Claimed by the Demon Hunter 3 (Guardians of Humanity)

by Harley James

  She bit her lip and withdrew her hand from his living flame. “What does it mean?”

  He hesitated. “No one knows for certain.”

  “Then what’s the point?”

  He sighed and extinguished the flame. “I feel energized when you’re near. Stronger and more capable of protecting my holy relic and taking on Baal—an archdemon who, along with four others of Lucifer’s spawn, came through a Seam between Earth and Hell on Halloween night during a demonic ritual.”

  Hell, demons, holy relics.

  Her heartbeat pounded in her neck. Don’t overreact.

  Losing her shit wouldn’t clarify anything.

  “Okaaay. So, you’re some heavenly helper who fights demons, and little old me is responsible for giving you a psychic boost? Is this some over-the-top pick-up line?”

  An inhuman roar shuddered the walls. A low, terrible sound that would follow her into sleep at night.

  Panic and confusion twisted through her, her pulse ratcheting so fast she grew light-headed. She tried to catch her breath. Tried to focus on him.

  He was calling her name, his handsome face dark with some tangled emotion she should be able to translate.

  But he wasn’t human. Don’t trust him.

  He moved toward her as another roar poured through the space followed by a human’s pain-filled scream.

  Adrenaline cascaded through her. Not safe here either!

  She lunged for the glass table, gripped the edge and heaved it Spencer’s direction, dread rushing through her veins. Hide. She didn’t pause to see if she’d hurt him, rushing out the door and down the hallway, away from the direction the demonic snarls seemed to originate.

  Spencer was closing in behind her until Pepper yelled for his help from the ‘bad’ hallway. Spencer cursed, but Sydney felt him turn away, his heavy presence suddenly gone.

  She beelined toward the most crowded section of the club, grabbing an unattended drink off the nearest table with tingling fingers, forcing herself to smile and dance as she made her way to the exit.

  The music was super loud, but she was still taken aback that no one seemed to have heard the demon. Was it loose? Trapped in one of those Devil circles? Fighting against its exorcism?

  It had probably killed the woman who’d screamed.

  A scream of her own bubbled up from her belly.

  When a group of girls headed toward an exit, she plastered herself to the back of the pack, ducking her head as though checking for something in her pocket as they passed security.

  Outside on the sidewalk, the unseasonably cold, wet December air swirled down the busy, nighttime street. Fat snowflakes streamed down from a gauzy sky creating a halo effect around the streetlights.

  Breath sawing in and out of her mouth, Sydney peeled away from the group of women who hadn’t paid her any notice.

  And ran away from Inferno as fast as she could.

  Chapter 21

  Out of breath and teeth chattering, Sydney slipped into a low-profile bar whose patrons were more the blue jeans and baseball cap sort than three-piece suit types.

  A few people glanced over their shoulders with raised eyebrows as she scanned for bathrooms and all possible exits, but it was more likely because she wasn’t wearing a winter coat. They couldn’t tell her hands were still shaking, her heart still pounding so forcefully she was almost seeing stars.

  Here in this All-American bar she was safe. Hidden away from Spencer’s scary brand of sexy. The fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rose as she passed behind the people bellied up to the bar.

  Were any of them demons?

  Would she ever take anything or anyone at face value again?

  Stop. Wigging. Out.

  She took deep, cleansing breaths as she made her way to the bathroom.

  Alone. Thank God. She spent long minutes warming her arms and hands under the electric hand dryer before locking herself in a stall so she could think.

  Holy shit. Demons. Angels. Holy relics and magical feathers. Immortal warriors. Being able to control the elements.

  What the hell? How had she gotten mixed up in all this and why? Was there a reason, or was it a chance happening like one of those wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time things?

  Her heart continued to bang against her ribs as she looked up at the water-stained ceiling tiles. In her panic, she’d made a rash decision to escape from Spencer.

  What if that was her worst mistake?

  What if he was really the only one who could protect her family?

  But what if he had been tricking her, and her escape angered him so much he retaliated by hurting her family?

  Her gut said he wouldn’t, but what did she know anymore?

  Tears rose to her eyes, and she wrapped her arms around her waist. She had no phone, no money, and if something happened to her parents, siblings, or the Torque crew because of her decision...

  Laughter and strains from an old Bruce Springsteen ballad spilled into the bathroom as the door opened. She held her breath, but no one entered the other stall. Then...sounds of slurping. A wet, sucking sound that made dread pool in her belly.

  She tried to look through the stall door crack, but the sound was coming from the right. She leaned down to peek under the stall and saw two pairs of feminine shoes, facing each other.

  Sydney inhaled and exhaled as quietly as possible, then flushed and exited the stall, averting her gaze from the two young women—making out, or just friends huddled together, gossiping?—by the wall next to the condom dispenser.

  She must have imagined the slurping. She quickly washed her hands and was almost to the bathroom door when the taller woman lifted her head.

  Sydney gasped. Something red stained the woman’s lips, her large, black eyes soulless for a single heartbeat until her irises clicked into a lovely cornflower blue.

  The blue-eyed lady smiled and swiped at her mouth. “Hey, you alright? You look like you’ve seen—”

  Sydney pulled her palms from her temples and raced out the bathroom door. She’d use a stranger’s phone to call Laura. Laura would come get her. Bring her some money. Then she’d find a hotel and call Spencer to bargain for the safe release of her family.

  She kept her eyes on the ladies’ bathroom door and scooted onto a stool at the bar next to a forty-something man with a goatee and an Oakland A’s hat on backwards. “Brrr! Is it colder in here than ten minutes ago?” She put on the brightest smile she could muster with lips that were starting to feel numb.

  The A’s man shifted toward her, his mouth tilting up on one side. “Yeah, I was jus’ telling Jimmy here,” he indicated the bartender with a mohawk and tattooed eyelids, “that he oughta tell his boss to stop being so cheap and turn up the goddamn heat. The drinks cost enough they should be able to—”

  A fresh blast of frigid air dropped on the place like an invisible avalanche. The lights—all of them—went out the same time the music abruptly ended. Sydney’s hands gripped the brass railing that wrapped around the bar, dizzy and disoriented in the sudden darkness. A low chuckle rumbled through the space like a slow, deep roll of thunder.

  People began to scream and claw in the dark, pulling at her as they tried to find their way out of the bar. Sydney scrambled over the counter to the bartender’s side so she didn’t get trampled, finding her way to the back exit by following the wall, panning out with her hands, praying with every step.

  Something evil was in this space. Because of her? Had she endangered everyone in this building by coming here?

  Who or what was the enemy?

  She made it outside with only minor cuts and scrapes from tripping on broken glass. But what met her on the street…

  A blizzard… in San Francisco?

  Heavy, wet snow whipped so violently in the winds some of the streetlights were barely visible. Crazed people staggered in the middle of the road, stripping off their clothes, hurting each other and themselves with improvised weapons and their bare hands.

  She whe
ezed and put her hands on her knees, trying to breathe. Find shelter. But where? The snow was melting as soon as it hit her hands and the bare skin at the v-neck of her sweater, but not as fast as it should have.

  A bad sign.

  Her muscles were sluggish. She blinked once. Then again, her eyelids heavy as though made of clay.

  Want to sleep.

  She looked left, then right. There. A flickering light down an alleyway illuminated a garbage dumpster. She could crawl underneath it and lay down for a little while. Then she’d—

  A tall figure emerged from the blowing snow in front of her. Blood-red suit. Gray skin. He was laughing. “Are you ready to die, sweetheart?”

  “N-n-n-no.” Her lips chattered as tried to turn away, but her feet felt like they were sinking in quicksand. A brief, wild fluttering inside, beating at her paralyzed shell. As the street rushed up to her, the frantic beating ebbed.

  Not cold anymore.

  A relief. She exhaled once and darkness wrapped around her.

  Chapter 22

  Spencer caught sight of Sydney as she went down. Her name tore from his lips, his hand outstretching to form a wall of fire to block the rephaim from snatching her before he could reach her.

  Spencer streamed to her, scooping her frigid form into his arms. As he raced back to Inferno, he stoked both his body temperature and the ambient atmosphere in the trajectory he travelled because if she grew any colder, she might never wake.

  Damn her.

  He broadcast a call for all regional Guardians to descend on the rephaim block party before they decimated the area’s population. He was almost back at to the club when Sydney gathered a breath to scream.

  He rocked her body toward his chest. “Let loose a bellow, madam, and you’ll initiate a demon swarm.”

  She tensed, but closed her mouth. Inside Inferno, he carried her back into the safe room, which was now minus one expensive glass table. As Pepper arrived in the doorway with a blanket, he waved his hand in front of the fireplace to ignite the logs and set Sydney down into a chair. He pushed the chair in front of the flames, took the blanket from Pepper, and draped it over Sydney’s quivering shoulders.

  She remained seated, but her anxious eyes scooted around the room as though looking for a weapon. Or another means of escape.

  How to reassure her?

  He called to his xiphos blade. When it appeared in his grasp, Sydney flinched and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Spencer placed the blade in his palm, offering her the handle. “This sword is very fond of necks. Even so, if you attempt to cleave a man’s head from his body, I suggest you swing with both arms with all your might—much as you did to my one-of-a-kind glass table an hour ago.”

  Sydney stared at the sword like it would bite her. He bobbed it in front of her face. “Go on, then, take it. It’s your insurance that I am who I say I am, and not one of the rephaim devils you encountered on your reckless flight of independence.”

  She wouldn’t take the sword. Refused to even look at him.

  A rush of impatience flooded him. In the old days, he would have forced her to take it, by one means or another. Now...

  He tried to understand her perspective. “I know you’ve suffered a tremendous shock. Panic can make even the bravest among us do impetuous things. But I ask you this…have I done anything to make you believe that I wish you ill?”

  She raised welling eyes to his. “Where is my family?”

  He set the xiphos on the side table, then collapsed into the 18th Century Louis XVI Bergere chair, rubbing his hands over the bleached oak and pale khaki linen of the arm rests.

  Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier?

  He reached into his sport coat’s inner pocket and produced the new phone Atamu had acquired for him.

  The minute it was in Sydney’s hand, she called her mother, father, and damned if she didn’t insist on talking to every one of her siblings, and her Torque staff, too.

  Her commitment to family and friends was extraordinary.

  When she finally hung up, she’d stopped trembling from the cold, and—hopefully—from worry. He remained quiet, hoping she’d break the silence.

  After a few moments, she sighed and held out her hand for the sword. He leaned forward to pick it up from the side table. When the handle met her palm, a single, high frequency note quavered in the air. Her gaze lifted to his, her eyebrows raised. “You heard that?”

  He nodded, trying to mollify his own surprise. The xiphos was made for him, but it had never responded to him like that. “It’s apparently taken a fancy to you.”

  She scoffed, turning the sword this way and that. “It’s an object. Insensate.”

  “Are you certain?” he asked quietly.

  Her shoulders dropped, but she kept her gaze on the xiphos. “I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

  The defeat in her voice gutted him. “You live by logic and make choices based on all available facts. You, like the majority of humanity, are unaccustomed to the supernatural. So understandably, your world has been turned upside down. There is no shame in fear or doubt. It takes time to come to terms with all of this.”

  But hopefully not too much time. Baal was beginning to exert pressure from multiple fronts.

  Sydney raised her hooded gaze to his, her fingers curling around the sword handle. “Would this sword take even your life?”

  He kept his face calm. Dispassionate even. She was testing him.

  That was probably good. What wasn’t good was that high note the sword made when it met her palm. The damn thing probably would kill him if she attempted it. “I’ve never handed it over in good faith to someone contemplating my murder, so it’s uncharted waters, goddess. Would you like to sail them?”

  He watched her throat work as she swallowed. “How many demons have you killed with it?”

  He smiled, and she blanched. Remorse made his chest tight. The situation demanded gravitas, not flippancy.

  He sighed. “Too many to count. The sword was modeled after the blade our Guardian leader Alexios used as a Spartan warrior in 527 BC. A perfect weapon in its original conception, this particular xiphos is even more lethal, as it was forged by Michael, the very Archangel who escorted Lucifer to Hell.” He got up from the chair to pour a whiskey for each of them. “Lucifer is the Devil’s original name, in case you weren’t aware.”

  She whispered the word ‘archangel,’ then blew out a breath and pointed the sword at him. “How did you get this way?”

  He dodged the sword to lean in and place her drink on the end table next to her chair. “That’s a loaded question. Are you asking about my supernatural essence, or my path of moral dissolution?”

  The first question was decidedly easier to answer.

  “As I mentioned before, all Guardians protect humans, but some also have the responsibility of watching over ancient holy objects we call relics. The man chained to the floor in my office—the one whom you heard bellowing before you ran off—was recently possessed so he still has a chance to be exorcised.”

  Once Father Angus got the ritual to work again.

  But Sydney didn’t need to worry about that.

  “That doesn’t answer my question. Who gets to be a Guardian and why?”

  “We are chosen based on two criteria: moral bankruptcy and a final, uncharacteristic act of self-sacrifice. If those two conditions are present, the human in limbo may be given the choice to either become a Guardian or accept the consequences of his or her decisions.”

  Her eyes were wide and slightly glassy. “You mean, go to Hell.”

  “That’s the most commonly accepted term.”

  “How did you die?”

  He stared at her. The long, deep rephaim claw mark along her left cheek might scar regardless of how careful his mixologist Shadow had been when she’d made the liquid stitches. The exhaustion, worry, and misgivings in Sydney’s eyes made him tired and discouraged. Made him remember why he’d been determined to turn ov
er his relic to Jinx.

  “Spencer.”

  “My death story is no one’s business.” There were only a handful of people with whom he’d ever shared it.

  Her shoulders slumped again, and she nodded with her eyes closed. Like she’d expected his rejection. It angered him.

  He drained his whiskey and moved to stand in front of her. His stance was meant to intimidate, but it only managed to shame him.

  He cursed and turned away to run a hand through his hair.

  “I was thirty-two years old, shot through the heart with my own pistol by thugs who caught up to me after I took a gang-raped prostitute to safety.” He looked down at his hands and saw blood. His blood. Her blood. “She was hurt because of me.”

  “What happened?”

  “I didn’t know her. A man who owed me a vast sum of money sent her to my doorstep to pleasurably cajole me into clemency. The woman never even made it inside.”

  He could still remember her pitiful screams as the thugs dragged her into a getaway carriage, her cries only whimpers by the time he caught up and dealt with her attackers in a bleak alley.

  “How did you get her to safety?”

  “I fought three men and pulled her out from under the fourth rapist who’d crumpled on her, his final expression frozen in shock from the blade I shoved in his carotid. I didn’t want to use my pistol and rouse the local constable.”

  The man’s blood had poured in a crimson flood all over the woman’s ripped, green velvet dress.

  “My mistake was presuming there were four attackers. After carrying the woman to the nearest church, I exited the building and was pushed down the stairs and set upon by a fifth brigand. In seconds, the marauder had disarmed me, and I found myself staring down the barrel of my own pistol.” His lips pulled up without humor. “It’s very unbecoming, being shot.”

  They said time often slows during critical moments of your life. That had not been his experience. The bullet had pierced flesh and bone, and he’d bled out immediately.