He stared off in the direction of the Harrowgate. “It’s not that. Something else. Bad vibes. Maybe we should go. Come back later.”
“Does this have something to do with Byzamoth?” The way she asked, with a slight hesitation in her voice, surprised him. Up until now, she’d been incredibly nonchalant when it came to the demons they’d encountered.
“Maybe.”
She appeared to consider his suggestion to come back later, but after a moment shook her head. “We’ll be fine. This is too important to wait.” She started for the Temple of Hathor, and he had no choice but to follow. He kept his eyes peeled, scanning the landscape for anything out of place or unusual. The hair standing up on the back of his neck told him something was watching. Waiting.
They worked their way across the hot, dusty land to the temple, which rose up out of the island, a broken shell of the great building it once had been. Its small courtyard was empty of visitors, but then, the courtyard was pretty much an uninteresting pile of old rocks.
She stopped at the enclosure wall. A breeze, cooled slightly by the surrounding water, blew her hair into her face, but she didn’t seem to notice. She’d gone statue-still, her eyes twinkling like amber caught in the sun.
“Can you feel the history?” She finally brushed the hair off her cheeks. “I love the places I get to visit. I love the way they come alive. The vibes here are almost overwhelming.”
“You can say that again,” he muttered, but he wasn’t talking about the same vibes. He was still picking up demons on his radar. But he knew what she meant. Back when E had first asked him to be UG’s artifact hunter—a job created solely to keep Wraith out of trouble—Wraith had been game because he liked the chase. The danger.
But gradually, thanks to all the research and travel he’d done, he’d come to appreciate the history—both human and demon—bound to the places that turned up the treasures. They all possessed a different feel, some good, some bad… most somewhere in between. But always there was a palpable imprint of past activity that energized him.
She moved off, working her way carefully over the stone slabs, a hand-drawn map in her hand. The sense of malevolence grew stronger, almost with every step she took, and he was seriously ready to get the f**k out of there.
“We need to hurry. How can I help?”
She held up her hand, her concentration so fierce she obviously didn’t want to be interrupted. Frustrated, he kept an eye on their surroundings as she muttered to herself, checked each pillar with methodical precision, poked around the rubble at the bases.
“Oh, crap.” She kneeled next to a broken pillar lying on its side.
“What is it?”
“The pillar. It’s been destroyed. It either fell over or was pushed.”
He crouched beside her. The broken edges were sharp. This was fresh. “Serena? What is this tablet you’re looking for? Straight up. What’s it do?”
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. “Val—and the Elders—believe there’s some sort of demon invasion coming. The Tablet of Mons Silpius is supposed to work with the coin to provide some sort of protection. I think… I think it’s supposed to render the Harrowgates useless.”
That was some damned powerful magic. And any demon in his right mind would do whatever it took to prevent The Aegis from carrying out their plan. Maybe that was why he was sensing the evil presences—demons had taken the tablet already, and they were either on their way off the island with their treasure… or they were waiting around for the person who carried the other half of the equation.
He grabbed her wrist. “We’re out of here.”
“Absolutely not.” She tried to jerk free, but when that didn’t work, she started peeling his fingers off her arm. “I can search the broken stone and see if the tablet is still there. And intact.”
A tingle shot up his spine and spiked through his brain. This was bad. Very bad. Inside he was chafing, all his instincts spinning like blades in his chest, telling him to grab Serena and run.
And goddammit… his stomach had chosen now to act up with poison reflux. “No—”
A foul wind spun up, swirled around them like a dust devil. Still crouching, he whirled around with a hiss.
“Josh?”
“We gotta go, Serena.” He leaped to his feet, but it was too late.
They came at them from all sides. Silas demons, the mercenaries of the underworld. Wraith had always hated the fishbelly white, eyeless bastards, sellouts who could be bought for any job for the right pay.
“Oh, boy,” she breathed. “Queue the Raiders of the Lost Ark music.”
“These aren’t Nazis, babe.”
Wraith shoved Serena to the ground. Silas demons were tall, and while their long limbs and extended reach gave them fighting advantages, they couldn’t bend easily, and if Serena remained flat—
She came to her feet and threw a punch at the Silas nearest her, knocking him to the ground. Blood flowed from his broken nose. Smoothly, she moved on to the next one, each action elegant and efficient, and damn, the woman could handle herself. He was relieved to see that her charm was in effect. It prevented her from taking blows, but she delivered them with brutal efficiency, dancing on the balls of her feet like a beautiful, untouchable Valkyrie. He’d like to get her in a gym, where they could spar until he took her down to the mat and—
A kick to the kidney leveled Wraith. He rolled and came to his feet. He’d been caught off guard, had been so busy admiring Serena that he’d let himself get taken. That wouldn’t happen again.
He leaped into the air, spun, took out two Silases with combination kicks to their heads. Still, they swarmed like ants. In the distance, he heard screams and the gruesome sound of tearing flesh. The human tourists were being slaughtered.
There were high prices to be paid for human massacres, so whoever had hired these scum must either be extremely powerful or this was a precursor to something worse, like the demon invasion Serena had talked about.
Wraith took a crippling blow to the gut. His muscles turned watery, and oh, f**k, the damned poison was attacking him from the inside as the demons were attacking from the outside.
A Silas kicked him in the head as Wraith doubled over. Stars swam in his vision. He went to his knees, wobbled, and caught himself with his hand.
Suddenly, the Silas went flying backward and landed at an awkward angle, its head wrenched a hundred and eighty degrees. Serena stood there like a guardian angel, looking pretty damned proud of herself.
Wraith would be proud of her too, except he was smarting from the beating and by the fact that he’d been rescued by a human. A human female. He was the one who was supposed to do the hero shit.
She leaped into action to take out another one, giving him the break he needed to get back on his feet. Another Silas came at him, and somehow he managed to pummel it, until an agonized cry brought him around. Serena had been captured by a black-robed figure. A flash of the face beneath its hood told Wraith all he needed to know about the bastard’s identity.
Byzamoth.
His arm was hooked around her neck as he dragged her backward. She clawed at the male’s arm, her legs flailing wildly.
“Serena!” Wraith sprinted toward her, silently willing the demon to let her go. He didn’t think about the fact that her charm wasn’t working against the demon. Again. He didn’t think about the fact that by turning his back on the Silas horde he was opening himself up to attack. He had to save Serena.
He weaved through the masses, blocking strikes and dodging blows. He closed in on the demon, who had taken Serena to the ground, forced her to her hands and knees. Still, she fought, swiping at him with her nails, kicking out at his groin. Byzamoth snarled and punched her in the back of her head.
Serena sagged bonelessly to the ground.
Rage twisted into a vicious, gnarled knot in Wraith’s chest. He dove for the other being, struck him in the back and knocked him into a boulder. “You are so dead,” he snarled, slamming two rapid-fire kicks into the demon’s face. Blood sprayed from his mashed nose, and then Byzamoth was on his feet, and Silas demons were swarming the Temple of Hathor.
“You are the one who is about to die,” Byzamoth said, and Wraith wanted to knock that sneer right off his too pretty face.
But now wasn’t the time. Wraith might be the best fighter in the upper- and underworld, but he wasn’t invincible, and he was beyond outnumbered.
In a quick series of moves, he lashed out with one foot, catching Byzamoth in the chest, at the same time twisting to chop a Silas in the jaw. As the two careened into other demons, Wraith swept up Serena without breaking stride. Their only hope was to reach the Harrowgate, and even that depended on Serena remaining unconscious.
Conscious humans died in Harrowgates.
He ran hard, leaping ancient stone carvings and dodging spears and knives thrown by Silas warriors. Serena’s charm now seemed to keep her safe; twice, demons tripped and fell on their own weapons as they tried to impale her with blades, and once, two spears collided in mid-air and clattered harmlessly to the ground.
Ahead, the Harrowgate shimmered between two stone pillars of the Temple of Isis. Three demons, one Silas and two Cruenti, guarded the entrance. Behind Wraith, Byzamoth’s shouts and threats grew louder. Shit.
He was going to have to plow straight through the sentries.
This was going to hurt.
Sucking in a deep breath, he held Serena tight to his chest and shot across the expanse of land. Head down, he rammed the Silas with his shoulder, knocking the male into a huge figure of Horus carved deep into a column. Wraith threw out one arm and jammed the heel of his hand into a Cruentus’s nose. The thing howled in pain. The other one slashed at Wraith with his long claws, catching him across the back of the neck. Wraith stumbled and nearly fell.
The Harrowgate flashed, the shimmering curtain peeling back as another Silas emerged. Wraith punched it in the gut and dove into the Harrowgate. He tapped the map of the United States, which activated the gate and wouldn’t allow anything else inside. For now, they were safe.