Slaying Monsters for the Feeble - Annette Marie Page 0,70
“Do not stand and wait for the hunter to attack. Look and search and move.”
My heart thudded unsteadily as I moved my legs in the same pattern as his, our steps matching and his hands guiding me. We shifted down the alley, backs to the wall, and I understood what he was showing me—how to scan for danger while moving away from it at the same time.
A dozen paces from the main street, he stopped.
“Now you are safe.” He leaned over my shoulder, his face beside mine. “Do not find the hunter, drādah. Escape the hunter.”
I released a slow breath, strangely aware of his hands on my shoulders. “Someday, I want to fight the hunter like you do.”
“You must learn to be hunted before you can learn to hunt.”
Craning my neck to see him, our noses almost touching, I asked, “Did you learn to be hunted?”
“Var. When I was smaller than you.”
I imagined a child-sized Zylas, small horns poking out of tousled black hair and big crimson eyes glowing in a boyish face.
“No horns, drādah. We do not have horns until much older.”
I removed them from my mental picture. “How’s that? Also, get out of my head.”
“Do not throw your thoughts at me, then.” He nudged me toward the sidewalk as he checked his tail was once again hidden under his oversized sweater. “The scent ends at nothing. They did not go this way.”
We rejoined Amalia, and Zylas resumed tracking. After another block, his steps slowed again, but not because the trail had split. He cast back and forth on the sidewalk, annoying several passersby, then backtracked.
He relocated the trail and continued another fifty feet, only to lose it again. Three times we backtracked and each time he lost the scent. We made it another block, but even crouching to sniff at the ground—that earned us some strange looks—he couldn’t get a hold on the trail.
“Too many hh’ainun,” he complained, sitting on his haunches in the middle of the sidewalk. Confused pedestrians split to pass us on either side. “I cannot—”
“Out of the way,” a man in a heavy winter parka snapped, hip-checking Zylas in the shoulder—or trying to.
Instead, he bounced off the sturdy demon, stumbled, and stepped off the curb. An oncoming car swerved away from him. A horn blared, then a loud bang as two vehicles collided. Screeching tires, then a third car rear-ended the first one. Traffic slammed to a halt, both lanes blocked. A chorus of honking filled the street.
“Na, drādah,” Zylas remarked, rising to his full height while I gaped at the accident, “maybe hh’ainun are too slow for this too.”
I grabbed his wrist, Amalia grabbed his other arm, and we dragged him away from the collision as the drivers got out of their cars, shouting at each other. Zylas cackled under his breath.
“Don’t you dare cause any more accidents,” I warned him. “We need to focus.”
“The scent is gone.” He shrugged. “I can only smell hh’ainun and the stink of vehicles.”
My shoulders drooped in defeat. “We can’t just give up.”
“Trying to do this at lunch hour was dumb,” Amalia declared. “We should give the rush a chance to die down. Carlo’s is near here, isn’t it? I haven’t eaten there in forever.”
“Carlo’s?” I echoed.
“Amazing calzones. Come on.”
I followed her around the corner. Two blocks up the street, a red sign with white lettering announced Carlo’s Calzones. As we neared, the mouthwatering scent of warm pizza permeated the chilly breeze. The restaurant’s door swung open and closed with a steady stream of customers.
Gripping Zylas’s sleeve, I slowed, searching for an alley or out-of-the-way corner where he could return to the infernus. A solid wall of skyscrapers lined the street, with ground-level businesses facing the sidewalk. People everywhere.
“Amalia,” I called, “we need to go back and find an alley.”
She turned, frowning impatiently. “But we’re already here.”
“We can’t bring him inside.”
Her frown deepened as she looked up and down the street. “But there’s nowhere he can …”
Nowhere he could dissolve into crimson power and possess a small pendant—a phenomenon we couldn’t allow anyone to witness. My brow scrunched as I peered up at Zylas.
And that’s how we ended up taking a demon out to lunch.
Five minutes later, I was sitting beside Zylas in a cramped booth in the back corner of the packed restaurant. Conversations buzzed all around us, but all I could think was that my demon was sitting beside me, in full view of about a hundred people.