Neither of the demon hunters answered her question. But they didn’t need to. The truth hung in the autumn crisp air.

  There were more demons in these woods than two demon hunters alone could handle. Demons that were already free.

  She was going to need a bigger spell.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Candle flames crackled in the dark, cool air, the sound of the men chanting around the stone containment circle fading into the background of Angie’s panic. Even the blue, blobby demon seemed less of a worry. Because there were loose demons in the woods around them.

  Aidan hadn’t confirmed that out loud. Sebastian hadn’t either.

  They didn’t have to. Their silence said everything.

  The fact that they’d come to her for help, brought her here at all, should have warned her long before this moment.

  She wasn’t sure she could have gotten less happy than she’d been earlier, when her biggest worry was being surrounded by trees. She was definitely less happy now.

  “What do we do?” she murmured for both Aidan and Sebastian.

  Aidan raised a hand for silence, so Angie fell silent but she pressed the pentagram harder into her fingers. She’d have a pentagram shaped bruise at this rate and didn’t really care. A tingling through the little warding charm gave her some comfort. Not a lot. But some.

  She should be studying for midterms right now. She should be safe in her own apartment, away from demons and trees and the rotten humans who did this. This was Aidan’s job. Sebastian’s. She was just a college student.

  No. She sucked in a quiet but deep breath. Not just a college student. Demons might be out of her depth. But she was a witch, a well-trained witch, learning more every day, with no small amount of power at her command. She wasn’t helpless. She wasn’t defenseless.

  She forced herself to think, to work out what they could do. She had one of the best demon hunters in the world at her side—Aidan was legendary, even among the hunters—and she had her magic. She had no idea what Sebastian could do, how strong his will was. If he was Aidan’s protégé, then his skills were formidable. That was good. Angie would take that and hope his will was strong enough to keep him alive.

  A demon hunter who’s will wasn’t stronger than a demon’s ended up dead.

  The thought of Sebastian ending up dead did strange, tightening things to her stomach. She ignored the sensation as best she could. But the fact that it was there at all…

  She forced another deep breath. She had one spell ready and waiting to be triggered. But she needed another few ready. She couldn’t hold that many un-triggered. So far, her record in a controlled environment with one of her teachers there to help her, and inside the safety of a protection circle just in case something went wrong, was three.

  This was not a controlled environment with a convenient teacher and protection circle.

  One more, then. She could hold one more. She ran through her repertoire and decided on the second spell. Yes, that would do. And she’d practiced holding it with another spell before, so she knew she could manage it.

  She kept her murmured words quiet and her gestures as subtle as possible while not sacrificing precision. Word and hand gestures had to be exact, perfectly shaped and timed, or a spell could go terribly wrong. There were other ways witches did magic. But this was the way she knew and what worked with her innate powers. This was how she had to cast spells.

  She felt Sebastian’s gaze on the side of her head. She ignored him because she had to concentrate, but the awareness of him noticing her and what she was doing was…difficult to manage.

  When her spell was at the last possible point, when all it needed was a single word and one last finger twist to set it into motion, she carefully set it on the mental shelf with her first spell. Within easy reach. Ready to go off. Balanced so they didn’t trigger too soon.

  “Will it interfere with what Aidan and I do?” Sebastian asked quietly. “The spell you’ve just done?”

  “No,” she whispered back, and then had to clamp her mouth shut to keep from explaining more to him.

  First, she didn’t want to draw the attention of the still dancing humans or any of the demons in the woods around them—that last was probably a pointless hope, but still. Second, it wasn’t his business how her magic worked. Her witchy skills weren’t the reason Aidan had brought her anyway. But she also didn’t discuss the specifics with an outsider.

  He probably should know, her conscious told her. At least which spells she had ready to trigger. He and Aidan both probably needed to know so they knew what to expect. He didn’t need to know how she cast, but understanding what she was about to cast was probably important.

  She opened her mouth to tell him and Aidan both what she had at the ready, but a noise from the trees silenced her.

  Even without Aidan’s raised hand, Angie froze.

  The ground vibrated beneath her, a tremor like the rumbling after an earthquake. Slight aftershock, but not the big one. Except this was before the earthquake. And the shaking rumble got louder, and more intense, as the moments ticked past.

  The dancing men sent up a whooping shout, a cheer. Their voices sounded harsh and scratchy, like they’d been chanting so long they’d nearly ruined their throats.

  Across the small clearing, beyond the blue demon and the stone circle, the first flickering of red light came into view, lighting the dark night.

  Angie was tempted to look up into the trees, to search the trees for the first glimpse of the approaching demon—or demons—but to do so risked an accidental encounter with just the wrong type of tree. She didn’t want to loose more demons onto this realm than might already be here.

  More glowing red filled the woods beyond the circle. And with a shiver of fear, Angie realized there was red glowing in her peripheral vision, too. She swallowed hard. Keeping her gaze near the ground, she glanced beyond Sebastian, then Aidan.

  Fuck. Lots of red glow. Lot of approaching demons.

  The hair on the back of her neck prickled. Demons from the rear as well.

  It took everything in her not to swing around and face the threat at her back. Being surrounded meant every part of her was vulnerable. Panic robbed her of logic. Again. She had no idea what to do.

  Help!

  Aidan rested a hand on her arm and very quietly murmured, “Trigger the circle.”

  Angie didn’t even ask how Aidan knew what one of the spells she’d set up was, and she didn’t question the hunter’s timing. She triggered the second spell she’d designed. The protection circle. Encompassing herself and the two hunters.

  A flash of blue light in her witchy vision as the circle closed and a cone of protective energy rose above them. The hunters wouldn’t see that blue light. They wouldn’t see the circle at all, though Aidan might have felt it go up. But the glow of blue in Angie’s mind’s eye was the most reassuring thing Angie had ever seen.

  She released a slow breath and let her shoulders relax. No demons would get past that. Especially with Aidan and Sebastian’s wills to hold it. They had a little breathing room to work.

  “Was that a good idea?” Sebastian murmured—too Aidan, not Angie.

  “Yes,” Aidan said, her gaze still on the dancing, whooping men.

  Angie winced. There was nothing she could do to help the men. At least not at the moment. But since they were actively summoning at least one demon and had filled the woods with more, she wasn’t inclined to feel that bad.

  Then the first demon came into view. Not one of the giant ones. A small, almost human-sized being with black skin and leathery wings like a bat’s, a smoothly bald head, and taloned claws where its fingers and toes would have been. Its eyes were red spots amidst all the blackness. Three more similar demons moved up around the first. All of them so dark, they blended with the shadows, their wings ruffling and red eyes the only thing keeping them visible when they stopped moving.

  More demons appeared. More of the small bat-winged creatures. But also some of the larger ones. Some with molten skin, red and rolling like lava over their huge hunched bodies. Others shaped a little like a human and a little like an oxen, moving on two legs but dropping to all fours as they settled into place around the edge of the clearing.

  Angie spotted several demons with green scaled skin, their tentacles a white fleshy color that struck her as quite horrible to look at, their bodies shaped like a combination of human tops and octopus bottoms. There were more. Another two of the blue blobby demons, like the one in the circle—which meant they weren’t from a froze realm, thank the goddess, or everyone would have frozen by now. A few more with black crackling rock skin over lava. A tentacled, gray-skinned demon walked beside a huge beast that looked like a cross between a bull and an eagle with bright red skin. Almost all of them with glowing red eyes.

  The stench of sulfur coated Angie’s tongue, making her gag even as she shivered. The last time she’d been around half so many demons, she’d accidentally unleashed them by staring into the natural V in a tree trunk in her father’s church parking lot.

  And Aidan had to come and put all those demons back.

  Angie barely remembered the fight. She was too young and scared, terrified and guilty. Oh so much guilt. For a child, almost too much. Would have been too much if not for Aidan.

  Which was why she was here. Surrounded by demons again. Hoping her magical protective circle would keep them safe until Aidan and Sebastian decided what to do.

  “So many different kinds,” Sebastian murmured. “Idiots.”

  “The demons or the humans summoning them?” Angie asked, her voice low as she slowly turned.

  Behind them three demons stood just outside her circle. Staring in.

  Smiling.

  The three demons were more of the small, black, bat-winged creatures, with talons for fingers and toes. They made a high, piercing, chittering sound as they stared at Angie, and she stared helplessly back.

  No. Not helpless. They couldn’t cross her circle. They would have already if they could.

  One did test its boundaries, though. Setting the tip of one talon against the cone of light that was only visible in Angie’s mind’s eye. At least, it was supposed to only be visible that way. The demons seemed to have an exact sense of where the circle began.

  The demon’s talon sizzled and sparked, and a flash of blue light erupted visibly, making the demon yelp and jump back.

  That was helpful.

  “Good circle,” Aidan murmured. Her gaze was still on the dancing men. She hadn’t so much as glanced around at the various species of demons filling in around them.

  “Bad situation,” Angie whispered back, her throat tight.

  “You okay?” Sebastian asked her, leaning a little closer.

  “Of course not,” she snapped, keeping her voice low still but only because she was too scared to speak any louder. “I’m surrounded by fucking demons.”

  Sebastian took her hand and squeezed once before releasing her. The touch was so unexpected she didn’t know how to react. His hand had been large and warm and…distracting. Distracting enough that she looked away from the demons at their backs to stare at the side of his face.

  He didn’t turn to look at her.

  “Okay,” Aidan said, breaking into Angie’s confusion. “They’re about to release this current demon.”

  “Why a stone circle if they’re letting them out?” Angie muttered. “Why build something that strong and not just use chalk like a normal idiot?”

  Sebastian’s mouth twitched.

  Aidan said, “They’re summoning demons from more than one realm. Each realm would need a freshly drawn circle. The stones are more stable for cross-realm summonings and give them control over the release in a way a chalk circle wouldn’t.

  That was news to Angie—not that she knew much about demons and demon summonings since she tried to avoid all things demon. “I didn’t know that about stone circles.” She narrowed her eyes, glancing back at the three men. “How did they learn it?”

  “Book probably,” Aidan said. She gestured to the ground at one side of the stone circle and sure enough there was an open book, the pages fluttering in a wind that had been chilly before the area was surrounded by demons.

  “What’s their plan? What’s the point of all this?” Sebastian whispered, but more like he was talking to himself and not to either his mentor or Angie.

  “Motivations don’t really matter,” Aidan said, answering Sebastian’s questions even if they hadn’t been meant for her. “It’s always the same anyway. Greed, or desperation, or some variation on that theme.”

  “What do we do?” Angie asked. Again. Because the three demons behind them were still testing her circle. And she could feel the others. All around them. How many? Did the exact number even matter?

  “We need to prevent that new one from being released,” Aidan said.

  “Why didn’t you guys get here sooner?” Angie asked, her heart pounding too hard, making spots dance at the edge of her vision. “When there was only one or two demons? How were they allowed to get away with releasing so many? And why aren’t the humans dead?”

  Aidan, her attention still intent on the dancing men, said, “We’ll ask if we can keep them from dying now.”

  “As to why we weren’t here sooner,” Sebastian said, “we’re here as early as we could get here. This has all happened…fast.”

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Angie muttered. “These demons are from different realms. Shouldn’t they be killing each other?”

  She actually had no idea. For all she knew, demons from different realms might cooperate and not kill each other, as well as everything in sight, if there was a big enough end goal.

  She hadn’t taken her attention from the bat-winged beasts at their backs, but the demons were just looking at them now. No longer testing her circle. The one who’d been running its talon over her circle’s protective barrier had its mouth lifted in what might have been a teeth-filled smile. It was hard to tell if that was a smile or not. But the display of all those sharp sharp teeth was easy enough to interpret.

  Aidan made a little move next to Angie, a sort of abrupt intake of air, not quite a gasp and not very obviously a gesture, but it was movement from the otherwise still hunter. The gesture drew Angie’s full attention.

  “What is it?”

  “Almost time,” Aidan murmured. Her voice sounded distant now, as if she wasn’t actually answering the question but was talking to herself, her concentration elsewhere.

  “Sebastian?” Angie asked quietly, leaning a little closer to him without meaning to.

  He didn’t respond. That wasn’t reassuring.

  “When they reach the stage of releasing this last demon,” Aidan said, quietly, “they’ll have to reset to start a new summoning.”

  “Shouldn’t we, you know, prevent them from releasing yet another demon?” Angie’s voice didn’t squeak when she got nervous, not much or often. But her voice did deepen and she heard the drop in register clearly. Everything in her screamed to get away. She hadn’t felt this out of her depth and helpless since that parking lot when she was five.

  “There’s a plan,” Aidan murmured, yet again seeming like she was mostly talking to herself. “The release of so many is part of the bargain they’ve made. That’s why they’re not dead.”

  “Huh?”

  “They aren’t…” Aidan paused as if listening. “Even free, the demons are still bound by the bargain they’ve made with the three men. The rules of that bargain allow them out of the circle but not out of the bargain. That’s why the humans aren’t dead.”

  Sebastian glanced away from the dancing men, to the three demons still standing behind them. “What bargain? For what?”

  The demon in the middle of the triad opened his mouth again in that teeth-revealing gesture that might have been a smile if its face were even a little bit human-like.

  It hissed out a sound that made Angie shiver. A sound that hurt her ears. And it took a full beat before she translated the hiss into words…

  “To rule.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  To rule?

  The demon’s hissed response raised more questions for Angie than it answered. To rule what? To rule whom? This realm? Who would rule? Why like this? Why not a bigger, more powerful demon?

  Angie might not know much about demons, on purpose, but she knew enough to know if the demons surrounding them in the woods were super powerful, they wouldn’t still be here under a bargain, working with so many other demons, and not killing the humans who’d released them from their containment circle.

  They were still dangerous as all hell. Each one a potentially lethal threat. But…not the most powerful demons that could be summoned.

  Still, there were a lot of them. Filling the woods with a red glow, the pervasive scent of sulfur competing with autumnal forest and the waxy scent of candles from the stone summoning circle.

  A lot of demons for the humans to control.

  Once a demon left a circle—breaking free or being set free, either counted—they lost a lot of power as well. Couldn’t just walk into this realm without sacrificing power. At least not through a traditional summoning method. The more powerful the demon, the more power they sacrificed by cutting off the connection to their own realm.

  They were still deadly. Even the least powerful of them. The average demon could rip through an average human in less than ten seconds without much effort. Still, leaving behind the tie to their own realm did cost them. The ones who wanted into this realm, for whatever reason, didn’t actually care.

  And the weaker the demon, the less power they sacrificed.

  Was that why the men were calling less objectively powerful demons? Because they’d be sacrificing less power to come into this realm, where they would still be extremely dangerous?

  Even if that was the reason, though, the question was still…why? Why do this at all? “Ruling” whatever that meant. But ruling what and whom and how?

 

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