“Just one.” I show him the red welt on my wrist. “After all that, the demon just clawed me like a sissy baby.” I rest my head against Lucas’s chest. The demon is dead, but things still aren’t adding up.
The demon wasn’t in its true form, yet was being guarded by those things. Was it controlling them? Did it create them? But more importantly…are they gone now that the demon is dead?
“There’s still one of those creatures out there,” I remind Lucas. He runs his hands down my arms.
“We’ll kill it.”
Binx shadows off to check the rest of the basement, trying to locate the creature. Lucas keeps his hand in mine after we break apart.
“That’s the hunter.” My eyes go to the headless body a few feet from us. I’ve seen my fair share of demon-related deaths, but this is making my stomach clench. “I think.”
Lucas lets go of my hand and checks the body for ID. He finds a wallet, and I conjure a small string of magic so I can see the name.
“Melinda didn’t say who it was, but this has to be him. I mean, who other than hunters wear flannel in summer?”
Lucas hands me the wallet. “You should give it to her.”
“I know,” I sigh. “I’m sure she knew he was already dead, but having to tell her…”
Lucas looks at the body for a moment and then turns back to me. “I don’t hear anything else in here, my love.”
“Good.” My eyes fall shut in a long blink as a sharp headache suddenly comes on. “I don’t even know its name.”
“Does it matter if it’s dead?”
“I keep a record of the demons I’ve vanquished in my book. You know, for the future generation of—” I cut off, realizing what I’m saying.
Lucas and I can never have a family.
And now is not the time to even entertain thoughts related to that.
“Knowing its name would help me understand why it’s here and if I should expect more.”
“Is there a way to find out?”
The sharp pain comes back in a wave. I squeeze my eyes shut again and it passes as quickly as it came on. “Not that I know of. That explosion was pretty final, though. I don’t have anything to resurrect if I tried.”
“That’s probably a good thing.”
“Probably.” My stomach tightens and for a few seconds, I think I’m going to throw up. The sick feeling passes, and I look up at Lucas’s face. “You heard what it said, didn’t you? That I’m not human.”
“I did,” he says and I’m so thankful he didn’t feed me the “demons are liars” line. “I meant what I said earlier. It doesn’t matter what you are, Callie. Who you are is what counts, and you’re the single most amazing person in this whole fucking world.
Binx comes back, letting me know he didn’t sense anything at all in the rest of the building.
“Let’s get out of here. I really want tacos.” My eyes go to the headless body on the floor. Bits of demon dust my hair. Lucas is covered in blood, some of it his own but most the demon’s.
And I’m thinking about fucking tacos.
“I’ve heard humans at the bar talk about a taco cart. I’ll take you.”
“We should probably get cleaned up first.” I shove the wallet into the back pocket of my jeans. Lucas guides me through the dark building, and we go out through a set of double doors in the back, emerging onto the deck. At one point, it offered outside eating right along the lake.
The headache comes on strong again and Lucas can sense it. He turns to put his arm around me when he suddenly stops. A dark figure rises from the shadows and points a gun at us.
My heart stops and I don’t have time to react. A shot is fired, ringing out into the night.
Chapter 26
I know from the time I hear to gunshot to the time I feel it hit me is less than a second. Yet the pain never comes, and Lucas is in front of me, growling. Another shot is fired, hitting him in the stomach.
Fighting through the pain, Lucas speeds forward and grabs the gunman’s hand, snapping his wrist back. The bones break and the gun clatters to the ground. Using my powers, I throw the gun off the deck and into the lake. Funny, how facing demons and creatures made up of hundreds of rats scares me, but having someone point a gun at me scares me even more.
My eyes go to Lucas, who has the gunman pushed up against the wall of the building. His fingers are wrapped around his throat, fangs glinting and eyes full of anger. He’s not mad he got shot—twice—but that someone aimed the gun at me and pulled the trigger.
“Hey!” another man shouts, running down the deck. “Let him go!” He’s holding a pistol in one hand and points it at Lucas. I recognize his voice before he comes into view. You have got to be fucking kidding me. I throw out my hand, knocking Easton back. I’m glad he listened to his sister and stayed away. I’m sure he thought I couldn’t do it, that he’d need to run in here and save me from the big bad demon.
There is no way anyone without powers could have faced that thing and come out alive.
“Callie?” Easton slows to a stop. “What are you doing?”
“What you couldn’t, apparently.” I drop my hand. “You’re not supposed to be h
ere. Didn’t Melinda tell you to stay away?”
“She did.” His eyes go from me to Lucas, and he raises his gun again.
“Don’t point your gun at him,” I run my thumb over my fingers, conjuring a string of white magic. I let it go into the air, lighting up the area of the deck we’re on. “And you really need to learn to listen. Like I said, we got this.”
“Be glad we did show up. There were two fucking huge demonic dogs at the entrance to the property.”
“So that’s where the others were.” Lucas slides the gunman down the wall so his feet are back on the ground. The bullet wounds are still bleeding, and his shirt is soaked with dark red blood. He’s standing, not acting as if the pain is bothering him at all, yet the sight of his chest and stomach all bloody like that makes me want to panic.
If he were alive, well…he wouldn’t be for much longer.
“Other?” Easton echoes. “There’s more?”
“Did you kill them?” I ask, ignoring his question. “The demon dogs. Are they still out there?”
“We got one and then the other exploded.”
“Into rats?”
“Yes.” The look on his face reads he’s just as confused as we are. “Dead rats.”
“Killing the demon must have killed the rats,” Lucas tells me, looking over his shoulder. He lets go of the gunman and zooms back to my side.
“You were right about the demon being some sort of pied piper to them.”
Binx shadows around Easton, knocking the gun out of his hand. Lucas darts forward, grabbing the gun and coming back to my side so fast it was like he didn’t even move at all. Binx shifts into cat-form and rubs against my legs.
“Are you okay?” I turn to Lucas, putting my hand on his chest. My fingers become slick with blood.
“I’m fine, my love.”
“Are the bullets still in there?”
“Yes, but I can feel them being pushed out.”
“You’re okay, though?”
Lucas, not caring that we have an audience, cups my face with both his large hands and puts his lips to mine. “I will be.”