“Myrddin wants the negotiations to go well.” Quinn looked a little exasperated.
Zoey’s hands came down and went to her hips, and I knew she was getting ready to fight. “Is that why he put a thrall stone in the back of your skulls?”
“Well, it’s really more in the front,” Dean explained. “You see there’s this part of the brain…”
“There’s no stone in my brain,” Daniel argued.
“I would know if there was something wrong with my mind.” Quinn was shaking his head. “Hello, ancient god inside. He knows when things go wrong.”
“He wouldn’t know about this if it was done properly. I would use a stasis chamber. I would convince you there was something wrong with you and naturally you would need someone to stabilize you. Once I had you in stasis I could easily inject the thrall stone. Did your wife convince you to do it?” Erna crossed her arms over her chest and seemed not so concerned that there was a demon halfheartedly making his way to us. “She must have paid a powerful witch.”
“I told you it wasn’t me,” Zoey insisted.
I moved toward the barrier. The demon had fallen, but it looked like he knew how to get up.
“Myrddin would never have done something like that…what are we talking about?” Daniel asked.
“Someone got stoned,” Dev replied as though it was perfectly natural to forget an important argument. “Or something like it. I can’t wait for Myrddin to find us. I want to get home. Do you think he’ll help us break Summer out?”
“It gets worse when the thrall stone realizes someone knows about it.” Dean had moved to stand beside me.
“It thinks?” I didn’t like the idea. Of course there wasn’t a lot I liked about the situation, including the fact that the demon kept coming.
“Daniel, Myrddin set you up,” Zoey was insisting.
“I think the Planeswalker knows we’re here,” Dean said quietly beside me. “Are you going to talk to it? Erna was right. They typically don’t cause trouble, but this doesn’t look like a typical Planeswalker.”
“Myrddin set me up to succeed,” Daniel said.
Oh, I was going to stay out of this particular situation altogether. Like even when we eventually got back to the Earth plane, I was hiding away. I did not want to be the one to tell the most powerful witch in the world that she likely had spent the last decade of her life humping a guy because he’d given her the ultimate roofie. That’s what the queen was going to have to do. As for me, I was going to do what I did best. Go and deal with something weird and creepy that might try to kill me.
It wasn’t like my boss would notice. He was way too busy arguing with his wife about being stoned.
“Hey, uhm, I don’t know that you should do this.” Dean jogged to keep up with me. “Like Erna said, it probably won’t get in.”
“Nah, it knows we’re here. It’s trying to find us.” I knew when something was coming for me. You say paranoid. I say I’m not dead yet. I stopped at the edge of the barrier. From this side I could see it. It was a shimmer that let me know where safety stopped and danger began.
The demon fell, knees hitting the ground.
Even on its damn knees it was likely the same height I was.
“Your mom met one of these things?” I asked Dean.
“Yeah. Going to be honest, I always kind of thought she was exaggerating. Turns out that really is scary as hell.” Dean turned to me. “It looks like it’s done.”
The demon had slumped down as though it could no longer function.
Dean sighed. “But you’re going to talk to it, aren’t you?”
It was good the kid was getting to know me. “Oh, yeah.”
I stepped through the protection of the barrier as I heard Quinn call out my name. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to stop. I had some questions, and a tired demon might want to talk. We were stuck on this plane, and here was a demon who knew where all the doors were. Nah, I wasn’t going to play it safe.
The demon’s head came up as I stepped through and his eyes flared. “Hunter.”
I was popular with the whole demon crew. That’s what happens when you kill a Duke of Hell, an angel from the Heaven plane, and beat a high-powered lord at his own game. You get a reputation. “Demon.”