Chapter 2
2
B ryant is still explaining the finer details of aluminum versus carbon arrows to an entirely uncomprehending Chester when there’s a telltale crackle of power behind them. Roma swears, jumping to her feet and almost tripping over their picnic table’s bench seat. “Really? Right in front of my poutine?”
“Never off duty, are we?” Bryant drawls, and she extends her fingers. Her recurve bow appears in her hands as easily as breathing, complete with an arrow?—carbon, not aluminum?—ready to be nocked and fired. “Chester? Will you be joining us?”
Chester’s escrima sticks are already in his hands, but his shoulders are tense. “Well, I’m trained for it,” he says tightly, trepidation winding through the words. “Even if it’s, ah, not exactly my department.”
Roma flicks her wrist, activating the summoning spell on her ax. It slides smoothly out of the gap in spacetime where she stashes it, nestling firmly between her palm and fingers. “Chester, stay behind me,” she orders, because even though Chester can fight, his skills lie more in interrogation than fieldwork. “Bryant, back us up.”
“On it,” Bryant says, and before Roma and Chester can even start running, she leaps on top of their table, pulls back her bowstring, and sends an arrow hurtling straight for the summoner.
He barely misses a beat, snapping a glowing hand in their direction. The arrow freezes in midair and disintegrates long before getting close to him, and Roma can hear the vestiges of Bryant cursing behind her as she and Chester sprint forward.
Lakeside is probably the worst possible place for an altercation like this?—too many civilians, too few escape routes. In fact, it’s the perfect place to spring a trap, just like Roma tried to do last month with??—
She shoves the memory away. No reason to think about JJ now.
Not after he abandoned them.
And she has bigger problems at the moment?—specifically, the gargantuan demon that’s currently being wrenched through the summoner’s rift, screaming in protest all the while. It resembles a ten-foot-tall tarantula with bat wings and an electric-blue stripe along its belly, and Chester barks out an incredulous laugh next to her. “Oh, that’s just great.”
Roma bites back a curse, her eyes sweeping around. All the civilians gathered at Lakeside for a nice lunch are a predictable mess of fear and panic, hiding under picnic tables and cowering behind food trucks. The Sanctum has been encouraging its strike teams to bring newly summoned demons back for testing lately, but right now??—
Right now, with so many potential casualties, they might just have to kill this one. “Chester, get the summoner! I’ve got the demon.”
“Better you than me!” Chester says, and they peel apart right at the point where the sand meets the grass. Roma’s sneakers pound against the ground as she races for the neophyte demon, mentally starts the shorthand incantation for a magic offensive??—
Another form lunges into her path before she can cast the spell, herding the neophyte backward. Roma skids to a stop, blank terror roiling through her at this new monster that looks like a cross between a chimera and a dragon??—
Followed by a jolt of recognition. “Obie?”
For a split second, the demon looks over its shoulder at her, its glowing red eyes cold and ageless.
And then the neophyte lashes out with a shriek, and Obie leaps back into the fight, trying to corner the demon against the lake so it can’t barrel into town. Roma scrambles out of range, her head whipping around.
Obie? Obadiah Smith, her old landlord during her brief stint as a fake defector? What is he doing here? Is he alone? Or is he here with??—??
All at once, she spots another familiar face. She feels like she just got punched in the gut.
JJ.
Julian Jackson, the former third member of Roma and Bryant’s strike team, is racing towards the summoner with his escrima sticks held aloft. He stumbles in surprise when he catches sight of Chester homing in from the opposite direction, and the summoner takes advantage of their confusion to blast them both away, his incantation getting louder as he turns back to the rift.
To Roma’s horror, another demon appears at its center, shrieking in pain and fear as it’s dragged from Tamaros to Earth. Most summoners only pull one demon from Earth’s sister dimension to do their bidding, but apparently, this guy is trying to amass an entire army.
They don’t have the resources for this. She and Bryant haven’t even been on active duty since JJ defected, the Sanctum and the Chain will take too long to respond??—
“Gutierrez!” Bryant yells, and Roma wheels around, panic choking up her throat. “Get the rift!”
Right. Roma sucks in a sharp breath, clearing her mind and focusing on her mission. A powerful spellcaster summoning multiple demons isn’t ideal, but they’ll only keep materializing until he closes the rift??—
Or someone else does. And, luckily for Lakeside and probably Redwater as a whole right now, Roma is Strike Team Kappa’s magic expert. Gritting her teeth, she drops her ax back into its holding area and races forward, dodging around the demonic scuffle to get to the rift.
It’s noticeably larger than normal, at least ten feet high as opposed to the usual seven or eight. A more skilled summoner or a more robust spell, probably. That means it’ll be particularly difficult to close, and this isn’t exactly a spell Roma uses every day. Steeling herself, she sets her spellcasting stance?—open hands facing forward, feet shoulder-width apart?—and starts the incantation. “Ages upon ages, to preserve the sanctity of this realm, I defend us from the worlds beyond. Dispatching both sword and shield to protect us, I??—?”
“?—?cut the threads that bind our realms together,” a familiar voice says nearby, and Roma nearly jumps out of her skin when she sees Esmeralda Laguerre on the opposite side of the rift, hands raised high and glowing with power. “To protect and preserve life in abundance, we close what once was opened!”
The words, structure, and cadence of the incantation are different from anything Roma knows?—a demonic spell instead of a human one, she thinks?—and the rift only shivers before stabilizing itself. Ez’s eyes widen in shock. “What the? ? —??”
Quickly, Roma finishes her own spell. “I create a barrier through which nothing can pass and command you to close!” she orders, sweeping her arms out as power pulses through her hands.
The rift barely twitches. Swearing, Roma dives out of the way as the battling demons thrash in her direction.
A dive that unfortunately brings her closer to Ez. “What was that incantation?” Ez demands, eyes narrowed.
Roma shoves herself to her feet, putting a healthy distance between them. Ez was always the most suspicious of Roma during her fake defection, and while her animosity was admittedly well-founded, it still didn’t endear her to Roma. “Rift-closing spell,” she says shortly. “The human version.”
“And the demonic version didn’t work, either,” Ez mumbles, taking a step back to analyze the rift as a whole?—and cursing when a third demon gets dragged out of it. “We don’t have time for this. Cass and Obie can’t hold them off forever, and JJ??—?”
Instinctively, Roma’s eyes snap to where Chester and JJ are fighting the summoner, apparently putting aside their differences for the good of Redwater. Bryant is supplying her ranged attacks to back up Obie and Cass, all of them united in their mission to contain the neophyte demons??—
Inspiration strikes. “Wait,” Roma says sharply, turning to Ez. “Yours sounded like a disconnecting spell at the Tamaros side of the rift, right? And mine was a blocking spell at the Earth side. If we hit it from both angles at the same time??—?”
“?—?then we might be able to overcome the power threshold to close it,” Ez finishes grimly, and then, barely giving Roma time to think: “We start on three. One, two, three? ? —?”
Hastily, Roma flies into her incantation. “Ages upon ages??—?”
“In the name of Nostringvadha??—?”
The two of them shout over each other, their voices nearly lost between the roaring of the demons and the crackling of the rift. Roma’s magic lights up around her hands as she reaches the end of her spell, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ez’s powers blaze to life, too.
“?—?command you to close!”
“?—?close what once was opened!”
The rift shudders before finally collapsing. Roma leaps out of range as it folds in on itself and vanishes, a startled grin jumping onto her face. “It worked,” she breathes, and she turns to look at Ez??—
Only to find that the demon in question is already gone, apparently having shifted into her grotesque true form and bounded in to help Cass and Obie without a backwards glance.
Roma’s moment of elation shatters. “You’re welcome,” she snaps to empty air, and she takes off towards the summoner, her ax back at the ready. JJ jerks away in shock at her approach, but she determinedly ignores him, ducking between his and Chester’s twin offenses just like she used to during training sessions??—
Her ax slices down the summoner’s torso. He quickly goes ashen and crumples to the ground, his magic dying along with him, and all at once, the cacophony around Lakeside drops by a few decibels.
Roma looks from the neophyte demons?—now even more frightened and erratic without their summoner?—to Bryant’s nonplussed expression to the shell-shocked men on either side of her and resists the urge to scrub her hand down her face.
All she wanted was some poutine, damn it.
Ez warily eyes the three anxious demons in front of her, giving the winged spider a particularly wide berth as it nervously swings its legs around. “Well, this isn’t ideal.”
“It never is,” Obie agrees, and he pulls out his phone. “I’ll call Maggie. She’s always been the best at calming down neophytes, and she can bring them straight to the Education Department to register them. Cass, you and JJ should probably make yourselves scarce before she gets here, since you’re technically fugitives and all. Where’s Desi?”
“I rifted her home and told her to protect her dragon plushies. She should be fine for a little while, but I don’t like to leave her alone for more than?—?” Abruptly, Cass goes rigid, his eyes widening.
Frowning, Ez turns around to follow his gaze. The summoner is collapsed in a bloody heap on the grass, as expected, and in a small semicircle around him are Roma Gutierrez, Chester Locke??—
And JJ, who’s backing away from the two hunters with tense shoulders and an unreadable expression.
“I’ve got him,” Ez says quickly, and before Cass can argue, she snaps open a rift to transport herself across Lakeside, stepping through to JJ’s side. “Let’s go, Jackson. We’re calling in the big guns to deal with the neophytes.”
JJ flashes her a grateful look. “Thanks,” he says quietly, and he shifts towards her??—
Just as Roma steps forward, a hard glint in her eyes. “Yeah, I don’t think so. Chester and I killed the summoner. Those demons are ours.”
Ez’s temper spikes. “This isn’t finders keepers, Gutierrez. These are actual lives we’re dealing with, and there’s no way we’re letting Blondie over here take them home and torture them.”
Chester’s flinch at the words is all the confirmation Ez needs that she didn’t mistake his identity. Definitely the same interrogator from the Sanctum’s prison who refused to tell them where Cass was being held last month. Her dislike of both him and Roma ticks up a few notches.
Roma doesn’t back down. “Us against you? I like our chances.”
Before Ez can even begin to react to that laughable statement?—or just blast Roma away with magic like the gnat she is?—JJ suddenly puts himself between them. “Stand down, Gutierrez,” he says, a low thread of danger in his voice as he shifts his grip on his escrima. “This isn’t a battle you want to fight.”
Roma and Chester both stiffen. “So that’s how it is now?” Roma demands, eyes narrowed. “We’re enemies?”
JJ doesn’t move. “I don’t want to be. Just?—just leave them alone. Leave my friends alone.”
Ez doesn’t know whether to be touched or roll her eyes. “As heartwarming as this is,” she says, putting two fingers on JJ’s shoulder and nudging him aside, “we have nothing to worry about. Maggie Khan is on her way to transport the neophytes to the Chain, and she’s one of the few demons alive who intimidates me, so I’d love to see the Sanctum even try to cross her. Let’s get out of here.”
For a long moment, JJ stares Roma and Chester down. Roma just looks bitter and angry, like she’s still pissy that she didn’t manage to kidnap him two weeks ago, but Chester??—
Chester looks more sad and worried than anything else. So Ez supposes it isn’t entirely surprising that, when she waves open a new rift to take her and JJ home, Chester unexpectedly steps forward, grabbing JJ’s arm. “JJ, wait? ? —?”
JJ jerks away so fast that he stumbles into Ez, gasping in pain. On his bare forearm, right where Chester’s hand was, angry red blisters are already erupting, cracked and bloody and oozing.
Corrosion burns. Ez’s stomach plummets. Sanctum hunters have a lot of enchantments baked into their bones?—enhanced senses, increased speed, superhuman strength?—but the most infamous one is a spell that makes their skin physically caustic to demons, leaving excruciating burns after even fleeting touches.
Now that JJ is half-demon, he has that weakness, too.
Roma and Chester both reel away, eyes wide and horrified. “The hell?” Chester stammers, staring at JJ’s arm. “JJ??—?”
Roma’s voice, quiet and disgusted and a little bit sad, cuts through Chester’s. “What did they do to you?” she asks, her accusing eyes snapping to Ez.
Before Ez can retort, a rift peels open between her and JJ. Cass stalks out of it and grabs his boyfriend’s arm, pulling JJ behind him. “What did we do to him?” he hisses. “What did you do to him? Gutierrez here tried to kidnap him, Locke cut him open on orders from the Council?—JJ is safer with us than he ever was with you sociopaths.”
Roma bristles. “You? ? —?”
“Guys.” Ez almost jumps when Obie appears between them. He definitely didn’t rift over?—she would’ve noticed the magic?—but he apparently walked up so silently that no one even noticed him. His hands are shoved casually in his pockets, but his shoulders are stiff and his voice is flat. “This is neither the time nor the place to make a scene. We’re in a civilian area that’s crawling with witnesses. We all need to disappear.”
Automatically, Ez glances around. Maggie Khan is currently coaxing the three terrified neophytes into standing down and not lashing out at everything in sight; Bryant Nehemiah still has an arrow nocked and held at the ready like she’s not sure whether to attack the newly summoned demons, Ez’s posse, or both; the civilians are starting to poke their heads out from their various hiding places, sensing that the danger is nearly over??—
Ez and her friends have done enough for today. “One disappearing act, coming right up,” she says shortly, and she snaps open a rift. “Well, this has been?—what’s the opposite of ‘fun’? That. Let’s not do this again.”
Roma’s eyes glint dangerously. “Couldn’t agree more.”
Chester is still trying to catch JJ’s eye, regret written all over his face, but JJ just looks away and takes Cass’s hand. “Come on,” he says softly, and he pulls Cass through the rift first. Obie follows after them, shooting Ez a clear “don’t start anything” look as he goes, and Ez returns Roma’s glare for a long, hard moment before stalking through the rift and waving it closed behind her.
So much for having a nice lunch with her friends.