Grace and Glory (The Harbinger #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,26
even voice my fear. He lifted his head toward me. “Some demons can change their appearance. You know this.”
I did. “But why would a demon change their appearance and give themselves angel wings?”
“Because they’re messed up like that? Fool someone into believing they’re seeing an angel when in reality they’re seeing a nightmare come to life,” he answered. “Let me see if I can figure out who this poor soul is.”
Looking around while Dez gently turned the guy on the side and went for a wallet, I took a deep breath and held it. My eyes burned. So did my nose and my throat. I wasn’t going to cry. Nope. Crying solved nothing. Dez could be right. A demon could’ve done this. It didn’t have to mean it was Zayne.
Because if it was, and Zayne had already taken a life, then was he already—
The air behind Dez rippled.
I cocked my head to the side. It could be my eyes. They were exhausted.
A moment later I knew it wasn’t my eyes.
The sudden awareness of a demon—a very powerful demon—hit me as static charged the atmosphere.
“Dez! Incoming!” I shouted, already moving. I leaped over the body, putting myself between the portal and Dez. The air stirred around me as Dez rose, spinning around.
A hot, fetid wind blew my hair back from my face as a huge, hulking form took shape in the space in front of me. For a moment, I thought it was a Hellion or Nightcrawler, and while those two things wouldn’t be something anyone should be glad to see, I was. I felt an answering pulse of grace. It tangled with all the anger and the desperation, and erupted into a need for violence.
But the second the demon took complete form, I knew it wasn’t a Hellion or Nightcrawler. The demon was something I’d never seen before.
Its skin was milky white and the body hairless. The bullet-shaped head was...well, it consisted of one crimson red eye, two quarter-size holes I guessed were a nose and one giant, round mouth full of rows of tiny shark teeth.
It looked like a giant worm—a giant, muscular worm with two arms and two legs.
“What in the world is this?” I asked.
“A Ghoul,” Dez snarled. “Flesh eaters. They also like to eat souls. Definitely forbidden to be topside. First one I’ve seen in real life.”
My gaze dropped, and I wanted to bleach my eyeballs. “And why are demons always naked?”
The Ghoul opened its mouth and garbled grunts and high-pitched squeals came out.
The sounds rose and then...then became words—mushy-sounding words I heard perfectly clear. “We are here for the nephilim.”
I rolled my eyes. They must’ve been sent by Gabriel. I guessed he wanted me under his tender, loving care until the Transfiguration. “Trueborn. The appropriate term is Trueborn.”
“We do not care,” the Ghoul replied, and before I could question the “we” part, the entire left side of its body stretched and sort of plopped out another Ghoul.
“What in the actual wide world of fu—?” I snapped my mouth shut as another popped out of the right side of its body.
“I think they left the replicating thing out of the textbooks,” Dez commented.
“You think?”
The one to the right of the main Ghoul went right at Dez. He was fast, spinning out of its grip. The other two came toward me.
I had my iron daggers on me still, but my grace was pushing at me. I wanted to use it. I’d moved past the idea of only using the grace in a worst-case scenario, having realized what I’d been taught and trained had been far more of a hindrance than my eyes.
But the problem with that was I didn’t have a bonded Protector any longer. I couldn’t pull strength to avoid the weakness that followed after using my grace. My nose would most likely bleed, possibly drawing more demons my direction even though it hadn’t the night before.
But not using my grace right now was okay.
I was more than happy to get stabby.
Pushing the grace down, I unsheathed my daggers. Adrenaline kicked my senses alive as the Ghouls charged me. Anticipation licked through me, my muscles tensing. I knew to keep a distance between us so they didn’t end up outside my constricted line of vision, and I waited until the last possible moment and then spun around, kicking out. My sneaker caught the Ghoul in a very unmentionable place. It shrieked, doubling over as I popped back up.