It... might have been funny, if tonight were any other night. I focused on the feral vampiric power inside of me until I felt my eyes burning with inner light. Settling my gaze on the hapless pair, I let that same power add resonance to my voice.
“You don’t want to be here,” I told them. “Turn around and run away as fast as you can. Forget about what you saw, and stay out of the park at night.”
Eyes comically wide, they turned around and hared toward the tree line where they’d emerged. An instant before they would have disappeared into the shadows between the thick trunks, a new figure popped into existence, leathery wings blocking their path.
Myrial’s battle scythe flashed out, crackling with blue energy. One of the fleeing humans fell with a gurgle, blood spurting from his neck like a fountain. Myrial grabbed the other by the back of his hoodie, spinning him around in a parody of an embrace. Her free hand gripped his chin and jerked to the side. With a dull crunch of cracking vertebrae, he slid to the ground in a lifeless heap.
“Well, my dears,” the succubus purred. “Isn’t this quite the welcoming committee? Tell me, my pets—did you miss me while I was away in Hell?”
THIRTEEN
A SHOTGUN BLAST rang out in the night, followed closely by a second. Guthrie strode toward Myrial, his expression twisted into hard lines as he dropped a pair of fresh shells into the gun and snapped the barrel closed. Myrial hissed in anger like a cat as two more blasts of rock salt exploded scattershot against her torso. Thin wisps of smoke rose from the tiny wounds.
She disappeared, only to reappear instantaneously right in Guthrie’s face, tearing the shotgun from his hands and shoving him backward thirty feet through the air. His spine impacted with a tree trunk, and the sound of wood cracking echoed through the clearing.
Vampire, I reminded myself a bit frantically. As long as his head’s still attached and there’s no silver sticking out of his chest, he’s fine.
Edward murmured something low in an unfamiliar sounding language. A shimmer of light like an aurora burst up from the perimeter he’d defined with his own blood. Myrial’s gaze raked over him, and she sneered with disdain before returning her attention to Guthrie lying crumpled at the base of the tree.
“Word to the wise, bean-counter,” she said. “Salt makes a poor projectile. It’s far too light to penetrate more than a few millimeters into flesh...” Her eyes slid to me, darkness flooding in behind her expression. “... unless, of course, you pack it inside a hollowed-out bullet first.”
A chill like glacial ice settled in my chest at the reminder of how my mother had died. Myrial hadn’t killed her; of that, I was fairly confident. No—I had the Fae to thank for Sasha Bright’s death, and for my family’s downward spiral in the aftermath. Of course, that wasn’t going to stop Myrial from using Mom’s death as a weapon to distract me, now that the evil cow had decided I needed to die.
Her eyes glowed with hellfire as she studied me. One eyebrow arched with interest as she sensed my newly undead status.
I bared my teeth. “Oh, yeah. That’s right, bitch. Being a demon-human hybrid with added Fae magic was getting kind of boring, so I decided to add vampire into the mix. Sorry if that complicated your little plan for world domination, or whatever the fuck you’re trying to do.”
Rans and Nigellus stepped forward to stand on either side of me. Myrial’s attention slid past us, and I glanced back to find that she was taking in Albigard’s presence as he helped Guthrie back to his feet. The Fae met her eyes squarely and leaned back against the cracked tree trunk with his arms crossed—the picture of indifference. Apparently, he hadn’t been kidding when he told Nigellus that his only interest was in Caspian.
A sharp whoomph of displaced air snapped my focus back to the demon of fate standing next to me. Nigellus had shed his human guise, and now I was flanked by a creature from human nightmare. Where Myrial’s androgynous natural form exuded grace, from her shapely legs to her spiral antelope horns, Nigellus’ demon guise screamed power. Horns like a ram’s curled backward from the sides of his skull, and muscle bulged from his nearly seven-foot frame. His leathery wings spanned twenty feet easily, each one topped with a vicious, curved claw at the wrist.
“There is no turning back now, Myrial,” he said, his voice ringing with otherworldly resonance. “Killing innocent humans wholesale? You must know I cannot allow you to destroy the treaty with your treasonous scheming.”
“Allow me?” Myrial purred; the words smooth as poison. “Dearest Nigellus, how do you plan to stop me?”
A flaming blade burst into existence in Nigellus’ right hand, and Myrial laughed aloud. As casually as breaking a twig, the succubus snapped the barrel of Guthrie’s shotgun free from the stock at the hinge, and tossed the two pieces aside.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “How very predictable. Come then, O mighty demon of the first rank. Let us see if you can defeat me while also keeping your precious pet vampires alive.”
My neck prickled as Rans and Nigellus dove forward, attacking as one. Everything about Myrial’s blithe reaction screamed trap, but I couldn’t see where the trap was, or how it might be sprung. There was no one else lurking in the bushes—my vampire senses insisted Myrial was here alone. I drew my salt dagger and swirled into vapor, circling above the two-on-one fight in search of an opening.
I’d agreed not to engage Myrial directly unless there was absolutely no other choice. As much as it stung, I knew that my paltry few weeks of combat training were essentially useless against a demon, and we’d already proven she was stronger than me when it came to pulling animus as a form of attack.
As long as I remained incorporeal, there
