Wicked Bite (Night Rebel #2)(72)

Ian suddenly tensed and his aura crackled with enough energy to make me feel as if I’d been stung by a swarm of bees. I gripped his arm, anticipation rocketing through me.

“Is it Dagon? Is he here?” I whispered.

“Yes,” Ian replied with quiet savageness.

I threw the blanket off us. Then, with barely any noise, we both got to our feet. I palmed one of my demon-bone knives before I met Ian’s eyes. The last time we’d ambushed Dagon, Ian had died. I wouldn’t let that happen this time, no matter what.

He gave me a look I couldn’t read as he handed me the sparkling blue diamond. Magic crawled up my arm, painful in its potency, but we needed every bit of it. I closed my fist over the diamond, and Ian took my clenched hand in his.

“This time, we win,” he said as if reading my thoughts.

“This time, we win,” I echoed. No matter what.

His hand tightened; then our surroundings blurred.

That blur stopped moments later, revealing an interior room on the first floor of the lodge. It was stripped except for a few benches, lockers, and counters where skiers must have once checked in. Now, graffiti covered the walls and trash covered most of the age-bowed wooden floors. The stench of old urine, feces, and garbage was almost overwhelming.

But beyond that, I smelled a hint of lilacs and lavender. Ereshki’s scent. Ian was right, she was here, possibly on the second floor. Another sniff revealed the harsher scent of sulfur. She wasn’t alone. Ian was right again. Dagon was here.

I went to the far side of the room, then looked at Ian. He checked the coordinates programmed into his smart watch and nodded, confirming that I was at the center of our pentagram.

I bent down, cleared the garbage away, and slammed the blue diamond onto the floor hard enough to puncture the wooden floorboards. Magic exploded with such a tangible rush that the garbage blasted out in all directions.

I felt that magic find the stones at the five tips of the pentagram’s star and activate them. Then it found the five stones in the circle surrounding the pentagram and filled those, too. But the circle allowed the magic to go no further, so it boomeranged back toward the blue diamond with the force of a thousand speeding trains. Feeling it coming, I ducked and braced.

The boards covering the windows exploded inward. Wood shards and the window’s remaining glass fragments pelted me before the magic caught me in a full-body blow that slammed me up and into the ceiling. Ian was thrown backward hard enough to tear a line of ski lockers off the wall. My head rang, my body ached, and I could barely see through the haze of garbage that swirled around like the world’s ugliest confetti, but despite all that, I let out a hoarse cry.

“Got you!”

The magic that had blown us off our feet now prevented anyone from entering the pentagram that surrounded the entire lodge and some of its grounds—critical to keeping Dagon from bringing in demon reinforcements. But the circle around the pentagram was the real trap. It kept everyone inside its limits until the sun shone through the blue diamond that now lay like a discarded toy on the garbage-strewn floor. No way in, no way out. One way or the other, our war with Dagon ended tonight.

Ian untangled himself from the lockers, then threw the mangled mess aside to check on me. “I’m fine,” I assured him, even though my arm felt like it was paralyzed from holding the diamond while all that magic funneled through it.

“Then let’s get the sod.” Blood practically dripped from Ian’s tone. “The spell your father put on Dagon should have him on his knees from being this close to me—”

“I am not on my knees,” a familiar voice hissed.

Both of us turned.

Dagon was at the top of the staircase connecting the second floor to this room. His blue eyes gleamed with malice and his pale blond hair swirled from the residual waves of magic, but as described, he wasn’t on his knees. He did lean heavily on Ereshki, though, and she looked like she wasn’t enjoying being his version of a pair of crutches. That could be because she looked exhausted. Whatever she’d been doing the past three days had taken a toll on her.

“What do you think you accomplished with that spell?” Dagon continued in the same snakelike tone.

“Consider the doors on this place locked,” I replied with deep satisfaction.

Ian gave the demon a brilliant smile. “Used the blue diamond I stole from you to anchor the spell.”

Dagon didn’t look afraid at hearing he was locked in with us. I hoped that was overconfidence and not something more ominous.

Ereshki appeared rattled, though, which was cold comfort. “You broke your vow,” she said. “Dagon told me you would.”

“He was wrong,” I replied. “I’m not going to kill you, Ereshki. Ian, however, has other intentions.”

Ian’s smile made ice roll over my skin despite it being aimed at Ereshki, not me. If death indulged in foreplay before getting to the final act, it would start with that smile.

“Shall we, poppet?” he purred at her.

Ereshki shuddered. Dagon spat. “We’re all trapped in here for however long your spell lasts, so if you want me, here I am!”

He was taunting me to charge him. Doing anything that Dagon wanted me to do would backfire, so I stayed where I was. Ian must have thought it was a trap, too. He put a hand on my arm.

“Don’t move,” he said through newly gritted teeth. “I feel something building . . .”