“I wish.” Pazuzu sighed. “Irkalla is the afterlife, where the dead go to roam. It’s nothing but dust and ash at home. I rarely get the chance to come out and play.” He spread his arms wide. “Yet here I am, ready to change it up. So here’s the deal. I was promised your bloode. If you give it willingly, I’ll let your mate go and stop chewing on her soul. If not, we fight. And by the time we’re done, I’ll have eaten her up. She’s delicious, by the way.”
Orion glanced at Kaia and saw her wan features and fading essence in danger. “I’ll kill you.”
“Boy, you can’t,” Pazuzu said, almost kindly. “I have been alive for thousands of years. Even if my body leaves this plane, it will go back to Irkalla. I am destined to guide and guard the lands of my people. But with Kaia’s soul, I’ll have enough power for a quick rebirth.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Orion had no idea what his kin were up to, but Pazuzu needed to be stopped.
“Because I feel cheated, to be honest.” Pazuzu removed a handkerchief from his inner pocket and dabbed at his mouth. “She is tasty.” He turned it to show Orion a hint of blood.
Instead of rushing the demon, Orion waited, using his brain for once because Kaia kept shouting in his mind, and he couldn’t make out her words or intent, though he could see her blood slowing, her wrists seeming to fuse to the bone spears sticking out of them. This he noticed out of the corner of his eye, not wanting the demon to see.
“Why do you feel cheated?”
“Because I was promised a rather tasty soul, and she left when I wasn’t looking.” Pazuzu frowned at Kaia. “And this one isn’t—” He dodged the fist Orion shot at his face and smiled, his face looking almost canine for a moment, with a muzzle, large eyes, and even larger teeth, before he resumed his human form.
“Excellent. Well, then, vrykolakas, bring me your rage while I consume your female.”
Orion stopped, not sure why his kin wanted him to distract the demon when everything he did only gave Pazuzu more time to eat his fucking mate. “Take me instead.”
Pazuzu paused. “Really? Even if it means your end? Even if means ending the world?” He smiled wide, showing sharp teeth. “Fascinating. Very well. Come here, boy.”
“Call me boy again and I’ll rip your dick off and feed it to you.”
“Now that’s a knee-slapper.” Pazuzu chuckled and literally slapped his knee. “Kneel.”
Orion hurried forward and knelt, anticipating the pain. But the agony was worse than anything he’d ever felt when the demon reached into his chest and put a fist around his heart.
And squeezed.
Kraft didn’t like what he was seeing. The sea witch had driven away in her car while Orion battled the demon on the roof. He had no idea what condition Kaia might be in, but he did know the jagged portal in the basement that kept growing could not be a good thing.
“This is what we need to stop from entering our world,” Varu growled. “It smells of death and rot.”
“And life too.” A voice deeper and louder than Kraft’s ears could comfortably hear made him cringe and shake his head to rid himself of the pain.
Next to him, Khent grimaced. “A god.”
“Yes, and soon your god, my children.” A massive serpentine tail came through the void, with jagged ridges, what looked like teeth, on one side of it. The thing couldn’t possibly fit inside the room, and then it didn’t have to, as the cavernous basement became a cavern in truth, several stories in height and deeper than Kraft could see, darkness eating at the endless distance beyond.
Scents and sounds grew muffled, only Khent and Varu any color in the monochrome of gray all around. Except for the demon who continued to move forward.
Another tail with teeth joined the other, acting as legs for the green-scaled and black-furred torso that arrived before the creature’s giant human arms, feathery wings, and head finally came through.
“So much to experience,” the creature said and shrunk, so that he was no longer fifty feet tall, but twenty feet, closer to its prey—vampires.
“Who are you?” Varu asked, their badass patriarch not taking one step back. No fear, no give, that was their master strigoi.
“I am Hanbi, your father, child. You are my eyes now, my teeth.” The jagged spikes between his snake legs chittered, and Kraft stared, mesmerized, at a predator who impressed the hell—no pun intended—out of him.
He shifted into his wolf and sniffed, then sneezed and shifted back. “Kumpel, you stink.”
Hanbi turned to look down at him, his face a stone mask of evil, dark smoke wafting from the sockets where his eyes should be. He had a man’s face with long hair made of black feathers and a mouth with rows upon rows of teeth.
He laughed, and the boom of eternal damnation sang from his throat. “So I do. So will you when we are one, little brother.” He paused, and Kraft swore Hanbi shimmered, transparent before becoming solid once more. “I hunger.”
He reached for Kraft but had to battle Khent’s attack with a white, shining sword.
It hit Hanbi, slicing his arm off, which vanished when it hit the ground. Hanbi didn’t bleed. His arm regrew, his hand now equipped with sharp talons, each with four digits, all ending in black nails a foot long.
“Keep him busy,” Varu said and vanished.
“Oh, nice.” Kraft snarled and avoided the giant serpent teeth trying to decapitate him as he ripped into Hanbi’s wing. He made contact and chewed through feathery skin that tasted like ass and melted like snow in his mouth. He spat out the offensive texture only to realize it had vanished as if it had never been. But while distracted by that weird taste, he let Hanbi smack him so far away he could no longer see Khent or the demon god and hit something hard and sharp that caused him to bleed.
“Shit.” He listened and heard Khent in the distance, so much gray all around him beginning to blend, no longer the pale outline of trees and villages, animals and people with no life left to give.
And then the real demons ventured forth, drawn to the bloode that poured from his shoulder and wouldn’t stop.
“My children, I bring you a present.” Hanbi’s voice echoed all around, and Kraft raced toward Khent’s faint swearing as he called for Kraft to stop dicking around.
With a grin, Kraft shifted into his wolf and ran as if his life depended on it. And when the demons came after him in droves, he knew it did.
Kaia could feel the pain coursing through Orion as he let that bastard Pazuzu rip into his very core. It felt as if he were tearing her in half as well, tied as she was to her mate. When he tried to sever their link, to keep her free from his burden of pain, she doubled down, gripping him with all the love she had inside her.
Their bond remained, and she gasped as she felt herself begin to die.
She’d been able to seal her wrists when Orion had come, but now she’d healed around creepy—unsanitary—bones that felt like they’d been dipped in acid.
“Now this is interesting,” came a low voice that would have scared her into a scream if the stranger hadn’t put a hand over her mouth.
She glanced at a tall, dark, and extremely handsome male with red eyes. A vampire, and by the look and feel of his immense power, she sensed he was Orion’s patriarch—Varujan. She had yet to meet him, having been so busy having sex and all.