we found,” a male crooned.
Zora pulled her sword from its sheath with a slithering rasp. The blade gleamed. “Out in the sunlight, bloodsuckers? How bold.”
The female vampire leered delightedly. “Not a problem … not for us.”
“We were waiting for a summoner.” The creepy male licked his lips. “Not pretty ladies.”
“Taye,” Zora called. “Get out of here. Use the patio.”
The telethesian rushed toward the sliding glass doors. Amalia shot me a questioning look and I nodded. She ran after the psychic and they disappeared outside.
Setting her feet in a defensive stance, Zora raised her sword confidently—but she had no idea these vampires were nothing like the ones she’d made her career exterminating.
The three vampires smiled. They knew we didn’t stand a chance.
The creepy one stepped away from the others, his weird eyes on Zora. He strolled toward her, getting closer and closer to the shining blade of her weapon.
“Ori torpeas languescas,” she said quietly. A faint shimmer ran down the sword.
He took one more step—then blurred almost out of sight as he lunged for Zora.
She wheeled sideways, saved by her combat reflexes. The vampire shot past her, spun, and halted, leering tauntingly.
“What the …” She adjusted her grip on the sword. “This bastard is a fast one.”
I grabbed my infernus. “They’re all fast.”
Red light flared across my pendant and all three vampires attacked at once.
The creepy one charged Zora again while the other two came straight for me. Zylas materialized with his dark claws slashing. He sprang between the two vampires, striking both simultaneously. A whirling kick sent one vampire flying past me. She hit the refrigerator headfirst and bounced off, the dented door swinging open.
Zylas exchanged swift blows with his second opponent. As the first one climbed to her feet, shaking her head back and forth as though stunned, I threw my full weight into the fridge door. It slammed shut on her head.
Across the living room, Zora darted side to side, frantically evading her adversary. A spell glowed on her left wrist, not doing anything as far as I could see. The vampire circled her, his attacks swift but playful. He was toying with the petite sorceress.
As the vampire pounced again, laughing nastily, she whipped her sword around. The tip of the blade nicked the vamp’s arm—and a shimmer ran up the length of steel. Silver runes flashed across the vampire’s arm and over his shoulder.
Beside me, the female vampire pushed backward off the fridge, wobbling unsteadily after the second impact to her skull. Before I could panic, Zylas slid across the island counter. He slammed both feet into the vampire, knocking her back into the open fridge. Condiment bottles tumbled to the floor.
He grabbed the door and swung it shut on her torso—but with exponentially more power than I had. Plastic shattered, metal warped, and bones crunched.
At the other end of the room, Zora’s opponent was no longer playful. Silver runes glowed on his side and he kept lurching and stumbling, one half of his body moving much slower than the other.
The third vampire leaped over the counter. Zylas met him with open claws and tried to ram his fingers between the man’s ribs. The vampire twisted away, then struck Zylas in the chest. The demon slammed into the fridge, crushing the female vampire all over again.
With a furious shriek, she flung the door open, throwing Zylas forward. Unhampered by her broken bones, she lunged for his back. The other vampire sprang at his front.
The terrifying memory of pointed fangs sinking into his skin flashed through me.
“Ori eruptum impello!” I yelled.
My new artifact flashed brightly and a dome of pale light burst from it. It expanded outward—and everything it touched was flung away from it: a toaster, a knife block, a drain tray full of dishes—
—and the two vampires and demon in front of me.
The vampires slammed into the counters on either side while Zylas was blasted across the length of the kitchen. He landed hard on his back, ten feet away. The fridge door slammed yet again and all the glass inside shattered.
My mouth hung open.
The vampires jumped back up, and Zylas rolled to his feet, shooting me his meanest glare. I winced guiltily.
Note to self: don’t use spell against my demon.
Exchanging a look, the vampires split—one facing me and one facing Zylas. My face went cold. My artifact needed time to recharge before I could use it again. I was defenseless, and I couldn’t even use the sidestep evasion technique Zylas had taught me because there was nowhere to go.
The two vampires charged.
Daimon, hesychaze!
Zylas dissolved into red light. The blaze of power streaked across the kitchen, passing right through the vampires, and hit the infernus. He reformed in front of me, claws flashing. He caught the vampire’s reaching arm, planted his foot on the man’s side, and wrenched.
I almost passed out on the spot when the vampire’s arm tore off his body.
A shriek jerked my attention away from the bloodletting. I expected to see Zora on the floor, but it was the vampire scuttling backward, spitting with rage and bleeding from multiple wounds he seemed unaware of. The spell that had slowed him down had faded, but one of his legs was dragging awkwardly, half severed.
He shuffled backward and Zora, several spells glowing over her wrists, drove him into the bedroom. They disappeared inside. A heartbeat of silence—then a burst of golden magic. The wave of force caught the bedroom door and swung it shut with a bang.
I whirled back to Zylas and the remaining two vampires. Now! Quickly!
Crimson magic blazed up his arms. Six-inch talons extended from his fingers, and he buried them in the nearer vampire’s chest. As the creature fell, the female vampire backpedaled in fright. Zylas stretched out his hand and two glowing triangles snapped around his wrist.
Power blazed and a spear of red light shot across the kitchen and struck the female vampire in the chest. She keeled over backward, a hole through her heart.
The bedroom door remained safely closed, and I let out a relieved sigh as Zylas banished the telltale glow of crimson from his hands. Stepping over the mess, I headed toward the bedroom to check if Zora was okay.
I got two steps and froze.
Zora was okay. I could see she was ok
ay because she was standing in the bathroom doorway. The bathroom. Not the bedroom, even though I’d seen her go into the bedroom. The two rooms … they must be connected.
She was standing in the doorway, sword in hand and her face deathly white. If I’d had any hope she hadn’t seen Zylas’s magic, her horrified expression immediately dispelled it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Zora’s gaze darted between me and my demon, and her hands tightened on the hilt of her sword.
Zylas shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, his fingers curling and claws glinting.
Daimon, hesychaze!
His head snapped toward me, disbelief and fury briefly touching his face before his body melted into glowing power. Crimson light leaped into the infernus and I closed my hand around the pendant.
Just stay there, I told him urgently. Let me handle this.
The silver buzzed under my hand, then went quiet. I exhaled shakily.
Zora slowly raised her sword. “So … does this mean you don’t plan to kill me now that I know you’re an illegal contractor?”
“Of course I won’t k-kill you.” I wished my voice wasn’t shaking. “Let me explain.”
“Illegal contracts are illegal,” she snapped. “Most of them come with a death sentence for the contractor. And yours isn’t just a loose contract—your demon was using magic. How?”
She again shifted her grip on her sword, the long blade wavering, and I noticed the blood dripping from her elbow. The vampire had raked her upper arms with his claws.
I twisted my hands together. “Zora, please—”
“How did you fool Darius?” Her eyes blazed. “MagiPol is just waiting for an excuse to disband the Crow and Hammer. How dare you put our guild at risk?”
“I—I didn’t—”
“A contracted demon with magic,” she spat. “Now I know how you took down the unbound demon on Halloween. There’s no way you can control your demon. There’s no way you aren’t a danger to everyone with that—”
The patio door banged open. Taye rushed in, Amalia right behind him.
“Zora,” he said sharply. “You all right? The police are on the way. I put in a call to the MPD and they’re sending agents and a cleanup crew, but we should leave the crime scene.”
Her furious stare jerked back to me. “Are you waiting for the MPD?”
So they could arrest me on the spot? No thanks. “I—I should go.”
“You can go for now,” she said darkly, “but we aren’t finished, Robin Page.”
Taye’s brow furrowed, whereas Amalia’s expression flashed from confusion to alarm as she guessed what had happened.
Zora grabbed her sword case off the floor and crunched across the room to the patio. Amalia stepped back as the sorceress strode out the doors, Taye hurrying after her. As their footsteps retreated, the wail of police sirens drifted into the unit, growing louder by the second.
“Shit,” Amalia muttered. “What does she know?”
“She saw Zylas use magic,” I said heavily, fighting the nausea building in my stomach. “She knows my contract isn’t legal, but not the full extent of it.”
“Shit,” she said again. “We need to get out of here.”
Nodding grimly, I climbed over the fridge door—when had it fallen off?—and grabbed both the case of demon blood and the case of syringes from Claude’s desk. Amalia scooped the papers and photos off the floor. Carrying our loot, we ducked out the doors.
The patio backed onto a courtyard shared by several apartment towers. We cut across it and joined the busy sidewalk. Three police cruisers with their lights flashing were parked on the curb, two officers directing pedestrians away while four more headed toward the condos. They were about to get a nasty surprise. The MPD agents would have fun smoothing over that bloodbath.
All in all, though, that didn’t even rank on my list of worries.
I clutched the metal cases to my chest, breathing hard. Zora knew my secret. What would she do? Report me to the MPD? Report me to Darius? Both courses of action would have the same result. Darius had warned me that if anyone from the Crow and Hammer discovered the truth, he would turn me in to protect his guildeds.
No matter how I looked at it, I was doomed.
“Maybe she won’t report you,” Amalia said, her mind on the same worries as mine. “It’s not like you’re hurting anyone. Maybe …”
Faint hope sparked, but I didn’t let it grow. Considering how furious and betrayed she’d appeared, I didn’t think she’d ignore her discovery.
“I’ll call her,” I mumbled. “If I can explain the situation like I did with Darius, she might look the other way.”
“Yeah … yeah, she probably will.”
Silence fell between us. We both knew we were fooling ourselves.
“I grabbed all this stuff”—she hefted her armload of papers—“so the MPD wouldn’t have a reason to look at my dad, but why’d you take those cases?”
“These are proof.”
“Of what?”
“One holds bottled demon blood. The other … it has vials of vampire saliva. Last time we saw him, Claude used a syringe of it to bring down Zylas.”
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put the clues together before. The tranquilizing effect of a vampire bite was identical to Zylas’s collapse after he’d been injected with the mysterious syringe. Vamp saliva was the perfect demon neutralizer, especially since it had an even stronger effect on demons than humans.
“You think Claude has been trading his demon’s blood to the vampires in exchange for their saliva?” Amalia squinted. “But why did they trash his townhouse? And why did his demon steal back his documents from the vampires?”
“That part I don’t get, but I suspect it has something to do with that Vasilii guy the other vampires are following. Maybe Vasilii isn’t happy with their arrangement anymore.”
We stopped at a crosswalk and waited for the light to change. The lunch rush had dispersed, leaving the streets much quieter.
“Hmm, well.” Amalia cast me a sharp smile. “We might not know what’s going on with Claude and the vampires, but we do have this.”
She held up the snapshot of Uncle Jack and the bearded stranger standing over a dead moose.
“What’s special about that?”
“This,” she declared, waving the photo, “is where we’re going to find my dad.”
* * *
Not even a hot shower could calm the nerves churning through my gut. I rubbed a towel over my hair, watching my reflection in the foggy bathroom mirror. A thin white scar stood out against the smooth skin of my neck; the sight of it always chilled me. My blue eyes were tired and a seemingly permanent wrinkle of worry had formed between my eyebrows.
In less than twelve hours, I might finally reclaim my mother’s grimoire.
According to Amalia, that photo was the clue she’d needed to figure out her dad’s location. She’d booked a rental car so we could drive out to the property in the photo, owned by the bearded man whose identity Claude hadn’t been able to uncover.
If she was right, my uncle would be there, and almost eight months after my parents’ deaths, I would have in my hands their most treasured possession—a possession they might have died protecting. The two letters my mother had written, one to her brother and one to her daughter, sat on my bedside table. I would bring them with me tomorrow, and when I saw Uncle Jack, I would demand not only the grimoire, but answers. And, unlike our past confrontations, I wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.
The girl he’d bullied and dismissed seemed like a stranger to me now. The new and improved Robin was a contractor. She regularly pitted her will against an ornery demon. She had faced an escaped demon from the powerful First House, a rogue guild, and unnaturally powerful vampires. She wouldn’t be intimidated by her portly, middle-aged, cowardly uncle.
Or so I hoped.
I scrunched the water from my hair, considered blow-drying it, then decided I was too tired. Th
rowing my towel over the edge of the tub—the towel rack lay on the floor, ripped off the wall by Zylas—I pulled on a tank top and cotton PJ shorts.
Cool air rushed into the steamy bathroom when I opened the door. Across the living room, a pair of green eyes reflected the dim light. Socks was curled up on the sofa, watching me, and I crossed the room to scratch her furry ears. The whir of Amalia’s sewing machine accompanied the pattering of the rain against the window. I wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping tonight.
MPD agents hadn’t knocked down our apartment door, so I assumed Zora hadn’t reported my illegal contract yet. I’d tried calling her—six times—but my calls had all gone straight to voicemail. I didn’t dare go to the guild to see if she was there.
All I could do was wait and see what happened. Would Zora pretend she hadn’t seen anything illegal, or would the MPD be waiting for us when we returned from our outing tomorrow?
With a final pat for Socks, I wandered into my room. Only after I’d shut the door did I notice the dark shadow by my window.
Zylas sat on the floor, one shoulder leaning against the wall, his arm resting on the sill. His chin was propped on his forearm, crimson eyes gazing through the rain-streaked glass. Still and silent, he was a statue draped in shadow, the faint light from beyond the window tracing one edge of his jaw. His breath fogged on the glass, a white mist.
A memory slipped into my mind: Rose’s crystal ball. The pale fog, the shadow of Zylas within it. Sitting still and silent, staring into nothing.
Uncertainty rooted my bare feet to the carpet, but I pushed myself forward. His gaze swept up to my face as I approached, his expression indecipherable.
“Are you going out tonight?” I asked softly.
“No.” He returned his attention to the window. “Tonight I will stay.”
He, too, was worried about what the morning might bring.
Slaying Monsters for the Feeble: The Guild Codex: Demonized / Two Page 20