option. Why would we? The MPD had stomped out the already rare practice so thoroughly that it’d become an urban legend.
On top of that, I couldn’t imagine a demon mage hiding in a guild and passing himself off as a regular mythic. Madness was a notorious symptom of demon magery. After all, how could a human with an unwilling demon stuffed into their body for the sole purpose of giving them access to the demon’s powerful magic not descend into some level of derangement?
None of Tori’s friends struck me as power-hungry, demon-harboring madmen, but I wasn’t ruling out the possibility—especially when it came to the quiet, unusually scarred Ezra Rowe.
“Have you asked Ezra?” Zora prompted.
“Not yet.”
“Hmm.” She slid her phone out of her pocket. “He’ll be busy disabling golems right about now, but …” Her thumbs flashed across her phone screen. “There. Sent.”
“Sent?” Alarm shot through me. “What’s sent?”
“An email.” She grinned. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t text him in the middle of a dangerous raid.”
Something close to terror flitted through my chest. Not good. Not good at all. The last thing I wanted was Ezra’s attention before we figured out what was going on with the three mages.
Glowing red eyes appeared between two trees, then Zylas slunk into the faint moonlight leaking through the bare branches overhead. Zora’s hand inched toward her sword hilt, but she caught herself and lowered her arm.
He dropped into a crouch, joining our small circle, his gaze fixed on the sorceress. “Your fight strategy, it is to disable the golems first?”
It took her a moment to react to his question, disbelief wrinkling her forehead all over again. A demon speaking took some getting used to.
“Yes,” she belatedly confirmed.
“You said the golems are in one place.”
She nodded.
“They are not in one place.”
A pulse of confused silence.
“What?” she demanded. “What do you mean?”
“I went all over.” He waved at the stevedoring operation, which spanned twenty city blocks. “I could smell the demon blood in the golems. I found them in lis places. Five places,” he corrected. “Most are close to a building with many hh’ainun in it.”
Zora’s face went ghostly pale in the silvery moonlight. “Are you sure? Absolutely sure?”
“Of course, talÅ«k,” he growled irritably.
I squinted at him. “What did you just call her?”
His tail snapped against the ground. “It is a mean word. You would not like it.”
I started to apologize to Zora for my demon’s bad manners, but she already had her phone to her ear. I could hear faint ringing, then a male voice answered.
“Andrew,” she replied, biting off the words in her urgency, “contact the team leads and tell them the golems are not all in the warehouse. Do you copy that? At least part of the golem supply has been moved.”
She listened. “Yes, tell them it might be an ambush. They need to be ready for the worst. Can you reach Darius?” A pause, then she bit off a curse. “If phone signals are poor, get Bryce on it. You have six”—she checked her watch—“five minutes. Start with Kai, Aaron, and Tabitha.”
Ending the call, she turned back to Zylas. “Where is the largest collection of golems?”
He considered her, then pointed over her shoulder. “By a building. That way.”
“Can you get us there unseen?”
“Var.”
She looked at me, brow scrunched.
“That means yes,” I translated. “But Zora, we’re supposed to be looking for Claude.”
“We’re supposed to ensure our guildmates survive,” she retorted, pushing to her feet. “If the golems have been moved, that means the enemy knows we’re coming. It’s a trap. We have to help.”
I nodded. “Amalia, you should go, uh, get in position.” The words seemed silly, but that was the proper terminology, wasn’t it?
She hefted the pair of binoculars hanging around her neck. “You got it. Don’t forget your earpiece so you can actually hear me if I spot anything.”
With a quick wave, she hurried out of the trees and toward a high fence topped with barbed wire. Beyond it, cylindrical reservoirs, three stories tall, rose above everything else, a metal staircase running along the side of each one. She started to climb the fence, her feet slipping on the post, and Zylas snickered.
I nudged him with my elbow and shot him a pointed look. He scowled at me. I gave him an even firmer stare.
Growling under his breath, he shoved up and trotted out of the trees. He grabbed Amalia by the waist, yanked her off the fence, and threw her over his armored shoulder. One impossible jump later, he dropped