Page 9

Chapter Nine

We crept up the fire stairs. I followed Maia’s lead, moving cautiously as I wrangled the dress. I didn’t see how anything could get into the stairwell, but better safe than sorry. Particularly when hampered by yards and yards of fabric.

Damon stayed behind me and I tried to focus on the job at hand rather than how angry I was he’d followed us. Ahead of me Maia reached the top landing where an exit sign glowed above a door marked ROOF in large red letters.

Helpful.

“Slowly,” I said when Maia went to swipe the security pass. “We don’t want to let it in the building if it’s waiting by the door.” The back of my neck prickled with nerves. Demonkind. Never good. Afrit were the smallest and easiest to kill but I didn’t want to deal with anything to do with demons.

Maia shot me a look back over her shoulder that suggested she wasn’t an idiot and she knew how to do her job.

Fair call. My nerves, not to mention Damon tagging along, were making me speak before I thought. Dumb. I had to keep my wits about me. I sucked in a deep breath and blew it out. “Go on.”

She eased the door open. There was no immediate scurrying, skittering rush of clawed feet. Just the sounds of the city below suddenly audible again. A faint hum of traffic. A police siren somewhere off in the distance, and the thump of synchro-pop music off to our left. One of those clubs the guard had mentioned. Maia gestured for me to hold the door and then slipped through.

There was a long pause while my heartbeat thudded too loud in my ears, drowning out the city noise. Then Maia said, “Clear. Come on.” She held the door for me.

As I maneuvered sideways, I wished I’d asked Maia for a knife to cut the damned skirt off, but too late now. I stepped onto the flat concrete, every nerve tensed. Damon followed and pushed the door shut. The click of the lock hit me like a shock.

Time to get to work.

Damon came to stand beside me.

“Remember what I said.” The words felt tight in my mouth. “Too much trouble, you get clear.”

“Don’t worry about me, go look for your devil bug.” He smiled. It was a fraction too tight for him to be as calm as he sounded, but he still exuded confidence.

I scowled at him and turned to survey the roof.

It was mostly empty. There was a water tower, the small structure surrounding the door, and a bunch of stuff I figured was to do with the HVAC system or whatever it was office buildings required to function.

The whole space was plain gray concrete broken only by the yellow safety line painted a few feet inside the edges. Those were protected by a glass barricade about four feet tall, anchored in about a foot and a half of concrete. Tall enough that no one was at any risk of falling off without making considerable effort to do so. Not that it would prove much of a deterrent to an afrit.

Despite the barrier, the breeze was strong enough to ruffle the skirt of my dress and bring out goosebumps along my arms. After the heat of the Phoenix and the warmth of the limo, it was cold.

It was never truly dark downtown but other than the small exit sign over the door, there wasn’t any lighting to illuminate the inner part of the roof. There were lights along the edge, outside the glass, but they all angled down toward the building’s exterior. The back glow from them provided enough light at the edge to make the shadows around the various structures appear even darker. Perfect for an afrit to blend into.

I reached out with my magic, trying to see if I could feel it, extending my reach slowly, so as not to immediately tip it off if it could feel me. It was the mental equivalent of walking in the dark, holding my hands out in front of me, hoping I wasn’t going to stumble into a spiderweb or worse. There was a trace of something. But not strong enough for me to tell if it was still here. My kingdom for more light.

As though she heard me, Maia reached inside her jacket again and pulled out two tiny flashlights, handing me one. I snapped it into place on my gun. I didn’t routinely carry a light for it, because I could make my own, but Maia was always prepared.

I scanned the roof again with the flashlight, looking for movement.

Nothing.

The only thing moving besides us was a piece of paper stuck under a pile of industrial buckets stacked near the edge of the roof opposite us. They stood next to a couple of metal containers I guessed held some type of cleaning product, a pile of tarps, several neatly coiled ropes and a plastic crate stuffed with something I couldn’t quite make out. Window cleaning gear.

I pointed at the gear and mouthed, “There?”

Maia shook her head once and made a circling motion, pointing to her left.

Right. Best to check behind us first. We started to ease around the doorway structure. It was only about ten square feet but it was high enough to stop us seeing anything on its roof.

My skin crawled picturing an afrit sitting there, waiting to leap. But there was nothing I could do about the possibility, so I followed Maia, putting everything Callum had ever taught me about moving silently into practice.

Not so simple wearing fifty layers of tulle.

Damon moved behind me. I avoided looking at him. I couldn’t let my focus stray. Had to trust him to protect himself. And me.

I could yell at him later. And let Mitch yell, too.

Maybe even Cassandra.

Imagining it calmed me down a little as we cleared the section of roof behind the door and kept moving slowly forward, Maia sweeping ahead of me. There was nothing near the water tower or any of the other permanent structures.

So either the creature had continued over and down the building and disappeared into the night or it was hiding in the window cleaning gear.

I tipped my head toward the nearest bucket.

Maia grimaced but nodded and crept closer until she was within arm’s length. “Cover me,” she mouthed before she reached out and upended the bucket in one swift move.

Empty.

I almost sighed in relief. Maia tucked the handle of the bucket over her arm and studied the pile of gear. The containers of detergent or whatever they were only had small screw on lids, too small for an afrit to crawl into, even if it had wanted to coat itself in chemicals.

Which left the remaining buckets and the crate. Now we were closer, I could see it was stuffed with rags and old towels. The piece of paper that had caught my attention initially still flapped slowly in the breeze.

It made the faintest rustling noise but was clearly just paper. Afrits didn’t use illusions.

Maia watched it too, then turned her attention back to the buckets. Before she could make her next move, I heard something new.

Something not papery. More like fabric moving against a hard surface. Along with the faintest suggestion of a hiss.

Maia heard it, too, her eyes narrowing and her body language sharpening as she shifted her focus to the towel-filled crate.

Damon stepped up beside me, his gun at the ready. Three for three. I wasn’t imagining things.

I sent my magic out again and got a far stronger sense of wrong, wrong, wrong. Maia looked at me and I nodded. Her mouth went flat as she put a finger to her lips, telling us to stay silent.

I tightened my grip on my gun. Maia pointed to it and lifted the bucket she held, miming tipping the crate over, then slamming the bucket down.

As methods of catching an afrit went, it wasn’t the smartest but I didn’t have a better one. Not if we wanted to catch it alive.

Maia mimed again, nodding toward the crate and scowling at me. I really didn’t want to pick up a crate containing an afrit, but too bad for me.

Going against every instinct I possessed, I motioned for Damon to move back a couple of feet. I inched closer to the crate, gun ready, trying not to think about what would happen if the afrit was in there and it charged me rather than Maia. The idea of it getting under my skirt made me want to puke.

So I had to act before I could psych myself out. I bent forward, grabbed the back of the crate with my free hand and tipped it over, sending the contents spilling out. I scuttled backward instinctively, a move that nearly resulted in me tripping over the stupid gown.

Nothing happened for a long moment then came a hiss that sounded like a furious cat crossed with a big-ass snake. The hairs on my arms stood on end. A large black bug-like creature with weird scaly skin burrowed out of the pile of towels and charged straight at Maia. As it moved, long thin black spines shot up out of its back, turning the afrit into a nightmare hedgehog-cockroach combination that made my brain stutter for a moment, stuck on wrong-bad- run .

Thank God for Maia’s training, because she reacted like lightning to slam the bucket down over it before I could panic.

The hissing increased, more screechy and angrier. The bucket wobbled despite the fact Maia was leaning her whole weight against it.

Which she wouldn’t be able to do for long.

I grabbed one of the tubs of cleaning chemicals and placed it on top of the bucket. The wobbling stopped and all three of us breathed identical sighs of relief.

“Now what?” Damon asked from behind me.

The angry screeching hisses continued, punctuated with tapping sounds like it was using its legs or feet to figure out its next move.

Maia was talking into her headset, alerting someone—I hoped Cassandra—we’d caught the afrit. I kept my gun aimed at the bucket.

The hissing subsided suddenly and I waited for another round of creepy tapping. Instead there was a soft splat and a tiny hole started to melt through the plastic about halfway up, a clear thick liquid spilling over the edges and starting to slowly slide toward the concrete.

“Fuck. It spits acid,” I said.

“So I see,” Damon said slowly. “Now what?” He moved up beside me.

I shot him an annoyed look. “We could start with you leaving.”

He grinned tightly. “Not going to happen, baby. One afrit we can handle.”

The hole stopped growing but another splat came from within and more liquid goo trickled out of the first hole as another one started to form beside it. Afrit might be the dumbest of the demonkind, but this one could obviously think itself out of a trap. Some of its acid goo reached the concrete. There was a tiny sizzling noise and the concrete went white before starting to pit.

So, really strong acid.

Perfect.

“We don’t have anything else to contain it,” Maia said. Her gun stayed trained on the bucket.

“No. So. Plan B?”

“What’s Plan B?” Damon asked.

“Kill it with fire,” I said.

Maia grinned approvingly. “Plan B it is. You want to do the honors, or should I?” She started to put her gun away.

“Wait,” I said.

“What?” The gun came back out as though she thought I’d seen something.

“If we’re going to do this, we need water. To put the fire out.”

“Right,” she said. The gun lowered again and she scanned the roof.

“If there’s been window cleaners up here, there must be a faucet or something they use to fill the buckets. They can’t drag buckets up from inside surely? Maybe on the cooling tower?” I suggested.

She nodded, went back to the pile to grab another bucket, and jogged off toward the cooling tower. “Score,” she called. “There’s a hose connector up here and a valve.”

Something creaked, followed by the sound of running water.

I willed her to be fast. Under the influence of whatever it was the afrit was spitting, the hole in the bucket had widened to about the size of two quarters. As I watched, one long leg extended out. It was covered in short black spines ending in three claws that glistened in the moonlight in a way that told me they were very sharp. And wet.

Claws covered in acid were nothing I wanted to get up close and personal with.

I took a half step back, bracing myself to shoot.

Maia arrived back with her now full bucket and came to stand next to me. “Do you want to be fire or water?” She put the bucket down between us.

“Fire,” I said. I’d never actually managed to call lightning a second time, but otherwise, fire was my thing.

“We want like a concentrated stream,” she said. “Let it burn for a minute or so, then I’ll dump the water on it.”

“Okay,” I said. If a minute wasn’t long enough to kill it, we had a bigger problem and we were going to have to shoot the afrit, no matter what reaction gunfire might bring.

The bucket over the afrit was plastic. It would melt.

I raised my hand. Then paused. The cleaning fluids. Also in plastic containers but the contents were chemicals. And some chemicals were flammable. Or explosive.

I jerked my chin at Maia. “Move that cleaning stuff. We don’t know what it’s made of and I don’t want to make something go ‘boom’ accidentally.” The afrit made another splat and the hole got bigger. The leg wiggled, claws scraping the concrete. The bucket rattled.

“Good idea,” Maia said, “but someone will have to hold that bucket down once I move those.”

“I will,” Damon said. He moved before I could stop him, damn the man.

The afrit’s leg withdrew from the gap, like it was following his movement. My skin crawled. I could smell it now. Acid and rot, a scent my brain and body associated with terror and death and danger. I had to fight to keep my breathing steady. I knew I could kill it, but it still terrified me. It was demonkind. The enemy. Demons, given a chance, would devour our world and everyone in it.

Damon gripped the so-far-intact side of the bucket. His face was taut. Determined. But also possibly trying not to breathe too deeply.

“Alright,” I nodded at Maia, wanting to get on with it. “Take the cleaning stuff.”

She moved fast, lifting the containers and carrying them to the far side of the roof. Damon’s knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip on the bucket. As though it had sensed the changing weight, the afrit thumped against the side of the bucket, making it shake. It screeched again, the sound like nails down a demonic chalkboard.

I resisted the urge to order Damon to swap places with me. He was behind the side with the hole. That was hopefully safer as long as the damn afrit didn’t decide to spit upward.

“Can you burn it from where you are?” Maia asked as she returned and picked up the water bucket.

“We’re about to find out.” I stretched out my hand, pulling on my magic, and summoned a flame, thinking about shaping it into a spike like a miniature lightning bolt.

The flame rose in my hand, brilliant orange. Hot enough to burn through anything I aimed it at, though hopefully not through the concrete roof before we could put it out.

“Alright,” I said to Damon. “On the count of three, let go of the damned bucket and get the hell out of there. Once you’re out of the way, I’m burning it.”

He nodded, mouth grim.

I turned to Maia. “Ready?”

The water bucket was at her feet but she had her gun out, ready in case the afrit got free. “Ready when you are.”

“One, two….THREE.” I yelled at Damon.

True to his word he let go and bolted sideways, back toward the doorway.

I waited until he was fifteen feet away before I sent the flame arcing down.

The plastic went up with a whoomp . The afrit started screaming, the sound of it physically painful. Bad enough that it made me want to stop my fire so I could clamp my hands over my ears. Somehow my brain knew it didn’t come from the throat of any creature from the human world. But I held my ground and the flame. After about thirty seconds, the noise stopped. I waited another thirty seconds before I stopped feeding the fire.

Maia held up a hand. “Wait.”

We stood in silence, watching the flames dance. The stench of burning plastic made my eyes stream but there was no movement from within the fire. Maia held her forearm over her mouth, coughing. The smell was as bad as the shrieking had been—the combination of burning plastic and afrit was stomach churning—and the breeze was blowing in her direction.

After a minute or so she said, “Okay, enough.”

I pulled my gun back out of my pocket just in case, and she dumped the water over the molten mess of burning plastic.

Fortunately, it went out, hissing steam, which made the stench worse.

Ewwww . I coughed, wishing I could cover my mouth and nose, but I needed both hands for my gun.

Maia put her bucket down, gaze still fastened on the steaming pile of ash and melted plastic.

Nothing moved.

Thank God .

“You want me to check it out?” Maia asked, nodding at the mess.

I shook my head. “Let’s wait.”

At least the death cries hadn’t summoned any friends. Afrit often moved in packs but this one seemed to be alone. Like the one Callum and I killed in Dockside had been. Weird.

Damon came back to my side. He wrinkled his nose at the smell but smiled at me. “Well, that was exciting. But good job. You, too, Maia.”

“Thanks, boss,” she said.

“You could go back downstairs now,” I suggested.

“Nope.” He slipped off his tux jacket and held it out to me. “Put this on, you’re shivering.”

Excellent idea. I pocketed my gun and slid the jacket on. It was warm and smelled like him. Way better than fresh fried afrit.

Warmer, I stared at the remains. Two afrit in a month. Not to mention the other potential sightings and finding Ajax’s secret lair. What the hell was going on?

Maia refilled her bucket and poured a second load of water over the remains. The concrete around the pile of melted plastic was scorched, but less steam indicated it was cooling down. Promising. No doubt Riley Arts were going to have to get the fire department or something to check the damage—after the Cestis had removed any sign of what had actually been burning. Maybe the fire department would believe that the cleaning chemicals had started all this?

Not my problem. The Cestis were the ones who dealt with covering up demon activity with the non-magical first responders and legal system.

“All right,” I said, starting to believe the afrit was dead. “Now we call Cassandra.”

Maia tapped her earpiece. “No need. She’s already here.”