Page 32
Hopefully, they would presume it empty. Even if they did learn of the bomb shelter, it would take them days to dig us out. For now, we were safe.
Hopefully.
Brad’s and Lana’s relaxed voices drifted up the hall, too muted to hear, and it ticked me off. The jerk was shooting the shit with her, not interrogating her.
Making small talk. With ademon.
He was more of a carrot guy. I liked the stick.
This bedroom also served as my war room. Pinned to the wall over a stainless steel desk, a map of the world bore dozens of crisscrossing lines and arrows—my notes on where the portals were located.
I had shit.
They hid their gateways well, and no demon knew the location of more than two portals at a time. So assholes like me couldn’t get gullible demons like Lana to squeal and blow their whole operation—and Iwouldget her to squeal.
If, for whatever reason, they needed access to another portal, they would use magic to erase their memory of the first two, thus covering their tracks.
Clever bastards.
But so far, their strategy had worked against them. Without complete knowledge of the portals, they hadn’t caught wind I was destroying them.
I’d picked off three so far, in addition to the one I’d busted up yesterday—mostly out-of-the-way back entrances into our world, the ones they rarely used and wouldn’t miss. But now I was getting to the more heavily trafficked portals, the demon thoroughfares, the ones they would be guarding. Especially now that I’d blown my cover.
Nine left.
Two more, I believed, in the Americas. Four in Europe, two in Asia, and one in Africa.
Apparently, they didn’t give a fuck about Australia.
But with demonkind weakened by civil war, no new portals had been built in a thousand years.
Portals took time and many generations to create. A portal master would pass on the task of weaving a new portal to his kin. But to do so, he needed access to both sides. Earth, and that ashy shithole from which they spawned.
It came down to a simple truth, a realization I’d had years ago.
If I killed all the demons on Earth and destroyed all their portals, the connection between Earth and Hell would literally be severed. Cut off from human misfortune, demons would gradually wither away and die.
Never before had the complete annihilation of demons been feasible. Throughout most of human history, they had numbered in the millions. Their magic made them all but invincible. To the Egyptians, they were gods. To medieval Europeans, they were witches and warlocks. They were always our superiors.
Then two things happened.
A brutal, centuries-long civil war had cut their numbers to just over a thousand. That, and the ultimate triumph of human ingenuity—technology.
Technology leveled the playing field, made us equals. Humans and demons.
They had their magic, I had my machines.
Now, for the first time ever, they could be driven from our world.
I was going to go for it. A Hail Mary.
But I couldn’t fight a thousand demons at once. Twenty, yes. A thousand, no.
Which meant I had to close those portals ASAP, before I had every demon and his grandma riding my ass. But first I had to find them.
I paused to listen again, and caught another snippet of Lana’s doll-like voice—the succubus—interspersed with Brad’s murmurs of understanding.
Really? How long were they going to chat?
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32 (Reading here)
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156