Page 49

They’d sent a demon after me that couldn’t be burned.

Or shot at.

No sign of a hit whatsoever. I doubted I had enough bullets in my armory to bring this beast down.

If Lana was healing this thing, she’d have hell to pay—no, she didn’t have nearly enough blood. And of course she would try to heal any demon in sight. That was simple survival instinct. In her position, I would do the same.

But she wasn’t healing it.

Which left only one possibility.

Major affinity: breathing fire.

Minor affinity: some sort of immunity to bullets.

Still wheezing to catch my breath, I planted my palms on my knees and watched my house go up in flames around the creature.

Only one way to kill a demon like this. Don a fire proximity suit, rip off its head to deprive its lungs of potency, then do the next best thing to burning a demon—dissolve its flesh in acid.

None of which was happening tonight.

I’d gotten my ass kicked.

I squeezed off a few more halfhearted shots, which the demon ignored. Crouching on all fours, it continued to blast the floor.

The floor.

With a twist in my gut, I realized. It was going through the floor.

Below the floor lay my safe house, all my weapons, my machine shop, my Hummer, and Lana—possibly the most valuable prisoner I’d ever captured.

That kind of fire, its bluish color... it would be hot enough to melt the rebar in the concrete slab.

My insides turned to ice.

I’d once thought it would take weeks to dig me out of my cave. With a major affinity like that, it would take minutes.

And I could do nothing but watch.

Brad. He was still down there.

Once that slab broke, he’d get fried.

Shit. I sprinted back around to the trap door, where I dropped back into the basement.

“Brad,” I called, charging up the corridor. “Brad, get your crap, we’re gone! Let’s go, go, go!”

The room was empty.

Huddled in the corner of her cell, shivering, Lana watched me from behind a curtain of her long, iridescent hair, which seemed to be weeping greens and blues under the fluorescent light. Her eyes glistened.

I felt a pang of sympathy. It was a reflex, not an actual emotion. Seeing another creature in distress, no matter if they’re your mortal enemy, it affects you.

I shook it off. “Where’s Brad?”

“He went up to help you,” she whispered, “after we heard shooting. By now, he’s surely dead. That Infernarus up there—”

The ceiling shuddered, yanking both our gazes.