didn’t seem to notice Alec at all. “Pretty Mark came to see Joey.”
“You piss on me again,” she warned, pushing to her feet, “and I’ll kick your ass.”
“Joey’s ass is stone, Pretty Mark. Pretty Mark break foot kicking Joey’s ass.” The tengu laughed, still hopping in a frenzied jig to some tune only he could hear.
“My foot’s bigger,” Alec rumbled.
The tengu looked at him and a smile split his face. “Cain, Cain, good to see you again.”
“You know him?” Eve asked, stepping closer.
“Hell if I know. Without any details, I can’t tell.”
“What do we do?”
“Capture him.”
She snorted. “How are we supposed to do that?”
“Pretty Mark want to dance?” Joey cried, then he lunged at her.
Alec leaped between them, grunting against the vicious impact of hard, heavy stone to his gut. He hit the deck on his back and rolled with the writhing tengu. A brick safety ledge surrounded the roof’s perimeter and they crashed into it with a jolting thud.
The creature was hot to the touch, charged by the evil of the hellfire. As Alec grappled with the wriggling demon, his bare palms sizzled. The stench of burning flesh filled the air and he briefly considered tossing the damn tengu over the edge to shatter into pieces on the ground below. But he needed him intact so they could study him.
What the hell was it?
Aided by weight and his small size, the tengu crawled up Alec’s torso. As he rose with both hands fisted together as a mallet and prepared to swing, Eve lashed out with a swift kick. Her boot caught the tengu in the face and sent him flying. Screaming, it crashed into the bonfire.
“We’ve got to put the flames out.” Alec leaped to his feet. “It will keep recharging him, and we’ll wear out before he does.”
The tengu vaulted from the flames as a red-hot missile, and Eve ducked. He overshot and crashed into a van-sized air conditioner. A pipe feeding into the unit broke, spilling water across the roof.
“Will that work?” she asked.
“Only if it’s holy.”
“How the fuck are we supposed to get holy water up here?” She kicked droplets at the fire. The tengu disengaged from the massive dent he’d made in the AC unit and came running for Eve, screeching unintelligible words.
“Give me a second to work on that.” Alec tackled the crazed demon before he reached her.
Eve stared in horrified fascination. The two combatants were so disparate in size, yet seemed almost evenly matched. Alec definitely had his hands full. She glanced around for anything that could be used as a makeshift weapon.
“Adjutorium nostrun in nomine—” Alec shouted. “—Domini.”
“What?” She raced around the air conditioner and was thrust backward with stunning strength. With the wind knocked from her, Eve could only gape up at the creature who sat on her. It was another tengu.
“I kill you,” the tengu said, in a lilting feminine voice so at odds with her frightening visage.
Alec continued to yell at his opponent in what Eve guessed was Latin. She yanked her head to the side as the tengu swung at her. The sound of the metal roof rending near her ear was deafening and painful, but the pain dissipated as quickly as it came. Using the tengu’s forward momentum, Eve tossed the heavy creature over her head and rolled to her belly. She scrambled to her feet, barely managing to gain her footing before the tengu was after her again.
“Alec!” she yelled, kicking the demon and sending her skidding through the growing lake of water. Eve was sick of being wet. Totally sick of it.
The tengu slid into the fire and popped up a moment later, laughing. Alec threw his tengu into the other one, causing a collision that cracked off the leg of one and the arm of the other. The two collected their missing appendages and leaped into the fire.
Standing over the gushing water, Alec made the sign of the cross. “Commixtio salis et aquæ pariter fiat in nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.”
His voice rose in volume, the words rolling off his tongue in a richly nuanced incantation. Eve turned to the broken air conditioner, hoping her superstrength was fully operational. She grabbed the end of the broken water pipe and yanked hard, ripping a piece free. Wielding the section like a bat, she pivoted. “Joey” barreled toward her and she dispatched him with a home run hit that sent him flying over the lip of the roof. The pipe was ruined by the