Page 42 of The Demon’s Due (Bedeviled #5)

Ezra Cardoso had broken the internet with a single photo of him silhouetted against a collapsing condo tower engulfed in flames. He carried a man over each shoulder, and in his arms, he held a curly-haired toddler hugging a beagle puppy.

It was accompanied by such pithy headlines as: “Bloodsucker Turns Lifesaver!” and “Fangs and Flames: Vampire’s Epic Rescue Captivates World!”

Then there was the one that made me do a double take and click the link: “Prime Playboy… Crimson Prince… Maccabee?”

The Authority had claimed him as their own.

“I hear his fan club website crashed. They had to close new memberships. Think you can get me in?” Joe teased, packing wound cables into a Rubbermaid. “I want to resell it to the highest bidder.”

“I can’t believe the Authority claimed him.” I joined Eduardo in checking the comms units.

“They had to.” Marilyn stacked the monitors on a dolly. “The second that photo hit the airwaves, the mayor of Toronto was all over the news hailing Ezra as a hero. He was followed by Ontario’s premier.”

“That was after the footage of Ezra on the front lines, personally thanking Trad and Eishei Kodesh firefighters and first responders for their fight against the Luce,” Gemma said. “I mean, he was hot before, but now?” She fanned herself.

Ezra’s fan club was legion enough, but this had kicked his recognition into the mega-mainstream. I pushed away the sinking feeling at what this might mean for me.

“Even those alt-right wankers have shut up about legislating EKs,” Eduardo said. “It was a smart move on Cardoso’s part, framing all humans as in this together.”

“Not just humans.” Joe tossed battery packs into another Rubbermaid. “There are photos of him with the Toronto Spook Squad, gazing sadly at fallen vampires. From what I’ve read, a lot of people see vampires as victims, with the Luce as the only real villain.”

“Not Maccabees?” I said. “Even after Natán’s comments?”

“There are definitely some haters,” Gemma said, “but the Ezracurricular president jumped into the conversation, getting the club’s members to make all kinds of posts and memes about the hero Prime and his Eishei Kodesh girlfriend who also happens to be a Maccabee.

” She powered down her laptop. “I set them straight about what a cow you are.”

I chucked a pen at her.

“Human or vampire, everyone who fought to keep earth safe during the Endless Night is considered a hero,” Marilyn said.

“Oh good,” I said faintly. “They gave it a catchy name.”

She winked at me. “I vote we leverage our heroic service to get raises.”

We moved the equipment downstairs into a transport van, my team debating what kind of pay upgrade would be applicable. I enjoyed a quiet appreciation at how Ezra had managed to unite not only the magic and non-magic human population, but vampires as well.

No wonder the Authority rushed to claim him as one of their own.

The hypocrites.

It took two hours to get every unit wired up and in communication with the others at the rift sites. We were spread out across multiple continents and cell coverage wasn’t always consistent on our designated battlefields.

The underwater rift in Turkey was deemed a no go; it was too complicated to navigate water pressure and currents on top of everything.

On top of that, we had only approximate locations of where the rifts had been. The laundromat had been razed and cleared away here in Vancouver, and while we could figure out more or less where the rift once existed in the empty parking lot, we couldn’t afford to miss.

At least our rift had been large, which gave us more room for error, but some of them were quite small and called for far more precision in terms of where to direct our magic backburn.

Thanks to my shedim magic, I was able to illuminate traces of them, but it was damned hard to do via a video hookup.

The second the rift coordinates were locked down, other Blue Flames stepped in to act like orchestra conductors, directing Orange Flames to adjust temperature and lower humidity as necessary, but we immediately got bogged down.

Here in Vancouver, unexpected coastal fog rolled in.

Mumbai was dealing with unseasonable rain, Singapore was boggy with humidity, and even Adelaide in Australia, generally reliable for low humidity, had unusual weather patterns.

It wasn’t a rift location, but our backfire had to work in all corners of the globe, so any humid hotspots were of concern.

Our problems dominoed from there.

Yellow Flames had mapped a series of secondary channels. Their job was to connect everything and create a worldwide net for the Reds to pour their magic into.

Except when those linked up, our problems compounded because the channels kept collapsing, dragging the main pathways with them.

Orange Flames attempted to adjust the temperature gradients to help stabilize these pathways, but they dissipated too quickly.

Meantime, Monserrat and her team in Madrid found their temperature modifications dispersing almost as soon as they were established.

In the wake of all that, the physical fire magic of the Red Flames, meant to provide the raw devouring power against the Luce, became dangerously unpredictable.

What should have been controlled bursts of consuming flame contained within magic pathways instead flickered erratically, threatening to spread beyond their intended paths. The Red Flames had to pull back, unable to risk actual fires breaking out across multiple continents.

The fog in Vancouver turned to freezing rain, pelting down on us. We scrambled into the rain gear that Gemma had packed.

I zipped up my jacket with shaking fingers, restraining my immediate urge to call Darsh or Silas and see if with this high humidity, the Luce’s effects had gone into overdrive on them again.

My field notebook, despite its waterproof pages, got so wet that the ink ran in places.

I’d made copious notes about when and why our magic backburn veered off course and had been chiming in with minute corrections to keep our magic focused, but trying to see them on the monitors, which kept fogging up with condensation was challenging.

We kept morale up by assuring ourselves that some of the rift sites maintained optimal conditions, but with wonky air pressure causing the magic to deviate from our pathways or fizzle out altogether in a number of places, it was hard to remain hopeful.

And these were just the external problems. There were internal ones as well.

“Contact with the Luce feels like being smothered by pure spring water,” Joe said with a troubled look.

Marilyn had to stop her red flame attack and sit down, claiming vertigo. “My sense of harmful versus helpful magic is getting distorted,” she said. “It’s messing up my ability to maintain an offensive push without annihilating our teammates or the environment.”

Cue another hour of arguing with everyone over the comms about how to factor this complication in, all against the constant patter of raindrops on buildings now empty of vampire inhabitants.

It became white noise, occasionally interrupted by the splash of someone stepping in a puddle or the squeak of wet gear.

Some humans had remained in these once-popular neighborhoods, but we felt their presence as eyes peering out from drawn curtains or the occasional clang of a gate locked tight in front of a store.

We took a break to refuel, those of us in Vancouver huddling in the covered doorway of a locked-up hair salon sucking back strong black coffee and turkey subs.

We weren’t beating back the Luce, just wearing ourselves down, burning out into synesthetic overload.

Some Reds suffered self-immolation and had to be doused with the special fire extinguishers. Orange Eishei Kodesh experienced rapid and dangerous levels of hypothermia. We pulled the Yellows before they went into full-on shutdowns of their immune systems.

Luckily, we’d had the foresight to bring a healer along with each unit, but after all that, the Blue Flames monitoring the Luce reported that it barely flickered.

Our frustrations boiled over, the lines of communication devolving into shouting matches.

Even with high-end rain gear, water found its way in, trickling down my neck despite the hood, and seeping through the seams of my jacket. My hands were pruned and trembling inside my wet gloves, and my supposedly waterproof boots had given up hours ago, leaving my socks to squelch with every step.

Ha-joon finally called an end to our misery. Despite our anger and frustration, no one protested too much, and I doubted I was the only one who felt relief, even though we’d failed.

“It’s only Thursday,” I said to everyone on the comms. “We can try again.”

“Provided we have better conditions,” one of the operatives stationed at the North Yorkshire Moor rift site said.

“Monserrat? Ha-joon?” I said. “What’s it looking like between now and Saturday?”

They moved onto a private back channel to discuss it.

Gemma, Joe, Eduardo, Marilyn, and I kept our comms on but used the time to pack up and scramble back into the van with the heat cranked.

“We have a window to launch the backburn in thirty-two hours,” Monserrat finally announced.

Saturday morning. The day the Luce would be at its most potent.

We were all professionals and used to working in adverse conditions. We’d take this as a dress rehearsal—albeit a disastrous one—and learn from the valuable data we collected.

I glanced at the Japanese maples in cedar planter boxes lining the sidewalk whose naturally twisted trunks had been straightened like drawn wire.

We’d been given a second chance.

There wouldn’t be a third.

Now, however, we cared about getting warm and fed. Marilyn and Joe almost came to blows over a package of hot chocolate back at HQ, while Gemma’s growl when I reached for the last prepackaged ramen noodle bowl was scarier than any sound Cherry had ever made.