He shot her a derisive look. “Pull back your fangs, woman.”
She hmphed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Fuddy-duddy. Don’t worry, I won’t eat your little friend. Wouldn’t want to risk your wrath.” She studied him for a moment. “Your eyes are flickering something fierce. Been a long time since I’ve seen them do that. And over a girl who dresses like…I’m not even sure how to categorize her style. Grunge? Thrift store?”
He watched Ruby cross the street, or try to, between cars. “I’m not attracted to her.” Though she had an intriguing mouth, with her upper lip a bit wider than her lower lip, wide jaw line, and strong chin. The sass that came out of her mouth was more interesting than annoying, for the most part. She would learn to respect him. “You’re going to see a lot of her. She’s a new Crescent.”
“New, at her age?”
“Long story. I expect you to help her however you can. She’s got a hell of an adjustment period coming.”
Glesenda’s eyes widened. “You mean she doesn’t know—”
“She has no idea.”
Ruby glanced back, blinking when she saw him at the door watching her. She gave him a look that probably equaled the finger and got into her dark blue truck. He pushed the door open before Glesenda could grill him further. The flow of traffic forced Ruby to wait before pulling out of her spot.
She also had no idea that a demon sat in the passenger seat of her truck. Whoever had sent the orb was wasting no time in trying to take her out. His Dragon clawed at him, its protective instinct pushing to Catalyze.
You know better. Not in public.
He ran to his ’57 T-bird as Ruby peeled away from the curb. The demon turned to him, its red eyes flaring, its lip curling with victory. A humanoid demon, it took the shape of a person, but with brown skin and ears that pointed up like horns.
Hell. The damned thing was gloating. Cyn despised the humanoids only second to harbingers. He pulled into traffic as the truck moved out of sight. He tried to pull around the cars between him and Ruby, but traffic gave him no break.
He took the chance on a small gap, passing one car at the cost of a blaring horn. The demon watched him, its hand on the back of the bench seat like it was Ruby’s date. It couldn’t materialize, bound by the same rule as Crescents: never reveal your presence to Mundanes. It could, however, kill her right there, depending on how much evidence and chaos it was willing to cause. Demons weren’t known to be subtle. Those rare cases of spontaneous combustion and one-car accidents? Usually demons.
“Damn it.” His Dragon strained now.
Cyn thought about pounding his horn to get her attention, but she’d likely drive away faster. He passed another car, narrowly missing a collision with an oncoming garbage truck. Now he was one car behind hers.
The demon leaned close to Ruby’s neck, flicking its long pointed tongue toward her skin. She brushed at her neck, glancing over but obviously seeing nothing of the menace sitting right next to her. All the while it looked at him.
He thought she might go to her restoration yard. He knew where that was. Despite reluctantly agreeing to Moncrief’s plan, he’d checked on the girl from time to time to see if the spell had broken yet.
The demon waved its long fingers as Ruby cleared a traffic light. The light skipped from green to red, making the driver in front of him slam on his brakes. Cyn’s bumper tapped the rear of the car, but he was already looking for a way around. Ruby’s truck turned right one block ahead. Short of running down people on the sidewalk, Cyn could do nothing but wait. He gripped the steering wheel so hard it began to crack.
He had to get to Ruby. The moment the demon had her alone, it would all be over.
Chapter 6
Sed, the demon, followed Ruby into a building that was identified as a library. She asked the person behind the desk where she could look up old newspaper articles, then followed his directions toward the back.
The place was not very busy. He searched for Crescents, who would be able to see him. A Deuce was checking out. Sed ducked behind the aisle as the man left. A handful of Mundanes. Easy to dispense with.
That was what had gotten him into trouble in the first place, relegated to a prison on the Dark Side. He had been sprung to carry out a task, the kind he most enjoyed.
The object of his task took a seat in the back of the building, the perfect location. If he could get rid of the rest of the inhabitants, he would be done and allowed to play as his reward.
Mundanes couldn’t see him, but they could feel him. Sed moved up close to one male who was reading at a table. Mmm, would love to eat him, torment him. All he was allowed to do was send him a feeling of dread.
The man shivered and looked around. He closed his book and left. Several others were just as easily dispensed with. Some took the time to check out, while the more sensitive ones left their stacks of books behind.
Now, the workers. Sed made two of them violently ill by flooding them with negative energy. They staggered out, sure there must have been something toxic in the coffee they had shared. One became unaccountably angry and stormed out. Which left the man who appeared to be in charge, and who was accountably angry that his entire staff was gone. He did not respond to the demon’s emotional blasts because he already held anger and hopelessness.
He reached for the phone and looked at a list of names and numbers. Before he could call replacements, the demon reached into the man’s chest and squeezed his heart. He gasped, shock on his face.
The demon inhaled his pain. Die, Mundane. Die by my hand, and no one will know any better.
The man dropped to his knees and collapsed, claimed by the heart attack. Sed ran to the door and locked it just as someone approached with a stack of books. The woman tried the door, peered in, and then dropped the books into the metal bin. The demon thought about sliding his hand out of the rotating bin and grabbing her. How amusing it would be to see her expression of horror.
Alas, he had to follow the rules if he hoped to gain freedom. He flicked off the light switches at the front and made his way to his target. The one he could torment.
Ruby’s brain was literally buzzing. Hah, I knew he put some funky drug in the air.
Except that didn’t explain the killer orb. That was no hallucination, nor was Mon’s death. And she didn’t feel high or dizzy or otherwise altered. Her rash was flaring big-time though.
She’d barely taken time to enjoy the smell of the books, a scent she found oddly comforting, on her way to the bulky machines at the back of the building. Why had she never thought to look at the old newspaper stories dating back to the time of the boating accident?
She stopped at the headline: FAMILY PERISHES AT SEA.
This was it. To the side was a picture of all three of them, posing at what looked like a picnic. She plunged in. Her father was obviously doing well in whatever job he’d been working on—something to do with physics—as the boat was described as a yacht. The Yard certainly wouldn’t fund such a thing.
The press played it up as another mysterious Devil’s Triangle disappearance. Investigators speculated that it was either an accidental explosion, rogue wave, or pirates.
The family’s disappearance. It hit her then, that she was included in the missing. There was no mention of her rescue. At the time, she was Ruby Winston. Mon adopted her and, as Cyntag had pointed out, immediately changed her name for some legal reason she had never questioned.