House of Earth and Blood

I think you’ll find this of interest. Kisses, Tharion

“Kisses?” Hunt asked.

“They’re for you, obviously,” Bryce said, still smiling about the otter. She’d handed him a silver mark, for which she’d earned a twitch of the whiskers and a little fanged grin.

Easily the highlight of her day. Week. Year.

Honestly, her entire life.

At the desk in the showroom, Bryce removed Tharion’s letter from the top of the pile, while Hunt began to leaf through some of the pages beneath.

The blood rushed from her face at a photograph in Hunt’s hand. “Is that a body?”

Hunt grunted. “It’s what’s left of one after Tharion pried it from a sobek’s lair.”

Bryce couldn’t stop the shudder down her spine. Clocking in at more than twenty-five feet and nearly three thousand pounds of scale-covered muscle, sobeks were among the worst of the apex predators who prowled the river. Mean, strong, and with teeth that could snap you in two, a full-grown male sobek could make most Vanir back away. “He’s insane.”

Hunt chuckled. “Oh, he most certainly is.”

Bryce frowned at the gruesome photo, then read through Tharion’s notes. “He says the bite marks on the torso aren’t consistent with sobek teeth. This person was already dead when they were dumped into the Istros. The sobek must have seen an easy meal and hauled it down to its lair to eat later.” She swallowed the dryness in her mouth and again looked at the body. A dryad female. Her chest cavity had been ripped open, heart and internal organs removed, and bite marks peppered—

“These wounds look like the ones you got from the kristallos. And the mer’s lab figured this body was probably five days old, judging by the level of decay.”

“The night we were attacked.”

Bryce studied the analysis. “There was clear venom in the wounds. Tharion says he could feel it inside the corpse even before the mer did tests on it.” Most of those in the House of Many Waters could sense what flowed in someone’s body—illnesses and weaknesses and, apparently, venom. “But when they tested it …” She blew out a breath. “It negated magic.” It had to be the kristallos. Bryce cringed, reading on, “He looked into records of all unidentified bodies the mer found in the past couple years. They found two with identical wounds and this clear venom right around the time of …” She swallowed. “Around when Danika and the pack died. A dryad and a fox shifter male. Both reported missing. This month, they’ve found five with these marks and the venom. All reported missing, but a few weeks after the fact.”

“So they’re people who might not have had many close friends or family,” Hunt said.

“Maybe.” Bryce again studied the photograph. Made herself look at the wounds. Silence fell, interrupted only by the distant sounds of Lehabah’s show downstairs.

She said quietly, “That’s not the creature that killed Danika.”

Hunt ran a hand through his hair. “There might have been multiple kristallos—”

“No,” she insisted, setting down the papers. “The kristallos isn’t what killed Danika.”

Hunt’s brow furrowed. “You were on the scene, though. You saw it.”

“I saw it in the hall, not in the apartment. Danika, the pack, and the other three recent victims were in piles.” She could barely stand to say it, to think about it again.

These past five days had been … not easy. Putting one foot in front of the other had been the only thing to get her through it after the disaster with Sabine. After the bomb she’d dropped about Danika. And if they’d been looking for the wrong fucking thing all this time …

Bryce held up the photo. “These wounds aren’t the same. The kristallos wanted to get at your heart, your organs. Not turn you into a—a heap. Danika, the Pack of Devils, Tertian, the acolyte and temple guard—none of them had wounds like this. And none had this venom in their system.” Hunt just blinked at her. Bryce’s voice cracked. “What if something else came through? What if the kristallos was summoned to look for the Horn, but something worse was also there that night? If you had the power to summon the kristallos, why not summon multiple types of demons?”

Hunt considered. “I can’t think of a demon that demolishes its victims like that, though. Unless it’s another ancient horror straight from the Pit.” He rubbed his neck. “If the kristallos killed this dryad—killed these people whose bodies washed into the river through the sewers—then why summon two kinds of demons? The kristallos is already lethal as Hel.” Literally.

Bryce threw up her hands. “I have no idea. But if everything we know about Danika’s death is wrong, then we need to figure out how she died. We need someone who can weigh in.”

He rubbed his jaw. “Any ideas?”

She nodded slowly, dread curling in her gut. “Promise me you won’t go ballistic.”

51

“Summoning a demon is a bad fucking idea,” Hunt breathed as night fell beyond the apartment’s shut curtains. “Especially considering that’s what started this mess in the first place.”

They stood in her great room, lights dimmed and candles flickering around them, Syrinx bundled in blankets and locked in his crate in Bryce’s bedroom, surrounded by a protective circle of white salt.

What lay around and before them on the pale floors, reeking of mold and rotten earth, was the opposite of that.

Bryce had ground the block of obsidian salt down at some point—presumably using her fucking food processor. For something she’d dropped ten grand on, Bryce didn’t treat it with any particular reverence. She’d chucked it into a kitchen cabinet as if it were a bag of chips.

He hadn’t realized she’d only been biding her time until she needed it.

Now, she’d crafted two circles with the obsidian salt. The one near the windows was perhaps five feet in diameter. The other was big enough to hold herself and Hunt.

Bryce said, “I’m not going to waste my time snooping around town for answers about what kind of demon killed Danika. Going right to the source will save me a headache.”

“Going right to the source will get you splattered on a wall. And if not, arrested for summoning a demon into a residential zone.” Shit. He should arrest her, shouldn’t he?

“No one likes a narc, Athalar.”

“I am a narc.”

A dark red eyebrow arched. “Could’ve fooled me, Shadow of Death.” She joined him in the salt circle. Her long ponytail pooled in the collar of her leather jacket, the candlelight gilding the red strands.

His fingers twitched, as if they’d reach for that silken length of hair. Run it between them. Wrap it around his fist and draw her head back, exposing that neck of hers again to his mouth. His tongue. Teeth.

Hunt growled, “You do know that it is my job to stop these demons from entering this world.”

“We’re not setting the demon loose,” she hissed back. “This is as safe as a phone call.”

“Are you going to summon it with its unholy number, then?” Many demons had numbers associated with them, like some sort of ancient email address.