That night long ago, she’d had only brief impressions of him. He moved so fast, he seemed more like wind than a corporeal being, which explained why she’d dispatched him in that lucky strike. He hadn’t thought he’d need to be fully planted on the earthly plane to defeat her. Tonight he was as real as a nuclear device, ticking toward zero. She wondered how much blood had been spilled to make that possible.

He was leaning in a position of casual indolence against the light post. The town liked those traditional ones with the globe on top, the turned spindle posts. It suited him. Horror movies liked to depict creatures of darkness with mutated faces and gross, powerful, monstrous bodies, but the reality was they often looked like the front-row audience at a New York fashion show.

He had long silver hair. Not gray, not white, but actual gleaming, polished spoon silver. Bloodred eyes, ringed with a silver band prominent enough to be noticed and complement the hair in a disturbingly coordinated fashion. His clothing choice definitely wasn’t a blend with the coastal environment. Tunic, leggings and boots, as well as long black fingernails that shimmered occasionally to give the impression of talons. They went well with his fangs, and she wondered how they got hold of Colgate whitener strips in Hell.

A ruby pendant hung on his neck, secured to his body with additional silver chains that ran to the belt of the tunic and down his back. They ran around the joining point of his wings. Large, dark leathery-looking things with tattered edges at the trailing ends and taloned scallops higher up that looked like sharp teeth. The talons oozed something venomous and blood-like, staining the leather.

He was beautiful and terrible. Like the children at the end of the hallway in The Shining, no one would mistake his beauty for anything but a pretty nightmare waiting to happen.

“He outthought me by a matter of seconds. That is very annoying.”

She didn’t care what he meant or why. She mainlined the Darkness in herself, pulled on the elements around her, and shot power at him like Nolan Ryan, a blinding arc of fire and speed.

He countered with his own volley, one that made the earth shudder beneath her. She dove into the alley between the hometown bank and the Western Union, conveniently located together. The fire rolled by as if ejected from a flamethrower, only the light of the explosion was as red as that ruby around his neck. She shielded herself against the heat, feeling it blast over her. Then all was darkness, silence.

She scrambled to the corner, listened. Nothing. She eased out, just a sliver of her face, then all of it. The street was empty. She looked up quickly, knowing those wings would make gravity a nonissue, unlike her biped self. Nothing. The residual was there, but the substance wasn’t.

He’d been solid. She’d felt it. So how had he dematerialized like that?

Because he was solid, only not right here. Close by. Way close by.

He outthought me by a matter of seconds.

Her breath clogged in her throat, and she bolted out of the alley. Derek. Derek had gone into the chamber without her, but not to betray her. He’d felt Asmodeus coming and went to protect Rose. Even as her heart nearly burst with love for him, it was gripped with terror. He would be facing Asmodeus alone, with Rose to defend and hamper what he could do, because he didn’t know enough about the magic that protected her to risk doing things that might harm the soul within it.

She’d left him blind, handicapped. She could very well lose them both.

Chapter 20

THE METAL DOOR TO THE BASEMENT HAD BEEN BLASTED on its hinges, charred frame still smoking and flickering with sparks. It was Derek’s work, in too much of a hurry to attempt an unlock spell. His urgency only increased her own. At one time, she and Derek had been so close, they could almost read each other’s thoughts, sense the other’s pain and distress, but she wasn’t getting anything right now. Maybe there was too much going on, Derek too involved to project anything. Or, noble bastard that he was, he hadn’t wanted to draw her back here. She was betting on the latter.

That explained why Asmodeus had projected his phantasmic self, to goad her into coming as fast as possible. He’d tossed her around a bit to rattle her, of course, but the demon wanted her present. She was supposed to distract Derek, give him one more thing to worry about. Asmodeus wasn’t counting her as a real threat, which, while insulting, might be the most important mistake the demon was making.

Even knowing she’d been pulled here deliberately, it didn’t slow her down. The man she loved and her daughter’s soul were in danger. That was all she needed to know.

She flew down the steps, not bothering with those dim bulbs. The one at the top of the steps had been shattered, anyhow. She knew her way, and there was no need to announce the exact moment of her arrival by turning on all the lights.

Now she did feel Derek. In spades. She felt his urgency, his hyperalertness toward the foe he was facing, and his sharp, directed command for her to get the hell out of here. Not in words, of course, but the feeling was so pointedly strong there was no mistaking it for anything else. He didn’t want her there. He thought she didn’t realize that Asmodeus was bringing her deliberately. If she wasn’t so worried about him, she’d have been insulted. And how the hell did he know she was this close?

Derek needed to learn she wasn’t that same uncertain girl whom Asmodeus had attacked three years ago. Hell, she wasn’t the same girl she was twelve hours ago, when she’d been beset by the fears and insecurities that came from shutting him out, lying and not trusting him. Things were different now, and if he wanted her to travel with him, she was fine with that, with him being her teacher, but he was going to learn she could stand and fight on her own two feet.

If they lived through this, she’d be sure to tell him so.

Moving swiftly down the stone steps of the cave tunnel, she sank quickly to a sitting position, hugging the wall as a rumble rocked the foundation under the stairs. Intuition gave her a blink of warning and she threw up a shield, just as the dust and heat from the explosion billowed up the stairs like a pyroclastic cloud. The scalding touch of sheer power roared over her. Without the shield, it would have peeled her skin from her body and left her a melted, gooey skeleton. Even sitting, she rocked precariously as it rolled over her like a freight train. Bits of rock showered down on her, but, thank Heaven, the walls held. She didn’t relish being buried alive. Not that it was the biggest issue on her mind right now.

Derek. Rose. Scrambling back up, she fought her way through the smoke, holding the wall, following the steps from long familiarity instead of sight. She kept that shield in place until she reached a lower point where she had visibility again. Like the Starship Enterprise, she couldn’t shield and attack at the same time. Otherwise what she threw would bounce off her shields from the inside and ricochet right back onto her. Embarrassing and terminal, a sucky combination.

She was going to figure out how to fix that glitch. Again— important caveat— if she lived through this.

The outer chamber was empty, of course. Derek would choose to protect Rose in the area that had the most protections for the sphere. Ruby slipped to the illusory opening, wormed her way carefully through its S shape, then flattened herself against the wall, trying to determine tactical advantage from the throw of shadows and voices.

“Give me the soul, and I will accept half of what I came for,” Asmodeus rasped.

Derek let out a short but notably strained chuckle. He was hurt. The fear around her heart constricted, her adrenaline spiked by uncertainty. If the demon could do that to Derek, what could Asmodeus do to her? Was she just kidding herself? Or was she still that girl with too much power and too little knowledge to use it?

If you use your power, it will only come to tragedy. Hide it; never use it….

God, she wasn’t sure what was worse at this moment. Facing a demon or being haunted by her mother’s syrupy voice. Derek had not responded further, the chuckle an answer in itself. He wisely didn’t believe in making chitchat. She was sure he was looking for an opening, because their voices were moving, circling. Daring a glance into the chamber, she came back against the wall, her heart thumping high in her throat once again.

Derek was bleeding from his temple, so much blood that it was blinding his right eye. He was also holding his side, as if his ribs had been damaged. The sphere was behind him. Somehow he’d anchored Rose so she was moving with him. As she’d feared, he didn’t know the magic well enough to risk anything more than shielding it. And that was tying his hands.

Asmodeus was done chatting up Derek as well. An ominous chant started, heat swelling in the room as fast as if a furnace door had been opened. Derek countered before the demon could complete the chant.

Ruby yelped, jumping to the right as a battering ram of power exploded past her, taking out a large chunk of the wall, creating a new, more spacious doorway into the other chamber. More dust and smoke rolled over her. The cave rocked from the impact, rumbling for a much longer period. Somewhere, things were falling, crumbling. She hoped it wasn’t the stairwell.

Asmodeus had moved past her right before it hit, narrowly escaping being caught in the volley. He yowled, though, suggesting he hadn’t come off unscathed. She needed to move. Derek might know her position, but he might not. That had been awfully close, and he’d be pretty aggravated with her if he blew her to pieces before he did the same to Asmodeus.

Before she could do anything, however, another percussion hit. Goddess, it was like the soldiers said, those who discussed firefights when they were in her shop. No time to breathe, nothing but the noise, noise, noise, explosions vibrating through the chest and feet and head, every survival instinct screaming to run, though training kicked in and made you do otherwise. She’d dropped to her heels, her hands over her ears. The chamber shook as if in the fist of an angry giant. The sense of crumbling, disintegration, the roar of rock, grew louder.

“No.” Ruby scrambled to her feet, but instead of retreating, she plunged forward through the crumbling opening. If Derek had tried that deliberately to keep her out, she was so going to kick his ass.

It wasn’t Derek. She came up short, a shriek catching in her throat. A yawning hole had replaced the cave floor. Jagged edges gave the macabre impression of teeth around the maw of a monster. She stared down into a dizzying abyss, saw dark flame waiting, far below. Waiting to accept a body after it ricocheted and smashed against the rock like a pinball.