"We need to undo this," Knox says. His voice comes out steady, which is a minor miracle given that his blood is still humming from being in close proximity to a demon who has expressed direct interest in causing him bodily harm. "As quickly as possible."
The demon stares at him. "Oh, do we? Thank you for that insight. I never would have arrived at that conclusion on my own."
The urge to remind this horned beast that Knox didn’t exactly plan for this and this isn’t how he wanted to spend his evening is there, right on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t. Because adding kindling onto the fire is not how he plays these games and arguing with demons is not going to get him anywhere. He ignores the urge to be petulant and plows forward.
"Whatever this is, we break it. Tonight. Tomorrow. As soon as we can find the means." Knox meets his gaze and does not step back even though every instinct in his body is telling him to put distance between himself and this creature who makes his skin hum and his thoughts go sideways. "But in case you didn'tnotice, we can't get more than fifty feet from each other without—"
"I noticed."
"Then you know we have to work together."
The words taste wrong in his mouth. Everything about this goes against his training, his vows, every year he's given to the Order. Templars do not work with demons. Templars do not negotiate with demons. Templars do not stand two feet from a demon and have civil conversations about shared magical afflictions while the demon's fury burns hot and constant in their chest and the demon's cologne, or whatever the hell that scent is, keeps distracting them from the task at hand. But Knox has never been the kind of Templar who lets dogma override sense. He's survived as long as he has by being practical, and practical means acknowledging when the situation on the ground has outpaced the protocol, even when the situation is six foot two and looking at him with murderous intent.
The demon laughs. Ugly and humorless and sharp. "Work together. A Templar and a demon. Working together."
"I'm aware of the irony."
"Irony. He calls it irony." The demon looks at the ceiling as if appealing to a higher power, which, given what he is, strikes Knox as particularly absurd. "This isn't irony, angel. This is a cosmic fucking joke."
"Don't call me that."
The sharpness in his own voice surprises him. He hadn't meant to react, hadn't meant to give the demon anything to work with, but the word hits a nerve that Knox has spent decades burying under paperwork and diligence and silence, the same nerve that only Vale and Fiora and the High Commander have ever been close enough to touch, and the flinch is automatic.
The demon notices. Of course he does. His head tilts, just slightly, and something shifts behind those red eyes. Notsympathy. Nothing that generous. But a recalibration, the careful filing away of a vulnerability for future use, and Knox knows with absolute certainty that he will use it again. Probably soon. Probably often. Probably at the worst possible moment.
Knox exhales through his nose. It is going to be a very long night.
"We need to find the witch," he says, steering the conversation back to ground he can stand on. "He had the spellbook. If we can find him, we can find the spell he used, and we can reverse it."
"Brilliant. And where do you suggest we start looking for one terrified redhead in a city of four million?"
"Fiora," Knox says. "The archivist at the Cathedral. She keeps records of every known practitioner in the city, registered or otherwise. If this kid has so much as lit a candle inside a chalk circle, she'll have a file on him."
The demon goes very still.
It's a different kind of stillness than the one that came over him during the botched spell, when the chalk had begun to glow and his expression had shifted from fury to something that looked almost like dread. This is the stillness of a creature assessing a threat, measuring distances, calculating odds. Knox has seen it in predators. He's seen it in demons. He's never seen it directed at him by something he's tethered to, and he doesn't enjoy the experience.
"The Cathedral," the demon repeats.
"Yes."
"You want to take me to the Cathedral."
"Fiora is our best lead—"
"Let me make sure I understand this correctly." The demon holds up one finger, a claw tipping the end of it, dark and curved and sharp. "You want to parade me, a demon, through the front doors of the Order Cathedral. Past the wards. Past the consecrated ground. Past every sigil-bearing, blessing-slinging,divinely anointed soldier in a ten-mile radius." He pauses, and Knox can feel the theatrical pleasure he's taking in this through the bond, bright and insufferable. "Have you always been this stupid, or is this a recent development?"
Knox sighs. It comes from somewhere deep and tired, the kind of sigh that a career in holy service earns a man. He is aware that the plan has flaws. He is aware that walking a demon into the Cathedral is, objectively, a terrible idea. But Fiora's archives are the most comprehensive occult database in Haven, and Knox is not in the habit of letting perfect be the enemy of functional.
"Do you have a better idea?"
The demon grins at him. Slow and wicked and full of sharp teeth, and it changes the entire architecture of his face, makes him look less furious and more dangerous, which is somehow worse. The red eyes brighten. The horns catch the light. And the overall effect is so striking that Knox's train of thought derails for a full second before he can haul it back. His stomach does something inadvisable and he ignores it with the discipline of a man who has been ignoring inadvisable things for a very long time.
"As a matter of fact," the demon says, "I do."
Chapter 4
The night air hits Dimitri when they step out of the warehouse, cold and sharp, carrying the smell of rain and diesel and underneath it, threaded through the city, the scent of the creatures that escaped through the rift. Sulfur and acid and something rotten, trailing off in multiple directions, fading into the labyrinth of the industrial district.
