Slayer (Slayer 1)

He shifts his weight with a clinking of chains. “Can I make a suggestion, love?” He smiles, revealing double rows of blunt black teeth. “Let me go. Forget we ever met. Forget you ever saw me. I promise it’ll be better for you that way.”

“I can’t let a demon go!”

“Fantastic.” He leans his head back against the wall. “What are you, some sort of vigilante? I’m not a bad bloke. Really, I’m not.”

“Why does this Sean want you, then?”

The demon holds out his hands. “You might have noticed I have a bit of a skin condition.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Yeah, your skin condition got all over my shirt and my hair when I carried you in here.”

He snorts a laugh, then quickly tries to cover it as a cough. “Wow. Sorry. My particular breed of demon, as you call me, secretes a substance that has a psychotropic effect on humans. ‘Psychotropic’ means—”

“I know what ‘psychotropic’ means.” Every good medic studies drugs. “You secrete tranquilizers?”

“Depends. People react differently when they ingest it. For some it has a powerful antidepressant effect. Sometimes triggers euphoria. Sometimes puts people to sleep. And sometimes makes people hallucinate. But always in a happy way.”

I must look horrified, because he shrugs. “Literally can’t help it. I’m worth quite a bit on the black market, if you know the right people.” He looks me up and down, lingering on my rainbow pajamas and slippers. “I don’t think you know the right people. And Sean would find you the second you started making inquiries to sell me. So again, your best bet is to let me go.”

“Why do you secrete that stuff? Let me guess: Your victims are so blissed out that they don’t mind when you eat them.”

He wrinkles his nose this time, the cracked skin bunching up. Then he grimaces and lifts his fingers to the cut I taped shut. “I happen to be vegetarian. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“I eat emotions. That’s what we do. We make you happy and then we breathe in all that bliss. And then we move on, because why keep eating the same happiness when you can experience something new every meal?”

“And your victims?”

“What victims? At most they have a mild headache when they come down. No lasting damage. They’ll even have happy memories. I don’t hurt anyone.” He shakes one manacled ankle at me. “Unlike humans. You never saw a creature you didn’t prey on.”

“That’s not true!”

“Innit, though?”

I open my mouth to argue, but . . . well, he has a point. We’re a deeply predatory race. Look what being imbued with demonic power does to us, after all. We become Slayers—humans made solely to hunt and kill.

I shake my head, refocusing. “I have volumes and volumes on demons. I can look you up and find out whether you’re telling the truth.”

“Good. Go do that. And hope that Sean doesn’t find you while you’re reading. Because I won’t hurt you, but Sean definitely will.”

The demon’s intensity makes me feel like he’s telling the truth. And then I think of something. I’ve run into hellhounds twice in connection to this demon, and once somewhere else. “This Sean. Does he work in Dublin? Nice suit? Ponytail?”

All the open disdain in the demon’s face shifts to wariness. “I thought you didn’t know him.”

“I don’t. But I crashed one of his parties last night.”

He pushes back like he’d burrow into the wall of the shed if he could. “You should let me go. And you should run too. You seem like a nice kid.”

I tap the shock stick on the table. “I can handle myself.” It’s too many coincidences, though. The demon showing up here. My dream leading me to Cosmina, who was connected to the man the demon is connected to. “Why did you run here?”

“I made for the forest first. Hellhound was on my heels, so I kept going. Something about the shed seemed safe. It called to me, I suppose. I was trying to make it inside. Didn’t get past collapsing over the fence, though.”

“No, I mean Shancoom. This area specifically.”

The demon looks away, shrugging. He rubs his shoulder, which must be sore, but it’s working. I did a good job there too. “I like the seaside. Lovely little town.”

“Were you looking for someone?” It can’t be a coincidence that he ended up by our castle.