CHAPTER TWO

Elise dreamed of Hell.

She drifted over an endless wasteland. Black mountains lined the horizon, so distant that she couldn’t have reached them if she ran for a hundred years. An obsidian city belching cones of smoke, glistened underneath her. The buildings, the streets, were laid out in the pattern of a spiderweb.

The sky was the crimson of blood spilled on lava rock. Ragged gashes in the desert flickered with occasional flame. Screams drifted on the rippling heat.

The City of Dis. Home. Her heart ached for it.

Elise woke up in a closet on Earth, not in Hell. It was barely big enough for her to sit inside, though her muscles registered no discomfort when she stood, using the ironing board for leverage. A clothes iron hung on the wall. Empty hangers dangled in her face.

She stretched her arms across her chest, rolled her neck on her shoulders, and stepped into the motel room.

“This is a bad idea,” Anthony Morales said by way of greeting.

He sat on the end of Elise’s bed. She hadn’t slept in it once during her stay at the motel, but evidently he had; the imprint of a pillow still marked his left cheek. He was shirtless, shamelessly revealing the sculpted planes of his chest, and his muscular thighs were accentuated by snug gray boxer-briefs.

Anthony and Elise used to date, although “date” wasn’t the best descriptor of their former relationship. Elise had used him for sex. He had pined for her love. Unsurprisingly, she had ended up breaking his heart—but more surprisingly, he had come back, and their friendship had been the better for it.

He was now Elise’s eyes during the day, though he often slept through afternoons so he could help her hunt at night. And he already had the coffee brewing for her. Good man.

Fading daylight touched the edges of the motel curtains. A single sunbeam splashed on the wall behind her. Elise avoided it as she went to the coffee maker, tugging her underwear out of the cleft of her ass. Black lace—why was she wearing black lace? Must have been laundry day.

“Someone’s obviously trying to lure you to Grove County,” Anthony said. “Don’t go.”

“Can we talk traps after caffeine?”

His lips pressed into a disapproving line. “Okay. Caffeine first.”

He had recently begun cultivating a pencil mustache that Leticia McIntyre generously described as “the Ricky Ricardo.” Her husband, Lucas, had said, “It makes you look like a fucking beaner.” Which had led to yet another fistfight. But Anthony’s black eye was healing great. Elise could barely even tell he was injured anymore.

The coffee tasted like burned paper, but she decided to be grateful that this motel actually had in-room coffee. The last two hadn’t, and those had been two very long weeks.

Elise tossed back the first eight ounces and poured the next.

“All right,” she said, wiggling back to sit on the counter. “It’s a trap. That’s obvious. Why do I care?”

Anthony pulled on a pair of oil-stained jeans. “Why do you care?”

“Don’t just repeat my questions.”

“Lucas told me everything. He wanted to know why Lucinde Ramirez’s name got you interested.” He tugged a shirt over his head, letting the hem fall over his abs. “You know as well as I do that there’s no way Lucinde Ramirez has gone missing in Grove County.”

There were a lot of people that Elise had failed to save in her career as a demon hunter. And her memory was excellent now that she had died and returned as a demon. She remembered every single failure with crystal clarity.

Lucinde Ramirez was one of those failures: a five year old girl whose stepmother, Marisa, had offered her soul to a demon. Lucinde had been dying of a heart defect, and Marisa had hoped that possession would save her life. When Elise had killed the master demon, the girl hadn’t survived.

Five years old. She’d had glossy black ringlets and a stuffed rabbit.

“She would have been nine this year,” Elise said, tracing her finger around the rim of the coffee cup. Her nails were black today. She hadn’t painted them.

“But she’s dead,” Anthony said.

Elise suppressed her annoyance. “Yes. I know.”

“I feel like I’m going in circles here.” He shoved a hand in her face, ticking off one finger at a time. “She’s dead. Someone’s using her name to get you to Grove County. It’s a trap.” He spoke slowly, patronizingly, as if she were a five year old herself.

“The question is, who?” Elise asked, pushing his hand away. “Who’s placing the trap? Who’s got the balls to summon me now?”

“Maybe Death’s Hand,” Anthony said.

Death’s Hand was the demon that had possessed Lucinde. To be fair, it wouldn’t be the first time that Death’s Hand had returned from the dead to ruin Elise’s day. But she was confident that she had destroyed that demon on her second try. Elise had paid a high price for that kill.

“I don’t think so. This isn’t her style.” She stood, shedding her underwear. “Laundry?”

“Here.” Anthony grabbed a trash bag from beside the door and tossed it to her.

She didn’t bother with much of a wardrobe anymore. There were a couple clean pairs of underwear, a pair of jeans, a couple shirts, some leggings. Elise donned the first outfit that she laid hands on and kicked the rest of it under the bed. “Will you check out of the motel for me?”

He folded his arms across his chest, making his biceps bulge. “You’re not invulnerable.”

“Actually…” Elise gave him a thin smile.

“Everyone has a weakness. If someone’s asking you to pay them a visit, you can’t trust that they’re not going to be ready for you.”

“I’ll be fine.” She buttoned her jeans. “But I take this to mean that you’re not coming.”

“Not a fucking chance.”

“All right.”

Scant as her personal belongings had become, there were two things that Anthony took to every motel for Elise: a single-edged sword with a blade two feet long, which looked like it had been cast from obsidian, and golden chains dripping with charms. Elise had been forced to remove a few of the charms when she discovered that they stung her skin—the Star of David, for instance—but the pentacles, ankhs, and various other symbols remained intact.

She looped the chains around her neck, then shrugged into the straps of a spine sheath like a backpack. The hilt of the falchion hid neatly underneath her inky black hair.

Anthony watched her prepare with annoyance tightening his shoulders. “We’ve had something good here. Being hired guns is good money. The tithes are great. We’ve got the McIntyres a phone call away. We haven’t seen a hybrid in an entire year. We’re as safe and settled as kopides get. I can’t believe you’re blowing it off to chase ghosts.”

“Werewolves, Anthony. Werewolves. Maybe it’s a different Lucinde Ramirez.”

“Do you really believe that?” Anthony asked.

No. She didn’t.

Elise stroked his cheek with her fingertips. Anthony wasn’t afraid of her anymore. He didn’t pull back at the contact of her skin, no matter how much it had to drive his kopis senses crazy.

Kopides were supernaturally-strong, legendary hunters. The class had been created in ancient times to preserve the balance between angels, demons, and humans, so their senses were attuned to threats like Elise. Everything about her infernal energies could make a kopis go haywire.

But Anthony actually leaned into her touch, putting his hand over hers.

“I’m worried, Elise,” he said. “Lucinde Ramirez. That’s a whole other life.”

A life that she was glad to have left behind. Her perfect memory wouldn’t let her forget any of it—all the miserable lies, betrayal, violence, and death. The people she had lost. The mistakes she had made. Hearing that name dragged her human past out of its grave like a shambling zombie. Elise had to lay that zombie to rest. She needed to know who was fucking with her.

“Yeah,” she said, grabbing a pair of biker gloves off of the counter. “I’ll call you.”

They embraced, but didn’t say goodbye.

She felt, rather than saw, the sun slip behind the casino across the street. That meant it was safe for her to leave. Anthony sat on the bed again, and Elise left, stepping onto the sweltering porch outside the motel. Even at night, the oven-dry heat had a way of clinging to the city. It was smothering. Oppressive. It felt good to her demon lungs.

The motel that they had been staying in that week was just off the Strip, where it was never truly night. The light from the pinnacle of the Luxor pierced the cloudless sky. Casino lights flashed over her, dappling the pavement in dancing patterns of red and gold. Sirens wailed a block away. A thousand hearts beat within the radius of a city block, some pounding with adrenaline, others with disappointment.

Elise pushed away her senses, ignoring the call of human life—and the demons that dwelled in the tunnels below. Instead, she focused herself on the job to come.

Werewolves . Man, she hated werewolves.

She spread her arms wide and let the night consume her.