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“Ah, not so easy to villainize anymore.”

“Shut up. A demon’s a demon.” I slipped the knife back into its sheath and tossed it onto my desk. “I’ll sleep on it.”

“Thought you said you didn’t sleep.”

“Central America,” I announced, ignoring his quip. “That’s where the next portal is.”

Brad drew back. “She... she told you that?”

“No, but she’s about to... .” I strode to my map, squeezing my jaw again. “If I can shut down their access to this continent, I can buy us some time. Somewhere near ruins, I’m guessing. A Mayan temple or something like that. See if I can get her to narrow it down.”

“Bro, you can’t do this. Those portals have been there for thousands of years, longer... freaking geological timescales. They’re part of their mythology. They’resacredto them.”

I kicked the desk leg and faced him. “My wife and my baby girl were sacred to me... and those creatures slaughtered them, used them up like tanks of gas... and for what? Some parlor tricks? Every human life is sacred, and they burn through us like kindling to fuel their magic... one cursed family member at a time. So don’t you talk to me about sacred.”

He held my gaze. “This is wrong, Asher.”

A faint scratching reached my ears. I tensed, scanning the room for its source, and my gaze slid to the air vent behind the desk, which pinged and began to hiss air. My hand inched toward my gun.

“It’s your AC, dude. You’re a fucking spaz.”

“I heard something else.”

He rubbed his shoulders. “Why do you keep it so cold, anyway? I feel like I’m in a meat locker.”

Though my heart continued to pound, my muscles began to relax. “The cold throws them off.”

“You’re sick.”

I planted my palms on the desk and took a slow, agonized breath. “You’re sleeping in the armory,” I said. “I’ll get you an air mattress.”

“Nah, I’ll just take a guest room upstairs. You’ve got like a billion—”

“Lock the door. If anything comes at you, shoot it. Then burn it. We check on the creature every hour. I take first rounds at midnight, you take one. Do not interact with it, do not listen to it, do not give it anything it wants... or she’ll fucking bewitch you.”

“Oh, this is just giving me warm fuzzies.”

I straightened up. “Did you forget what these animals are? Two years is a long time to be out of the business.”

“No, actually, I was hoping for a lifetime, you douchebag—”

A chittering sound cut him off.

We shared anuh-ohlook, and then our gazes swiveled as one to the air vent, where it had come from.

“Knife,” I said, holding out my hand. Brad whacked the hilt into my palm.

Ducking under the desk, I tossed the weapon and caught it with a better grip, then stabbed it behind the air vent, prying it loose.

Inside, something skittered away.

I plunged my arm in, caught a fistful of claws and leathery wings before it could get away, and yanked the creature out.

It was the size of a rat, its mottled skin the exact gray of my concrete floors, blending in perfectly. As it writhed in my hand, squealing and sinking its claws into my wrist, I made out a hideous, horned face, a sinewy humanoid torso, a scaly serpentine tail.

A gargoyle.

Grimacing, I pinned it under my boot and cut off its head, leaving a smear of black blood.