House of Earth and Blood
She admitted, “The quiet bothers me sometimes.”
“I invited you to the bar.”
“I didn’t want to go to a bar with a bunch of triarii.”
“Why not?”
She cut him a sidelong glance. “I’m a civilian. They wouldn’t be able to relax.”
Hunt opened his mouth to deny it, but she gave him a look. “Fine,” he admitted. “Maybe.”
They walked in silence for a few steps. “You could go back to your drinking, you know. That ominous-looking angel you sent to babysit me can handle it.”
“Naomi left.”
“She looks intense.”
“She is.”
Bryce threw him a hint of a smile. “You two …?”
“No.” Though Naomi had hinted about it on occasion. “It’d complicate things.”
“Mmm.”
“Were you on your way to meet your friends?”
She shook her head. “Just the one friend these days, Athalar. And she’s too busy.”
“So you were going out alone. To do what?”
“Walk through this garden.”
“Alone.”
“I knew you’d send a babysitter.”
Hunt moved before he could think, gripping her elbow.
She peered up into his face. “Is this the part where you start yelling?”
Lightning cracked through the sky, and echoed in his veins as he leaned closer and purred, “Would you like me to yell, Bryce Quinlan?”
Her throat bobbed, her eyes glowing with golden fire. “Maybe?”
Hunt let out a low laugh. Didn’t try to stop the heat that flooded him. “That can be arranged.”
All of his focus narrowed on the dip of her eyes to his mouth. The blush that bloomed over her freckled cheeks, inviting him to taste every rosy inch.
No one and nothing existed but this—but her.
He never heard the night-dark bushes behind him rustling. Never heard the branches cracking.
Not until the kristallos crashed into him and sank its teeth into his shoulder.
46
The kristallos slammed into Hunt with the force of an SUV.
Bryce knew he only had enough time to either draw a weapon or shove her out of the way. Hunt chose her.
She hit the asphalt several feet from him, bones barking, and froze. Angel and demon went down, the kristallos pinning Hunt with a roar that sent the night garden shuddering.
It was worse. So much worse than that night.
Blood sprayed, and a knife glinted as Hunt pulled it from its sheath and plunged it into the grayish, near-translucent hide.
Veins of lightning wreathed Hunt’s hands—and faded into blackness.
People screamed and bolted down the path, cries to run! ringing through the glowing flora. Bryce barely heard them as she climbed to her knees.
Hunt rolled, flipping the creature off him and onto the pathway, wrenching his knife free in the process. Clear blood dripped down the blade as Hunt angled it in front of himself, his shredded arm outflung to protect Bryce. Lightning flared and sputtered at his fingertips.
“Call for backup,” he panted without taking his focus off the demon, who paced a step, a clawed hand—crystalline talons glinting—going to the wound in its side.
She’d never seen anything like it. Anything so unearthly, so primal and raging. Her memory of that night was fogged with rage and grief and drugs, so this, the real, undiluted thing—
Bryce reached for her phone, but the creature lunged for Hunt.
The angel’s blade drove home. It made no difference.
They again toppled to the path, and Hunt bellowed as the demon’s jaws wrapped around his forearm and crunched.
His lightning died out entirely.
Move. Move, she had to move—
Hunt’s free fist slammed into the creature’s face hard enough to crack bone, but the crystal teeth remained clamped.
This thing pinned him down so easily. Had it done just this to Danika? Shredding and shredding?
Hunt grunted, brow bunched in pain and concentration. His lightning had vanished. Not one flicker of it rose again.
Every part of her shook.
Hunt punched the demon’s face again, “Bryce—”
She scrambled into movement. Not for her phone, but for the gun holstered at Hunt’s hip.
The blind demon sensed her, its nostrils flaring as her fingers wrapped around the handgun. She freed the safety, hauling it up as she uncoiled to her feet.
The creature released Hunt’s arm and leapt for her. Bryce fired, but too slow. The demon lunged to the side, dodging her bullet. Bryce fell back as it roared and leapt for her again—
Its head snapped to the side, clear blood spraying like rain as a knife embedded itself to the hilt just above its mouth.
Hunt was upon it again, drawing another long knife from a hidden panel down the back of his battle-suit and plunging the blade right into the skull and toward the spine.
The creature struggled, snapping for Bryce, its clear teeth stained red with Hunt’s blood. She’d wound up on the pavement somehow, and crawled backward as it tried to lunge for her. Failed to, as Hunt wrapped his hands around the blade and twisted.
The crack of its severing neck was muffled by the moss-shrouded trees.
Bryce still aimed the handgun. “Get out of the way.”
Hunt released his grip, letting the creature slump to the mossy path. Its black tongue lolled from its clear-fanged mouth.
“Just in case,” Bryce said, and fired. She didn’t miss this time.
Sirens wailed, and wings filled the air. Ringing droned in her head.
Hunt withdrew his blade from the creature’s skull and brought it down with a mighty, one-armed sweep. The severed head tumbled away. Hunt moved again, and the head split in half. Then quarters.
Another plunge and the hateful heart was skewered, too. Clear blood leaked everywhere, like a spilled vial of serum.
Bryce stared and stared at its ruined head, the horrible, monstrous body.
Powerful forms landed among them, that black-winged malakh instantly at Hunt’s side. “Holy shit, Hunt, what—”
Bryce barely heard the words. Someone helped her to her feet. Blue light flared, and a magi-screen encompassed the site, blocking it from the view of any who hadn’t yet fled. She should have been screaming, should have been leaping for the demon, ripping apart its corpse with her bare hands. But only a thrumming silence filled her head.
She looked around the park, stupidly and slowly, as if she might see Sabine there.
Hunt groaned, and she whirled as he tumbled face-first to the ground. The dark-winged angel caught him, her powerful body easily bearing his weight. “Get a medwitch here now!”
His shoulder was gushing blood. So was his forearm. Blood, and some sort of silvery slime.
She knew the burn of that slime, like living fire.
A head of sleek black curls streamed past, and Bryce blinked as a curvy young woman in a medwitch’s blue jumpsuit unhooked the bag across her chest and slid to her knees beside Hunt.
He was bent over, a hand at his forearm, panting heavily. His gray wings sagged, splattered with both clear and red blood.
The medwitch asked him something, the broom-and-bell insignia on her right arm catching the blue light of the screens. Her brown hands didn’t falter as she used a pair of tweezers to extract what looked to be a small worm from a glass jar full of damp moss and set it on Hunt’s forearm.