Xander glanced at his phone and spun it in a circle. “If you believe the words of the Raven”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“About them… taking Mel alive.” He glanced back up at me, frowning.
“I believe it,” I said, smiling. Not a real smile, though. Never one of those. More of a nervous grin, because I needed to believe more than I actually did. “Why wouldn’t her body be here with the other two? She’s alive. I feel it.”
“Okay,” Xander said. “I believe you.”
“Either way, the Ravens worked together and they worked intelligently. They created a distraction for me and drew me away from here. That means they somehow knew my schedule and my routines. The Nephil knew how to manipulate me—so, the fucker also knows my past.” I chewed on a thumbnail. “Only Nephil I’ve ever known is Hephaestus and I’ve never even met that one in person.” I chewed on my cheek for a second. “But it’s not him doing this.”
“Sorry, man,” Xander said, wearing that concerned look again. I think he feared my trigger, which I don’t blame him for. I was known to be a little… explosive and unpredictable. “But you’ve fallen into a predictable pattern lately.”
“Yeah, I have,” I said, remaining calm for the moment.
Xander cleared his throat, then grabbed his phone and pocketed it. “Four M.I.S. hunters that were stationed in front of the house are now dead,” he said. “Sucked clean.” He sighed. “My fifth and sixth hunters were hidden on the roof as snipers. They’re dead, too. When the check-in party arrived, they said a darkness had settled around the property that shrouded the area in an inky black. One man went in it, didn’t come back out. His body was also found on the property, dried.”
“What did the survivors say? They get descriptions? A direction? Anything?”
Xander shook his head. “No. They saw the darkness, too. Said it moved like a fog rolling out, then it just… dispersed.”
“You ever hear of anything like that?” I asked, scratching behind my ear. “A fog like darkness?” I thought about the woman I had faced in the garage, how she had glitched around the shadows—how I had fired at her and the bullets had gone through her head as if she were no more than mist or fog.
“I have,” Xander said, nodding. His face had fallen somber, his posture stiff. “Umbrakinesis, or shadow magic. Used only by the Nephil in the Underworld. Has your reputation extended beyond our world?”
My reputation. Ha! Without getting into too much detail, I’ll just say that some kids are afraid of the bogeyman. Well, the bogeyman used to be afraid of me. I’ve always been good at one thing—destruction—and people used to pay me to kill monsters. Most Cursed knew my name, as did Acolytes. If a Nephil had bestowed power or curses to a follower, chances are that I’ve killed one of their people in my past.
I ran through my list of enemies—mostly enemies acquired through my service to Hephaestus—and I couldn’t recall one name from the Underworld. But that made sense. Underworld Nephil were assigned to protect the gates of Hell and keep the Fallen—fallen angels or demons—from returning to this universe.
“Any theories?” I asked, my mind blank.
“With consideration to your theory about control, and the evidence at hand, I have a few,” Xander said. “But before I voice them, I’d like to hear what our prisoner has to say. See if he can narrow my thoughts.”
I didn’t press him. Why entertain every idea that popped into his head? If he had a hunch, and if our prisoner could confirm or deny that hunch, then we would do that.
“You need to know something,” Xander said.
“What’s that?”
“The Raven shifted back to human form without blood. I’ve never heard of such a thing—for a vampire to switch between Raven and human without feeding, or going hungry.”
I didn’t exactly know how to use that information, and with each passing second thundering in my head, I went a little crazier and wild. Stagnation didn’t help with my acute awareness of expiring time, which meant I had to do something. I had to move, to act.
“Where’s that piece of shit at?” I asked.
The Andersons’ garage was cramped with Christmas boxes and a large worktable, but the limited space worked fine for my needs. Four M.I.S. hunters stood guard around the detained vampire.
He had shifted from Raven to vampire—appearing more human than most of your neighbors. He had curly, blonde hair and blue eyes and tanned skin. He looked like he should have been barefoot on a beach instead of in the gloomy Sacramento Valley. The vampire sat restrained in a plastic chair near a jolly Santa gnome. His hands were cuffed beneath the seat and his ankles were shackled to the chair legs.
“What’s the ring about?” I asked, squatting before him and removing a necklace from his neck with a black ring attached to it. I held the piece of jewelry up, inspecting it like I knew what I was looking at. A white-painted symbol was etched into the thickness of the band. When he didn’t answer quick enough, I asked, “You know who I am?”
He scoffed and grinned. “Do you know who you are?”
That struck a humorous chord, and I couldn’t help but chuckle out the ominous bad guy response. “Eh, strike one,” I said. “Hopefully the rest of this quiz doesn’t go so poorly for you. A failing grade, and, well, you die.” I cleared my throat and stood, spreading out my arms to showcase myself. “I—you sexy, blonde buffoon—am your best friend. Think of
