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Perfect.

Turning back around, I forced the magic out of me, shoving it down the affinity-based connection I shared with Fidel.

I knew the moment my power found him. I felt his body jolt as though I shocked him. His essence still lingered beneath his flesh, just as I believed it would. It brushed against my magic, and even though I was petrified, and even though he was still in great danger, I smiled a little. Souls felt like sun on skin. Beautiful things.

I flooded his system with power, enough to jumpstart a stilled heart. Enough to bring the dead back to life. All the while I continued to draw out magic from the blood, funneling the chaotic power into a form I could use.

It took an obscene amount of magic to bring an Infernarus back to life, and this would take even more than usual. I had to waste some of it disguising the sight and smell of the blood as it combusted. It was what the natives called a parlor trick, an illusion that would lift as soon as I stopped pouring magic into it. But for now, it kept the human hunter’s focus off me.

I could sense, dimly, that Fidel’s head had found his body. The magic stitched the mutilated bits of flesh back together seamlessly. I felt him blink his eyes open, felt some base emotion that might’ve been wonder—or thanks. He knew help was here.

Now that he was sentient, it only took him seconds to collect his hands, and with my guidance, we merged them to his wrists. I assisted sealing the last of his wounds, and then I let him take full control of the magic I fed him.

I smiled a little. Jame Asher had picked the wrong day to hunt.

We’d see just how much the hunter enjoyed being hunted.

Asher

I reached intothe front of my truck to get the rest of my supplies. On the passenger seat sat a canister of gasoline connected to a hose and a foot pump—best way to dispose of demons.

Turn them back to the ash from whence they came.

Grunting, I hoisted the canister and slammed it down on the ground.

A faint bump sounded behind the truck, and the vehicle’s suspension squeaked a little. I jerked my head up, ears prone.

No other sounds.

Just the body slumping to the side, right?

I dropped the hose and ran back to check.

The armored, bloodstained enclosure came into view.

One look, and all the breath whooshed out of my lungs.

Empty.

The body was gone.

The head, too.

“Fuck,” I muttered, spinning around three hundred sixty degrees, the skin all down my back bristling with pins and needles. No one in sight.

The figure I’d seen... could it be?

Groping behind me, I caught the rim of the bucket and yanked it out, overturned it on the dirt.

Blood trickled out.

Blood... and nothing else.

He’d taken his hands with him.

“FUCK!” I yelled.

Demons were notoriously difficult to kill. Like cockroaches.