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He noticed and grinned, unmoving. “Danté?”
“Yes. Danté. You know, one of the princes of darkness. I’m sure you know him. You guys all hang in the same crowd.”
I sounded much more confident than I felt, a trembling now weakening my knees. And my voice. When he took another step toward me, I pressed back fully against the wall.
“My command comes from another master.”
“Great,” I mumbled. Two high demons after me. Then I remembered something. I pulled down the high collar of my button-down to reveal the bruised bite at my neck.
“Danté has marked me,” I said, hoping this would be enough to make him back off.
Jude hadn’t explained everything the mark meant, but I knew at the very least it was a warning to other high demons that I was taken. Not that I in any way considered myself property of a fucking demon. Still, I was willing to try anything to get this demon to back off.
His red eyes glimmered over the mark, then met mine again as he prowled forward, unperturbed. Definitely not the reaction I was hoping for.
“Danté will have to mourn your loss.”
Fuck.My heartbeat fled into hyper speed. His formal words were disturbingly out of sync with the muscular exterior. I reminded myself that it was a demon inside who spoke, not the man whose huge frame was crowding me in.
“What do you mean, loss?”
I shifted left, closer to a stall door. His hand flicked an oblong shape out of his back pocket. An ice pick! What the hell!
I wondered briefly if he’d snagged it from behind the bar, which led me to ponder when and how lower demons hopped into their hosts. I didn’t wonder long as he stalked closer, caging me into the corner. My left hand slid up the stall door, gripping the top.
“True,” he sneered, glaring with so much menace I felt my pulse pounding in my throat, “it does seem a waste to dispose of such a lovely Vessel, but my master must have no challenger.”
He lunged. The ice pick jabbed straight toward my heart. I arched my torso back just in time, grabbing his arm with my right hand, thrusting it forward, and slamming the stall door as hard as I possibly could. He grunted but didn’t drop the pick.
The surprise gave me a split second to bend and duck behind him, darting for the door. As I gripped the door handle, a sharp pain stung my scalp. Yanking me by my hair, my ass hit the floor, and he dragged me back across the floor.
I cried out in pain, reaching back to claw his hand and wrist.
“No, no, my beauty. That won’t do,” he hissed.
He jerked my head to the floor, stretching my body out. With his hand gripping my hair, there was no way I could wiggle free. I rolled into a ball and kicked him squarely across the jaw over my head.
He yanked harder, knocking the back of my skull against the floor, clattering my teeth together. Stunned by the jarring pain, I couldn’t move while he quickly immobilized me with a knee onto my stomach. I gouged the wrist with my nails, drawing blood but he kept his hand firmly entangled in my hair.
“Oh God, no,” I whispered, feeling tears prick from both the fear and the pain.
The demon bent low, malevolent crimson eyes glaring at me.
“He won’t hear you,” he whispered, raising the ice pick again.
I froze, watching the swing of his arm, but it never hit its target. A sharp pull on my scalp, then I was free, his weight no longer on my chest.
Jude had the hulk of a man pinned against the wall. He’d sifted in superfast, a murderous expression tightening his face into hard, taut lines. A flexed arm shoved the point of his broadsword into the hollow of the demon’s throat. I scrambled back to the wall near the door.
“Give me your name, demon.” Fury and death shook his voice. The throaty malice of his command made gooseflesh rise on my arms.
I thought I’d seen Jude at his scariest after Danté had caught me in the alcove at his place. I was wrong. So wrong.
The demon laughed, but not for long. Jude threw the sword aside with a clang, snapping the demon’s head back, cracking it against the wall, and clenching the demon by the hair with violent force.
The creature cried out. I felt some small vindication for the swelling lump on the back of my head.
Energy shifted in the room. A whirl of electricity crackled, emanating from Jude. The familiar aura of blazing flame licked around his shoulders, head, and arms. An unnatural wind stirred the air.
