Taming Demons for Beginners (The Guild Codex: Demonized #1)(34)

I peeked at my inner elbow. Dried blood coated my skin, and barely visible fingerprints smudged the gore where a hand had gripped my arm. I couldn’t see the wounds from Vince’s knife.

Amalia was watching me anxiously, so I stammered, “I—I guess I fell in the … the …”

Determinedly looking away from the bodies, she muttered, “Come on.”

She helped me stand, keeping a firm grip on my elbow. The hem of her pretty purple dress was stained red.

“Where do you think you’re taking her?” Uncle Jack stalked toward us, blowing air through his nose. “I want answers! I want—”

“No one cares what you want!” Amalia shouted. “I can’t believe you! Kathy is upstairs in hysterics, trying to find her missing son, and all you care about is the demon!” She hauled me past him and spat over her shoulder, “I’m taking Robin upstairs. Do something useful while I’m gone.”

Uncle Jack swore at her. As we left, I stared at my feet, unwilling to risk glimpsing the bodies.

Amalia steered me directly to my bedroom. “You should clean up. I’ll check on you in a few minutes. You … you sure you’re okay?”

When I nodded weakly, she retreated into the hallway and closed the door. I stood there, numb and shivering, then looked down. My white t-shirt was drenched in crimson that had dried to brown at the edges. Blood everywhere.

My stomach jumped. I bolted into the bathroom just in time to throw up in the toilet. Panting, I washed out my mouth, then stripped off my shirt and wet a towel in the sink. I vigorously scrubbed my arm, then paused. Lowering the towel, I stared at my inner elbow.

Three pink scars marked my skin where Vince had cut me. I prodded one, surprised it didn’t hurt. Healing sorcery could close wounds but it took intensive work … and no healers had been present in that basement.

A visceral memory hit me in the gut: Zylas leaning over me, a hand on my chest, another on my injured arm, red magic crawling over the floor and sliding into my body. My stomach twitched threateningly and I grabbed the sink, breathing fast. Demon magic. He had healed me with his demonic magic.

My eyes fluttered closed. “Protect me,” I had said.

“What will you give me?” he had asked.

An exchange. A trade. That’s how demons worked. I’d asked him to protect me, and in return … I’d set him free. I hadn’t realized that’s what I was agreeing to, and a violent shudder shook me from head to toe. I’d set a demon loose in the city. He was so fast, so deadly. Where was he now? How many people had he killed already?

Gulping down my nausea, I finished cleaning the blood off my torso, then unbuttoned my jeans and shoved them off my hips. As they slid down my legs, something fell out of the back pocket and hit the floor with a clang. A flat, circular pendant on a silver chain lay across the tiles, its surface smeared with blood like everything else. Warily, I picked it up.

Zylas crushed the pendant between our hands. “Now seal it.”

I rubbed my thumb across its rune-etched surface. It was an infernus—the key to a demon contract, Amalia had said. The demon’s will and spirit were bound to the infernus, and through it, the contractor could control the demon.

That was a real contract, though. Whatever weird bargain Zylas and I had made didn’t come close … did it? He’d already fulfilled his end, even going a step further to heal my injuries—not merely repairing my arm, but a full healing. Though I should’ve been lightheaded and woozy from blood loss, I was simply tired—and parched with thirst. I turned on the faucet and drank from the flow, gulping down water until my stomach threatened to rebel again.

Finished with cleaning, I carried the infernus back into my room and tossed it on the bed. I needed to hide the pendant before anyone noticed I had it. That’d be hard to explain.

I pulled on clean clothes—a soft green sweater and stretchy yoga pants—then sat on my bed. Exhausted and sick with guilt and anxiety, I picked up the infernus again. My thumb traced the centermost rune—a spiky, circular sigil. I hadn’t looked closely at the one Amalia had shown me, but I would’ve remembered such a strange marking.

Flopping back onto my pillow, I swung the infernus like a pendulum. Golden beams from the setting sun streaked through the window, illuminating floating dust motes and sparkling across the silver disc. How long had it been since Travis led me into the basement, since those men had nearly killed me? Where was Zylas now?

Red light sparked in the infernus’s center.

The scarlet glow burst out of it in bounding streaks. They pooled and condensed, solidifying into a humanoid shape. Weight settled on my waist, and the light dispersed with a final shimmer.

Zylas grinned down at me, crimson eyes glowing and his pointed canines on full display.

For an eternity, I could neither move nor breathe. Gasping in blind panic, I shoved away from him—but he was straddling my hips, his weight pressing me into the bed. All I managed to do was writhe pathetically.

“Payilas,” he crooned.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded breathlessly, fighting my panic. “I thought you’d left!”

“Left?” He canted his head, then flicked the infernus I still held in the air, sending it swinging. “I am bound to this, payilas. So are you.”

“What?” I dropped the infernus like it was contaminated with a deadly disease. “No.”