“Nothing. He’s trying to manipulate you. He’s messing with you.”
Sallos waggled his finger. “Now, now, Ronan, don’t be lying to the girl. I can tell how much you really like her. Lying is not a good way to start a relationship.”
Silver blade in hand, Ronan rushed the demon. He was aiming for Sallos’s throat, but the demon was faster and he tossed Ronan across the room like a feather-filled pillow.
Ronan landed on top of the bar, glasses and bottles breaking under and over him until he was lying still in a pool of shattered glass.
“Idiot,” Sallos growled. “I’ll always be faster than you. You’d think you’d know that by now.”
Brushing at the glass, Ronan sat up. “And you should realize by now that I’m smarter.”
Sallos went to laugh but then looked down at himself. A devil’s trap was stuck to his chest and there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t tear it off or even touch it, for that matter. He was now bound to the spot and had to, by creed, answer Ivy’s questions truthfully.
She grinned. “Looks like you’re screwed, Sallos.”
The demon glared at Ronan as he stumbled his way back to Ivy’s side. There were little cuts on his face and hands. But nothing too serious that would keep him out of action. She imagined it would take a lot to put Ronan down.
“Anything to keep your secrets, hey, boy?”
“Enough of your double-talk, demon,” Ivy spit out, “I want to know where my brother is.”
Standing, Sallos turned his angry red glare onto her. She could see the fires of hell in the round orbs. He wasn’t even bothering to hide his true nature any longer.
“Know that he wasn’t taken. He chose to disappear. He chose to leave you, Ivy. He chose to abandon his baby sister for his own design.”
She didn’t want his words to matter to her, but they needled her regardless. She’d always wondered how he left, and why. Her biggest question, her deepest hurt, was how he could’ve chosen to leave her completely alone to battle the monsters on her own.
“I don’t care. I just want to know where he is. I command you to tell me.”
The demon’s face began to twist and grimace. “He doesn’t want you to find him. Can’t you understand that? He doesn’t want to see you.”
“Tell me!” she yelled.
She knew he was fighting the compulsion. Most demons couldn’t fight it. But Sallos was more powerful than that. He was, or had been, a great duke in hell. He commanded legions of demons. So she should’ve known he would fight it to the end.
And that was when she realized what he intended to do.
She was moving forward even as Sallos turned and ran into the glass window. The force of his motion shattered the glass in front of him and in seconds he was falling to his death.
Ivy jumped across the room, her hand reaching for him. Her fingertips brushed the cotton of his shirt, but when she landed on her stomach, her hand was empty. She’d missed him by a measurement she couldn’t even fathom. She’d failed.
But the momentum of her jump had her sliding towards the gaping hole in the thick glass window.
Flailing her arms to stop her fall, she could feel the glass cutting into her skin. Her head was over the edge, and she thought she was going to go over. But she stopped falling.
She looked behind her and saw Ronan with a firm grip on her legs. He had her. By the look in his eyes, he wasn’t letting her go for anything. She thanked the Lord for that or she would’ve been Ivy cream pie on the sidewalk.
He pulled her back a little and she was able to release her grip on the edges of the window. Her hands were bleeding, as were her forearms, but she was alive.
She flipped over onto her back and stared up at Ronan. Tears pricked her eyes, not because she’d almost died, but because she had lost her last chance to find her brother. She’d waited three years for this one, and it had jumped out the window.
Without words, Ronan reached down and helped her to her feet. He nestled her into the crook of his arm. Sirens could be heard from down below on the street. The cops would be here any moment.
“We need to go,” Ronan murmured to her as he led her out of the lounge and to the stairwell.
She let him lead her through the hotel. She felt numb, and for the first time in her life, lost. What was she going to do now?
After he got Ivy out of the lounge and into the stairwell, she perked up and did what needed to be done. Ronan knew she was operating on autopilot but maybe that’s what she needed to do to function and survive.
The cops had been swarming up the elevators and stairs when Ronan and Ivy popped out on the twentieth floor and picked up their bags, which had been cleverly hidden near the exit. They cleaned up a bit in a public washroom and wrapped coats over their ruined clothes before heading down in the elevator to the lobby. Still masquerading as the happily married rich couple, they swept through the lobby and out of the hotel without anyone calling foul.
They made it to the truck, parked several blocks away. Ronan took the keys from Ivy, put her in the cab and drove out of the downtown area. She needed a safe place to let go and to finally gather her shit together. So he opted for his place.
It was small, quiet, unassuming and so tucked out of the way that no one would ever even consider that he would live there. Plus it was heavily warded. Nothing could get in. He had some tricks that even Ivy didn’t know. Things he’d learned from demons themselves about the art of being invisible.
“Where are we going?” she asked after they were out of the downtown area.
“My place.”
“What if it’s compromised?”
“It won’t be. I fly under the radar. There isn’t a target on my back like there is with you. Every demon within a hundred miles of San Francisco is out for your blood. The Stroms have been killing demons for a long time.”
She didn’t say anything after that, just looked out the side window watching the world zoom by, contemplating her own personal demons, he suspected.
Another ten minutes passed, and she spoke again, still without looking at him. “What did Sallos mean, he was there at your birth?”
“Ten years ago, I was coming out of a bar, drunk and stupid, thinking I was tough shit, and I was jumped by two men in the alley. Except they weren’t men.”
She turned and looked at him.
“That was the night I was turned into what I am now. Sallos was there with the other demon. Sallos held me down as the other nearly ripped my throat out.” He pulled down the collar of his shirt to show her the six-inch scar that started in the middle of his neck and arced to the left over his thorax. “Instead of killing me, the other demon thought it would be fun to feed me his blood. I was helpless to stop it. It tore open its wrist and held it to my mouth. I tried to spit it out but Sallos made me swallow.”
She studied him for a moment. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware of how it worked. I didn’t know that’s what happened to you to become a cambion.”
He rubbed his face. His skin was clammy from talking about it. “Yeah, you can be born one or made one. Either way you have demon blood racing through your body. Demon blood that won’t ever go away.”
She stared at him for another few minutes and then turned back to the window. He thought he saw her shiver once, but it could’ve been from the cool night air circulating through the cab.
After another thirty minutes in the truck, Ronan pulled to the curb and parked. Ivy opened the door and slid out. He came around, grabbed their bags from the bed and led her to his four-story apartment complex.
Without speaking, they climbed the three flights of stairs to the third floor, then walked down the dimly lit
