So we went back to discussing our options, since the whole setup wouldn’t work unless it didn’t look like a trap in the first place. In the end we decided to summon our enemies. Show them one hand. Slap them with the other.

Vayl and Raoul took seats at the head and foot of the table. When they were in position, I sat to Vayl’s left. I pulled up my right sleeve, unstrapped the syringe of holy water I usually kept tucked there, and laid it on the table in front of me. Cole, already parked beside Bergman, had been watching my preparations.

Now he raised his eyebrows as Astral began doing a remarkably good cover of “Survivalism” by Nine Inch Nails.

Miles bobbed his head and kept the beat against his thighs until he realized we were all staring. “What?” I began quoting lyrics. “I got my propaganda I got revisionism… All a part of this great nation?” He shook one of his fingers at me. “You know better than to trust your government. Or any government for that matter. Which is the best reason yet why you should dump the CIA and throw in with me.

They’ve already gone crooked on you once.”

When I started to protest, he added fingers until his whole hand was raised. “Don’t try to tell me Senator Bozcowski was some kind of blip. He was a rotten apple in a crate of wormy fruit. And he nearly got you killed back in Miami, not to mention what he had planned for the rest of the country! They’re all on the take. Which is why I’ll work with them, but not for them.” Cole leaned forward. “I think you need to wipe your mouth there, Bergie. You’re frothing at the corners.”

“None of you can tell me I’m wrong!” Bergman insisted, though he did press his sleeve against his mouth.

“Of course we can,” Vayl said, the absolute stillness of his posture a peaceful counterpoint to Bergman’s seat-wriggling passion. “The very extremity of your position makes it questionable.”

“Plus, you’ve forgotten the most important point,” I said.

“What’s that?” Bergman asked.

“Those government pukes you’re so afraid of are our employees. And if they piss enough of us off, we’ll fire them.”

“It’s not that easy!”

“Sure it is. Happens all the time. You’re just mad about a lot more things than the rest of us.”

“What if something terrible goes down? What if the entire cabinet gets infested with demons and starts some sort of coup?”

I leaned forward. “Just watch what we do next, and you should have some idea how much patience we’d have with an executive office full of possessed administrators.” At a nod from Vayl, Cole pulled his sword and cocked it over one shoulder like a ball bat. Raoul and I both had belts, his at his waist, mine at my back. We also drew.

Seeing all the metal put Bergman back in his seat. “I get your point,” he said.

Vayl rolled his cane between his fingers as if it helped him think. He said, “Then shall we move on?” We nodded.

Cole began. “Kyphas, drop everything and come flying.”

“Kyphas, do not delay, we require your presence, your visage, your favor,” said Vayl. He took the syringe off the table.

“Kyphas, rise quickly to our circle,” I said as I pulled Raoul’s blade across my forearm and let the blood drip on the ground between my feet.

“Blood to the hellspawn,” I murmured.

“Nema,” chorused Cole, Vayl, and Bergman.

We all spat over our left knees.

As we knew it would, the thrice-naming brought a feeling of electricity into the air that raised the hairs on our arms and made the backs of our necks itch. We rose together. Bergman and Cole strained to see into the night. Not a problem for the rest of us. Vayl and Raoul had natural abilities. Mine had come at a price I often questioned.

But it was almost worth it all to be able to see my blood and our separate puddles of spit merge and flow to a spot in the middle of the yard, like the driveway had tipped sideways, forcing all the liquid into the parched grass. The puddle expanded to the size of a manhole cover and Kyphas shot out of it. She landed badly, flopping onto the lawn like a beached dolphin.

Vayl threw the syringe into the middle of the summoning circle, shattering it. The holy water it contained boiled instantly, barring the gateway. But even our vampire wasn’t fast enough to prevent a few of Kyphas’s allies from flying through first.

“Slyein!” I yelled as I recognized the unlined faces of hell’s scum. The kid killers.

In life they’d been adults. Moms and dads, truck drivers and CEOs, fanatics who didn’t give a crap who died in the blast. In death they’d been doomed to the bodies they’d destroyed. Eternal youth screaming for the chance to grow up. Dream on. Fulfill.

The rage they brought to battle made them even harder to fight than their aerial capability, which could be awkward given the bloody rips they’d torn in their own wings. Self-mutilation. One of the sure signs that the creature you were fighting wasn’t hellborn. Only the originals weren’t subject to torture. Which made them harder to injure and, ultimately, destroy.

Still, we’d be lucky to survive the onslaught of the three monsters who’d followed Kyphas through the gateway before Vayl closed it. A girl with spiked black hair and eyes rimmed in purple, a blond boy whose reddened teeth showed he’d just been feasting on raw flesh, and a toddler with white curls and long black lashes who might’ve been a girl, except he wore a blue jumper with the words “I’m a good boy,” stitched across the front.

“No,” muttered Miles. “Can’t be.” He swiped his sword off the table. “Slyein?” His voice crept higher while he stalked toward Kyphas, who was halfway to her feet and already reaching for her hat. “You dare to bring those fuckers here?”

“Miles, no!” I yelled. “You need to run !”

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