Taming Demons for Beginners (The Guild Codex: Demonized #1)(69)
If I’d kept the infernus, would this have happened? Would Zylas have saved me back at the Grand Grimoire? Would he have rescued me while Travis held me and Amalia captive in the shipping container? But I’d left him behind, afraid to take responsibility for the creature I had unleashed.
“Hurry up and get them on the boat,” Karlson barked. “I want to—”
A flicker of red—and the boat exploded.
The boom hit my eardrums like stabbing knives. A crimson-laced fireball roared upward, belching black smoke. The men staggered in shock, then one yelled in terrified agony. As the rogues whirled toward the sound, another man screamed. Blood misted the air and a mythic collapsed.
A dark blur shot away from him, red magic streaking from phantom claws.
“Demon!” someone roared.
Chaos erupted—contractors grabbing their pendants, champions drawing weapons. Zylas skidded on the concrete, tail snapping out, and he leaped onto the back of a contractor, snapped his neck, and sprang off the falling man. He landed on the next mythic’s shoulders, his six-inch crimson talons disappearing into the man’s throat.
Red magic blazed as demons materialized around us.
Zylas jumped off the collapsing man, slid aside from a swinging sword—which hit another demon instead—and launched straight at me.
He hit me and my captor. We went down in a tangle of limbs, then I was whirling through the air, a band of steel across my chest. The world came to a dizzying halt. Zylas held me against his torso as he angled toward the street.
“Ori impello potissime!” a sorcerer shouted.
An invisible force hit us like a battering ram. Everything spun wildly again, and I slammed into the concrete, the impact jarring through my back. I jolted up as two demons charged Zylas, who’d landed nearby.
He dove, skidding under a demon’s long legs, and reappeared behind it. Another swift leap—and a man died beneath his talons. The contractor’s demon dissolved into crimson light.
I shoved myself to my feet, trembling and weak but with my head miraculously clear. Getting hit by more Arcana had broken Travis’s confusion spell. Or something. I whirled, searching for Amalia—
Charging in out of nowhere, Travis grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. A cold, sharp edge pressed against my throat.
“Stop or I’ll kill her!” he yelled.
Zylas sprang off the shoulders of a heavyset man with an infernus on his chest, landed on the pavement in a crouch, and turned glowing crimson eyes on Travis. His final victim crumpled in a heap, head lolling on his broken neck. Another demon melted into a red haze, swept into the corpse, and faded.
Everything was suddenly still, the silence broken only by the choking gurgles of a man bleeding out a few yards away. Half the Red Rum mythics were dead. That fast, Zylas had killed half of them.
Travis held the knife to my throat, the edge slicing the first layers of my skin. A wet tickle ran down my neck. My pulse hammered desperately as I stared at Zylas, elated that he’d come, terrified that he was far too late.
His face, normally so humanlike, was hard and cold, his canines flashing, his hunger for violence rolling off him in waves.
“Why did the demon stop?” Karlson asked, his tone low and cautious.
“Her contract,” Travis replied, breathing hard, “requires that the demon protect her. If it moves, I’ll kill her, so it can’t do anything.”
Panic churned in my head. How did he know that? The only people who knew the details of our contract were me, Zylas, and—
My gaze darted to Amalia, several long steps away. A tall, lanky man had his arm locked around her throat. At Travis’s declaration, horror widened her eyes and she shot me a guilt-stricken look. How much had she told him? Did he know Zylas and I had no Banishment Clause?
Pacing to my side, Karlson took in Zylas like an artist studying his latest painting—critical, assessing, appreciative. And beneath that, lusty greed burned in the man’s narrow face and dark eyes.
“Well,” the man murmured, “this makes things easier. We can proceed immediately with the contract substitution.”
Zylas didn’t react, still crouched and motionless. He wouldn’t move—the contract’s magic didn’t allow him to put my life in danger. As long as I was helpless, he was helpless too.
Karlson glanced across his remaining men, blind to the bodies. “Leonard, are you ready to take on this demon?”
Another mythic stepped forward—thickly muscled, a beard bristling over his jaw as he grinned. “I’m more than ready. This fiend may be small, but with speed like that, the possibilities are endless.”
“A perfect assassin,” Karlson agreed. “Demon, you will submit to a new contract with Leonard, and whatever terms we stipulate, or the girl will die.”
Zylas’s eyes flared with power, twin spots of churning lava. Rage deeper and more coldly vicious than anything I’d seen before twisted his face, and the breeze chilled. The temperature dropped below freezing, ice frosting the pavement around his feet.
I shuddered in horrified denial. Zylas had sworn to never submit to humans. He’d prefer to die than be enslaved, and he’d only agreed to a contract with me because he could retain his autonomy. But now he would lose it. Because of me, because he was bound to protect me, he would surrender his mind and body to Red Rum. The magic of the contract would force him to submit.