Over at the stove, she held one of the corners to the open flame. The smell was like BBQ—but the insta-burn she had imagined did not happen.
As seconds turned into a minute or more, she glanced back at the main door. Just as she was getting desperate, a burst of yellow and orange caught purchase on the leather. Mae waited until she was certain the transfer was complete . . . and then she started walking. Fortunately, the nearest sprinkler was not far.
“Come on . . .” she groaned as she stretched up onto her tiptoes and lifted the purse as high as she could.
No alarm went off. No water rained down. No anything.
The ceiling was nine or ten feet tall. Maybe she wasn’t close enough? But crap, her arms were getting tired because the purse was so heavy. With a curse, she lowered them . . . and then went over and pulled a chair away from the table. Under the sprinkler again, she stepped up and put the flames right on the steel fixture.
The smell of burning leather got stronger. Smoke began to waft in her face. She coughed and had to turn her head away.
Still nothing happened.
Glancing over her shoulder, she checked out the other sprinklers. “Damn it . . .”
She didn’t need to see a clock to know that she was seriously out of time. And had no other options.
• • •
In spite of Sahvage’s minor surge of emotion, he didn’t let Tohrment, son of Hharm, go any further with whatever problems the Brotherhood had.
“You guys need to deal with your own shit.” He waved a hand toward all the strong male bodies standing in the mist and then refocused on his phone. Which—goddamn it—had not rung. “You’ve got resources, and you’ve been dealing with the Omega and the Lessening Society for centuries. You don’t need me—”
“The Omega is gone.”
Sahvage looked up from his cell. Surely he’d heard that wrong. “What.”
“The Omega no longer exists. The Lessening Society is no more.”
As he properly focused on the Brother, he had a thought that those two statements were pretty much the only thing that could have diverted him, even for a split second, from worrying about Mae. Even though it had been so long since he had reflected on the war, to hear that it was over and the species was safe was a shock—and he found himself searching out the faces that he recognized in the Brotherhood.
There was no running to greet them, however. And none of them were making any moves to embrace him, either. But it had been a long, long time.
“We won?” he said because he still couldn’t believe it. Then he shook his head. “I mean, you won? You did it?”
“We did. But there’s a new evil.”
Sahvage glanced down at his phone. Looked back up at the Brotherhood. “Like I said, you need to deal with—”
“We need you—”
“I’m no different than—”
“It’s a demon.”
Sahvage’s body stilled of its own volition. “A demon? What kind of . . . demon.”
“We’re trying to figure that out. And we know you have special skills—”
Putting his hand into the Brother’s face, he stopped the talk. “It’s a female, right? A brunette. And she comes with shadows—”
One of the Brothers he didn’t recognize, who had dark hair and was shorter and wider than the others, stepped forward. “That’s right. She can be a brunette. But she can also be a lot of other things.”
The accent was strong, but not in an Old Country kind of way—in an American one, though Sahvage didn’t have enough knowledge about New World dialectics to pinpoint any orgin in particular.
“You’ve seen her?” Sahvage asked the male.
“Yes.”
“Where. Do you know where to find her?”
Tohrment leaned in and put his face in the way. “You know her?”
As Sahvage contemplated his answer to that, the Brotherhood closed in on him, but not in an aggressive manner, in spite of all their weapons.
“I don’t have time to explain.” He put his phone away. “Listen, I just need to know where she is. I think she has someone . . . she’s taken someone. Tonight. And if I don’t find that demon, I think somebody I care about is going to be killed.”
“I know of one place she’s gone before,” the stocky fighter with the accent said. “I can take you there.”
“Let’s go!”
Tohrment put his whole body in the way. “Not until we have your word.”
“Fine! Take it! You have it.” Sahvage threw up his arms. “Whatever you need, I don’t give a fuck—”
“You’re going to help us after we help you. You’re going to do what only you can do when we need you to.”
Sahvage stared into his brother’s—former Brother’s—eyes. “You don’t actually buy that bullshit, do you. About the warnings on my coffin? I can assure you, I got no special powers.”