Page 69 of Dead Beat

He gave a little wave of his hand, magnanimous now. “Go ahead.”

Alex took her time crossing the sand, afraid she might simply see a corpse.

“Mercy?” she asked, going to her knees.

She was asleep, wrapped in blankets and snoring softly. Reiter must have drugged her. Alex checked her neck—no marks.

She heard a squeal of tires. Alex let herself glance back once, briefly, glimpsed headlights approaching from the road.

She rose, putting distance between herself and Mercy in case things turned ugly.

“Okay,” Alex said to Reiter. “Come and get it.”

“You’ve purged yourself of any Grays?”

“Yes,” she lied.

In less than a breath Reiter had hold of her, his grip like a fist closing tight around her body.

“My God,” he whispered, drawing her closer. “You stink of suffering. How do you fit so much agony into one tiny girl? How is there room for so much pain?”

Alex tried to scream, but he was crushing the air from her chest. He had no scent, no heat to his body. She couldn’t think over the clamor in her brain.

“It’s as if you were prepared for me,” he murmured against her neck. “A calf kept in darkness, fattened for veal. You are a delicacy.” He made a disapproving clucking sound, his lips hovering over the spot Darlington had bitten only the night before. “Someone has been here before me.”

She could hear the roar of an engine.

“You should know,” Alex gasped out. “I brought something back from hell.”

“They always do.” He nuzzled her neck, pushing her hair aside. “I’m going to leave a bit more of a mark this time.”

“Me too.”

Blue fire ignited over her skin. A weapon. A beacon.

Reiter shrieked and shoved her so hard she flew backward, landing with a rough jolt on the sand.

“You filthy little bitch,” he seethed.

Alex scrambled to her feet, drawing a curtain of hellfire around her and Mercy. “That’s not my name.”

“I’m going to drain you and your friend dry.”

“You said yourself you need me,” Alex shouted with more confidence than she felt. She could hear the rumble of the engine. Closer. Closer.

“Filthy little girl. Abomination.” He stalked toward her, his face singed, his eyes wild. The pretense of humanity was gone, the illusion of the aristocrat in his fine white suit. The demon hadn’t known pain in a very long time and he was going to hurt her for refreshing his memory. “Mongrel whore. Human waste.”

Alex backed away, pushing a wall of hellfire between them. Maybe it was the power of her fear, but she felt the substance of the flame this time, the shape of it in her hands, bending to the curve of the Wheel. She let it guide her, forging hellfire into a towering shield.

Reiter roared his rage, but he was afraid to cross that blue fire. “Your father stabbed your mother and fucked the wound! He sewed his seed up inside her and you’re the infection. I will root you out. I will—”

Turner’s Dodge leapt the boardwalk and slammed into Linus Reiter.

25

Darlington and Dawes were in the parlor at Il Bastone when Alex’s call came in. They had been poring over every text they’d been able to procure on the Anubis plate and adding relevant notes to the whiteboard alongside their own speculation regarding the other three artifacts. They hadn’t given up on locating the other two pilgrims, but the golem had to be their focus.

When Dawes’s phone rang, she put it on speaker, but they couldn’t hear anything except muffled voices.