Page 33 of Warrior Unraveled

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Wes tore his eyes from Virginia’s flushed face and glanced back at the dead demon. This time she’d saved him. But then, who was keeping score?

“What are we gonna do with him?” He pointed at the dead demon.

“Normally I’d say, we burn him, but”—She patted her torso and legs—“I don’t have any of my usual gear with me.” She looked around and peered into the dark. “Maybe we can just hide his body. Come back for it later?”

“Works for me.”

When she made a motion to get up, Wes jumped up to help her up, but she was faster. She looked around. “Where do you think we are?”

He let his eyes wander. There were streetlights in the distance, maybe a small town. He heard the sound of cars passing by. He looked in the other direction. “That looks like an overpass. We could be near a freeway.” He squinted and was able to make out a large green sign. “Definitely a freeway.”

She nodded. “Good. If that’s the case, we can find shelter in a motel.”

“A shower wouldn’t go amiss either,” he added.

“But first, let’s hide the demon.” She pointed to the overpass. “Underneath there.”

Together they dragged the dead creature about twenty yards to a pile of illegally dumped trash and stashed him behind it, covering him as best they could. It would hide the body once the sun came up.

Then they made their way up toward the embankment. It wasn’t busy on the freeway, a sign that it was either very late at night, or this was a remote area, or both.

“There are signs for motels in that direction,” Wes pointed out.

“Let’s go then.”

They started walking. For a moment, there was silence between them, then Wes said, “That was risky, jumping into the demon’s portal.”

“It’s called a vortex, and it worked.”

“Did you know it would?”

“I suspected it. We’ve always assumed that the demon’s vortexes worked similarly to our portals. It was a calculated risk.”

“What about hearing his thoughts? Did you know about that too?”

She cast him a sideways look. “I didn’t at the time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What I said. But now that you mention it, I recall a report I read last year that mentioned one of our guardians accidentally stepping into a demon’s vortex during a rescue mission. He’d also heard the demon’s thoughts. Though his report didn’t mention whether he believed the demon could read his thoughts too. That’s probably how he figured he wasn’t alone.”

Wes chuckled. “Yeah, that, or our stench.”

“You do reek.”

“You smell a little past your sell-by date too.”

“Is that a dig at my age?”

The fact that Virginia was bantering with him made the tension roll off him. They’d just escaped from the Underworld and cheated certain death. If that wasn’t a little stressful, he didn’t know what was.

He smiled at her. “Did I mention I like older women?”

Virginia rolled her eyes and looked at the lights ahead.

Though Wes had no idea how old she was, he had to assume that she was older than the guardians at the Baltimore compound, most of whom were around two-hundred. And that definitely made her older than him. And possibly more experienced. And that part he didn’t mind at all.