Chapter 7
Turns out I feel bad about hurting a demon’s feelings. Either that, or I’m really, really lonely.
Or maybe both are true.
These are the thoughts I admit to myself as I wait in the alley behind the soup kitchen, near the side entrance, the October wind sweeping down the block and sending brittle leaves and stray wrappers skittering around my boots. I tell myself I’m here on business. Surveillance? Due diligence.
I’m waiting for the kitchen to close.
I’m waiting for Jonah. Jonah, the half-demon who doesn’t feed on people. Who, in fact, feeds people.
So what am I waiting for? To apologize? For more answers? Some clarification that will let me neatly file him away as threat or anomaly? I still have plenty of questions. What’s going on with my magic? What happened to me ten years ago? What happened to Jonah’s wife forty years ago?
An unsettling question nudges its way forward.
Do I know who killed her?
There are only five major slayer families in New York City. Officially, each borough falls under one family’s watch. Lines drawn in blood and obligation and passed down through generations.
The Baptistes have Brooklyn. The Chens—Queens. The Riveras are in The Bronx and the Morettis have Staten Island.
My family—the Magdangals—is responsible for Manhattan.
The wind gusts harder, rattling the metal doors in the alley.
Where did it happen? Could it have been us? Could it have been me?
Forty years ago, it’s possible. I was alive. I was training. I was… eager to prove myself. But I would remember, wouldn’t I? Have I ever paused long enough to practice discernment? Or have I simply trusted that if my magic sensed something, the killing was justified?
I didn’t falter ten years ago. The memory presses in at the edges of my mind—
My magic screams. The familiar signature of a demon hits first, a single, sustained note I’d recognize anywhere.
But beneath it comes something sharper, a second current that slices straight through me.
No jittery static. No strange fluctuations like I’ve felt for the past twenty-four hours.
This signal is clean and focused, almost vicious in its clarity.
Whatever my magic has been trying to tell me lately, it isn’t confused about this one.
I whirl around.
A slender demon casually stands a few yards behind me, as if he’s been a permanent fixture of this alleyway for ages.
His suit is immaculate. Blond hair is artfully swept back from a face far too perfect to be human—not that he looks particularly human, considering the foot-long horns on either side of his head. His smile is sharp and severe. Cold.
Both my hands move without conscious thought—left diving into my pocket for the salt-and-ash mixture, right settling around the hilt of my dagger.
We begin to circle each other, slow and deliberate. I let the salt sift between my fingers as I move, scattering it at my feet in what looks like nervous pacing.
An arc first.
“You’re in my way, Slayer,” the demon croons, voice smooth as oil.
“You’re… in my way… DEMON!” I shout back and cringe immediately.
The arc is almost closed. I edge backward until my shoulders brush the concrete wall of the soup kitchen. Just a few more inches and—
The metal door beside me slams open.
Jonah steps out, eyes wild and frantic—searching—until they land on me. “Mayari,” he breathes.
Then he spots the blond, and his expression shifts instantly into recognition and fury and hatred.
I clock a number of things immediately and simultaneously: Jonah’s not wearing the hoodie anymore, the bandages on his arm are soaked dark with blood, and he is still healing from me. Jonah is injured.
This blond demon is not.
For once, I don’t hesitate.
I slam my shoulder into Jonah’s chest and shove him back through the gap in the salt. Before either of them can react, I drop low and sweep the remaining salt from my palm in one decisive line, sealing the break.
The circle seals with a sharp, compressed pop. The air shifts, and the barrier rises, locking me and the blond demon inside.
Jonah is safe outside the circle. “No!” he shouts, slamming his palms against the invisible wall. “What the fuck are you doing, Mayari—”
Inside the circle, the blond demon smiles wider.
“Oh,” he says softly, gaze sliding over me.
“Now this is interesting.” He doesn’t move at first. He studies me the way one might study an unexpected inconvenience, like a giant puddle at a crosswalk, his head tilted slightly.
His expression reads, if I step in this, my socks might get wet. Thoughtful rather than threatened.
“You’re very small,” he says pleasantly.
“You’re very dead,” I snap stupidly, and lunge.
I’m fast. Not demon fast, but “decades of training and discipline combined with some inherent slayer skill” fast. The dagger whistles toward his throat, Baybayin script along the blade igniting as they taste demon energy.
The circle hums in answer, the salt line glowing faintly beneath our feet as the magic tightens its hold.
He catches my wrist with both superior speed and strength.
“You’re one of the Magdangals,” he says, as if recalling a fact from memory. “Manhattan’s little watchdogs.”
My chest constricts.
Behind him, Jonah strikes the barrier with his palm. “Mayari, do not engage him head-on—he’ll overpower you,” he grits out.
“I’m already engaged, Jonah!” I remind him, wrenching my wrist free with a twist my brother drilled into me when I was fifteen.
The blond laughs and moves. One second he’s in front of me, the next he’s behind me, fingers fisting in the back of my catsuit, yanking me off balance.
He picks me up and slams me onto the pavement.
My teeth rattle, my magic absorbing some but not most of the pain radiating down the front of my body, and I’m immediately reminded of another reason I haven’t gone hunting in ten years.
Because this part fucking sucks. And this is one strong fucking demon.
I roll before he can follow up, flinging a fistful of ash toward his face. It ignites midair. Silver fire blooms across his features.
He snarls—real pain this time—and staggers back, smoke curling from his skin.
“Yes!” I breathe, scrambling to my feet. “That’s right—ash, asshole. Ash-hole.”
“Mayari, enough!” Jonah growls. “Circle him. Don’t let him flank you.”
I pivot, dragging a fresh arc of salt with my free hand, trying to split the space, trying to limit his movement. My magic hums, surging now that I have a clear target. Just bright, clean certainty.
He lunges through it anyway. His hand catches my throat and lifts me clean off the ground. Goddamnit.
My dagger clatters to the ground. Air vanishes from my lungs.
“Belvedere will enjoy you,” he murmurs conversationally. “He prefers spirited ones.”
Cold punches through me harder than the lack of oxygen. “Wha—” I rasp.
“He shall meet me here on Halloween night,” the demon continues, tightening his grip. “This charming little feeding ground of yours has drawn his interest. So many open hearts.” His smile sharpens. “We’ll feast.”
Behind him, Jonah has gone very, very still.
The demon squeezes.
Black begins to creep into the edges of my vision.
Think.
I force my hands up between us, palms flat against his chest. My magic blasts in a concussive burst of pressure and energy. It slams into him like a wave, forcing him back a step. Just enough.
I drop, gasping, and dive for my dagger.
He kicks it away. He kicks me.
Pain detonates along my ribs as his foot connects with my side. Something cracks, and the sound is loud and intimate and devastating. I think my rib has just punctured my lung. Fuck, I hate this shit!
I roll again, clutching my side, and fling a desperate handful of salt behind me. The circle answers, flaring bright, reinforcing its boundary as the blond attempts to lunge through it. He hits the invisible wall with a snarl, and the impact ripples outward in shimmering distortion.
“Mayari!” Jonah is pounding the barrier now. “Use a tether! Anchor him!”
Right.
Tether.
With shaking fingers, I smear ash and blood together against the pavement, carving a Baybayin symbol of binding into the ground within the circle. The air thickens further, pressure building inside the circle until my ears pop.
The demon’s movements grow slow, as if the air itself has turned viscous around him.
He pushes through it anyway, and then I am well and truly fucked.
The demon bends and rakes his claws across my abdomen, slicing several inches deep, down through leather and skin and flesh in one slow, brutal sweep. Fierce, white-hot pain floods outward. My breath leaves me in a sharp, involuntary cry.
My head hits the ground.
The demon stands over me now, irritation replacing amusement. “You should’ve stayed over there and looked pretty,” he snarls.
I don’t have a comeback lined up, because at this point, I wholeheartedly agree.
Behind him, Jonah’s voice cracks. “Mayari, get up. Get up.”
Someone is coming.
Halloween.
Soup kitchen.
People inside.
I can’t let him walk out of this circle.
My fingers grope blindly until they find the dagger’s hilt. I curl my hand around it and draw it close against my body, hiding the movement beneath the curl of pain.
The demon leans down, perhaps to savor the moment, perhaps to finish it.
I whisper a binding word. The dagger ignites. White light fractures through the blade, traveling up my arm and into my chest like lightning seeking ground.
I drive it upward with everything I have left.
The blade cleanly pierces between his ribs.
For one suspended heartbeat, our faces are inches apart. His expression shifts to one of shock.
“Belvedere—” he begins.
The symbols flare to blinding brightness. The ash I laid earlier ignites, silver light bursting through his skin in branching fractures. He convulses once as the circle tightens, compressing inward, forcing the magic to hold.
Then he shatters. He explodes into smoke and burning silver fragments that collapse inward, leaving nothing but a scorch mark and the faint smell of ozone.
My circle flickers, then drops entirely as silence floods the alley.
I try to breathe. It hurts.
I try to stand. I can’t.
Jonah is suddenly there, dropping to his knees beside me, hands hovering like he doesn’t know where he’s allowed to touch.
“Mayari,” he says, voice raw. “Stay with me.”
“I killed that motherfucker,” I wheeze out, tasting blood.
“You did,” he says. “You absolute motherfucking nightmare.”
I smile as my vision narrows to a thin tunnel.
His face is the last thing I see—terrified and furious and something else I can’t quite place.
Then everything goes dark.