Page 84

Guy’s head snapped toward her. “What?”

“She made the Hellmark lose Knox before,” Bernie said.

Maisie nodded once. “Three seconds. It couldn’t identify him.”

Bernie’s eyes sharpened. “If I cut while it can’t find his signature…”

“The severed end may not know where to reattach,” Carrick said. Static chewed through the last word. “The timing must be precise.”

“Too early,” Bernie said, “and it recoils through him.”

“Too late,” Maisie said, “and the mark reacquires him.”

“No pressure,” Maisie muttered.

Bernie shot her a look.

Hank lifted one hand. “Apparently, that’s my line.”

Then Mammon yanked again, and humor left the room.

My boots gouged twin scars through the floorboards as I slid toward the growing line of black and red. Heat and cold crashed together over my skin. Sulfur crawled down my throat. Somewhere at the edge of memory, old screams lifted their heads.

I did not follow them.

This was not about reliving Hell. This was about ending its claim.

Sully’s bronze scale armor manifested across my shoulders first, one overlapping plate at a time, hot as banked fire and heavy as an oath. It poured down over my chest and locked across my ribs, then swept over my back in a ridged spine of ancient Dragon protection. The plates flexed when I breathed.

They did not cover my marked arm, not by mistake. Sully left the Hellmark exposed, bare and ugly in the open, because Maisie and Bernie needed access to the thing trying to drag me back to Hell.

Guy crossed the space without ceremony and locked his hand around my upper arm hard enough to bruise. “I’ve got you,” he said, low and flat, like a fact Hell could argue with if it wanted to embarrass itself.

I let him.

A thousand old reflexes wanted me to pull away, to prove I needed no one. I ignored every one of them and braced my forearm against my brother’s grip.

“If it pulls, you lean into me,” Guy said. “Not away. Into me.”

Lou came forward through Guy in bronze-gold fury, ancient and bright, his power wrapping around my brother as Guy braced harder against the pull.

The wound spat a black and red tendril of Hell’s Sorcery toward Bernie.

Hank hit it before it touched her. Not with a spell. With his shoulder and claws and a Hellhound snarl that made the boards jump. He drove into the Magical tendril sideways, taking the impact across his forearm instead of letting it crack across Bernie’s hands. Black and red Magic wrapped around him once, smoking where it bit into skin, and he twisted with it rather than fighting the pull head-on. The movement dragged the tendril of Hell’s Sorcery down and away from Bernie’s line of sight, pinning it between his claws and the splintered floor long enough for her to keep her Necromancy on the cut point.

He did not look back to see if she was safe. He trusted the angle of his body, the set of his feet, the warning in the air. One boot slid through broken glass. His shoulder slammed into the table hard enough to crack the edge, and still he held the tendril of Hell’s Sorcery low, teeth bared, all his attention on keeping Hell’s ugly away from Bernie’s working hands.

She did not look away.

Everybody had a job.

“Enforcer,” Mammon said.

The title came through the wound like a brand pressed back into old scar tissue. Not shouted. Worse. Certain. Mammon did not ask me to remember what he had made of me. He expected the room, my body, my soul, to accept the name because he had given it.

My teeth locked together. Every instinct that had kept me alive in Hell rose up, filthy and useful and terrified. Answer correctly. Answer fast. Give him what he wants before he decides to take more.

I swallowed blood and smoke and a century of fear, and I did what I knew was right. “Ranger,” I answered. “Texas Ranger.”