Battle With Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights)

The demons stared at me with unblinking eyes. “The Great Master requests that you send me back, using the circle provided, or create another one. You have a mage within your employ who can manage such things, correct?”

I slid a glance at Dizzy. How did my father know about that? Someone had clearly been talking, and it wasn’t a big stretch to guess who.

“He needs to know what you said,” the demon went on. “You can send the others back or kill them—your choice.”

“Jesus,” Charity said softly. She clearly didn’t know how cutthroat demons could be.

Dizzy moved around the five demons, giving them a wide berth. He bent, studying the ground. Callie watched them as she trailed him.

A moment later, Dizzy pointed down with the chalk. “Yup. There’s a circle right here.” He bent a little more, examining. “Decent work in a shaky hand. Inexperienced, probably. The runes are a little shoddy in some places and the lines aren’t totally straight. That aside, it is a very effective circle, I would think. I haven’t seen this in any of the books I’ve been researching.”

“Ja was here not that long ago,” I said. “She’s proficient in circles, right?”

Dizzy rubbed his chin. “Yes, but hers tend to be ancient and neat, I recall. Well drawn. She has a certain few that work well, and she uses them often. I’ve never seen this one before.”

Someone in our camp would’ve had to draw that circle, Darius thought. If not Ja, then who?

That was the million-dollar question.

“How many people would it have taken to bring those demons up?” I asked.

Dizzy turned to me and blew out a breath, thinking. “These demons are high on the power scale. They’d need very little power to beam them up. Callie and I could do it ourselves, I’d imagine. Maybe just me, though that’s more doubtful.”

And someone summoned the other group, as well, Darius thought.

“Unless the others were brought up first, then the person zipped over here and called up these guys,” I said. “An elder vampire’s blood would make it easy. The circles could’ve been made in advance.”

“Oh yes, sure, using a vampire’s blood would greatly help.” Dizzy bent further. “The light is too low for me to tell, though.”

I took a deep breath. “We have two days. Let’s get everything in motion.”

I shoved the demons back with air and fed magic into the circle. I sliced my finger, walked forward, and crouched down, letting a droplet of blood feed the circle.

“It was an honor, your heinous,” the demon said.

“He is calling you your heinous, right?” Charity asked. “I’m not hearing things?”

“Yeah. It’s my title of choice. Soon they’ll realize how well it fits me.” I sent them back to the Underworld with a thrust of power. Nothing to it. That circle was ideal for easy travel, as perfect as if Lucifer himself had designed it.

And he just might have.

“We got problems.” I turned and held out my hands, using my magic to force a path through the gathered crowd, careful not to smack anyone or send them flying. “Where’s Roger? We need to talk.”

Fourteen

Penny stood to one side of the large, rustic table in what looked like a spacious conference room stolen out of the seventies. The orange Formica countertop at the back, housing a coffee pot and a few sandwiches, matched the strange shag carpet that ran wall to wall. A dusty plant took up residence in the corner, and no one used the spindly chairs positioned throughout the room in little clusters.

Instead, they gathered around the conference table, all eyes on Penny’s mom, who alone sat at the table. She had her cards spaced out in front of her, her crystal ball to one side. The Red Prophet sat cross-legged on the surface of the opposite end of the table.

Roger stood across from Penny’s mother, his hands loose at his sides and hard lines etching his face. The muscles on his large torso bulged beneath his white T-shirt, his whole body channeling his anger at the revelation that at least one person in his camp was working for the enemy. Given they’d had a problem like this when Penny escorted Charity to the Flush for the first time and they’d never found the perpetrator, it was clear he needed to clean house. Hard to do that with the sudden time constraints, however.

Romulus and Charity stood beside Roger, and the rest of their strategists were positioned around the room, ready to take notes or just absorb the new information.

Reagan exhaled slowly, and Penny could tell she was trying to keep her composure. She hadn’t wanted to come and see the Seers at work. Darius had pushed, though, wanting her to get the information firsthand and ask questions if need be. He stood behind her, with Emery, the dual-mages, and Cahal close at hand.