The Brightest Embers. Jeaniene Frost

chuff and squared off on her. He wouldn’t tolerate anyone threatening us, human or otherwise.

      Something about the noise he made caused the woman to blanch, as if on an instinctive level she sensed the predator he really was. If she could see Brutus’s real form behind the seagull disguise, she wouldn’t just pale. She’d piss herself.

      “No,” I told Brutus, yanking on his harness for emphasis. To the woman, I said, “You’re in shock. He didn’t kill anyone. There’s no one else here but the three of us.”

      “There is!” she snapped. “He’s right there—”

      She stopped in midsentence when the minion crumbled into ashes before her eyes. Adrian got up, shaking the blood off his right hand while brushing the ashes from his jeans with his left. Soon, the blood on him turned to ashes, too, and all of those dark specks began to slowly blow away in the breeze.

      “That’s...that’s not possible,” the woman whispered.

      “Like I said, you’re in shock from the shooting,” I went on. “The mind plays tricks on people when that happens. Go home, be with your family and don’t think about this again.”

      More people were starting to peek around the cars they’d been hiding behind. It wouldn’t be long before an ambulance showed up, which would be good for the wounded girl, but the police would soon follow, and that was a hassle we didn’t need.

      Adrian knew it, too. “Time to go,” he said, taking my arm. Then he stopped, cursing when he saw my leg. “You’ve been hit.”

      “Flesh wound,” I said, which was true, although it didn’t help with how much it hurt.

      Adrian picked me up. “There’s manna in the van,” he said, striding away from the onlookers. “We’ll get you fixed up on the way to the hotel.”

      We’d parked the van at the back of the lot, where a big tree had shaded it from the sunlight Brutus hated so much. One look at it, though, and I knew we wouldn’t be leaving in that.

      “Brutus killed it, too,” I said, sighing at the missing side door and the long, rending claw marks. No way were we getting our security deposit back.

      Adrian set me down and pulled our duffel bag out of the ruined van, then emptied the glove box of our paperwork.

      “Brutus can fly us back,” he told me, taking the small plastic bag out of the duffel bag. It looked like it contained crumpled-up sugar cookies, but the substance that Adrian smeared on my leg wasn’t baked goods. It was the famed bread of heaven that had sustained the Israelites for over forty years in the desert. Only, manna was good for a lot more than food. It could also heal anything except for a mortal wound.

      I cast a dubious look at the not-quite-dark sky. “That’s a lot of exposure. Why risk it when we can take a cab?”

      “We need to get back before dark,” he said, picking me up and carrying me even though the manna would heal me in another few moments. Brutus easily kept pace with Adrian’s rapid strides, his big head swiveling around to check for danger.

      “What’s the rush? We don’t have to worry about being outside after dark anymore. There are no more demons in our world, remember?”

      “Maybe, maybe not,” he responded, his pace increasing. “It’s possible some of them managed to stay behind here.”

      “What?” I burst out. “How? You told me demons couldn’t stand our realm for long. It’s been over four weeks since the gateways slammed shut, so any demons stranded on our side should be dead by now!”

      “Not if they’re on cursed earth,” he countered, heading for a cluster of trees. “You remember the demon I trapped beneath that old chapel? I cursed the ground he was on so he could stand being in our realm, even beneath a church. Demons had advance warning that you were going after Moses’s staff, and they knew it could close the gateways. Some of them could’ve cursed sections of ground in this world as safe places in case you succeeded, which you did.”

      This was the first I was hearing about the possibility of demons still being in our world. Why hadn’t he told me before?

      I didn’t have a chance to ask that, let alone any of the other questions that sprang to mind. Adrian hoisted me onto Brutus’s back with a muttered “Damn, sun’s almost down.” Then he jumped behind me, grabbing the reins and shouting, “Tarate!”

      The gargoyle took off, leaving the Mother See’s complex of buildings, churches and museums below us. The sky stretched out in front of us, the few remaining dusky shades of sunset darkening into the bluish-black haze of night.

      I told myself it looked nothing like when a demon realm swallowed a place in our world, and mostly, I was right. Still, I couldn’t shake my feeling of foreboding as the darkness spread until it snuffed out the last remains of the light. Something bad was coming with that darkness, I could feel it.

      And if Adrian was right, that something might be demons.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      OUR HOTEL HAD been more than thirty minutes away by car. By air, it took less than fifteen. Adrian used the GPS on his smartwatch to find it, since you couldn’t see street signs from this height, then had Brutus land on the hotel’s roof. That allowed us more privacy for our unusual arrival. Even though there were other buildings around, most people didn’t spend their evenings staring up at the night sky.

      “Did you try Jasmine and Costa again?” Adrian asked as one hard kick broke the lock on the roof’s only door.

      “Yes. Still no answer.”

      I tried to control my rising fear. Maybe they’d gone out on a date. My sister and Costa thought we didn’t know that they’d started seeing each other, but we did. We were just waiting for them to admit it to us.

      “Wait here with Brutus,” Adrian said curtly. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Any sign of danger, have him fly you away.”

      “No way,” I snapped. “If a demon is somehow here, I’m not leaving you, Jasmine and Costa alone to deal with it.”

      “If one is, you’re in the most danger,” he shot back. “If nothing’s wrong, you only waste ten minutes up here while I make sure that Costa and Jasmine are ignoring their phones because they’re too busy having fun.”

      “But I’m the only one who has this,” I said, pointing at the slingshot embedded in my right arm. “This can kill demons, so I’m going with you. End of discussion.”

      His features hardened in a way that said he wasn’t listening. I started to shove past him, but he pushed me back and said a word in Demonish I’d never heard before.

      Brutus snatched me around the waist and pulled me back against him. His arms crossed around my midsection when I tried to wrest away, and pounding against them was as effective as trying to chop down trees with my bare hands.

      “Ten minutes,” Adrian said over my furious demands to be released. “If I’m not back by then, leave.”

      With that, he disappeared into the staircase. I continued my struggles while cursing both Adrian and Brutus. The gargoyle whined as if in apology, but his unbreakable grip didn’t loosen. After a few minutes, I realized that all my struggles were doing was giving me a nice set of bruises.

      Still, I wasn’t about to give up. I was destiny-bound to save people, dammit! Not to stand by and let others do the fighting for me. Brutus apparently couldn’t be berated into releasing me, but maybe there was another way.

      “Who’s a good boy?” I suddenly asked, ceasing my struggles.

      Brutus’s whine changed, sounding less sorry and more hopeful. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I also felt his back end start to shift from side to side. Over the past couple months, I’d