Well, not exactlynothing. He was beating two huge black feathered wings.
The bastard really did have wings! I fuckingknewit.
Dever hovered above the largest monument, legs dangling almost gracefully, wings flapping slowly. Almost elegantly. His suit jacket was gone, his white dress shirt hanging in shreds from smooth, sculpted pallid arms. His wings were so big they generated an actual breeze, and the air they disturbed blew my hair back, drying blood and sweat on my face. The damn things were each six feet long, giving him a wingspan of at least twelve feet.
Damn. I was almost jealous.
As I watched, the demon threw his head back, and a roar of triumph erupted from his mouth. My ears rang with it, my very bones shuddering. The goblins winced, as if the sound hurt their ears. Dever’s bare, pale arms stretched above his head, tatters from his shirt flapping in the breeze he stirred. He held the fake urn in two black-clawed hands. He met my gaze, his own glowing crimson now, like the hellhound’s. Then he threw the pot at the granite tower beneath his feet.
Oh, shit. I hadn’t expected him to break it in front of us. If the demon wasn’t already pissed, he was about to be. Fuckinghell.
The urn shattered, shards of clay scattered among a dozen beanbag-shaped hand warmers. And nothing happened. Absolutely nothing.
My gaze trailed up from the busted urn to the monument, then over Dever’s mostly-nude calcite body to his face. I expected to see fury. Pure rage. What I saw instead was a look of…was that joy? Could demons feel joy? Because Dever looked pretty fucking happy, for no reason I could imagine as he stared past me, at…Cale?
I turned slowly, loathe to know what could make a demon that happy, because I was pretty damn sure that his joy and mine couldn’t exist in the same universe. My gaze slid past Orthus to Cale, then kept going, because something behind him had caught my attention. Movement. Pale reddish hair fluttering in the persistent puffs of air stirred by the demon’s wings.
And suddenly I understood.Xaphan. He’d popped in on cue—dressed again in seventeenth century clothing—and the demon thought he’d won. That he’d freed the djinni and earned his wish.
“Dever,” the djinni said, and his voice echoed throughout the cemetery, impossibly loud. A blatant display of power.
The demon dropped to stand in front of the monument, his ebony toe claws scratching against the stone. His wings folding gracefully at his back. “Xaphan. It’s been a long time.”
The djinni nodded.
“I have freed you, after four hundred years of imprisonment. I’ve earned a request, and I am ready to make it.”
Xaphan nodded, again mute. His arms hung at his sides, hands relaxed. There was no sign of anger or tension in his expression or bearing. He looked totally at ease. “Make your wish.”
Dever inhaled deeply, his folded wings ruffling with the motion. “I wish to have the full range of my power restored. Everything I was born with. Now.”
Xaphan didn’t move. I held my breath, waiting for him to speak. Cale, Orthus, and the remaining goblins stood frozen. And finally, instead of answering, the djinni laughed.
Yes,laughed.
He threw his head back and roared with laughter, his whole body shaking. He trembled so hard I thought for a moment that he might be having a seizure. But finally, he stilled, and I glanced at Dever. The demon’s pale face was tense, his forehead furrowed where a human would have had eyebrows, his demonic features, lit only by rays from the moon and the weak beams from the light at the cemetery gate.
“No,” Xaphan said, and my head swiveled back in his direction.
“No?” Dever sounded thoroughly, exquisitely confused.
“No,” Xaphan repeated. “I already answer to another mistress. I will never grant your wish, and when I am free, I will send you back to the flaming depths from whence you came.”
Could he do that? Was there some way I couldwishfor the djinni to do that, without setting him free?
Dever shuddered deeply, his entire body quaking with fury. He rose into the air with a mighty flap of ebony wings. A sound of pure rage tore free from his throat. Black-nailed claws tore at the clothing still clinging to his body. Shreds of white cotton shirt and black linen slacks fluttered to the ground.
His head twisted inhumanly fast. Glowing red eyes zeroed in on me. His wings flapped once, twice, like an engine revving. Then he was suddenly racing through the air toward me.
If I’d been thinking clearly, I’d have reminded him that if he killed me, the djinni would be free to enact his revenge. But as the demon devoured the space between us, claws already curling in preparation to rip through my flesh, I wasn’t thinking at all.
I fucking panicked.
Heart slamming against my sternum, palms slick with sweat, I pointed the gun I’d taken from a goblin and emptied the magazine into Dever. No need to aim; the demon was too close to miss.
Bullets slammed into his face. His chest. They thunked into flesh and muscle, then seemed to melt into his body. To soak in.
They didn’t even slow him down.
