Page 9 of Thane's Demon

The demon recoiled violently at the memory, snarling with a viciousness that made my temples throb.

‘Lies.

He created us.

Left us.

He cannot fix what he broke.’

I shoved the thoughts aside and focused on the job. Xue wanted the man dead. Quickly. Cleanly. I’d done worse with the demon chewing at the edges of my mind like a starving animal. This should have been nothing. Another night. Another life ended. Another ghost erased. And yet the heaviness in my chest refused to loosen.

When I reached my apartment, I stood in the doorway for a long moment, letting the familiar darkness wrap around me like an old, abrasive blanket. The room hummed with distant citynoise, shouting, breaking glass, arguments, desperation. The soundtrack of lives falling apart below me.

I placed the file on the table and ran a hand through my hair, trying to steady the faint tremor building in my fingers.

Something is coming. Something inevitable.

The demon’s voice was softer now.

A tone it almost never used.

‘Fate.

Calling.

Pulling.’

I shut my eyes hard, forcing the whisper down until it was nothing but static buzzing beneath my skin. I could not afford distraction, not from Dominic, not from the Seal pulsing like a heartbeat behind my eyelids. Not from whatever invisible thread was tightening around me with each passing hour.

I forced myself into motion, opening the drawer where I kept my weapons. The silver gleam of blades greeted me like old companions. I selected two knives, slipped them into hidden sheaths beneath my jacket, then added a compact firearm more out of practicality than necessity. Guns lacked intimacy. They lacked finality. A blade allowed you to feel the life leave the body.

The demon purred.

‘Kill.

End.

Finish.’

I moved to the cracked mirror near the closet. My reflection stared back, eyes glowing faint blue, face carved with sharp lines of restraint and resentment. I no longer questioned whether I looked like my father. Tonight, I saw only the monster.

As I should.

The weight of my weapons grounded me even as the demon prowled beneath my skin. The file lay open on the table, the target’s dead eyes staring up at me like a warning.

I closed it, tucking it under my arm before stepping into the hallway.

The night greeted me with open arms as I descended the stairs, the air thick with humidity and anticipation. Shanghai stretched before me like a living creature, pulsing with secrets, violence, and something else curled beneath its surface, something calling to me like a shadow whispering my name.

I moved toward the meeting point with steady steps. The demon whispering inside my skull, the Seal humming faintly like a distant echo, and Fate tightening around me like a noose I could not escape.

Tonight, I had a job to do.

Tonight, something would shift.

And with a certainty colder than steel, the world I knew was about to change in ways I could not yet name.

But there was one word my demon uttered that, right in that moment, I would never understand…