Cale set his backpack carefully on the ground and unzipped the main compartment. Reaching in with both hands, he pulled out the five-dollar pot as if it were the most precious antique on the face of the planet, gripping it carefully on both sides of the narrow base.
On the right edge of my vision, I felt Dever go completely still. He even stopped breathing. I could practically taste his anticipation.
Standing, I took the urn carefully from Cale, playing my part as planned. The clay pot was unusually warm in the cold October air. We had filled it with chemical hand warmers before gluing the lid on, because the demon would know that anything confining Xaphan would give off heat, just as the djinni himself did. I was more than a little relieved that the hand warmers had worked.
Turning slowly, I faced the demon across Lacey’s body, where he lay stretched out on the cold ground. Dever reached for the pot, and I hesitated, as if reluctant to let go of it. He smiled, and the last shadow of doubt drained from his face. He was buying it. With any luck, he’d be back on the other side of the shadows by the time he discovered the urn was empty.
Still wearing my angry, disappointed face, I placed the urn gently in the demon’s hands, breathing a silent sigh of satisfaction that I was only pretending to give him back the power to destroy the human race.
The moment Dever’s hands touched the warm clay pot, his face changed. In a single instant, all semblance of humanity seemed to melt away. His human skin appeared tofade intohis body, as if it were being absorbed.
The demon beneath wasn’t red, as I’d expected, based on caricatures of the devil as crimson, horned, and fork-tongued. Dever was white. Not flesh-white, but alabaster. The creamy white of a cold, hard marble statue. He was white all over, from his nail beds to his gums, except for sharp grayish teeth, jet black eyes, and a set of broad obsidian-like horns sprouting from either side of his forehead, curving sharply upward into gleaming points.
My mouth went dry. A weak sound croaked from my throat, but it was neither articulate nor particularly audible. It was the sound of shock. Complete and total shock. I’d known Devich was really Dever, and that Dever was an honest-to-god demon. But I hadn’t expected to ever see his true form.
Dever smiled, pale lips pulling back from pointed teeth the color of ash. His shiny black-eyed gaze never left mine, but he was speaking to his remaining goons when he said, “Kill her. Take the nymph.”
And that’s when all hell broke loose.
THIRTY
The first goblin lunged past me, going for Cale. I spun on one foot, kicking him in the chest with the other. He flew backward. His spine hit the large granite monument and he slid, unmoving, to the stone base.
My gaze found Dever just as the second goblin soared over Lacey and smashed his shoulder into my solar plexus. We both slammed into the ground, and air burst from my lungs. Agony radiated outward from my center. I squeezed the grip of my gun to keep from dropping it.
The goblin on my chest drew a double-edged knife from his belt. He slashed downward toward my throat. I heaved my legs up and back. The goblin flew over my head and crashed to the ground out of sight. Bone crunched, followed by a wordless scream.
Rolling over, I shoved myself to my feet in time to see Dever pull another string of goblins from the shadows like a line of paper dolls. Short, ugly paper dolls.If only I had a pair of scissors…
The goblin I’d kicked rushed me from the base of the monument. I shot him in the neck, and he went down gurgling.
On my right, Cale fought an especially bulky goon who was bleeding from a gunshot wound to the shoulder. The Glock lay useless on the ground at Cale’s feet. He hit the goblin in the ribs. The goblin struck back at Cale’s kidneys.
I put a bullet through the back of his skull. Blood and gray matter sprayed them both.
Spinning, I sighted my next target, but before I could fire, another goblin crashed into me, driving me to the cold, hard earth. My gun hit the ground two feet away. His fist slammed into my right cheek bone. My right hand pushed against his chest, holding him off me while my left pulled the blade from my boot. I slit his throat. My eyes and mouth closed just in time to avoid the worst of the spray.
Shoving the butchered goon to one side, I rolled onto my stomach and grabbed my gun as I lurched to my feet, wiping blood from my face on the sleeve of my leather coat. Goblins lay dead all around me. On my right, I was surprised to find Orthus gnawing on the arm of a dead goon.
Where did he come from?
Cale stood on my left, his arms stretched out to either side of his body. His fingers were splayed and slightly curled, as if he were fighting some invisible tension. A goon stood on either side of him, each in direct line with one of his arms. They were bent nearly in half, gasping and wheezing. One coughed, and thousands of droplets sprayed from his mouth. The other gurgled, spitting up a stream of clear liquid.
Puzzled, I shot a goblin pulling his gun on me from several feet away, then my sight settled on Cale and his victims again. What the hell was he doing to them?
Before I could ask, the goon on the left collapsed. His eyes rolled up into his skull. Water streamed from his nose and mouth. And finally, I understood. Cale had drowned them. He’d concentrated moisture from the air in their lungs and drowned them on dry fucking land.
Stunned, and more than a little impressed, I gave him a smile just as the second goon collapsed.
Two more ran at me together, drawing their guns. I shot one as I ducked beneath the other’s bullet, mentally counting my own rounds. That should have been my last, but I squeezed the trigger again, just in case.Yup. I was out.
No time for a new magazine. The second goon aimed again, this time from two feet away. I dropped to the ground and shoved my foot at his kneecap as hard as I could. Bone crunched. His leg bent thewrong way, and he screamed as it collapsed beneath him. My right hand snagged his gun as he went down, and I put one of his own bullets through his left eye.
There were three more goblins, at least that I could see. One facing me, gun aimed and ready, one about to rush Cale, and a third staring down the hellhound. But they didn’t move. Why was no one moving?
From the direction of the largest monument, a loud ripping sound tore through the air. The goblin aiming a gun at me turned to look. I shot him in the side of the head, and as his body fell, I twisted toward the monument, expecting to see Dever.
I saw clawed feet instead—dangling in mid-air. The alabaster-skinned demon hung several feet off the ground, suspended by nothing.
