Slayer(52)

I turn on my cell phone as a flashlight. Sweeping it from side to side, I see branching passages. I bet I could get to nearly every room here without ever being seen. I turn toward the gym. I hope. The passage here is narrow, the cold, damp walls brushing my shoulders. I angle myself so I’m walking sideways. My dim screen illuminates only a few feet in front of me. I pass several yawning exits.

The blackness moves in one of them.

I freeze. I slowly back up, my light bouncing as my hands shake. Then I sweep the light through the passageway where I had sensed the movement.

It’s empty.

I had expected a zompire looming. More hellhounds. Something dark and bloodthirsty to take me into the darkness with it, where I belong.

Unable to shake the sensation of being watched, I scramble until I find a door. I don’t care where it spits me out.

I slide it open, squeezing into a tiny space even more cramped than the passageways. There’s a heavy wooden panel in front of me. I push. It gives, but only a little. I push harder. It scrapes open.

Books. So many books. I’ve found the secret library room! I walk to the only door. It, too, is hard to push. I can’t imagine what people with non-Slayer strength must have to do to get it open. Maybe it’s designed to be a two-person door, so no one can get in here alone with the dangerous books. I overshot the gym, though. The library is next to the Council residence wing.

I employ every ounce of Slayer stealth as I sneak past where my mother, Eve Silvera, Leo, and all the other Watchers are sleeping. Including Bradford Smythe. I shudder, remembering that stupid dream.

The gym is unlocked. I take a short black stick that delivers electric shocks—used by Watchers, not Slayers, but I’ll make an exception for myself. I do not take the nunchucks.

Stupid nunchucks.

I’m still in my robe and slippers. I didn’t think this through in my rush to get to Cillian. But if I get caught coming back, no one will suspect I was out with a demon. Who talks with demons while wearing rainbow-print pajamas?

? ? ?

“Who talks with demons while wearing rainbow-print pajamas?” Cillian hisses at me in the dark. He’s in front of his house, arms crossed, stamping his feet impatiently. It’s freezing, and I already took off my robe so it wouldn’t hamper me if I needed to fight.

“I didn’t have time to change! Is the demon loose?”

“No. I heard some movement in there and peeked in a window. It’s awake. But still chained up.”

I try to psych myself up. “That’s good. This will be fine. It’ll all be fine. I’m going to go in. If I’m not back in ten minutes, call Rhys and Artemis. Or the army.”

“That’s reassuring, innit?”

I walk straight through his house and into the yard. The shed lurks, waiting in the darkness to swallow me whole.

I grip the shock stick and run through worst-case scenarios. The demon is free and inside, waiting to kill me. The demon is free and not inside anymore, already killing people and it’s my fault. The demon isn’t free and is still inside and I’ll have to figure out what to do with it, including potentially . . . killing it.

The last option bothers me the most. It’s one thing to kill creatures while fighting for your life. It’s another to have to actively choose to do so. Watchers have to make calls like this all the time. And Slayers don’t even make the call. They just act.

Taking a deep breath, I unlock the door and stomp inside with my aggression slightly dampened by fuzzy slippers. I pull the chain for the light.

“Ack, give a guy a little warning.” The demon squints up at me, its—his, I think—handcuffed-together hands lifted to shade his eyes. They’re a shockingly normal brown. Next to his radioactively bright skin, it looks like a kid with a crayon box and no sense of color families designed him.

“Oh.” His voice is cringe-inducingly discordant, filtered through materials not quite the same as human vocal cords and mouths. “Hey. Hi. Listen, you and I both know that I’m more valuable alive. But did you know my secretions are steadier and higher quality when I’m happy? So keep that in mind as you decide how to punish me.” He lowers his hands, eyeing me with a puzzled expression. “You don’t look like a bounty hunter.”

“Thank you?” I don’t move, and neither does he.

“Look, I’m sorry I ran away. But conditions were less than ideal for me. If you get Sean on the phone, I’ll apologize and we can figure out a compromise. Ideally one that involves less torture. I don’t want to die, and you don’t want me to die either. And he’s going to kill me if things continue as they were.”

I lean against a table, very aware of the length of the chains and how far he can reach should he surprise me by lunging. “I have no idea what you’re talking about or who Sean is. We found you unconscious. There was also a hellhound.”

He startles, panicked, as though perhaps a hellhound is hiding in the tiny shed. “Where is it?”

“I killed it.”

He snorts skeptically. “You killed it.”

I fold my arms, feeling defensive. “Yes.”

“With what? Did you smother it with a teddy bear? Have a slumber party and braid its hair to death?”

I channel Artemis. “Do you really want to insult someone who killed a hellhound with her bare hands?”