When his friends were all gone, he closed the shop’s front door and started cleaning up. Thanks to Maribell, he only had to put the cups back on the nineteenth-century hanging shelf and clean the coffeemaker. On his way to the stairs that would lead him to his apartment, Sammy found the trash he had meant to take out earlier in the day then forgotten. After a short internal debate, he sighed, picked it up and went to the back door.
The dumpster loomed like an alien monster in the small back alley that looked shady, even during daylight. Sammy gulped. He wasn’t easily frightened, but the way the shadows seemed to move in the semi-brightness of the single lightbulb over the door had him hurrying to the dumpster. After he had disposed of the sack, Sammy was headed straight back for the door and the warm safety of the house, when he suddenly heard something. It sounded like a cat going through the trash in search of leftovers and the rats that fed on the leftovers. Sammy shuddered. Some of the street cats in Beaconville were small, mean killing machines and he always tried to stay on their good side. Not interfering when one of them was on the hunt was part of the plan. He reached for the door handle, recognized a presence behind him that was most definitely not a cat, felt something soft and horrible-smelling being pressed against his nose then…nothing.
Chapter Two
“Damn it, Dre! Would you mind paying attention? We’re playing a serious game here and, thanks to you, I just got blown up with a plasma grenade!”
Barion, Dre’s younger brother, gave him a vicious jab with his elbow. Dre didn’t retaliate, because he deserved it, for one thing, and second, he was distracted by an all-too-familiar tingling at the back of his skull.
“Sorry, little bro. Seems like someone is trying to summon me—again!”
Barion groaned. “Damn. The same idiots from last time?”
“Feels like it. They’ve been doing this all week. I’m getting tired of it.”
A mischievous gleam appeared in Barion’s eyes. “You gonna take care of them?”
Dre pressed the pause button on his controller, freezing the battleships on the one-hundred-ten-inch flat-screen Barion had bought only a week before. Dre was sure the thing was worth a fortune, but, as a demon prince, his brother could easily afford it. Demons were not as big on hoarding as dragons, but they weren’t exactly poor either.
“I think I have to. This is getting on my nerves, and who knows what they will come up with next?”
Barion rolled his eyes. “Whoever thought it was a good idea giving humans just enough information that they are able to call us should be roasted alive.”
“Good luck with that one. Father is convinced it was Great-Uncle Corriwyn, and he’s fireproof…like all of us, moron!”
Barion whined. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“Because he was bored and thought it would be funny. And he had fun—still has. He answers every summoning he gets, just to mess with the humans. Damn old man should have gotten himself a mate and children at some point.”
The tingling got stronger and Dre wondered what kind of spell the humans were using this time. It was a widely believed myth that demons could be summoned and controlled by a human with the right spells and magic circles. It was a belief that was very false. For one thing, only a true witch had the means to infuse a magic circle with enough power to actually force a demon to appear. And if she wanted to do more than just have a stare-off with a pissed demon, she had to be a member of one of the five witch clans. That narrowed the amount of people who actually did have the means to control a demon to less than two hundred. As for truly mastering a demon? He knew of three who could probably pull it off, and they had other, easier means to get what they wanted.
All ordinary humans could do was the equivalent of a phone call—or prank call, to be precise. Mostly, demons simply ignored the summoning, unless they were bored, like Uncle Corriwyn, or pissed, like Dre was. As far as he could tell, the same group of humans had been trying to reach him at least six times during the past one-and-a-half weeks. That much he could sense through the weak bond caused by the ineffective spells they were using. He got up from the bright orange leather couch that Barion thought was the latest in fashion—and who was he to argue with his hip younger brother? Dre let his knuckles crack while he contemplated how to go about this. Barion watched him with interest.
“Are you going full demon on them? I’d love to see that!”
“Shut up. I don’t need comments from the peanut gallery.”
Dre pulled his black silk shirt over his head. There was no need to destroy a perfectly nice item of clothing. Then he closed his eyes and allowed his true form to burst through the thin veneer that hid it. He stretched from six foot seven to over eight foot tall. The silver hair that fell down his back turned into a broad stripe of silver scales that went from his head down to his ass. Dre unfolded his wings and knocked over a vase on the windowsill across the room.
“Hey, watch it!” Barion dove forward to catch the vase before it shattered on the ground. Since one of his talents was time-bending, he’d easily managed it.
Dre held up his hands to look at the beautiful silver patterns swirling over the red skin. His fangs prodded his lower lip and the claws on his toes made a clacking sound on the hardwood floor.
“Don’t you dare get any scratches in that wood, Dre! I mean it! Do you have any idea how long it took me to find the perfect planks for this room?”
Barion sounded almost hysterical, which had Dre resuming most of his human form within seconds. Nothing took the fun out of changing like the whining of an annoying little brother.
“You asked me if I’d go all demon on them.”
“Yeah, but I meant outside! Not here, where you act like a bull in a china store. You know it took me ages to get the house the way I wanted it.”
Dre sighed. Even though ‘house’ was a misleading term for the huge villa Barion had bought in the Carpathians, he knew how much work his little brother had dedicated to make the formerly run-down building splendid again. It was a little over the top for his own taste—he preferred the cozy cottage he had bought in Cornwall some three hundred years before—but Barion loved his new home and Dre would rather bite off his tongue than make his little brother sad.
“Sorry, Barion. I wasn’t thinking. I’ll go outside. See you tomorrow?”
Barion was still clutching the vase to his chest. “Yeah. See you tomorrow. Don’t overdo it.”
“Nah. I’m just going to give them a scare. I don’t feel like bloodshed today.”
Dre grinned at his brother before he made a cut into reality with one of the claws on his hands and stepped between space and time to follow the summoning.
* * * *
When Dre reappeared in a small, stinking room somewhere in the US, he was glad he hadn’t remembered to revert completely back to his demon form, because there was no way his wings would have fit in the place without knocking the—he squinted—remaining windows out. When he looked down at the floor where pieces of tile still stuck to the concrete that was full of disturbingly wide cracks, he wondered at which level they were and how long it would take until his weight became too much for the groaning structure beneath his feet.