The demon was fast and Jasper had to sprint full out to even keep him in his sights. More than once, he thought about turning aside, maybe even just stopping and making a call back to the agency. Yet he found himself running on.
A werespider.
He could hardly believe it.
Up ahead, the demon reined to a halt under a striped overhang, and Jasper stopped beside him, trying to soften his labored breathing before it could become too obvious. The neon sign above the door glowed eerily in the thin fog, bleeding red into the night. The sign read Rascal's.The glowing R was beset with pointy devil's horns, and the long snakelike tail on the s ended in a triangular point, the sort an uninspired cartoon artist might use in their depiction of Satan.
Typical.
"You're pretty quick," commented the werespider, holding the door open and leaning in towards him with a fascinated smile, all straight white teeth and soft brown lips. Demons had no right being so good looking. "I've never met a demon with eyes that glow white before. You got territory around here or...?"
"I'm not a demon," mumbled Jasper, putting as much space as possible between them as he dipped into the seedy little bar. The place was a low-lit dive, complete with ragged pool tables and an out-of-date jukebox, the yellow-orange glass light fixtures hanging over each booth giving the sparse room a sad sort of ambience. The stale stench of beer hit him as soon as he stepped inside, and he wrinkled his nose.
This was bad. He shouldn't be here (and with a werespider, no less), but he wasn't sure how to get out of it without arousing the other's suspicions. Outing himself as a Hunter would be as good as signing his own death warrant, and explaining how he had let a rare, dangerous werespider slip away right out from underneath his nose would be beyond humiliating. If he had to play along for now, so be it.
"Course you are." The werespider hopped onto a raggedy red barstool and rapped his knuckles against the stained and scratched counter.
It was near closing and the place was practically empty. The bartender was a young tatted-up blonde woman, light complected and dressed in a strappy black camisole with the bar's logo plastered over the front. She was already on her way towards him. "Hey, Chris. Let me guess, tequila?"
"She knows me so well." The demon grinned. "Nikki, I want you to meet my friend. This is, uhhh..." He paused, considering. "Sorry, handsome, I think I missed your name."
"It's Jasper," said Jasper, and immediately wondered why he hadn't made a different name up. His head still ached and he felt vague. Scattered. The twinkling lights behind the bar hurt his eyes, and the crackle of music from the ancient speakers overhead throbbed in the back of his skull, making Sublime sound anything but.
"You look a little dazed," said the demon.
The woman poured two shots, filling them all the way to the rim.
The demon knocked back the first and offered the second to Jasper, who turned it away.With a shrug, the demon drank it as well. "Does your kind get concussions? Cuz your pupils are huge."
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Strangers in the Night (The Hunter and The Spider #1)
अलौकिकWhere there's demons there's bound to be Hunters and in New York there's no shortage of either. Jasper Craig is a Hunter at St. James Academy and he's one of the best. With superior strength, agility, and a handy ability to sense demonic energy, it...
