Page 23 of Viper

“Then you’re stupid,” Jester bluntly told him.

A psyche right then bumped Viper’s, a sense of urgency coming from it. Then Dice’s voice flitted through his mind …I found some strix.

Viper stilled.Where?He wasn’t surprised that Dice had located them within a day—he was an expert tracker.

A bunch of them are hovering and sniffing around a camping spot. Seems like they’re trying to track the humans who recently used it.He paused.One human left behind a sock. A real small one, V.

Viper silently swore. Strix always preferred the blood of children.I need your coordinates.

Dice rattled them off.Be fast.

Viper refocused on his brothers. “All right, listen up. Dice has tracked the strix. We need to act quickly, because they seem to be hunting a party of campers that includes at least one kid.” He gave out Dice’s coordinates and then teleported straight there, finding himself stood within a tight cluster of trees. His brothers appeared behind him in a mere millisecond.

They could all teleport—or shimmer, as they sometimes called it—with complete ease. All celestials could, fallen or not.

Dice nodded their way. “They’re still sniffing around the camp.”

Celestial-vision not hampered by low lighting, Viper locked his gaze on the pale, long-limbed figures that were prowling around a patch of uneven ground that was ringed by trees and shrubs. One of them held the sock that Dice had mentioned. Yeah, it definitely belonged to a child.

They appeared to be debating something, two pointing long-nailed fingers in separate directions; possibly arguing over which way they believed the campers had headed.

“There’s only a dozen of them, and none are females. This can’t possibly be the entire colony.” Which was a shame, because eradicating them all in one go would have been easiest.

He drew in a breath through his nose, taking in the scents of grass, dew, and pine needles. There were no sounds of nature—no owls hooting, no coyotes howling, no mosquitos buzzing. As if every living thing had fled on sensing the strix. All that could beheard was the rustle of leaves and the crunch of gravel beneath the strix’s feet.

Viper shed his jacket, and the others followed suit. The fight would get ugly, and none wanted their jackets being ruined.

“We move now,” said Viper. “Circle them. None can leave here alive.”

“Do we have to kill them fast, or can we play?” asked Darko.

Viper felt his lips tip up, his entityallfor the latter. “We can play.”

Darko grinned, as did several others.

They teleported straight to the camp, forming a circle around it … placing the strix in the center.

Startled, the demons tensed, their blood-red eyes skimming over the Black Saints. Hissing, they shifted nervously, though a hunger for violence seeped into their gazes.

Inside Viper, his entity smiled in sadistic delight. “I’ve been looking forward to this.” He let out an archangelic blast of warped holy fire. The ultraviolet wave shimmered through the air, lethal as the sharpest of blades. It rammed into three strix, severing their bodies in half—halves that then crumbled to ashes.

The other strix hissed again, baring canine fangs. Then, like a switch had been flicked, chaos ensued.

A strix leaped in the air as if it had bounced off a damn trampoline. It came right at Viper, striking out with a black whip of fire that smelled of sulphur and brimstone.

He lurched to the side, but the whip lashed his arm and shoulder. The scorching-hot lash hurt like a motherfucker. It corroded his skin, ate through his tee, and infuriated his entity.

Adrenaline pumping through his system fast, Viper lobbed an ultraviolet orb at the demon’s chest, sending it careening into the picnic bench behind it. The wooden table gave beneath thestrix’s weight, collapsing into a pile. An agonized cry burst out of the strix as he stared down at his wound.

Just as the fall from heaven had twisted Viper’s inner entity, it had also twisted his ability to conjure holy fire. The latter left clean burns that hurt like nothing else. But the flaming orbs Viper and his brothers now wielded? They blackened flesh, burned like hell, and carried the astringent scent of acid.

The strix in Viper’s sight didn’t look up in time to see the second ball he aimed its way—it caught the demon right in the head, killing it instantly.

He jerked back as a hellfire orb whizzed past him and crashed into Sting’s chest.

Sting regarded his attacker like he was no more than a child throwing pebbles. “That all you got? How disappointing.”

He probablywasdisappointed, because he actually liked pain.

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