Taming Demons for Beginners (The Guild Codex Demonized #1) - Annette Marie Page 0,78

“Where’s the demon?”

“In the infernus. I put the confusion spell on her, like you said. She can’t call the demon.”

A spell? That was the reason for the noise in my head? I vaguely recalled reading about thought-inhibiting Arcana at some point, but I couldn’t dredge up any details.

“And where is the infernus?” Karlson demanded.

“Uh …” Travis strode over to me and felt around my neck, his fingers cold and rough. “It’s … right …”

Realizing my neck was devoid of an infernus chain, he pawed urgently at my chest and stomach, then yanked my shirt up, flashing my mauve bra to the room. When he didn’t find the pendant, he grabbed at the front and back pockets of my jeans.

“Where—where—” he panted desperately.

Karlson’s expression was colder than a subzero storm. “At no point in the last four hours did you confirm she had her infernus?”

“What contractor would go anywhere without it?” Travis muttered frantically. He grabbed the duct tape and ripped it off my face. “Where’s your infernus, Robin?”

I gasped, tears stinging my eyes.

“Where’s your infernus?” His shout blared through the metal room.

Cowering back, I stammered confusedly, but I couldn’t string together a coherent sentence.

“Where is it?”

Karlson folded his arms. “You put a confusion spell on her. She can’t answer.”

Travis stumblingly faced his employer. “If she didn’t bring it to the guild, then she left it at the motel. I know where their room is. I can—”

“You have proven yourself exceptionally incompetent,” Karlson cut in. “I lent you two good men to capture her and her demon off the streets, and you couldn’t even manage that.”

My head buzzed. Capture us off the streets. The voices Zylas and I had heard. The sorcerer who’d shot a spell at me.

“Send Bartoli to her motel room to get the infernus,” Karlson told the man with the sword. “We’re heading back. The girls come with us.”

The swordsman nodded, and the room brightened as he opened the door. My head spun and crackled, and the next thing I knew, a stranger was cutting the zip ties on my wrists. He seized the back of my sweater and hauled me out of the shipping container.

I squinted painfully. Heavy clouds shrouded the sun and I couldn’t guess the time—anywhere from mid-morning to mid-afternoon.

The man holding my sweater shoved me forward. Behind us, Amalia swore at someone. Nearly a dozen men were waiting—Karlson, plus an assortment of contractors and champions. So many. Hopelessness dragged at my distorted thoughts but Travis’s confusion spell drowned out my fear.

“We’re not fighting this demon after all?” a contractor grumbled. “Damn, I was looking forward to it.”

“Young Travis failed to ensure the girl had the infernus with her.” Karlson checked his phone, then slipped it into the pocket of his suit jacket. “It isn’t a complete loss, however.”

My captor steered me across the uneven pavement of a wide lot that bordered the ocean. A concrete pier stuck into the dark gray waves, and across the harbor, gargantuan cargo ships were docked along the coast. Abandoned shipping containers, truck beds, and old tractor-trailers edged the lot, and to our left rose a huge gray building—a factory or manufacturing plant.

Moored at the short pier was a shiny white boat large enough to transport fifteen people. Panic cut through the noise in my head, and I could see my fate clearly: kidnapped by the worst and most powerful criminal guild on the west coast, put on a boat, carried into international waters … and never seen again.

If I’d kept the infernus, would this have happened? Would Zylas have saved me back at the Grand Grimoire? Would he have rescued me while Travis held me and Amalia captive in the shipping container? But I’d left him behind, afraid to take responsibility for the creature I had unleashed.

“Hurry up and get them on the boat,” Karlson barked. “I want to—”

A flicker of red—and the boat exploded.

The boom hit my eardrums like stabbing knives. A crimson-laced fireball roared upward, belching black smoke. The men staggered in shock, then one yelled in terrified agony. As the rogues whirled toward the sound, another man screamed. Blood misted the air and a mythic collapsed.

A dark blur shot away from him, red magic streaking from phantom claws.

“Demon!” someone roared.

Chaos erupted—contractors grabbing their pendants, champions drawing weapons. Zylas skidded on the concrete, tail snapping out, and he leaped onto the back of a contractor, snapped his neck, and sprang off the falling man. He landed on the next mythic’s shoulders, his six-inch crimson talons disappearing