Mark of the Demon (Kara Gillian 1)

“Well, you did say that one of us needed to distract it.” He smiled without humor.

I scowled at him. He had no idea what we were up against. “No, I said that it needed to be distracted. Not necessarily by one of us.”

He continued to scan the area. “Do you see anyone else here wanting to help?”

My scowl deepened. “You don’t realize how fast these creatures can be.” I rubbed my eyes with my free hand. “This is stupid. You’re right, we can’t afford to be stuck in here. We don’t know if Belle is anywhere near here either.”

“Yeah, I have a bad feeling about that,” he murmured, expression dark.

I let out a shuddering breath. Had the demon already taken her? Then what was it doing attacking us? But it easily could have killed us by now, so maybe it’s just stalling us. I didn’t have any answers. I only knew that I was blowing it again and another victim was going to die. “Cover me,” I said, and before Ryan could form a protest, I took off running toward the car.

I heard the whoosh of air and I dove to the side, not thinking about tactics, just hoping that random evasion would work the best. Wings slammed at me and I went rolling, seeing teeth and claws as a line of fire seared my shoulder. A clawed hand seized my wrist in a grip of iron, then abruptly released me, sending me sprawling. My gun went flying from my hand as I tucked, but I heard gunshots anyway.

An agonized bellow erupted above me. I rolled, scrambling to get my back against the car as I saw the demon hit the ground in a crumpled heap, bright white light streaming from two places in its chest. It shrieked again, pushing up from the ground as the light spread and widened, then it collapsed, the shriek dying into an almost piteous whine.

I pulled myself to my feet and the demon lifted its head shakily, locking eyes with mine.

“Sssummoner,” it said in a weird, hissing croon, then the light flared to blinding levels and I heard the earsplitting crack of a dismissal. When I could see again, the demon was gone, with just the smell of rotting flowers and ozone lingering.

I looked up to see Ryan running toward me, his face a mask of fury. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he yelled, grabbing me by the shoulders and giving me a shake. Then he released me so suddenly I almost fell. “Christ, you’re hurt!” he exclaimed, looking down at blood on his hand.

I blinked at the sudden change from furious to solicitous. As if his words were a switch, my shoulder started to hurt. “Crap. Yeah.” I sighed and craned my head to look at my upper back by my shoulder. “I don’t think it’s bad, though.”

“It’s going to need stitches.” Ryan scowled blackly. “What the fuck was that stunt? That’s not what partners do!”>Ryan cleared his throat. “So why do they include summoners in this honor system?”

Tessa turned her attention to him. “Because even though it is an affront to them to be summoned, they can gain status by their knowledge of other spheres or with artifacts that we offer to them for their cooperation. Without the protection that their honor affords us as summoners, no human would ever attempt to summon a demon.” She snapped her eyes back to me. “And if someone were to call a lord outside of the normal protocols—”

“I have no intention of calling him!” I practically yelled. I started to say more, but the ringing of my cell phone interrupted me. Probably a good thing, since the more I had to say would not have been nice.

Ryan stared at me as I pulled my phone out to see who was calling at this late hour. “You have the Fraggle Rock theme song as your ring tone,” he said, with a bemused look on his face. “You are so weird.”

I laughed, then hit the answer button on my phone. “Detective Gillian here.”

There was silence for a couple of seconds, then a small cough, and a thin voice said, “H-hello? Is this the ladyc-cop who was speaking to T-tio?”

I straightened. “Yes, yes, it is. Who is this?”

Another brief silence. Then, “I go by Belle. Tio s-said I needed to t-talk to you. Showed me some p-pics.”

My excitement rose. I gestured wildly at Ryan and pointed first at the phone, then at the pics that I’d scrawled names on. “Yes, yes,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm as I flipped through the pages. “I’ve been showing some pictures around.” Ryan moved over to me and leaned in to try to hear. I yanked out a page that had Belle written on it and waved it at him triumphantly.

“Yeah. Oh, m-man. Tio said that it was f-fucked up and that I was g-gonna get killed, and now I think someone’s following me.” The girl’s voice wavered badly, thick with terror.

“I won’t let that happen,” I said gently as I looked at the picture. Holy shit, but she didn’t look much older than fifteen—a smiling black girl with a pert nose and slanted eyes, with piercings in her eyebrow and lower lip. “Where are you?”

“S-somewhere safe. I think.”

“Where?” I asked. “I can keep you a lot safer than you can be out there on the streets. Can I meet you someplace?”

Another silence, and this time I had to check my phone to make sure that the girl had not hung up on me. “Belle? I’m worried about you. Please tell me where I can meet you, so I can make sure you stay safe.”

“All right. I–I c-can meet you by the diner on Vaughn Street.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, Belle. I’m driving a dark-green Ford Taurus. Stay out of sight until you see my car, okay?”

“Ok-kay.”

“And call me or call 911 if you see anything strange or unusual.”