When Nicolas took another step, the demon matched him.
“You—You can’t come with me,” he said.
The sin eater tilted his head.
“I’m a paladin,” he said. “We can’t be seen together. They’ll—They’ll kill me if they find out about this.”
A low growl rumbled from him. The sound sent some primal part of Nicolas’s brain on alert. This demon might have been willing to spare him for some reason, but he wasn’t a human being. He was probably the most dangerous creature Nicolas had ever been in the presence of, no matter how nice he seemed.
He clutched the tatters of his shirt together. “Just stay away from me. That’s the best thing for both of us.”
He didn’t wait for acknowledgment, turning and striding away.
Chapter 2
Ashmedai
Ashmedai was a simple creature.For as long as he’d existed—the passage of time meant little to him, so he didn’t know his true age—he had lived only to feed. His life was marked by the passage of hunger and satiation in turns. He’d had no companionship, no friendships, no physical needs besides the urge to feed.
Since he’d been on Earth, he’d seen bright souls before. Each had a unique beauty, but none had captivated him the way this one had. Not only had he longed to drink in the sight of the opalescent hues, he’d also wanted totouch.
Ashmedai didn’t know what had come over him. He’d never reacted to a human like that before. Of course, he hadn’t been on the surface for very long, so maybe having a physical body for the first time was to blame. But he hadn’t reacted that way to any of the other bright souls he’d encountered. Just one. Just him.
The human didn’t want Ashmedai to follow him, but letting him go was impossible. His entire being rebelled at the thought. Ashmedai kept to the shadows, watching thehuman flee into the night. He stopped outside a black vehicle, leaning heavily against the door while he caught his breath. His eyes scanned the darkness around him, but his meager human eyesight didn’t detect Ashmedai, standing just steps from him. It wasn’t as close as he’d prefer, but it would do for now.
At the back of the car, he opened it up with shaking hands, removing his tattered shirt and replacing it with a similar one. Ashmedai didn’t like that. It tarnished his scent on the human’s skin. While Ashmedai sulked in the shadows, the human pulled a phone from his pocket, the front of which glowed and threw the contours of his face into sharp relief. Ashmedai only recognized the object because the other bright souls that he’d met all had them, too. He wanted to press into the human’s space again, slip his tongue into the warm, wet cavern of his mouth until he made those delicious sounds again.
He’d never felt this way before, and he wantedmore. Wanted to drown himself in the sensation of the human’s body against his. He wasn’t one to deny his impulses, but the human’s reticence made him hesitate. He didn’t want to be pushed away again.
“Hey,” the human croaked. He was holding the glowing rectangle to his ear. His face was pale, his eyes wet. “Um. Something’s happened in Sector 93. Send…” He sucked down a shuddering breath. “Send everyone.”
He paused, listening to the person on the other end.
“They’re not injured,” he replied. “They’re dead. They’re all dead. They rushed ahead of me, and it happened so fast I couldn’t stop it.”
Another pause.
“No, I don’t know what it was. Their bodies look like… Yeah, that. It was wearing a hood. That’s all I know.” He sucked down a fortifying breath, raising his face to the sky. “We have to be quick. We were in a working factory. There were no witnesses, but that won’t last forever if we don’t get the bodies out of here fast.” He picked up his ripped shirt and cast his eyes around as though looking for something. “Uh-huh. Okay, I’ll send you the address and wait for you here.”
He hung up the phone and jogged across the parking lot to throw his old shirt in a big, metal square that smelled like rot. When he returned to the car, he opened up the driver’s seat and sat down sideways, his feet hanging out of the door, and put his head in his hands.
Ashmedai reached a hand out to lay it on the human’s head—and stopped.
‘They’ll kill me if they find out about this.’That was what he’d said. Was he talking about the guild he worked for? Why did he work for them if they made him fear for his life? Why was he working for the enemy that Valac had steered Ashmedai toward? This human was good. He didn’t belong there.
The reason he’d been brought to the surface was to hunt down the dark souls from the Paladin Guild. Valac, a behemoth demon, had come to him in Hell and asked him if he was interested in hunting fresh souls on the surface. He’d agreed, because it soundeddifferent. Feasting in the Pit was all he’d known for all time. Feasting on thesurfacecould prove to be an entertaining change. And so far, it had been. Living souls were delicious in a way the damned could never be. But most interesting of all were the bright souls he saw living their lives here. Cast in different shades of light, each one was more beautiful than the last.
But none rivaled this human.Hishuman.
Ashmedai waited in the shadows, intent on protecting his human—and he knew, without a doubt, that this human washis—from demons and paladins alike. The only thing that kept him from rending the paladins on sight when they arrived was that some of them didn’t have black souls like the others. Some of them were gray. Some of them were a murky gold, and some of them shone bright. None compared to the soul of his human. He was beautiful, as golden as the Sentinels and streaked with color, like sunlight cutting through diamond.
He raised his gaze to the stars. His human was as beautiful as starlight and just as far out of reach.
For now.
Ashmedai stayed by his side until they reached the holy walls of the guild’s secretive headquarters. With a growl, he stopped outside the gates and left, traveling through the shadows and emerging outside the Rink. They kept the interior brightly lit when they were present, and he couldn’t appear in the light. It was a limitation he’d never known about until coming to the surface. Two halflings were leaning against the wall, smoking cigarettes.
“Well, look who it is,” Wolf said. He was tall and muscular for a halfling, and there was a steadiness in his countenance. He wasn’t a demon prone to unnecessary spectacles of violence.
