Alec and Reed roared in unison, their shouts reverberating in Eve’s skull with such volume they drowned out everything else. In slow motion, she watched the demon hovering like a ghostly apparition, her white robes in tatters, her hair a sinuously writhing mane. Eve raised her arms to ward off the coming attack, then jerked in surprise as a heavy weight forced her forearm to drop to her chest…
…weighted by the miraculous appearance of a glaive in her hand.
Her grip tightened on the hilt and her back arched up. Hurling the blade forward like a javelin, she struck the yuki-onna straight in the chest. The glaive pierced deep with a sickening thud.
The demon exploded in a burst of ash.
Eve continued to slide until she slammed into the wall. At impact, the katana dislodged from its mooring, twisting to fall point down toward her head. She jerked to the side, rolling to avoid the blade. It pierced the floor where she’d been an instant before. Behind her, the glaive—no longer embedded in the demon’s body—clattered to the tile.
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
A pair of steel-toed boots appeared next to her head, then a hand extended into her line of sight. Looking up, her gaze met eyes of rich chocolate brown. Once, Alec had looked at her with a heat so scorching it burned her skin. She missed that look. Then again, she got hot enough for the both of them just checking him out.
At a few inches over six feet, Alec was as ripped as one would expect a skilled predator to be. He was God’s most revered and trusted enforcer, and his body reflected that calling. His hair, as always, was slightly overlong, but she would fight off anyone who approached him with shears.
“Could God have waited any longer to bail me out of the mess he put me in?” she groused.
“Did you note the lack of fire?” His voice—dark and slightly raspy—was pure seduction, even when laced with the resonance unique to archangels. It didn’t sound that way when he spoke to her telepathically, which was sadly appropriate. Who he was in reality was far different from who he was in her mind.
She blinked up at him. “You bailed me out? What the hell? Was he just going to let me die? Again?”
“Obviously not, since you’re not dead. It was a lesson in faith.”
“More like a lesson in ‘I am God, see me fuck with you.”
“Watch it’ he admonished.
Eve accepted his proffered hand. As he pulled her upright, his powerful chest and tautly ridged abdomen flexed noticeably beneath his fitted white T-shirt. She couldn’t help noticing stuff like that, even though she couldn’t touch what she was looking at.
“What is it with demons and bathrooms?” she asked. “Grimshaw started a trend when he sent that dragon to kill me. I swear I’ve vanquished at least half a dozen Infernals in bathrooms since then.”
The dragon had been a courtier in Asmodeus’s court, but he’d killed her for Charles Grimshaw— former Alpha of the Northern California Black Diamond Pack and father of the wolf she’d had to kill twice. Demon retaliation was a bitch.
Alec cursed at the sight of her thigh. Her toes were squishing in the blood soaking her sock and puddling along the sole. She would need a new pair of boots.
He bent to examine her wound more closely. “I would have gotten here sooner, but I had to scare off the crowd of Infernals in the hall first.”
“Crowd?”
“I don’t think the ice bitch was kidding about the bounty.”
“What do you know that I don’t? You wouldn’t believe an Infernal without some sort of proof.”
Alec had assumed control over the day-to-day operation of Gadara Enterprises—the secular front for the North American firm of Marks—since the archangel Raguel had been taken prisoner by Satan a couple of months back. That meant Alec was privy to almost every hellacious and celestial happening that occurred between the top of Alaska to the end of Mexico.
“The number of Infernals in Orange County has tripled in the last two weeks.”
Which was when she’d graduated from training. As she was often reminded, nothing was a coincidence. “No wonder it’s been so busy around here.”
He gave her a resigned look. “It will get busier, if Sammael’s set his sights on you.”
“With a free-for-all bounty open to all classes of demons? Jeez, you’d think I kicked his puppy or something. Oh wait. . . I did.” Eve put weight on her wounded leg and winced at the immediate throb of agony.
Alec tucked his shoulder under her arm to support her. “We need to bandage that leg, smart ass.”
“You like my ass, and not because of its IQ.”
“Love it.” He gave her butt an affectionate squeeze. Alec might be restricted from feeling emotional love for her, but lust wasn’t a problem. “But I love the rest of your hot body, too, and I’d like to keep it in one piece.”
The mark enabled her to heal super fast. In an hour or two, only a pink scar would remain, and by nightfall, the injury would be nothing but a memory. But she could help move things along in the recovery department by closing the hole with some butterfly bandages. She’d have to hurry; her mom was still waiting for her.
I’ll take care of Miyoko, he assured her.
“I’ll take Eve back to her place to change,” a deep voice intruded.
They turned their heads to find Reed by the door. The men’s features were similar enough to betray them as siblings, but they were otherwise polar opposites. Reed favored Armani suits and faultless haircuts. Today he wore black slacks and a lavender dress shirt open at the throat and rolled at the wrists. It was a testament to how completely, robustly male he was that he could look so damn fine in such a soft color.
Alec’s arm at her waist tightened. The two brothers were like oil and kerosene together. Dangerously flammable. They refused to tell her what started their lifelong feud, and they kept the memory so repressed in the darkest corners of their minds that she hadn’t yet been able to find it. Whatever the sore spot was, the murderous rage it incited was easily goaded.
They’d been killing each other for years—Cain more so than Abel—but were always resurrected by God to fight some more.
Which was just nasty in her opinion. Why God enabled the two brothers to keep fighting was beyond her comprehension.
“What are we going to do about this mess?” She offered a soothing smile to Alec before stepping away from him. A trail of blood marked her recent kamikaze slide across the floor. The rapidly melting ice was spreading the crimson stain along the grout lines, creating an oddly compelling map.
Stepping into the water, Alec snapped his fingers and the liquid and blood filled the nearest sink, transferred so quickly she hadn’t caught the movement even with her enhanced senses. She would go home with Reed in similar fashion.
Thankfully, Marks had handlers to pick up after them. She was luckier than most in that she had Cain, too, although that created some friction with many of the other Marks who thought she had an advantage. They didn’t take into consideration how many demons wanted to use her to get to the deadliest Mark of them all. She might as well wear a bull’s-eye for cocky and rash Infernals to aim for.
Then again, it looked like Satan had taped the target on for her.
“Come on,” Reed said, extending a hand to her. “Before your mother calls in the cavalry.”
“Forget the cavalry.” Alec winked at Eve. “Miyoko would charge in herself.”
She was halted midlaugh by the stench of a sewer. Looking for the demon whose proximity had to be the cause, she found herself staring into an inexplicably lingering puddle at her feet.. . and familiar eyes of malevolent, crystalline blue. A face in the liquid. She stomped instinctively, destroying the visage of the water demon in an explosion of spraying droplets.
“What the hell?” Reed barked, catching her as her wounded thigh caused her to stumble.
In the literal blink of an eye, Eve found herself in the kitchen of her third-floor condo in Huntington Beach. “Did you see him?” she gasped, leaning heavily into his hard body.
Reed’s arms tightened around her. “Yeah, I saw him.”
He’s gone. Alec’s tone was grim. I’m heading out to hold off your mom, but we need to address this when we ‘re done here.
The demon was a Nix—a Germanic shape-shifting water spirit. He’d targeted her almost from the moment she had been marked, then made a nuisance of himself until she killed him. Correction: She’d thought she killed him.
She would kill him. This particular Nix had taken the life of her neighbor Mrs. Basso. Sweet, forthright, widowed Mrs. Basso who had been a beloved friend. Eve’s need for vengeance was what motivated her when the damned Infernal bounty hunting got tough.
Pulling away from Reed, she limped down the hallway to her master bedroom. The crash of the waves against the shore pulsed in through the living room balcony’s open sliding glass door. In her premarked life, she’d been an interior designer. Her condo had been one of her first projects, and the space remained one of her favorites. Even the mistakes she’d made in the layout were fond ones. She wouldn’t change a thing. She felt safe here, less like a demon killer and more like herself.
Eve absorbed the calm she found in her home with deep, even breaths.
Reed called after her, his tone both seductive and challenging. “Need help getting naked?”
She sighed inwardly. Outside these walls, the worst of Hell’s denizens were converging en masse. She would need to be ready when she ventured out again.
As if her love life wasn’t dangerous enough.
CHAPTER 2
Eve climbed onto one of the Shaker-style bar stools at her kitchen island. “You know, I wish the demons I killed would stay dead.”
In truth, they usually exploded into ash like the yuki-onna had and were returned to Hell where they were punished for blowing their chance to play with mortals. She was the only Mark to have vanquished the same demon more than once.
“Hey,” Diego Montevista protested from his seat on the stool beside her. “I’m alive for the same reason they came back to haunt you.”