His mouth tightened and he closed his eyes for a split second. His skin was still pale except for the red blotch, but when he lifted the lids, the pupils of his eyes were now normal. Before they had been black with only the thinnest ring of blue; now the blue was back. Dark with rage but back. So was his control, and we’d need it to get out of this trap we’d so stupidly hopped, skipped, and jumped our way into. I couldn’t remember all the times I’d been underestimated because I was a woman, but I could count the times I’d underestimated demons. This would be number two and there was no way I was letting it turn out the way the first time had. Not again. Zeke wasn’t going to die; Griff wasn’t going to . . . none of us were.
“Off?” I asked as one of the brown demons headed for us, crisp air purling under its wings
“It’s off,” Griffin answered grimly as he turned and fired. The demon fell, one wing shredded. It wasn’t off, the empathy, not really. I could see that in the bone white line of his jaw, but he had it under sufficient control to pull a trigger and that was good enough. I hit the other demon swooping at us, this time in the head. A slow one. Good. I deserved a slow one. I also deserved a bubble bath and hot chocolate laced with butter-scotch schnapps and topped with whipped cream. But I didn’t have that. What I did have was a one-winged green demon and the black one I’d shot off Zeke. Neither of them looked anywhere near as warm and fuzzy as chocolate and schnapps.
Zeke was pushing up to one elbow, ignoring his own gasps for air as he reloaded using a speed-loader. His chest heaved on one side and didn’t move on the other. Pure mission Zeke. Air? Only wimps need air. Just give me something to shoot. It looked like the black demon was going to give him his wish. I was wrong. It passed over its first victim and headed straight for me, wings working furiously. I didn’t have time to reload and I’d never played baseball.
There’s always time to learn.
I tossed the shotgun, caught the painfully warm end of the barrel, and swung.
This time I got his head with a crash that destroyed the shotgun’s stock. Beautifully polished wood splintered and shattered. And all in all, it was about as effective as hitting him with a flyswatter. He did a better job of it with me than I had with him. As I went down, I saw the green demon back up and head for the wounded of the pack. Griffin was right between the two of us, but while Zeke might be almost as ass kicking as he thought he was, with his collapsed lung he was also bleeding and breathing . . . not so good.
“Get Zeke!” I yelled right before the demon fell on me like the MGM Grand and Caesar’s all rolled into one. I was good, I was fast, but the human body is only capable of so much. I felt the breath jolt out of my lungs, the rough asphalt scrape through my jacket and shirt as we slid up the alley floor like the after-math of a motorcycle wreck. Road rash from Hell . . . literally . . . and it hurt. Damn, did it hurt. It might’ve even come close to how the demon felt when the barrel of my Smith punctured its amber eye. There was a scream of a thousand tortured souls, which he’d probably personally recruited, and then, after I emptied six rounds into its skull, there was silence. Blissful silence.
Then I was covered in disgustingly warm black goo and the emergency door slammed open. A bouncer was framed there. He had no neck and from the steroid acne he had, probably balls the size of raisins. “Something going on out here?”
I pushed up on my elbow, the skin of my back a wildfire of pain at the motion. The green demon was gone. Either Griffin or Zeke had nailed it. Zeke was flat on his back while Griffin, who’d stripped off his jacket and wadded it to apply pressure to his partner ’s chest, rapped orders into the cell phone cradled between shoulder and jaw. There was blood on his hands, two shotguns on the alley floor, and a gun in my fist.
“No. Not a thing.” I holstered the Smith slowly and painfully. “We’re good, studly. Thanks for asking.”
“Well . . . okay, then. Keep it down.” Dull, mean brown eyes, already half crossed, crossed further, and he slammed the door behind him, the only man I would actually encourage to trade in his soul. Cerebral cortexes were highly underrated in this town. “Evolution,” I groaned as I sat up all the way. “What a myth.”
“Trixa, you’re hurt.” Griffin had let the phone fall, disconnected, and I knew Eden House’s own personal ambulance was on the way. They had a medical unit at their headquarters and better doctors and equipment than the local hospitals had. They’d take care of Zeke. He’d be all right, be pissing off Griff and shooting demons again in no time. He would be, because life without Zeke—sociopathically efficient, endearingly psychotic Zeke—wasn’t going to happen. It simply wasn’t.
I knelt beside him, my own bloody hands cupping his face. I’d made it there and touched his chest without remembering the motion of it. Much as I’d done with Kimano. “Kit, you got to use your big gun. I can practically smell the testosterone on you.”
I called him Kit, a baby fox, back when he was fifteen for his fox-colored hair. I’d almost forgotten the nickname in the ten years that had passed.
His eyes, that pale green, were hazy but managed to find me. “Kit.” He dragged in several wet breaths. “When . . . do I make . . . full-grown fox?”
“When you know thyself,” I said solemnly.
“What the hell’s that mean?” Each word was slow and said with bloody lips.
“Ask the fortune cookie company. It came with last night’s takeout.” I gave him a smile, the best one I could manage when we were surrounded by shadows and the smell of copper and garbage.
A bloody hand gripped my shoulder and my attention. “You’re hurt,” Griffin repeated.
I already could hear the siren in the distance. Eden House didn’t waste any time and they couldn’t find me here. It wouldn’t be good for Zeke and Griffin and it wouldn’t be much better for me. “Superficial. Skin’s strictly optional, right?” I already had my own cell phone out. “I’ll call Leo. He can take me to the ER.” I stood, refusing to bite my lip, but the “Shitshitshit” I didn’t bother to hold back. I backed up toward the alley mouth as I made the call, watching the guys—my guys. I watched as Zeke closed his eyes, but kept breathing. He kept breathing.
“We walked right into it,” Griffin said with dark disgust. He looked down at Zeke and back at me. “Black demons. High-level demons. What were they doing here? Besides making us look like amateurs. Like complacent assholes. We screwed up.”
“No. We fucked up.” It wasn’t a word I used often, but the situation called for it. “There’s a difference. We won’t do it again.” High-level demons like Solomon. Well, perhaps not like Solomon, no one was quite like him, but higher than the usual demons we dealt with. “Like Solomon.” I couldn’t make myself believe that was a coincidence. I stopped at the corner. “Call me and let me know.” I didn’t need to elaborate. Griffin knew. Then I rounded the corner and walked away, sticking to the shadows to hide the damage to my clothes and back . . . waiting for Leo.
No, I wasn’t going to let Griff and Zeke follow Kimano into death.
Never.
Chapter 5
Hospitals were not fun.
My family and I tended to be completely healthy up until the second we were dead; we went out old as hell and wicked as they came. It was a nice quality; saved on health insurance. So this was my first visit to one of the places, and hopefully it would be the last. I waited four hours to get the dirt and bits of asphalt washed out of the raw stretch that was my back by a nurse who thought “gentle touch” was the slogan for some sort of toilet paper. Leo sat with me the entire time, alternately shaking his head and muttering, “This is what happens,” and eyeing a blond doctor walking by with intriguing shadows in her violet eyes. Secrets. Leo was a sucker for a secret. For that matter so was I, but certainly not now.