1
A scream split the night air.
I scuffed to a halt, the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
The voice was female, young, and human, with a sound of such utter fear and insane terror that it made my stomach churn and my guts shake.
I was out on my routine patrol of the city, keeping tabs on any unruly demon sightings and standing ready to vanquish any stinking bastard that stepped through the Veil and crossed into our world to make meals of unsuspecting humans. Contracted by the dark witch court, it was my job to keep watch on any supernatural baddie that was up to no good. The pay wasn’t great, but it was enough to get by.
It had been a quiet night until now.
I didn’t have the luxury of time to decide on a course of action. When I didn’t move quickly, people got killed. I’d been too slow with Julia, the girl whose parents had hired me to find her, and now she was dead. Killed by a Greater demon, no less.
Shit. I wasn’t a great sprinter, nor did I have the physique of a seasoned athlete, but I dashed towards the scream, pushing my legs as fast as they would go with a spell forming in my head. My hatred for demons wrestled with my fear, fueling me with adrenaline and an extra burst of speed.
I despised them. I hated them to the very depth of my soul. And I was going to fry their asses.
The scream came from the direction of East 14th Street around the corner of 1st Avenue. I raced toward the dark alley squished between Moe’s Vegetarian Lounge and The Pizza Shop, away from the light—always away from the light. To a demon, light was like sticking its finger in the flames of a fire. It burned them immediately.
Why did I always find myself in dark, dirty alleys with the demon of the hour? Because that’s how exciting my life was. Yay for me.
My heart thrashed in my chest as I ran across E 14th Street just as another scream cut through the air. Cars whined into motion, tires squealed and loud shouts were hurled from drivers as I maneuvered between them, the pounding of my heart loud over the revving engines.
“Watch it!” cried a voice.
“Idiot!”
“Crazy bitch!” shouted a driver from a gray SUV as its engine sputtered and caught, its wheels spinning on the pavement.
Smiling, I flipped him the bird and kept running.
Humans. Such an angry race.
Breathing hard, I leaped onto the sidewalk, zigzagged through a couple of humans in their mid-thirties and rushed towards the alley. If the humans had heard the scream, I saw no indication. Papers and plastic bags rattled and scraped over the streets in a sudden breeze, and the leaves in the trees rustled and sighed in the wind.
I reached the entrance to the alley, slipped through an opening in the chain link fence, and darted between several empty cardboard boxes and metal garbage bins. The air smelled of beer, piss and rot—the aroma of a night out on the town. Excellent.
I blinked as darkness hit me and I slowed to a walk. The alley was cloaked in darkness like a giant drape had blocked all the light from the street and neighboring buildings.
There was only one explanation for that—magic. Demonic magic.
My breath came faster as I felt something wrong, unnatural. An uneasy feeling ran over me, cold prickling along the nape of my neck and up my spine. I stood there for a minute, frowning while contemplating whether I should pull out my chalk. But if I couldn’t see, I couldn’t draw a summing circle either, so conjuring a demon from the Ars Goetia was out.
Damnit. Blinking, I strained to see through the darkness, but it was like standing in a closet with the lights out. I could make out shapes, but that’s where my vision ended.
Shit.
Pulse spiking, I flicked my gaze around, trying to pin down the source of the magic and the screaming human. I stepped forward with my hands splayed at my sides and a spell on the tip of my tongue.
The air was hot and stuffy, and I realized the wind had suddenly stopped. Now just pure, brittle and crystalline silence and darkness surrounded me.
Then I heard a struggling sound accompanied by a few frightened grunts before the screaming started again. Closer this time.
And then I was moving again. I acted without thinking, but I couldn’t help it. My instincts pulled me in the direction of that poor human. I had to reach her. I had to save her.
I sprinted into the alley as fast as I could through the darkness and toward the source of the sound, but I still couldn’t see anything. Only darkness stretched ahead of me as though I could go on for hours and not see a single thing. Possibly I was even trapped in this magical abyss.
Screw it. I had no choice.
“Hello?” I called as I halted and listened. “Hello, can you hear me? Where are you?”
A figure appeared through the darkness, short and plump, the silhouette of a small male or perhaps even a small female. It remained hunched before me, about twenty feet away, but I couldn’t make out the face or tell if it was human or demon.
The silhouette just stood there, giving me nothing. Great.
I tapped into the power of my sigil rings and held it with my will. “Hello?” I ventured. Yes, that sounded lame, but I needed to hear it speak before I started shooting off my magic. A dead human would look pretty bad on my record. A fried one, burnt to a nice, blackened and toasty crisp, was even worse.
And still the silhouette still didn’t move.
I let out a breath. “Listen, I don’t have all night. If you could just—”
An invisible force hit me. I never saw it coming, and I certainly never felt it coming either.
It struck me with the force of a linebacker on steroids. Despite my prepared spell, I didn’t even have time to deflect it. Instead, it felt like a giant had slugged me with one of his massive hands head-on, driving me straight back.
I flew several feet through the air, hit the pavement with my back, and then clipped my head. My breath exploded out of my lungs as I scraped another ten feet along the alley floor.
Ouch. What the hell was that?
I tried to muster a breath but my lungs didn’t seem able to manage it yet. I blinked in the darkness as white stars swirled around in my vision. A sliver of panic slipped through me as the idea of facing another Greater demon formed in my mind. Damnit. After all that had happened with Vargal, you’d think I’d have been more prepared.
Finally, I managed to take a gulp of air, panting as my lungs formed.
“Son of a bitch,” I wheezed as I rolled to my feet. The world tilted and I did my best not to fall flat on my face. Because that would look totally amateurish. And I was a professional.
Granted, that demon had some serious magical skill. Ten to one, I’d even go so far as to say he was more powerful than me. Yeah. I was having a great night.
Still, I wasn’t about to let some degenerate demon kill me. Not while I still drew breath and had a human to save.
With my jaw gritted, I tapped into my sigil rings again, drawing power from them. Energy coursed through me, filling my veins with the staggering feeling of strength and magic.
My eyes narrowed, and my fingers splayed as I gestured. “Come on, you bastard!” I cried, trying to see through the darkness, but my eyes would never settle on anything solid. “Where are you? Afraid of a little witch?” I waited, adrenaline spiking through my veins as I listened for a single scrape of a foot on the pavement so I could blast him.
A wind rose around me, and then the darkness lifted.