The last two books in the Age of Night series, scheduled in 2019 and 2020, will be closely related to the spin offs.

Looking up at the tall, decrepit brownstone everyone eyed suspiciously when they passed by, agent Grayson Marks sighed. Even regulars – boring humans without a drop of supernatural blood in their systems – gave it a wide berth, although they were undoubtedly the most unobservant creatures on Earth.

It stunk. Like a rotten corpse lying underneath a pile of fox shit. Gray’s pup whimpered at his side, the smell assaulting its sensitive nostrils.

“It’s all your fault, you know,” Ralph informed him.

Two years ago, Gray might have bothered asking what the hell he was talking about; now, he knew better. Asking any question of Ralph, outside of the basic professional courtesies, was just a recipe for a headache.

Of course, the man didn’t need any encouragement to share his warped logic.

“You arrived early this morning, so you could have had your pick of the missions. There’s an enquiry at one of The Wolf’s clubs. A club, Grayson. With sexy women in short skirts.”

Outwardly, Gray paid absolutely no attention to the dark-haired agent walking next to him. They headed towards the barricaded door of the abandoned townhouse where they’d been sent, and Gray knocked, his expression stern and indifferent. Inwardly, he was kind of wondering why he hadn’t taken a look at the assignment board. One of The Wolf’s clubs? Damn.

“But, no, you had to get started on your damn admin, instead. By the time I got there, it was this dump, or checking out a report of screams in an attic in Roxbury. Screams, Grayson. You know how I feel about ghosts.”

“There’s no such things as ghosts.”

He’d know. Gray had a perfect understanding of what happened to those who died; they couldn’t linger for long in this dimension. They could be recalled, but the result was a little more alarming than your average poltergeist whenever that happened.

“Well, there could be,” Ralph reasoned stubbornly.

“There isn’t,” he repeated, before calling to the pup, standing a few feet behind him. “Remus?”

The pup whimpered again, and laid down on the floor, making known his intention of staying the hell away from that house. Gray rolled his eyes. “Stay, then.”

When he turned back to his partner, the man was still arguing in favor of the existence of ghosts.

“Dude, we’ve recently learned there’re a dozen dimensions on this very planet.” That was an oversimplification, but most people liked to think that way. Plus, it was nine, not a dozen. Gray didn’t point it out. He wasn’t supposed to know more than anyone else about the other worlds. Never mind the fact that he actually came from one of them. “Nothing’s impossible. There could be someone else standing right where you are and jerking off in your mouth.”

Gray closed his eyes, wondering what he’d done in a previous life to be saddled with such a partner. That image? It wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He was going to have to brush his teeth as soon as they got back to headquarters.

Quite suddenly, the door he was knocking on disappeared and an ugly, red, extremely pungent worm with long teeth and tentacles lunged at his head. It was just five feet away, coming from the staircase right in front of them. Some greenish slime poured out of a hole that might be its mouth, or its ass; Gray didn’t want to know.

Holy shit. Remus had had the right idea; he should learn to listen to his pup.

In other circumstances, Gray would have been able to do something about a demon heading towards him within a moment’s notice, but the thing was downright vile. He’d had a heavy breakfast, which was attempting to make its way back up.

Before the oversized worm got too close, Ralph’s enchanted double- headed axe lodged itself in the lunging creature, which exploded in a thousand little pieces, smoking and smelling like fried manure.

Then Gray remembered. He put up with Ralph because the guy was the best agent of the PIA. Except for him, maybe.

Not that he’d tell him. Every god knew Ralph’s ego didn’t need stroking.

“I’m gonna be sick,” Gray blurted, heaving.

Most demonic creatures generally fried when in contact with positive energy, like the spells coating their weapons, and the result was never pretty, but it had been a while since they’d encountered anything half as disgusting as that fiend.

“I’d normally tell you to get it together, princess Gray, but can’t actually blame you today. Is there a spell, rune, or artifact intended to lose our sense of smell? We could totally use something like that right now.”

“There are at least a dozen different kinds of solutions I can think of; none of which are at our disposal at the moment.”

“Well, remind me to add something like that to the shopping list for next time.”

Ralph was the first to walk in, covering his nose with his sleeve.

Whoever had called in a disturbance talked of noises indicating squatters, but the local police department had referred the case to the Paranormal Investigation Agency after their men had come back behaving in an unusual manner and having forgotten their initial purpose.

It was a minor, routine investigation, the kind that would never have ended up on Gray and Ralph’s workload, if things hadn’t been so quiet recently.

The PIA investigated paranormal disturbances that weren’t resolved by local sups, in order to protect innocent human beings. That included everything from rogue vampires to stupid teenagers dabbling in magic and getting in over their heads. Gray and Ralph were part of the Alpha unit, the crème de la crème. Rogue vampires, feral shifters, dark object swallowing up entire towns? That was their jam. But for the last three months, the reports of major activities like these had considerably dialed down, so they were passing time with cases like this one.

“I’ll take upstairs,” Ralph offered, retrieving his axe with a grimace. “And that’s another pair of gloves I’m gonna have to chuck out.”

They wore their combat suits, soft, malleable materials that didn’t hinder movement, fitted with smart compartments where they could hide weapons. It looked like a superhero costume, but it could stop a bullet. Each suit cost a clear seven figures, and throwing any part of their apparel out without valid cause was unheard of. Today, Gray was going to countersign Ralph’s request, attesting that burning the gloves was a necessity. God, it really stunk.

You could fix it, said a bored, taunting, and familiar voice.

That voice was the one and only thing Gray truly feared, and every day it spoke to him, like they were old buddies.

It was right, though. He could clear the room with a wave of his hand. The basic tidying up spell he’d learned in his teens to clean his room would probably do the trick. Alternatively, he could cast one of the spells he’d mentioned to Ralph, preventing them from smelling that dreadful mixture of shit, death, and demon. But giving in, tapping into his power, was exactly what the voice in his head wanted. He knew better. Gray would never use magic; not unless it was a matter of life or death.

Ignoring the voice, he walked to the first door on his right and opened it to find what could have been Miss Havisham’s drawing room, pulled right out of Great Expectations. It seemed that whoever had inhabited this house had left suddenly, right before supper, leaving their food on the table, untouched; rats had ravaged it, and left trails of poop as a thank you. Spider webs ran from one wall to the other. He closed the door. No one, demon or otherwise, had entered that room in half a decade.

On his left, the kitchen was left in a similar state. Then there was a library. Gray frowned, standing in the doorway for longer this time. It had also been taken over by insects, dust, and mold, but he felt something else underneath it all. Walking in, he headed towards the bookshelf closest to him, and found that the thick layer of dust had been disturbed there. Someone had pulled a book out, and taken it.

Gray scanned the shelf, finding plenty of classics, some romance books, but also something he wouldn’t have expected in a place that screamed “regular” like this house did.

The Crown, by Rebecca Ann Wright. It differed from the rest of those innocuous volumes because, while it had been published as a work of fiction a long time ago, before the Age of Blood, they now knew it was a historical report written by a witch at the end of her life so that her knowledge wasn’t lost.

Plenty of humans owned it, of course, but it had never been a best seller. Finding it in a place infested by demon scum was no coincidence. They were in a sup’s house.

A curse yelled from upstairs startled him; leaving the book behind, he ran out to find Ralph running towards the stairs. “Move, move, move. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“What?” Ralph didn’t run; ever. It was one of his many problems.

Gray opened his mouth to say something and regretted it as soon as his nose picked up a scent.

Never mind the first tentacle worm. It had smelled like a breath of fresh air in comparison. For fuck’s sake, what did these things eat?

The monster in front of him was the size of a horse, as long as a whale, and moved faster than a cheetah. It also had four fanged heads, rather than just the one.

“We can’t leave that here,” Gray screamed, all the while letting his feet carry him out of the house as quickly as he could.

“Don’t worry,” said Ralph, instantly making him wonder if it was the end of the world.

When Ralph said ‘don’t worry’, it meant he had a plan. One of his last plans had involved jumping out of a moving plane without a ’chute.

They’d almost reached the door when Gray caught a movement on his right; a flash of red, green and white, heading right at Ralph.

Shit. He launched himself at his partner, knocking him out of the way just in time; a sharp jolt of pain hit him on his back, but he ignored it, helping Ralph back to his feet, before running out as fast as his own feet could carry him.

As soon as they leaped out the door, the entire building went up in flames. Remus ran around in circles excitedly; the puppy was weirdly fond of explosions. Gray groaned.

“How many warnings are we going to get before you understand the memo? We aren’t supposed to use those charmed explosives unless there’s no other choice, dammit.”

Ralph laughed. “Tentacles. Teeth. Ten feet high, sixty feet long. Pretty sure the boss will deal.”

Two hours later, it looked like the boss wouldn’t deal.

“An entire building? Again?” Patricia Dotts screeched, her entire face practically purple. She looked like she might need to use the toilet, which wasn’t an unusual look for her.

Still, Ralph was terrified of the harpy, with good reason. As the head of the field department, she had the power to give them the worst kind of punishments. Gray sighed and did what he had to do to get his colleague out of a week of 4am PT. No one deserved that.

“It was just that townhouse, Dotty. No surrounding building was affected,” he assured her, his voice soothing, sending her that look. The one that turned her purple face back to a slightly more normal red shade. “And it would have had to be completely obliterated, given the concentration of demonic energy, trust me.” Lies. Although anyone with a bit of sense would have indeed burned it to the ground after sniffing it. “We charmed it, so no regular will see it’s gone until we can get the clean-up team to rebuild it. It’s all good.”

Patricia vaguely resembled her plump, friendly self again.

Three, two, one…

“Oh well, if you say so, Grayson. I just wish Ralph here could warn us and log it in properly like you always do, so we can send the right team to ensure no one is disrupted. Ralph, you’re lucky to be paired up with such an outstanding agent. Please attempt to learn from him.”

She trotted away back to her desk. As soon as she closed the door, Ralph said, “I owe you one. Again.”

“Yep.”

“And also? I hate you.”

---