Page 28 of The Demon’s Due (Bedeviled #5)

“Code Black,” a calm voice said over the speakers. “Code Black.”

Chaim and I raced down the hallway after Ezra.

My fingers tingled with numbness. I clenched and unclenched my fists, trying to force feeling back into them as we ran.

The familiar corridors felt alien and threatening—as if the walls themselves had betrayed us by allowing the catastrophe that triggered this impossible alert.

“Code Black.” The voice repeated the classification that shouldn’t exist within this fortress we called HQ.

Two shedim ripped around the second floor. One was a sinuous mass of patchy scales, the other a spindly tangle of bone and shadow, but both demons possessed eyes like burning coals.

Someone knocked sharply into my shoulder in passing.

“How?” It was all my brain could manage to produce.

“The locks from the Lions Gallery,” Gemma said, sprinting in high heels to add her white flame abilities to the mix, battling the scale demon.

It moved like an oil slick, muscles rippling beneath skin that shifted between obsidian scales and raw flesh. Where magic should have crackled around its form, only feral rage remained.

Their pain of being on the wrong side of a mezuzah ward didn’t help matters. This should have debilitated them. Were they resistant due to their demon type or simply fury? Both options sucked.

A couple of Orange Flames were attempting to trap it in ice but had frozen the sprinkler systems in the process.

Meantime, the blaze created by Red Flames was spreading.

Being closest to the fire extinguisher, I sprinted for it.

Magic created the physical flames, but our special formula in these contraptions doused them.

The demons’ hunger manifested in different ways: one’s tongue lolled out as if to taste fear in the air, the other’s body constantly shifted as though trying to consume space itself.

Scale Demon elongated its jaws and bit into the chest of the Red Flame attempting to torch it. Its teeth clicked like shattered glass in time to the operative’s screams, its breath blowing the fire away as the woman’s body crumpled.

Chaim was immediately at her side, working feverishly to save her, while the others kept the demon away from the two of them.

I doused the flames, preventing an inferno. Operation Inferno. I gave a grim snort, frustrated that even though I was tapped into Delacroix’s magic, I still couldn’t illuminate shedim weaknesses to help my colleagues.

Hopefully, a lifetime of secretly hunting demons to feed Cherry paid off now. I was best positioned to seek patterns in the demons’ movements to indicate injury and determine their weak spots.

We still had our rings, and the second those areas were revealed, we’d deploy our magic cocktails into them and send the shedim to new prison cells. Seeing these creatures’ torment hammered home how barbaric this decision to imprison them again was, but it was them or us.

Ezra, who, like all vampires, could actually kill shedim, fought the second one single-handedly.

The demon whirled around him, its bones stretching and contracting into needlelike spears to slash out. Its vertebrae jutted through translucent skin like hooks, joints bending backward as it scrambled across walls and ceiling to drop down on Ezra without warning.

Even with his enhanced Prime senses he’d been injured more than once, his hands bleeding from multiple gashes from attempting to grab the demon.

Michael raced out of the elevator with Louis, their arms full of weapons. Zen Zappers, daggers, and— was that a broadsword —would only enrage the demons further, but most of our operatives were out of the building and the director was desperate.

Who could blame her? We were down to a skeleton crew, facing an enemy too broken and savage to feel pain.

Chaim rushed the wounded Red Flame out of the room on a gurney that another operative had brought in.

Operatives grabbed the weapons, but our maneuvers against these creatures were as effective as applying a Band-Aid to a severed artery.

My mother shot me a frantic questioning glance, but I shook my head. I couldn’t get any bead on their weak spots.

Even though my blue flame power was useless, I wasn’t.

I had something special precisely for this occasion.

The surprise detonation of one Cherry Bomb.

While my colleagues had seen me fight, they’d never seen my true form. I could keep hiding it and hope we eventually found the demons’ weak points or I could expedite matters and hope that my coworkers trusted me.

We were facing down two rampaging demons. If I didn’t do this, I risked people dying. The choice felt inevitable.

Except…

Outing myself had serious repercussions for others. Well, one other. I looked at my mother, my eyebrows raised in question.

She nodded without hesitation.

My skin erupted into toxic-green scales, armoring every inch. Twin horns throbbed through my skull, as needle-sharp as the claws on my left hand. My body had transformed too. Bulky muscle replaced my runner’s build, my biceps and thighs straining against fabric.

I shook out my crimson hair. Strange. I’d imagined this moment would feel like exposure. Instead, it felt like freedom.

It also felt like freedom to slam into the demon coming at Gemma, my shoulder catching its weirdly rectangular throat.

Scales scraped scales as we crashed to the floor, the demon thrashing beneath me, predator against predator and—ew! Its tongue flicked against my cheek while it writhed. I almost lost my hold on it, but I readjusted like the boss I was.

Gemma scrambled back as I grappled with the creature.

It unhinged its jaw like a snake, exhaling putrid breaths that made my eyes water.

I drove my claws deep into its flesh where patches of raw copper skin showed between obsidian glints.

The demon’s shriek echoed through the room.

It bucked violently, nearly throwing me off, but I locked my thighs around its torso, horns lowered, and slammed my full weight down. There was a wet crack as its spine shattered against the floor.

Its movements grew frantic, no longer calculated attacks, just violent flailing. I seized its head between my hands, shuddering at the clicking of its glass-sharp teeth.

One savage twist. The crack of bone. The demon went limp. It was so weak I hadn’t even required its specific kill spot.

I slammed its head once more against the floor for good measure, nodded in satisfaction at its lifeless stare, and stood up, wiping dark ichor off my hands.

The room was silent; both demons were dead.

But that wasn’t the only reason for the preternatural stillness.

My colleagues stared at me with wide eyes while my boyfriend kicked the other demon’s corpse aside with a “hurry up” twirl of his fingers.

There was a whispered comment between two operatives, a snide laugh, and a suspicious look from a third.

Gemma’s face was a careful mask.

Here it was, the moment of truth that I’d dreaded and dreamed of in equal measure. If I’d learned anything from Michael or my demon daddy, it was the importance of controlling the narrative.

Let the gossip begin—on my terms.

“My human form is not a glamor,” I said, “but yes, I am half-shedim.”

The Maccabees whipped their heads to Michael.

“Director Fleischer is not a demon,” Louis said icily. “Nor will there be any further speculation around Operative Fleischer’s birth.”

Ooh, the guard dog had shown his teeth—backed by a cold smile from their director that made the operatives hurriedly nod in agreement.

I could have changed back to my human self, but that would only put them at ease temporarily. I had to get them fully on board with this true version of me.

“I’ve dedicated my life to being the perfect Maccabee in hopes that when this day came, you’d accept me as you always have.

Another flame in this fight. Well, the Luce’s blaze is devouring us.

It’s lit fires on too many fronts to fight indefinitely, and we cannot afford any of its casualties.

” I flexed my claws. “I am different, but having a variety of weapons at our disposal means we can handle anything that gets thrown at us, as you just saw. I, Aviva Fleischer, am standing before you, not as a flame, but as a spark.”

In my head, Cherry Bomb shot Delacroix the finger . I’ll show you what being a spark means, you demon asshole.

I calmly met each and every one of my colleagues’ stares. “I think I know how to stop the Luce, but I need your fire. Anyone who wants to join me can come to Conference Room A.”

Inside the elevator, I relaxed back to my human form. Other than those stupid scaley patches from when I’d tangled myself up with the security system magic during Ezra’s healing of Darsh and Silas, that was. I didn’t bother to hide the one on my throat peeking out through my torn turtleneck.

Ezra slipped into the car with me while the doors were closing. “The healer,” he said. “For my sake and because every second we keep Delacroix’s magic in place on Darsh and Silas will stoke your father’s rage. You heard Chaim earlier. It won’t take long.”

“I just came out as a demon to a bunch of colleagues,” I hissed. “I can’t take a time-out.”

I watched the numbers on the panel rise, my stomach in knots. No one else had followed. They’d come, right? They were in the other elevator to give Ezra and me some privacy. Or taking the stairs.

Ezra punched the emergency button, and the car shuttered to a stop. “Natán hasn’t refuted the Authority’s charges that he doesn’t have humans’ best interests at heart.”

“Hey!” I tried to reach past him, but he put his back against the buttons. I crossed my arms. “He’s probably still formulating his response.”

“He doesn’t sit around and react to things. He’s a strategist with dozens of plans in motion at any given time. Why do you think he was able to move so quickly to put the Vampire Care Initiative into place?”