Had Devina found out about…
He told himself to get a grip. There was nothing to find out about that human detective and him. For fuck’s sake, he’d crossed paths with her for a split second, when she’d walked in on him and Sahvage playing mine-all-mine over the Book at that collector’s crib. And she didn’t even remember they’d ever met because he’d been careful to scrub her memories.
There was nothing for Devina to get bent over. Nothing at all—
Yeah, except for your preoccupation with the woman, you sad-sack, his inner ass-kicker pointed out. And just now you fell asleep for the first time since you’ve seen her. You think your demon night rider ain’t going to know you want to do more than polish that detective’s badge and gun?
With a curse, he let his head drop back on his spine.
“Not her,” he growled. “You’re not going to fuck with her—”
The demon’s voice interrupted him, sure as if she were standing right behind him: I don’t like competition even if it’s beneath me.
Balz palmed one of his forties and swung around, pointing the muzzle at—
A whole lot of thin air. And yet he spoke up like his enemy was corporeal and within earshot: “She’s not fucking competition—she’s not anything! What the fuck are you talking about?”
As his yell echoed off a charred fence line, he could swear he heard feminine laughter coming back at him on the wind, mocking him. But if this was really happening, if the demon was making a target out of that innocent human woman, Devina was going to get a nasty surprise. It was one thing for him to be used as unwilling gym equipment. Another entirely if some bystander who had nothing to do with any of this was put in the crosshairs.
“She’s not anything, damn you,” he snapped, like the syllables were rocks to be thrown. “She’s nothing!”
Keeping his gun out, Balz stomped his way through the site again, kicking at burned beams and twisted metal with his shitkickers, determined to find the one thing that could save him. With any luck, there was more in the Book than just how to de-demon a person. Maybe there was a spell to get rid of Devina altogether.
When he came up all U2 again—still not finding what he was looking for—he stopped at what had to have been the garage, given the concrete slab that was under his boots. Rubbing his eyes, rubbing his hair, rubbing his face, he wanted to light the place on fire all over again. Instead, he mined what he could recall of the story Sahvage had laid out: Mae had taken the Book home here to resurrect her dead brother. Devina had shown up. Shit had gone down… and when it was all over, the Book and the demon had been destroyed, and Sahvage had saved Mae’s life thanks to a little tricksy-tricksy the guy’s first cousin had pulled centuries before. Everything tied up in a nice, if slightly ashy, bow.
Except Sahvage had to be wrong. The Book couldn’t be gone. It was part of the demon or the demon was part of it, and Balz knew firsthand that Devina was still around—
Do you know what I do with competition? More of that silky, evil voice entered his head. I eliminate it.
All at once, rage like Balz had never known seized him.
“Two can play at the elimination game,” he gritted.
Bringing up his gun, he measured the contours of it in the moonlight, the blue-black metal of its barrel and body gleaming like a gemstone.
Fine, he thought as he put the weapon up to his own temple. No Book?
And Lassiter talking shit about happily ever afters while Devina was busy drawing fresh battle lines around a woman who had nothing to do with this?
He’d take care of things on his own. All he needed was a really big nap. A dirt nap. Like, lights out permanently. Relief, finally—
Something came around the corner of a garage two houses down and he quick-shifted the muzzle in that direction. But it was just a human male, going by the scent—and the guy was hardly being any kind of aggressor. He was carrying a recycling bin out to the curb, grunting noises percolating from his mouth like the empty plastic bottles plus the weight of their bright yellow holder was more than his honed-by-a-desk-job bod could handle. When he got to his mailbox, he dropped the load and a clatter rang out.
As he pivoted around to return to his cozy Colonial, he looked up—and froze.
The expression on his middle-aged puss was a cross between total confusion and utter terror. Which was how Balz realized that between the unobstructed moon and the security lights around the neighborhood, there was enough illumination for even human eyes to get a bead on some guy dressed head to foot in leather with a gun to his head.