“This is your chance to kill Kastor,” Felix called. “These meat sacks are his personal guard.”
Kastor had a personal guard? Meshara hadn’t mentioned that. So he wasn’t in powersolelybecause he kept his word.
“Kill Kastor?” The man holding the key to my cell laughed with his head thrown back, his tight, dark curls bobbing with the movement. “Child, put your hands through the bars before I break them off.”
“I’m an exorcist.” I stared boldly up at him. “Do you have any idea how many of you I’ve fried?”
“Do you have any idea how many exorcists Kastor has kept as pets over the years until he’s ready to take them as host?” the man with the cuffs asked. “Or how many he’s killed?”
“The question”—I stepped forward until the bars actually brushed my nose—“is how many haveyoukilled?” Flames burst from my palm as I shoved my left hand between the bars and pressed it to his chest. He screamed, then thrashed as he hung from the fire blazing between us as if he weighed nothing.
His fellow guards backed away, and one of them pulled a strange-looking rifle. “Shoot her!” one of the others shouted, and soft shuffling noises came from all around the basement as my fellow prisoners turned to watch the commotion.
Felix jogged toward us from the end of the aisle. “Shooting her won’t save Atticus,” he yelled as Atticus the guard convulsed in front of me, his eyes rolled back into his head, smoke rising from his scorched clothing.
“But it’ll make her easier to deal with.” The man with the rifle fired, and something slammed into my left side. I stumbled backward, thrown off balance, and the flames coming from my palm died. Atticus crumpled to the concrete floor in the aisle, unmoving, as the smell of scorched cotton rose from his body.
Pain radiated from my side, just above my hip, and as darkness closed in on me from the edges of my vision I looked down to find a dart sticking out of my shirt. If I passed out, any demon who wanted me could jump into my body.
Panic made my heart race, probably pumping the sedative through my body even faster. “Oh shi—”
I didn’t even feel it when I hit the floor.
Light glared red through my closed eyelids, and when I opened them, pain speared my head. I blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to the light, and it took me a couple of minutes to remember what had happened.
I’d lost consciousness for the third time in…what? Two days? Three? I had no idea how long I’d sat in that basement cell, and no idea how long I’d been unconscious this time.
I blinked again and took a deep breath, and finally my surroundings came into focus: A sideways chair, with intricately carved legs in the shape of an eagle’s claw grasping a ball. A musty-smelling rug with a repeating red-and-gold pattern hanging vertically. Against my face.
After one more blink, I realized the rug and chair weren’t sideways. I was lying on the floor.
When I tried to sit up, I discovered that my hands were bound at my back, this time with metal cuffs.
Pandemonia.
I was still in the demon city. Yet somehow, inexplicably, I was also still in my own body despite having lost consciousnesssurroundedby the Unclean.
“You killed the captain of my guard.”
I gasped, startled by the sudden voice, then rolled onto my opposite side to face the source. Kastor stood on the other side of a room ornately decorated with antique rugs and furnishings. I saw a velvet loveseat. A mirror with a golden beveled frame. Several small tables and a desk that all matched the chair behind me. The room looked like it had been frozen in time long before the war against the Unclean.
It took me another second to remember Kastor’s guard—Atticus—and what had happened to him. The boss looked angry over his loss, in a detached sort of way, yet I saw no grief or distress. He’d lost an asset, not a friend. Which made sense because demons lack human emotions and attachments.
“We’re nowhere near even.” I looked up at an awkward angle from the floor, watching for his reaction to see how scared I should be. “Your lapdog Meshara killed my sister.”
Kastor’s brows rose. “The pregnant one?” My furious glare must have been enough of an answer because he chuckled. “Huh. She knew you wouldn’t burn her out, because of the baby. Clever. I wouldn’t have given her that much credit.”
“You still shouldn’t. I sent her back to your homeland.” I sat up—the motion was awkward with my hands cuffed behind me, but not impossible. “Just like Aldric and the captain of your guard. But from what I understand, they’re still alive and well in your native land. You guys can’t really die, right?”
“And you ‘guys’ are notoriously fragile.” Kastor crossed his arms over his chest and sank onto the arm of the stiff-looking sofa. “Even exorcists.” The implicit threat made my heart pound, but…
“Then why am I still alive? And unpossessed?”
Kastor crossed his toned arms across his chest. “Because you’re still useful to me. And because I haven’t yet decided whom to gift you to as a host.”
I tucked my knees up to my chest, then rocked forward onto my feet and stood. “Better decide quickly. You don’t have much time left.”
He laughed out loud, and my skin crawled.
