Page 34 of The Demon’s Due (Bedeviled #5)

Ezra and I split up at the Hell’s portal, him to Toronto and me back to Vancouver.

The mid-morning sun shone brightly, which buoyed my mood a bit, except this was Vancouver in January. Rain would return and soon.

I sat on my bed, furiously typing a message to Darsh and Silas that Delacroix was on the warpath so be on guard for any attack.

Next, I fired off a text to Maud about outing myself to the Maccabees. I assured her it was just an FYI, and no one other than my inner circle knew we were siblings, but she should give a heads-up to her bodyguard.

Junior: Got it. Adrian says not to worry .

Adrian was answering her that quickly? Hold on. I calculated the time difference between Vancouver and Hong Kong. Oooh.

Me: That’s so dedicated of him to be on night shift . Unless he’s off the clock? Doing a little moonlighting?

Junior: Just for that, I’m going to request new chapters of the fanfic shipping you and Silas that is blowing up in the Ezracurricular forums. It’s called Calamity Demon and the Sundance Vampire.

I think it’s supposed to be enemies to lovers, but I regret to say you didn’t last long as sheriff.

You abandoned the law to chase a certain lawless Southern vampire.

Darsh was going to kill me.

Me: Don’t you dare. And don’t send me passages about Ezra and me either.

Junior: I’d have to read them to do that .

Once upon a time, I’d asked Ezra to keep us on the down low. Those days were over, and if part of us being together was people writing fanfic about us—nope, it was still weird.

What was weirder was how our relationship was being used as currency for others to gain popularity online via their own creative outlets.

It didn’t feel designed to catch Ezra’s or my attention, but the eye of Stasia, the president of his fan club, who held great sway in his fandom.

She hadn’t come out for or against us yet and was mostly advocating for everyone remaining respectful toward Ezra. The same stance she generally took whenever he was reported to be with someone new.

The end result, however, was that I was both an active target and a commodity, and I struggled to reconcile myself with either one.

Sachie rapped on my bedroom door, spatula in hand. “Food’s up.”

The pink had faded from her hair, leaving a disconcerting orangey-bleach color that clashed with the dark circles under her eyes and blood splattered on her wrinkled clothing.

She dropped her head onto my shoulder with a yawn.

I took the spatula out of her hand. “Let’s feed you and tuck you in.”

She shuffled behind me like a zombie, taking a seat at the dining room table next to Olivier without further chatter. Her boyfriend favored his left side, and a nasty gash peeked out from his torn sleeve.

I dished up the scrambled eggs she’d made, filling them in on everything that had happened since I’d seen them last while we ate.

Ezra texted when I was partway through my story to let me know that Orly was safe and out of Delacroix’s reach.

I sent a thumbs-up back, and had almost finished filling my friends in when Sachie’s eyes slipped closed, and she pitched forward.

I caught her before she face-planted into her toast. “I’m not that boring,” I teased. “A prominent cosplayer posted a photo of herself as me. Her fire hands aren’t canon, but the Maccabee uniform she came up with had some pluses.”

Sachie quietly huffed a laugh and an “Ew.”

Olivier had finished his food, but was completely zoned out, hunched over, fork in hand, rocking slightly.

“Hey.” Sachie put her hand on his arm.

Olivier lurched upright, using his utensil like a stake to slam into her eyes. She disarmed her boyfriend before any harm was done, but he gaped at her in horror.

“You’re exhausted and in pure reaction mode,” she said. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, leaving a streak of gray ash on his jaw. “It’s really not,” he repeated, voice cracking.

Jared’s murder was insanely high profile, and even with Roger’s confession, Olivier had to be meticulous in his handling of it. Not to mention, he was coming to it from the stress of staking vamps along with every other emergency facing Vancouver.

Olivier needed to rest up in a big way.

My task force would solve the mystery of how to stop the Luce, but throw in the damage already caused, plus power plays closing in from all sides, and even we Maccabees were struggling.

The Trad officers fighting alongside us had to feel like they were bobbing in storm-level swells. Forget justice—did they even see a way to survive?

Sachie helped Olivier to his feet.

“Are you going to tell me things will seem better in the morning?” he said.

“No, since it’s already morning and we’ll be waking up tonight.” She punched him in the shoulder in a pep-talk way. “But killing things in the shadows is fun.”

He waited for more, but when it didn’t come, he glanced at me.

I shrugged. “That’s really it. Sach is very simple in her life philosophy.”

“You people live a strange reality,” he muttered, heading for Sach’s bedroom.

“Get used to it, meatsack,” she said, padding along behind him.

“We discussed that name.” He tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

Sachie protested the manhandling with a number of creatively violent threats, but she was laughing and pounding on his back.

Smiling, I watched them until her bedroom door shut with a click. I picked up my phone, running my thumb over the screen and wishing Ezra was here. I didn’t contact him though. Orly deserved uninterrupted time with him, and I needed a quick nap before meeting the task force.

Sadly, sleep only made things worse. I’m not sure if the triple-shot latte after I woke up helped, but it kept my eyes open on the drive to work, even if my hands shook when I crammed a muffin in my mouth at red lights.

Once I got to HQ, I snagged some chocolate and headed to the conference room, uncomfortably aware of all the whispered comments and sideways looks I was getting.

Stay calm . The last time the hubbub was about Casey’s murder, not me. Except that just meant that something else terrible had happened.

I picked up my pace, almost colliding with Gemma, who’d stepped into my path.

“You bitch.” She multitasked insults and deep squats.

I froze and looked around. The whispers were about me?

Had portal at the Hell had returned me to some alternate Vancouver? One that looked the same, but was instead the darkest timeline where all my recent victories were nothing but a dream?

Gemma wagged a finger at me, bobbing up and down in small squat pulses. “You kept him for yourself when I told you I wanted to ride that boy.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Frowned. “Ezra?”

“Yes, Ezra. Your boyfriend. Who I have been seeing fan art of with you all over my social media.” She shuddered, then waved at a nearby group who were failing miserably at pretending not to eavesdrop.

“They want you to dish about what he’s like.

Well, not the ones who asked for transfers to another city so they don’t have to work with a half shedim, but the rest of them. ”

“Who what ?!”

“Fuck them. The trash is taking itself out. Let it. As for the rest of them…” She stared pointedly at the not-eavesdroppers until they turned away, then snorted.

“They’re dying for an introduction to the Crimson Prince, which, as we’ve established, I’m first in line for. Set me up with one of his friends.”

She grabbed my elbow, hauling me to the conference room.

“Uh, okay,” I said, still shell-shocked by, well, all of it.

The task force greeted me normally, which was reassuring.

Spreadsheets color-coded by flame type had been pinned to the walls. They were broken into three columns: Possible, No Go, and Yes.

Unfortunately, the middle one was the longest, but it was incredible how many ideas about the backfire had been greenlit.

I tore open the peanut butter cup I’d grabbed and received a snarked “Thanks for thinking of the team’s chocolate needs” from Gemma.

Her familiar bite rolled through me like aloe across a sunburn.

I got down to work with Gemma, Eduardo, Joe, and Marilyn, swapping notes and jumping onto video calls.

Ha-joon, our Blue Flame in Seoul who’d cracked the humidity and air pressure factors as keys to how fast the Luce spread, walked me through the animated maps he’d created.

The Blue Flame subgroup had broken the world down into zones to narrow in on the Luce’s most active hotspots, factoring in upcoming weather conditions.

Orange Flames were using these maps to create optimal conditions for the backburn.

Louis interrupted our meeting, making us come watch the Authority’s televised response to Natán’s press conference. I almost didn’t go, unable to handle more of this finger pointing, schoolyard bitching.

It would have been laughable if the ones doing it didn’t have a global reach and the ability to plunge not only vampires and humans, but Trads and Eishei Kodesh into war.

I pushed through the crowd gathered in front of the large screen Louis had wheeled onto the third floor.

Dmitri Koslov, my least favorite human—well, now that Jared Casey was dead—once more took center stage. He wasn’t flanked by other Authority members this time. He stood on the steps of some imposing official-looking building in front of a bevy of reporter mics.

Operatives three rows deep wearing black jumpsuits stood at attention behind him.

“They better not try and put me in that ninja onesie.” Gemma scowled at the screen.

I laughed but also massaged my throbbing temples.

Dmitri shared intelligence reports that healthy vampires had moved into the Seaside facilities and suggested that they were being used as training grounds for planned assaults on humans.

My headache worsened.

“The ones in charge will dispute our claims of what is happening,” Dmitri said, “so we’re giving them an opportunity to stand by their offer to work with us. Shut down all Seaside clinics and evacuate any vampires currently residing there back to Babel in the next forty-eight hours.”

Many vampires preferred Babel, but plenty of them barely ever visited, much less lived there. Earth was their home. It was humans who regarded Babel as the vampire homeland.

Now, it was to be their prison.

“Should they refuse or the deadline passes,” Dmitri said, “we’ll take that as proof that Seasides are being used for nefarious purposes.”

“Nefarious?” Gemma rolled her eyes. “Okay, supervillain.”

That chick was really growing on me.

“In that event,” Dmitri continued, “Maccabees will take the evacuation into our own hands.”

Was “evacuation” code for “mass murder”?

Those operatives on the screen nodding along to Dmitri’s ultimatum made me sick. How could the rest of the Authority approve this? Had Koslov staged his own coup?

Michael snapped off the television before the flurry of flashes from reporters on-screen had ended.

Fyodor, a competent level two I’d worked with before, tentatively raised his hand. “Director Fleischer? What is being asked of us?”

The entire room leaned forward as one.

“Regular procedure vis-à-vis vampire criminal activity stands,” the director said. “I will get clarification around any ‘evacuation’ policy, but it will not involve the wide-scale extermination of innocent vampires. Not by my chapter.”

“But the Authority…” Another man spoke, looking to the operatives around him who nodded nervously.

Michael held up a hand. “I guarantee no operative will suffer repercussions from the Authority for following my orders.” She dropped her hand with a sudden sharp motion.

“Abuse that directive to play vigilante or let personal prejudices around vampires dictate your behavior and you will be dealt with in the most punitive fashion.” She met the gaze of every operative.

“Trust me, I will find out. If you have a problem with that or don’t believe I can protect you, leave now and I’ll arrange your transfer to a different branch. ”

We exchanged uneasy glances, the silence tense. Then, with a rustle of movement, two men and a woman hurried to the stairwell, eyes to the floor.

“More scared of the Authority than the director.” Gemma shook her head. “Idiots.”

Michael tracked their departure, then sent the rest of us back to work.

The task force put in another couple hours, nailing down the final details of our backburn.

Suddenly, alarms screeched.

My first thought was that more shedim were roaming the building, and given how fast the others snatched up their phones for any alert, I wasn’t alone.

But no, the crisis wasn’t demons. Oh, for the days of that straightforward threat and not another grim milestone in my rapidly deteriorating definition of “normal day.”

Dmitri’s orders to shut down all Seaside Rehabilitation facilities had been complied with.

The vampires weren’t evacuated though, because the rifts to Babel were closed, stranding them earthside.

No one could say if the rift shutdowns were because of the Luce or because residents on that side took preventative measures and sealed themselves off from us.

In the end though, it didn’t matter. Only one thing did.

Infected vampires were flooding the streets.