Page 92 of King’s Kismet

I charged the male, hoping hand-to-hand combat would distract him enough to keep him from burning the whole town down. But he flashed me a dark grin, showing me I was his only objective.

I slammed my left shoulder into his waist, knocking him onto his back to straddle his chest. My knees dug into the underside of his arms, pinning him to the ground. He bucked, attempting to dislodge me. Fury shifted his eyes to black again when he was unsuccessful.

His body began to morph underneath me, heating as he melted his human skin for his demonic form. It was abundantly clear to me that his goal wasn’t a peaceful resolution, and as the Third Devil, I couldn’t let situations like this go unpunished.

Too many humans had seen him.

“Stop fighting, or I’ll have to kill you,” I snapped, the echo of my demon’s voice rasping around us.

He banged the back of his head against the ground, babbling incoherently. It took me four full seconds to smell the copper tang and realize he was trying to perform blood magic.

Either to attack me again or to disappear?

I didn’t know.

Neither of those options was acceptable.

I pulled the obsidian blade from my boot and slid it across his throat. Droplets of blood splattered against my cheek as I yanked my dagger away from him. But he kept muttering and bashing his head into the ground as he bled out.

He had two heartbeats that I could hear, so I stabbed each one, just to be safe. As I stood and backed away from him, I felt little remorse.

The blonde demon had been stalking us all night. He’d attacked us in front of humans. I was going to have so much bullshit to clean up in order to make sure this didn’t get out. All the security cameras and phones… And minds to wipe clean, though Novak had covered most of that.

Something was off about this demon, though.

I contemplated his behavior as I summoned Grim. But while I waited, I became transfixed when a smokey greenish-gray essence escaped from his chest, hovering over his body. I tilted my head to the left, reaching my hand out to touch the soul.

It was unheard of for a soul to pull away from its vessel before a reaper appeared.

And Grim wasn’t here yet.

No other reapers had shown up, either.

As soon as my fingertips brushed against the soul, familiar power hit me. It threw me backward, causing me to land on the strongman game Novak and I had been heading to. The bell rang, the words High Striker screeching through the empty carnival in an animated voice.

Novak flashed to my side as Grim stepped through the void, both of them pulling me up and out of the broken game.

“I win,” I mumbled to my vampire.

He chuckled at me, completely unaffected by the surrounding chaos. “That doesn’t count. You broke the game, and now it’s on fire. I didn’t get a chance.”

Grim moved to the demonic body, his scythe forming in his right hand as his robe draped around his skeleton.

“Where is his soul?” he inquired, his narrowed gaze landing on me.

“Home. Now,” I demanded, stepping through the void as I heard the sirens in the distance.

Novak and Grim stepped out right behind me in the living room, stunning the rest of my mates into silence. I was covered in blood, but I thought at some point they’d just grow accustomed to it.

“I see date night went well,” Briggs slurred, grinning when I rolled my eyes.

Grim whirled on me. “Where did his soul go, Lo?”

“It left his body.” I shrugged in confusion, swinging my hands wildly as my frustration grew. “Just floated up, attacked me, and I have no clue where it went from there.”

“That’s impossible,” Grim murmured. “Unless—”

“Yeah, I know,” I interrupted, scrubbing my hands over my face as I struggled to believe the words I needed to say aloud.