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But the creature was dead at last. There could be no regenerating from this.

I panted from the exertion, ears ringing. I’d probably go deaf by age thirty.

But to be sure, I should go down and burn the body—

The impossible happened.

Out of the shredded body parts, the demon rose again. His spilled blood and guts withdrew back into his body, his torn skin resealed, and his broken, dislocated limbs straightened with a series of sharp cracks. He stood slowly, now stark naked, and threw a final look back before he loped away, spry as a gazelle.

My jaw tightened.

No. Fucking. Way.

Glaring after his receding form, I bellowed at the top of my lungs, “Go on, tell them! Tell them Asher’s back!” I wheezed, then yelled again. “Tell them I’m coming... and tell them I’m going to burn every last one of you!”

My voice echoed back to me. The demon dropped into a crevice and vanished.

I wiped off my mouth with the back of my hand.

I was so fucked.

That shouldn’t have happened—him healing like that. Demons heads didn’t fuse back onto their bodies in five seconds flat. They didn’t get pulverized only to reform before your eyes.

It didn’t work like that.

As far as I knew, this particular demon didn’t have an affinity for accelerated healing. Sure, he would have healed eventually, but only marginally faster than a human.

He’d been helped.

My gaze went back to the dark forest, now creaking with night sounds.

Instinctively, my nose wrinkled.

There was another demon in these woods. Operating behind the scenes.

I should have known.

But to have healed one of its kind from a distance...

I’d never encountered that kind of power before.

I needed to capture it. Tonight.

Come tomorrow, I would have the entire race of demons hot on my scent and I would be a dead man for sure.

If this one was smart—and it must be smart, since it hadn’t shown its face—then it would probably head straight for the portal.

Lana

We call itmisfortunate magic.

Just as an animal must give its life to feed you, so too must creatures pay a tithe for the magic that sustains us. It’s all part of the circle of life. Why the victims must pay that debt is the mystery of the ages, but that is the way it’s always been.

And now, somewhere in the world, twenty-six blood donors would be having a very bad day. I murmured my thanks for their sacrifice, unwilling though it might be.

I rose silently to my feet, listening to the sounds of the night.

I knew Fidel escaped—that much I could sense through our connection. Which meant that somewhere out there, the most formidable human known to Infernari just lost a kill.