Blood Trinity (Belador #1)(17)

Her body stopped floating toward him.

“Yes, you are.”

“Nope. You got the wrong person. I’m just a witch. What’s your master going to say when you show up with a witch instead of an Alterant?”

She’d stumped him to the point of being mute. Go back to the important detail of who was hunting her. “No one important is looking for an Alterant or word would be all over the city.” She tried to shrug, but she couldn’t move her shoulders. “You’re good at what you do. You should find a master you deserve, one with a higher rank on the food chain.”

The demon had a puzzled look, as though trying to decide if telling her would win this game. “He’s powerful.”

“So you say. But I’m betting he’s so insignificant I’ve never even heard of your master.”

She might have pushed him too far with that. The pressure around her chest tightened until she could hardly breathe. Even if he didn’t mean to eat her he could crush her.

Flames licked at the corner of the Birrn’s mouth, and his eyes flared solid red. “My master is powerful,” he said so low that she almost couldn’t hear him. “He is called—”

Bright light erupted behind the demon on a loud blast.

A bolt of power shot a hole through his middle, barely missing Evalle’s feet. The invisible binding that had held her body captive fell away and she could feel the demon’s power withdrawing.

She hit the ground and stumbled backward, but kept her footing. The demon remained upright for the ten seconds it took his body to suck into itself and disintegrate into a pile of smoldering black chips that reminded her of manure … right down to the stench.

She cursed at the bad timing. She’d been a slip of a second from finding out who was directing the demon, and now she had nothing to give VIPER.

All her evidence gone into one steaming pile of demon sludge.

And she wanted blood for it.

As the smoke cleared, Evalle looked up to find a brute of a man standing where the door had been before she went through it. He held a black-and-silver weapon that looked like an oversize six-shooter with a cylinder big enough to hold six hand grenades.

He started toward her with purpose, weapon aimed straight at her chest.

Crap. It was Dr. Doom, and she was now the patient.





THREE




“Who are you?” Evalle widened her stance, ready to fight and bash in his head, since he’d destroyed her Birrn and ruined her chances for an easy alibi.

But the two most important questions bubbling through her worries were: What was that weapon he’d used to take down the demon and was he going to use it on her?

She didn’t have time for more company. Daylight would break in less than an hour, and while she had a suit in her bike that would protect her in an emergency, it wasn’t comfortable to be in anything black that covered her from head to toe during Georgia’s dog days of summer, when the temperature usually hit ninety-four degrees by 8:00 a.m.

The man walked forward with an arrogant stride. The closer he came, the more she could see of his Mack truck body, wide and bulked up beneath a black outfit that resembled an ACU—Army Combat Uniform—with Kevlar plates. His sleeves were rolled up over bulging biceps. Obviously he wasn’t afraid of demonic acid spit.

He wore a night-vision monocular, which allowed him to see her just as easily as she saw him in this cavernous building with no light. All in all, he was a handsome man in a lunatic, over-the-top, I play way too much Call of Duty and Resident Evil kind of way.

“You okay?” His lips barely moved, then returned to a tense line. The short black hair fit his abrupt personality.

Didn’t sound like he was a threat, but he definitely looked like one.

And he hadn’t lowered his weapon.

“Fine. You are?”

“Isak.” He gestured with the tip of his weapon toward her sunglasses. “You blind?”

She got that a lot because of her tendency to keep them on even at night. Her sunglasses had been custom-made by a friend of Tzader’s, who’d used a lens that would allow her eyes to be seen in low light but shield their freakish color. Let’s hear it for special variable tinted lenses—if she could only get something like that for her skin with SPF 5000. “No. I see fine in low light, right down to your Batman belt buckle.”

His eyebrows moved slightly at the dig, as if questioning how sensitive anyone’s eyes could be in this pitch-black warehouse. But obviously she’d seen enough to out his strange taste in belts. “What’re you doing here?” he asked.

Like she was going to tell him that … “What are you doing here?”

“Hunting demons.”

Dang, that was brutally honest. Most people who hunted demons didn’t blurt that out to strangers for fear of an all-expenses-paid visit to the local psycho ward.

Was this guy an unfamiliar VIPER agent? Agents, she didn’t mind, unless they got in her way.

Or killed a Birrn she needed to capture.

But if he was an agent, she didn’t sense power coming off him.

No. Definitely human.

Weird and gorgeous, but human.

“Who do you work for?” she asked.

“Myself.”

Her stomach clenched. He could be a merc, anybody … especially with that superblaster. Just what her already-screwed-up night needed.