Hunting Fiends for the Ill-Equipped (The Guild Codex Demonized #3) - Annette Marie Page 0,64
after him. Twitchy apprehension wound into my muscles. We’d found more than a clue about the sorcerers—we’d found the prize. The stolen pages I’d feared we’d never recover. How had the sorcerers gotten them from Claude? Or had Claude never had them?
Either way, I now needed to escape with them.
I pocketed my phone and crept to the door, Zylas behind me. Cracking it open, I peered into the dark alley. Zylas leaned into my back as he too peered outside, his vision better suited to spotting enemies.
“Go toward the busy, noisy place,” he whispered. “Quickly.”
As I sucked in a deep breath, he dissolved into light and returned to the infernus. I flung the door open and rushed into the alley. With not a soul in sight, a notch of my tension released. I quickened my pace, making a beeline for the busy street at the bottom of the hill.
A man appeared on the sidewalk and turned into the alley. Fear skittered through me, but I could tell he wasn’t one of the sorcerer twins. A white beard covered his lower face, and he had the thick middle of an older man who’d once been fit.
Exhaling unsteadily, I continued down the alley as the old man headed uphill, a hat pulled low to protect his ears from the chilly wind. We drew closer to each other, and I resisted the urge to veer toward the edge of the pavement, holding my course in the alley’s center.
We drew level with each other. One more step and I’d be past him.
His hand swung up and pressed against the binder clutched to my chest, the unexpected push bringing me to a stumbling halt. His chin rose, bearded face turning toward me.
“That binder,” he said in a gravelly voice as our gazes met, “doesn’t belong to you.”
I stared into his eyes—unnaturally pale blue and framed by white lashes. My heart hammered in my chest.
“Actually,” I whispered, my petrified throat scarcely able to make a sound, “it does.”
Twisting away from his hand, I leaped sideways, stumbled, then bolted downhill. If he was an abjuration sorcerer like the twins, then all his artifacts were built for demon combat. He wouldn’t have anything that could stop a human. All I had to do was reach the busy street and—
I didn’t see where the new man had come from until his arm had snapped into my path. His forearm struck my upper chest. I slammed into the pavement on my back, the impact seizing my lungs.
My assailant leaned over me—a familiar, pale face with no expression. As I struggled to breathe, footsteps thumped closer. Another face appeared, identical to the first except for his eager grin and the half-healed scratches on his cheek.
The old man joined them, his cold eyes assessing, and staring up at all three men, I finally understood. Not immortal sorcerers who hadn’t aged since the twenty-two-year-old photo with Claude. The twins were the children of the albino man in the photo.
The father and his adult sons contemplated me like hunters appreciating their catch, then the grinning twin reached down, aiming for my throat.
Crimson blazed from my chest. Zylas appeared, a foot on either side of me and claws slashing.
“Ori unum!”
The incantation rang out from all three men, and Zylas’s claws scraped across a trio of blue shields. He dropped and swung his leg into the shins of a twin. Rolling, he slammed into the ankles of the second twin, and both fell. His claws ripped into the calf of the nearer sorcerer.
“Ori quinque!”
The father’s spell hurled Zylas backward—opening a gap so the sorcerers could unleash their arsenal without fear of Zylas’s claws.
“Ori eruptum impello!” I yelled.
A silver dome expanded from my artifact and blasted all three sorcerers away from me. They crashed down on the pavement, and Zylas lunged for the nearest one.
“Ori unum!” he shouted.
Zylas pivoted, ducked, and slashed for his unprotected knee.
“Ori quattuor!”
Indigo spikes exploded from the other twin. Zylas leaped back, the barrage pelting the ground in front of me. They passed through the fallen sorcerer, harmless to anyone but a demon.
“Ori quinque!”
Another silvery blast flung Zylas off his feet. He landed in a skid, claws dragging across the ground and teeth bared. I shoved to my feet, panic choking off my air.
“Ori duo!”
“Ori quattuor!”
“Ori quinque!”
The spells, shouted almost in unison, struck too fast for Zylas to recover. He pitched over, glowing spikes peppering his limbs.
With a wild look around, I bolted away from the fight—racing for the busy street. If I