I woke up with a demon in my bed.
Three seconds after I realized I must’ve fallen asleep curled up beside Zylas with only a thin blanket separating us, I was out of the bed, across the room, and through the door.
Maybe in the next century, the blush would finally fade from my hot cheeks.
Zylas noted my sprint from the room but didn’t seem to care. Not that I could tell if he was embarrassed. With the reddish undertone of his skin, a blush would be difficult to notice, and besides that, he had yet to show the slightest hint of self-consciousness. Maybe he wasn’t capable of embarrassment.
The thought occurred to me as I leaned against the kitchen counter ten minutes later, a spoonful of yogurt halfway to my mouth. What I would give to never feel embarrassed again. Shaking my head, I resumed eating my simple breakfast.
Amalia woke up half an hour later and we got to work discussing our next move. No matter how we looked at it, we had no significant leads to follow. Claude and his demon had all the information and we had no idea where to find them. Plus, if Zylas was right about the strength of Claude’s demon, a Second House Dh’irath, we didn’t want to chance a confrontation.
As much as I never wanted to see another vampire again, we didn’t have much choice: we were going back to the tower.
While Amalia prepared cantrips on flashcards for self-defense—we weren’t going near the vampire nest unarmed—I took a quick shower. Hair blow-dried, contacts in, and clothes on, I winced back to my room. I’d hoped the shower would ease the pain in my back from last night’s intimate meet-and-greet with a wall, but the bruises flared with my every movement.
Red light glowed across my room. Zylas, back in his armor, lay in the middle of the floor. A spell surrounded his body, the twisting lines and spiky runes forming overlapping circles within a peculiarly oblong hexagon.
The light faded and the magic shimmered away to nothing. Zylas sat up with a grimace and examined his wrist. The vampire fang punctures were gone without a trace.
“Did you heal your blood loss too?” I asked as I moved stiffly to my bedside table.
“Var.” He rolled his shoulders. “This time, they will not get my blood.”
I lifted the infernus off my bedside table and looped the chain over my neck. The pendant settled on top of my thick, comfy sweater, the pale green cotton splashed with the logo of my favorite book convention. My mom had owned a matching one.
Warm breath stirred my hair.
Squealing in fright, I whirled around and lurched back, hitting the table and almost knocking the lamp over. Zylas frowned at my reaction. I hadn’t noticed him stand up, let alone sneak up behind me.
“Go sideways, drādah.”
“Why are you testing me on that now?” I asked breathlessly, pressing a hand over my trembling heart and wishing he’d step back. “This isn’t the time for—”
He laid his hands on the sides of my neck, palms warm and thumbs resting against my cheeks. I froze as he stared down at me. A sizzle of cool magic sparked over his hands and tingled across my nerves.
Releasing my neck, he seized my wrist and hauled me into the middle of the room. I huffed in confusion as he pushed me down to the floor and crouched, strangely focused on my face.
“Zylas, what—”
“You waste breath making noise when you are scared.”
“Huh?”
He pushed against my upper chest, and the next thing I knew, I was lying flat on my back on the carpet, gazing at the ceiling. His fingers, splayed across my collarbones, lit with crimson power that veined over his wrist.
“You make too much noise,” he repeated, his tone absent. Red lines spiraled across the floor on either side of me. “Drādah ahktallis is quiet when hunters are near.”
“I don’t intend to,” I muttered, distracted by the zing of magic sinking into my chest. “It’s reflexive. Zylas, what are you doing?”
“Making noise is not useful for escaping danger.”
“I know but Zylas, what are you doing?”
His gaze flicked up to mine—and the cool magic drifting through my body flashed hot. The spell circle blazed brightly and burning pain flared down my spine. I went rigid, arching off the floor, but he pushed me down. After a moment, the agony subsided.
“You are injured. I am fixing you.”
Yeah, I’d figured that out now. “You didn’t have to do that… but thank you.”
I started to sit up, but he forced me down yet again, his claws pricking me through my sweater. The spell circle twirled, runes fading and new ones forming as he adjusted its shape.
“I am not finished,” he growled. “Your back is still damaged… bruised.”
Relaxing into the floor, I watched the way concentration pulled at his mouth and tightened the line of his jaw. “Zylas… thank you. Really.”
“You were moving too slow.”
His words triggered a short but unpleasant slash of disappointment. “You’re healing me because I’d be too slow against the vampires?”
“Why else?”
My cold disappointment deepened. I said nothing as he tweaked the spell, working through some unfathomable process required to heal my bruised back muscles.
“Zylas…” I drew in a slow breath. “You feel pain, don’t you? When you’re injured, does it hurt?”
“Na? Of course, drādah.” He didn’t add “zh’ūltis” because his disparaging tone said it for him. “But maybe not as much as the same wound hurts a hh’ainun? I do not know.”
I had been reasonably sure he felt pain, but I’d wanted to know for sure. “If we weren’t hunting vampires today, would you have healed me?”
“No.”
He said it without thought, without consideration, without even looking away from his healing magic.
I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “Even though you know what pain feels like… and you knew I was in a lot of pain… you wouldn’t have helped me?”
His head came up. His crimson eyes turned to mine, the slightest crease between his eyebrows.
“I see,” I said softly, heavy sadness weighing down my lungs. It wasn’t that he would have decided against helping me. The thought of easing my suffering hadn’t even occurred to him.
The furrow between his eyebrows deepened. He glanced across me from head to toes, then swept his gaze back to my face. His mouth turned down, but it wasn’t his usual irritated-by-the-stupid-human scowl.
“Is this part of protect? I am supposed to heal all your pain?”
“No… it would be one of those ‘nice things’ I keep telling you about.” I gave him a reassuring smile, concealing the quiet but unignorable ache in my chest. “It’s okay, Zylas. Don’t worry about it.”
He canted his head, frowning, almost… bewildered.
“Thank you,” I added, “for getting me back into fighting shape.”
Puzzlement written all over his face, he returned his attention to the healing spell. A new wave of cold washed over me, building up in my back muscles, then flared into scorching agony. A whimper scraped my throat, my limbs locked as I endured it.
As the pain and magic faded, I slumped into the floor, breathing hard. Zylas finally lifted his hand from my chest—and his thumb brushed across my cheek. He smudged away a tear that had escaped despite my efforts.
Then he was on his feet and walking away, his husky voice calling back to me, “Hurry up, drādah. It is time to go.”
* * *
It was a quarter after eleven by the time I opened the door to the Arcana Atrium on the Crow and Hammer’s third level. As Amalia followed me inside, she let out an appreciative whistle.
“Starting small, eh?” she remarked.
Embarrassed but pleased, I grinned. “It should be charged and ready to go. I just have to complete the last stage.”
I grabbed the textbook off the worktable, and after reviewing the next steps, I prepared the final quantities of sulfur and iron powder. Positioning myself in front of the array, I took a deep, calming breath.
“Remember,” Amalia said, perching on the stool to wait, “if you fumble a single word, the spell will fail and you’ll have to start all over again.”
I shot her a glare, then focused on the incantation. Eighteen phrases in Latin, and I couldn’t stumble, stutter, or mispronounce a single syllable. I could, however, take it slowly. No need to rush. Arcana was a patient magic.
“Terra, terrae ferrum, tua vi dona circulum,” I began in a slow, measured rhythm.
The pile of iron powder fizzed and blackened. I chanted the next line, and the copper blackened too. As I continued, the salt burned and the oil bubbled. Lastly, the sulfur burst into flame.
As the spell’s ingredients were consumed, a faint glow imbued the white lines. I paused, as instructed by the text, and sprinkled my new measurement of sulfur across the rectangle of iron that would form the artifact. The powder puffed black and evaporated.
Standing, I chanted the next two lines. Heat waves rose from the array. A rainbow of colors rippled over the circle—yellow and gray where the sulfur and iron had rested, white and brown where the salt and copper had been consumed, and a shimmering swirl of pink and green where the oil had evaporated.
I flung the iron powder across the circle. It sizzled in the air and the colors brightened. I triple-checked the last line, then declared, “Haec vis signetur, surgat vis haec iussu: eruptum impello.”
The glowing magic and shimmering light rippled, then sucked down into the open triangle that directed the power into the artifact. The runes on the iron rectangle lit up and swirled with all the colors of the array. The spell circle darkened until only the artifact glowed brightly.
Then all the light and magic snuffed out like a candle flame in the wind.
I checked the book. Aside from a warning that the spell wouldn’t affect any people or objects the caster was touching, it had no further instructions. The last line of text was the artifact’s short “trigger incantation,” which would activate the spell it now contained—assuming I’d done everything right.
Amalia leaned forward. “Did it work?”
“I’m not sure.” I lifted the iron rectangle and weighed it on my palm. The runes I’d drawn on it were now etched lightly into its face. “I’ll have to test it.”
She waited a moment. “Then test it.”
“Um.” I glanced around the room. “Maybe not here. If it works, it might damage something.”
Pulling my infernus off, I unclasped the chain and fed it through the hole at the top of the artifact. It settled beside the silver pendant like an oversized dog tag.
Amalia helped me clean up the room, then we hurried out of the guild and onto the downtown streets. Though we could’ve caught a bus, the wait would have taken almost as long as walking, so we set out at a quick pace—or rather, Amalia walked at a comfortable pace and I half-jogged on my much shorter legs.
The four- and five-story businesses surrounding the Crow and Hammer were swiftly replaced by thirty-story skyscrapers. Vehicles zoomed past as we walked along the sidewalk, the noon rush hour translating to increased foot traffic as well. It was the Friday before Christmas, and what seemed like half the downtown populace was taking advantage of a rare day without rain to escape their offices for lunch. I dodged people every twenty steps, but Amalia blazed straight ahead, forcing other pedestrians to leap out of her way. If I tried that, I’d get trampled. More short people problems.
We crossed a busy intersection and headed down an attractive street with trees along the boulevard. Ahead, the office tower loomed, slightly less intimidating in the daylight. As before, construction barriers were arranged in front, and the window I’d broken gaped accusingly.
“This is it?” Amalia asked.
I nodded, blinking against my dry contacts. “That’s it. The alley goes around to the back where we can get inside.”
My heart thrummed unhappily at the prospect of entering the building again, but at least I had a flashlight this time. I was getting the hang of this “combat mythic” thing. All I needed now was a fancy vest like the—
We rounded a corner and stopped dead.
—like the Crow and Hammer team standing around the very entrance Zylas and I had broken into last night. The doors of the guild’s big black van hung open, and the mythics were unbuckling weapons and tossing them into the back. I spotted Drew, Cameron, and Darren, plus three other guild members whose names I couldn’t remember.
“Robin?” Zora stepped around the van. “What are you doing here?”
My stomach dropped sickeningly. In the aftermath of my “infiltration” last night, I’d completely forgotten that Zora and her team had planned to investigate the building this morning. If I’d remembered, I would’ve warned Zora not to go. Even her experienced team was no match for this nest.
She approached Amalia and me, and two men broke away from the group to follow her.
“Um,” I mumbled as the three mythics drew closer. “Hi Zora, and… uh…”
The older guy, with brown hair, fine laugh lines around his eyes, and a fatherly sort of look, held out his hand. “I’m Andrew.”
I shook his offered hand, then shook hands with the other man, early thirties with short black hair and teak skin, who introduced himself as Taye in a pleasantly deep voice with a South African accent.
“I’m Robin. This is Amalia.” I forced a smile for Zora. “We were just swinging by to see how things went.”
She folded her arms and cocked a hip, her huge sword strapped to her back. “A total bust. They were definitely here, possibly right up until last night, but they’ve jumped ship. The place is abandoned.”
I almost wilted with relief. Thank goodness everyone was safe.
“We found destroyed documents and a burnt computer,” she continued. “It looks like this is where the contents of that summoner’s townhouse ended up, but an explosion of some kind ruined everything.”
“An explosion?” I repeated with innocent disbelief.
“We checked the entire building. Nothing. Andrew is taking the rest of the team back. Taye and I will give it one more thorough check for any hints on where they’ve gone, but…” She shook her head.
“How long will that take?” Amalia asked.
“A few hours, I expect.”
“Damn, well, that sucks,” Amalia said brusquely. “Guess we’ll leave you to it. Come on, Robin.”
My mouth was still hanging open when she grabbed my arm and hauled me back down the alley to the street.
“Amalia, that was rude,” I hissed.
“What, did you want to stay and discuss the weather?” She dropped my arm and glared around at the busy street. “If they’re going to be in there for hours yet, we’ll have to wait to check it out.”
“I was about to suggest we help them search the building.”
She scowled. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“You didn’t give me a chance!” I huffed. “I’m pretty sure there’s nothing to find inside. Zylas blew the room to smithereens. We need to know where the vampires are now.”
“If we can get our hands on one, we can question them,” Amalia agreed. “Find out what they’re up to and what they know about my dad and the grimoire.”
I wasn’t as confident in our interrogation skills. “But how will we find them?”
We exchanged helpless looks as we strolled past the tower, feigning nonchalance. Pedestrians buffeted us as we passed a décor shop and a pizza joint.
“We need a way to track them,” I muttered. “Zora’s artifacts only work on nearby vampires. We need a spell that works like a bloodhound…”
“Or we need an actual bloodhound.”
I stopped. A businessman shouldered past me, muttering angrily, and I shuffled closer to a shop window.
“Zylas can track them,” I exclaimed in a whisper, amazed I hadn’t thought of him immediately. “He can follow the blood scent.”
Amalia’s face brightened hopefully, then her scowl reappeared. She waved at the bustle around us. “It’ll be the dead of night before these streets are empty enough for you to walk a demon around in the open.”
The window beside me reflected my frustrated expression. I peered into the shop’s interior, then swung to face Amalia, my pulse racing.
“I have an idea.”