Page 25 of Death Trap

Eli nodded stiffly. “Yes. He seems to be. Your human friends knew what they were doing when warding off the house.”

Didn’t doubt them for a second.

But if the Halfling was in fact dead, that made things even more complicated. How could something that was already technically dead die again? That didn’t make any sense. How could something be doubly dead?

I wasn’t sure how that was even possible, but I had to put the question away for a later date. Now, we had to get out of here before we attracted any more of the things.

When I looked over at the Halfling again, the untouched skin of its face began to turn black and disintegrate before my eyes, turning to ash and floating away. Gradually, the blackness spread until finally nothing was left besides a small pile of soot and the distinct, rotten-egg smell of sulfur.

“Easy clean up, too.” I glanced over my shoulder at the place Eli had fought with his Halfling in the yard. Another small mound of ash sat there also.

“We need to go,” Eli said, tone all seriousness.

And I agreed. There was no doubt in my mind that these Halfling attacks weren’t coincidences, and that meant I wasn’t safe in the living world anymore. Just like Eli had said.

But where to go? The afterlife was our only other option.

“There’s the afterlife… I know a couple of people there who I’d trust my life with—if I had one. But do you think these Halfling attacks keep happening because of Azrael?” I asked.

“Yes. It is suspicious to me that he’s been unreachable ever since the surge in demon activity on earth.”

So, the people upstairs had witnessed that, too. Good to know.

“Not to mention how he recruited a half demon to get you out of the way,” Eli added.

I hesitated at the mention of Cole, like I always did when his name came up. “Wait, how do you know that?” I’d only seen him in his light ball form during the fight with Xaver. Had he been following me before then, too?

“It’s my job to protect you,” he said.

“Yeah, you said that already.” And I still didn’t like it.

Eli closed his eyes briefly, as if my words had offended him in some way. “We were a team,” he said softly. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”

A team, huh? Was that in coworkers, partners, or lovers? I glanced over at him once again. The way his pants hung low on his hips, showing the V-shaped muscular lines dipping past the waistband, was tempting enough. One look and my imagination was running wild. Damn, I wished I could remember him.

“I couldn’t find you for a long time. The reaper cycle must have kept you hidden from me,” he said. “It wasn’t until your powers triggered that I was able to track you down again. And besides, I’m not supposed to get involved when you are in the living world. It’s against the Code.”

“The what now?”

“The Guardian Code,” he said. “They are the rules Guardians must live by.”

“And Guardians are not supposed to intervene with their charges.”

“Correct.”

“You mean, like you are now and like you did before when we were fighting Xaver?”

He frowned. “Right. I can get in a lot of trouble for that, and for this, but something big is going on. Something devious and evil. I can feel it. And if the rumors and my instincts are right, we could be on the verge of a war.”

Monnie’s words echoed in my head again. He had said a war was coming, too.

“A war with demons?” I asked.

“A war between Heaven and Hell.”

“Like the apocalypse?” I laughed nervously, but when Eli’s stern face turned toward me, I stopped. “You’re serious.”

“Very. Demons have wanted to take over the living plane for as long as its existence. If they succeed in their uprising, they will destroy everything. It’ll be Hell on earth.”

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