Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

The woman lay unconscious, but I felt more demons nearby. None dared come any closer, no matter how bad they wanted to. I could feel their desire, their singular drive, pulsate around me. They craved my blood like a desert craves water, my fear driving them into a mental frenzy. But they refrained from acting on it. Artemis was too powerful. She’d disposed of one demon and now stood hunched over me.

Waiting.

Hoping.

“You can’t win,” Hedeshi said.

Reyes lowered his head. “You forget who I am.”

“Not at all.” The man smiled, his teeth gritted with effort as he struggled against Reyes’s hold. Shook with it. “You’re the boy from the village who got lost on his way to the market. Do you remember why you’re here? Why your father created you?”

Another wave rippled through the air with the heat of Reyes’s anger. “He created me so he could get out of hell.”

“That was only half of it. The other half was for you to find the portal.” He nodded toward me. “That particular portal. Why do you think he sent you here?” He leaned in until their noses almost touched. “You?”

Reyes eased back. “He sent me after a portal, any portal. Not her.” He didn’t seem quite as confident as he had before. His brows slid together in thought.

The Englishman laughed. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

“I remember everything, like the fact that all you know how to do is lie.”

“She’s royalty, boy. She’s the most valuable pawn we could ever hope to possess. And you think you can keep her to yourself?”

A knowing grin slid across Reyes’s face. “She’s also the most powerful.”

“Exactly,” Hedeshi said, his eyes suddenly bright with hope. “Think of what we can do with her. With the two of you together. That’s what this is all about. What it’s always been about.” He dropped the knife and wrapped his hand around the back of Reyes’s head, pulling him forward into a brotherly embrace, their foreheads touching in affection. “We will be unstoppable, my lord. The world will fall beneath our feet, and your father will rule at last.”

Was he telling the truth? Was Reyes sent for me specifically? He must’ve sensed my doubt. He turned slightly, watching me from his periphery. “Remember what they are, Dutch. What they do.”

“I remember,” I said, trying to scoot out from under Artemis, but she plopped a huge paw on my chest, pinning me to the ground.

“Really?” I asked her, and she leaned over with a whine to lick my face. I pulled her head down into a hug, partly to assure her I wasn’t mad at her and partly to get a better look at the two men standing before me. That’s when I saw where the knife had dropped. Not to the ground as Hedeshi had expected, but into Reyes’s hand.

He took hold of the man’s head, seeming to embrace him back, and plunged the knife into his gut in one lightning-quick strike. Hedeshi gaped at him, his shock genuine as he stumbled back. “You would deny your father his throne?”

“It was never his,” Reyes said, plunging the knife again. Forcing it up his torso. An instant later, the knife reemerged from just underneath the Englishman’s chin.

Hedeshi looked at me, his eyes watering in pain. “Just remember what I’ve told you about him.”

I tried to tamp down the horror I felt at watching a man being cut open. “I’ll tie a string around my finger.”

Another stab wound wrenched a ragged groan from his throat. “He is not what you think he is.”

I thought of my father. Of Harper and Art and Pari. Of pretty much anyone I’d ever known in my entire life, and answered him as truthfully as I could. “No one ever is.”

Reyes embraced him again and plunged the knife into his side. “Your first mistake was coming for her,” he said into the man’s ear.

Hedeshi coughed, knowing full well he was taking his last breaths. “And my second?” he asked as blood gushed out of his mouth.

“Believing that you could get past me.”

The man smiled and said in the gentlest of voices, “Attack.”

And that was pretty much when all hell broke loose.

20

It puts the lotion in the basket.

—T-SHIRT

Five more demon-possessed people lunged out of the shadows like crazed mental patients as Reyes separated into two distinct beings. His incorporeal body dematerialized, reached into the Englishman, and ripped the demon Hedeshi out with a ferocious twist. His corporeal body dived into the darkness, taking on the biggest of the demons approaching, a male who looked like a sumo wrestler. They landed hard and quickly blurred into a tangle of arms and fists.

Unfortunately, Artemis used my body as a launching pad, ridding me of a kidney named Percival and quite possibly Harold, my spleen. I cradled my stomach, then scrambled to my feet and reached for the closest thing at hand—a leaf rake leaning against the building.

That’s when I realized Mrs. Allen had come outside to let PP the miniature poodle go potty. PP went berserk at all the action. Mrs. Allen yelled at him to get back inside, but PP was beyond listening to anything she had to say. I scooted back in surprise as he attacked a burly man headed toward me. The guy had enough weight on him to be taken seriously. Not as much as the sumo wrestler, but I wouldn’t have challenged him to a thumb war if my life depended on it.

He crept forward, literally crawling on hands and knees, stalking me in a slow methodical march, victory so close, so sweet, he must’ve wanted to savor the moment. PP barked and leapt off the ground, sinking his toothless gums into the man’s ear.