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“Verum vel infinitas infinitio nex.”
Jude bit out the words.Truth or endless death.
I couldn’t see Jude’s eyes but guessed the black had flooded them entirely. The demon’s angry scarlet eyes tried to resist Jude, but some force held him captive.
My VS responded to whatever was taking place, flushing my body with a wave of starry light.
“Garzel,” grumbled the demon, his mouth twisting abnormally.
“Garzel,” commanded Jude, “give me your master’s name.”
The demon beat its head from side to side, trying to break free. The demon’s true form popped its horned head out from within the human shell. The left horn was broken, the right curved like a goat’s.
Jude snatched the unbroken horn like the handle of a motorcycle, chanting low and literally yanking the creature violently from the human form. One hard tug and the nasty creature was out, held aloft in Jude’s tight grip. The guy I’d thought was just puking drunk at the jukebox crumbled to the floor, completely unconscious.
The creature was much bigger than the first one I saw in the alley on my birthday. Long, gray skeletal limbs dangled from a bony body. An oversized chest cavity and emaciated pelvis held together by papery, leather-like skin wrinkled over the bony frame as it twisted and writhed, beating against Jude.
My demon hunter didn’t budge an inch. Still as stone. One of the beast’s arms contorted and shortened into a black batwing, then elongated again into its regular, ghastly form with filth-encrusted claws.
“You cannot shape-shift away, Garzel,” Jude rumbled, then bellowed with power and rage, “Give me his name!”
I flinched at the violence in Jude’s voice. Ripples of ethereal flame banked higher, reflecting in the demon’s serpentine eyes.
“No,” rasped the creature between tight lips, dribbling spittle.
The constant jerking of the demon had angled Jude so I could view his profile. He closed his eyes, not chanting but obviously doing something.
My VS throbbed in response. I gasped. Then all was silent and unmoving. No, not silent. Deaf. I could hear nothing, absolutely nothing. A vacuum consumed all sound until only the faint thrum of my heart beat within my ears. The ghostly light deepened to the darkest blue, touching everything with an eerie shade of twilight.
Jude opened his eyes but never moved. The demon hung there midair, no longer flailing, just staring wide-eyed into the mirror along the wall. I followed his gaze, not believing my own eyes.
The glass reflected a creature straight from darkest nightmares, from mythical underworlds, from horror stories of the ferryman and the Grim Reaper. Shrouded in tattered gray cloth, corpselike remnants of the grave lifted in a wispy wind that wasn’t there.
Long, black-boned limbs extended from the gray trappings of death. A skeletal head of black bone, oddly stretched and angular, held eyes of liquid red. The wordsI walk through the valley of the shadow of deathcame to mind. This being was the shadow of death personified, carrying with it the promise of eternal night. And damnation.
The being floated closer, then crossed through the glass, sliding out of the mirror from some other dimension, gliding into our space, filling it up with static darkness. My pulse tripped faster, throbbing in my ears.
The thing spoke in a whispering breath. “Acherontis pabulum.”
A cold shiver shot up my spine. Ominous words.Food for Acheron.Confused and terrified, I could do nothing but watch.
“Garzel.” Jude’s voice was clipped and hollow and other. Sound resonated like something trapped in a jar. I shrank farther into the corner. “Give me your master’s name, or I give you to the Collector,” he stated in a dark rumble. “Your choice.”
Jude didn’t even glance at the hovering, ghastly specter floating only a few feet from him, but the gangly beast did, closing his blood-red eyes in resignation. “The Collector’s kiss.”
Jude still held the demon by one horn. “So be it.”
Without pause, he released Garzel the same instant the black-boned wraith opened its arms for an embrace. Sucked swiftly to the angel of death, its hideous head tilted, pressing a gaping, fleshless mouth to Garzel’s.
At once, I heard and felt a piercing sorrow wash over me. Overlapping voices cried and wailed in soul-deep anguish. I pressed my hands over my ears but still heard the tormented cries.
Hot tears streamed down my face, though the pain I felt wasn’t mine. Pain that was sharp and intimate, as if the voices broke all barriers, piercing straight to my heart and shattering it into tiny pieces.
Garzel’s sinister eyes glared at me, an unspoken warning, just as the Collector inhaled. The demon evaporated into a black stream of vapor, sucked into the mouth of the grim creature.
Jude bowed his head to the Collector. It swept one black arm outward in a regal gesture of farewell, slipped back into the mirror, then vanished. Instantly, the blue-tinged room brightened, and I could once again hear the hazy sound of music and voices from the bar. I panted, my chest heaving, trying to wrap my mind around what I’d just witnessed.
Jude took two long strides and lifted me by my upper arms. His dark gaze shimmered with emotion—compassion, fear, frustration, anger. Definitely anger. He shook his head in slow motion from side to side, pulling me within a hair's breadth of his chest. Black eyes scanned my entire face in a swift blink.
