Page 45 of Blood Magic

“Anti-possession,” I said, then gave one to Joe. “I’d rather you both wait outside.” Neither one of them bothered to reply. I looked at Remy. “You good?”

“I am.”

I nodded. I figured he’d gotten inked up a long time ago. “Let’s go kick demon ass.”

Rick grabbed my arm. “He wants you, Kait. Be careful. If he takes you, is there anything at all I can do to bring you back?”

I jerked my chin at Remy. “If he takes me, get with Remy. He’ll know what to do.”

Remy said nothing. He knew as well as I did that if the demon took me, there wasn’t shit anyone could do. I just didn’t want the detective to know that.

We ran across the parking lot and though I let fear lend me some adrenaline, I didn’t let it rule me. I’d trained for moments like this my entire life. I lived for moments like this, truth be told. Maybe that made me crazy, but that was who I was.

Good thing, too, or else I wouldn’t have been able to do it. Demons were fucking terrifying.

“Joe,” I said, “try to get people out of the building.”

“How will I know one of them isn’t the demon?”

“Because the demon is exactly where he wants to be. He’s not going to run out the door.”

He nodded.

Reporters attempted to talk to us, but what few policemen were on the outside were keeping the bystanders as far away as they could, and we completely ignored them.

I had two spirit traps, and I tossed Remy one of them and a piece of white chalk. “While I’m keeping him occupied, do what you can to draw a trap.” Then I tossed him a bag of salt. He’d know what to do with it.

The best-case scenario would be trapping the demon in one of the spirit traps, but if we could get him inside a drawn trap, at least that would neutralize him until I could pull him into the demon’s jar. The salt was a great option—if Remy got a chance to use it.

The demon was having a good old time. He hadn’t faded at all—he’d stayed quiet long enough to grow stronger, and I didn’t want to think about how he might have gained in power. He leaped from body to body—as soon as he left one, that person fell to the floor, unconscious. Cops were trying to shield themselves behind desks, their guns drawn, but the demon simply made them shoot each other.

No one knew what was happening or why their fellow cops were turning on each other. One of the possessed cops, a small, dark-haired woman, was currently pointing her gun at another cop.

“Jen,” he cried, his hands in the air, “I’m your partner. Don’t do this.”

But Jen couldn’t hear him.

“Stop,” I yelled. “You want me? I’m here, asshole.”

Jen jerked around to face me, grinning, her body riddled with bullets. Jen was dead, but the demon was keeping her body moving. I hoped he stayed inside Jen, because I didn’t want to shove my demon blade into whatever living human he jumped into next. I was pretty sure that demon or not, that would be frowned upon.

“And there she is,” the demon said, his voice so thick and full of broken glass that it was hard to understand him. “There’s my baby.” He dropped his stare to the blade in my hand and one of Jen’s eyes never came back up. “And there’s my blade.”

I curled my lip. I took a step closer to him, then another. “You can’t take me without the blade. So I guess you’re going to have to wrestle me for it.”

“I can do that, little girl. I can do that.”

The station was hushed, now, but there were still sobs and the occasional moan and cry for help. I heard Joe urging victims out the door, and the swish of wheels as paramedics slipped into the building.

I didn’t take my stare from the demon. This ended here tonight. One way or the other. I could’ve sacrificed myself for the good of the world. To keep more people from getting killed, I could have given myself to him. But I just wasn’t that good of a person. My wolf was clamoring to get out. She wanted to rip into him, eat him, kill him. But he could not be killed. Not that way.

I dragged the knife down my arm, and when it tasted my blood, the blade became so hot it would have burned me had I touched it. Smoke curled up from the edge, and the power of it slid through the handle, and up my arm. I could kill him with this blade. I just had to stick it into Jen’s dead body.

But he wasn’t going to let me get close enough for that. With my left hand, I gripped the spirit trap. I was seriously thinking about throwing the blade, but there was so much at stake, I panicked. I lost my confidence. If he got the blade, it was over.

And if I threw that blade, he would have Jen’s cold dead hands on it before I could move. Maybe it wouldn’t kill him before I could control him. Maybe it wouldn’t kill him before he took me. So I panicked.

Shit.