Page 27

Enko

Six Years Ago

“Tell us, or I’ll order my Beast on you,”

Damon snarled at the human tied up in the chair, holding a blackened knife to the man’s throat. Red leaked from the cut onto the fancy white collar of his shirt.

My Fire hardened my muscles, clenched my fists, made my growl louder. I’d never been able to control it, no matter how hard I tried and every year it just got worse. The smallest threat to Damon, my only family, and I was ready to be let loose.

Something within me fought against the demand. But it’s a human.

Humans can be as bad as demons, Enko, Damon told me again.

He always had access to my mind. I gave him free reign of it. Without him in there, I would have already attacked and killed the human man. And we needed him alive.

“You made a deal with our enemies,”

I snarled. The voice wasn’t my own. It couldn’t be. But I’d become so used to it, letting the Fire burn freely within me and engulf everything. Everything that threatened us.

I was ready to dash forward, bite down on the soft flesh of his neck without even shifting into my fox form.

He has a Mind demon protecting his thoughts, Damon told me. We’ll need to kill it before we can get the truth out of this one. It has to be nearby. Go and find it, Beast.

I was already on the move, my supernatural speed crossing the room in half a second, my strength ripping the door open. It smashed against the wall, leaving an imprint. I’d hear about that later from Damon. But when the Fire reigned with full fury, I didn’t care.

Damon’s thoughts guided me to where I needed to go, flashes of imagery he culled from the human as he continued the physical torture. Not really his style, but we would do what needed to be done to guard the Hellgate. Protect the last true stronghold between Hell and our world.

I found the street. Nothing.

Keep looking, Damon told me.

The apartment building looked just like the one I’d been forced into as a child. That’s how everything looked in Lethe. Dilapidated and decrepit, no lights but full of yelling and screaming, flickering lights, and chipping paint. The goddess hadn’t meant for me to stay there. Only to endure over a decade of torture to make me stronger. I took a long whiff of the air. I could smell demons when they were close enough. They always smelled. Sometimes sweet, like a succubus, sometimes brimstone like they were already burning or had just come to earth, ordered by their masters.

There’s nothing here, I yelled back through our connection.

Shit, Damon responded. Come back. I was already running before he said the words, shifting into my fox form, now with my three fiery tails chasing me. I’d earned each of them along the way, since the first. That one, the goddess gifted me.

The second came after taking out my first Tier III, after at least a hundred of the lesser demons. The third was my most recent addition, from a group of wraiths. Damon made me handle them on my own, but he had prepared me. He could have taken them out, but he wanted me to become strong. He needed me to be strong.

I slammed through the door in my fox form, on all fours as Damon was pressed against the wall by the human man.

Kill him, Beast, Damon ordered.

I hesitated. I fucking hesitated as my best friend choked for air.

But when the human looked at me, his eyes were the blackened pits of a demon.

Possession. I wasn’t familiar with the demon type, it was a Mind demon. That was Damon’s specialty.

I charged quickly and ripped out the man’s throat, enjoying the flavor of blood like some kind of demon myself. Enjoying the fury as it pulsed through me.

Damon heaved for air as I shredded the human’s flesh.

“Dybbuk,”

Damon gasped when the human was dead and I licked its blood from my paws. “Shift back, Beast.”

I did as ordered, hurrying up to him still in the nude to check on him, but he held out an arm to stop me.

“I’m fine.”

Then he paused, straightening his back, smoothing his suit. “You didn’t sense it?”

I shook my head.

“It couldn’t have been fooling both of us. It’s only a Tier III, it was focusing its attention on me. You are still weak, Enko. You need to work on that. Control yourself long enough to analyze the situation.”

I nodded, eager for his approval, his knowledge. As I always had been. “Dybbuk?”

“Mind demon, specializing in possessions. It’s difficult to tell unless you are close to the person and know their personality. And this fleabag was just your typical evil to begin with.”

He glared down at the shredded human flesh and a smoky spirit rising from it beginning to burn with blue hellfire. “We’ll need new carpets again.”

Damon strode toward his office, stopping for only a moment as he glared back at me. “And for the love of the goddess, don’t fucking hesitate next time. I could have been killed.”