Slaying Monsters for the Feeble - Annette Marie Page 0,23

Daimon, anastethi.

At my command, glowing light spilled down to the floor and formed the demon’s shape. He solidified beside me, eyes already narrowed with fury.

“Someone beat us here and searched everything,” I informed him brusquely. “Check the house for danger.”

A long moment passed where he didn’t react.

Crimson radiance erupted. His body dissolved into light and sucked into the infernus, leaving me and Amalia alone in the townhouse.

“What are you doing?” I growled at the infernus. “Zylas!”

“Now you’ve done it!” Amalia threw her hands up. “Of course he won’t help after that. Ugh.”

“Zylas! Daimon, anastethi!”

Red light blazed. It spilled to the floor, reforming his shape—then blurred. The power streaked back into the infernus.

“Get out here, Zylas!”

“You’re as immature as he is,” Amalia snapped, stomping away. “Let’s just hurry up and search this mess.”

I glared at her, then shook the infernus, imagining a two-inch-tall Zylas bouncing around inside it like a pinball.

“You’re horrible,” I hissed at the silver pendant. “Completely useless. We don’t need your help anyway.”

Amalia’s remark about my maturity echoed in my head and I scowled. Dropping the infernus against my chest, I stormed over to the wreckage of the desk. My anger faded into hopelessness as I knelt and gathered the papers. There wasn’t much, mostly scraps with handwritten reminders in a masculine print. “Email so-and-so” and “pick up such-and-such.”

I shuffled through a few printouts of flights and hotels, all months old. As I tossed them down, a glimpse of white caught the corner of my eye—a page that had slid under the desk. Pinching the corner, I tugged it out and flipped it over.

The MPD logo filled the top left corner, and I recognized the layout immediately—a mythic profile. All registered mythics could be looked up in the MPD archives, though the amount of information displayed depended on your clearance level. Being a nobody, I could see only a mythic’s name and current guild. Someone like a GM could see everything the MPD had ever logged.

This page was the latter kind. It showed the mythic’s photo, name, age, description, class, guild history, job and bounty history, even criminal charges—none, in this case. I brushed my finger across the mythic’s name, utterly bewildered by the familiar face in the photo.

“‘Ezra Rowe,’” I read in a whisper.

The bold white scar that cut down his face from hairline to cheek was hard to forget. He was one of Tori’s mage friends who had fled the scene after Tahēsh’s death. One of the mythics Zylas had said carried the scent of demon magic.

Getting on my hands and knees, I searched all around the desk. Either Claude hadn’t printed out anything on the other two mages, or whoever had trashed the townhouse had already taken the additional printouts. I sat back on my heels, scanning Ezra’s profile. What did Claude know about the mysterious three mages who smelled like demon magic?

A clatter sounded from the other end of the townhouse. Rising to my feet, I folded the paper and stuffed it in my back pocket. Lost in thought, I hurried past the staircase and into the eat-in kitchen.

“Amalia, I just found—”

I broke off, my mouth hanging open. That clatter hadn’t been Amalia searching the kitchen. It had been the sound of the front door opening.

A strange man swung the door shut with a thump. Tall, thin, with short black hair and opaque sunglasses perched on his nose, the lenses reflecting my white face back at me from across the kitchen. His dark windbreaker was open, revealing a blue sweater underneath. I had no idea who he was.

“What’s this?” the man murmured. “A little mouse wandering about?”

I inched backward, silently panicking. I’d been caught breaking and entering. Was this man a mythic? An MPD agent? A friend of Claude’s? A—

He used one finger to push his sunglasses up.

—a vampire?

I gawked at his reverse-colored eyes, the sclera black as pitch with a blank white circle in the center. A vampire. A vampire had just walked into Claude’s apartment.

“Scared, little mouse?” he breathed.

Only when he spoke did I realize he’d covered half the distance between us. My gaze was locked on his eerie stare and I couldn’t look away.

He drifted closer. I needed to move. I needed to run.

“They say ‘fight or flight,’ little mouse, but the most common response to a predator”—his lips pulled into a smile, revealing the fangs that curved down from his upper jaw—“is to freeze.”

He lunged for me.

“Zylas!” I screamed, throwing myself backward.

Red light blazed over my infernus. Zylas appeared in