Get out of jail, get yet another crappy criminal henchman job, get his hotshot lawyer ex-girlfriend back. Oh yeah -- and get a murderous demon exorcised from his head. Jason Torres has his route back from rock-bottom perfectly planned out, right? Th...
The Demon's hyphae began to breach my skull, their white-hot tips singeing me.
"You're a fucking monster!"
Another giggle. "You always did hate me. Yet you still followed me to bed."
"You'd have killed me if I'd refused!"
"You could have refused me, and died as a lion. Instead, you preferred to live as my dog. Don't pretend that you don't love to serve. That's why the Demon chose you."
"The Demon doesn't exist, Mira!"
She sniggered under her breath. "All those men you killed, and still you think I'm the worse of the two of us. We're the same. You're here to kill me now, are you not?"
"I don't want to kill you." I swiped at a new burst of tears. "I just want Dante and Rayan safe. You've gotten what you wanted. Kill me, enslave me. Whatever you want. But please let them go. Please grant me this one thing, and I'll serve you for however long you want me."
She leaned down, slim hands cradling my face. My skin crawled under her touch.
"When you first came to me, I fought you. I felt the strength of your fist. But when I watched you with my security men? They loved you. And you loved them. Your heart is so much bigger than your fist, Ahmar, and so easy to reach. I live by the sword. Rayan lives by his wits. But you? You live by your heart. I needed that for the Demon Star."
"Demon Star?"
"Through us the Demon Star has risen. We have created the Demon's true form."
She was crazy. I wasn't anything to do with Demon Star. She'd worked alone on that everlasting-youth shit for decades before I'd met her. And, the Demon was nothing but a neurotoxin, an excuse for her murderous self. She'd created a fucked-up demonic alter-ago to absolve her of guilt.
Where had the Demon fled to? I'd felt its sickly fingers pressing at my mind just moments earlier. Whatever my fate as her prisoner, I was running outta time for Dante.
"Please. I'll do anything you want. Just let Dante go."
Her lips parted a touch, letting out a breathy chuckle. "A police officer in love with a murderer? You can't possibly be so stupid to trust him, Ahmar. He's using you for evidence. He knows too much to stay alive."
My stomach spasmed, hot acid flooding my mouth. I'd just signed Dante's death sentence.
Mira tilted her head. Zaki nodded a reply, then pressed the barrel of his pistol hard against Dante's vertebra.
A glint of light caught my eye.
A spinning, whirring light emerged from the shadowy rooms beyond, like a shooting star careening across the night sky.
A throwing star.
Rayan's tracker-star.
The star sailed in a bright arc across the room, embedding itself between Zaki's eyes with a thud.
Zaki bellowed to the ceiling, his forehead erupting in a fountain of blood. The guards spun in circles, AKs flailing around them as Zaki mopped blood from his eyes with a sleeve.
A blur on legs, Dante sprang into a spinning kick that knocked Zaki off his feet.
I screamed, snatching a guard's AK before he had a chance to spring away. A kick to his ankle and he toppled, his gun firing shots into the wall that left my ears ringing.
The second guard threw himself in front of Mira to shield her from stray bullets and shrapnel. She leaped backward, snatching up a jambiya from a desk drawer, but I'd already made it to Dante.
Slashing at Dante's zip-ties with my kris, he lunged at Zaki before I could bundle him to safety, the two of them crashing through a windowpane and into the gloom of the gardens.
Dante needed me. He was a half-decent fighter, but Zaki was born to it. So close to leaping outta the window to Dante, a singing blade cut the air behind me. Mira's jambiya slashed at my back.
I twisted away before the blade could strike too deep, parrying her second blow at the last moment with my kris.
Too late. The two guards regrouped to flank Mira, AKs trained between my eyes.
Fuck.
I probed my thoughts, searching for the Demon.
Searching for myself.
Who was I?
The Red Demon. The child of an alcoholic mother, and a father who'd abandoned us. A pickpocket, a car thief, a gang member. A stupid brick, living like a dog, and dying like one. A man who stabbed his own boyfriend through the heart.
A murderer.
Something wicked.
Just like that, putrid black worms of unconsciousness slithered across my corneas. Like it could taste the chaos in the room, the Demon took me swiftly.
Muscles charged with bloodlust, every nerve cell in my brain scorched to fuck, I stepped toward Mira. My jaw hinged open like I was a possessed puppet, and from the depths of my belly came an earsplitting roar.
I was the Demon.
And the one thing that the Demon relished most was a big dirty fucking fight.
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