Page 28 of The Darkest Night

Mae shivered at his words.Does he mean the voice I heard that night?

“He says he wants another name,” she murmured.

“He does?” Miles said in a strained voice.

“Ah-huh.” Mae chewed her lip. A word came to her mind as she studied the creature’s sumptuous red and black fur. “How about…Brimstone?”

The fox repeated the word in her head.Brimstone.His chest vibrated with a low rumble.I like it.

The pendant hummed against Mae’s chest.

Brimstone lifted a paw and touched it.

Crimson magic detonated around Mae, wrapping the three of them in a bubble that distorted the air and made the lights flicker. She heard Violet and Miles gasp in the far distance.

Mae’s heart slammed against her ribs. She could feel something happening inside her as the scarlet light swirled and pulsed around them. Something changing. No. Something…formingbetween her, the fox, and the pendant. Something she knew instinctively would link their fates forever more.

A red bond of power. A promise of souls. A contract forged in blood.

How long the moment lasted Mae wasn’t sure. It ended just as abruptly as it’d started, making her ears pop and leaving her dizzy. The pendant hung heavily around her neck, as if showing its true weight for the first time. Brimstone swayed in her lap.

Mae steadied the fox with one hand and clutched the medallion. The connection between them raised the hairs on her arms and seared her senses.

The fox blinked sleepily.Thank you.

He licked her face, yawned, and curled up in a ball on her lap. He was asleep in seconds.

Mae met Violet and Miles’s stunned stares. “What just happened?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Violet murmured.

Chapter 14

NYPD Lieutenant Jared Dicksonstood a good six-foot-three-inches and towered over FBI Special Agent Alicia Calvarro. The African American detective’s business-like smile contrasted sharply with the Hispanic woman’s cool expression as they observed Mae from the end of the bed.

“Thank you for agreeing to see us, Miss Jin,” Dickson said affably.

Mae wasn’t fooled by the lieutenant’s smile or tone. She’d seen enough good-cop-bad-cop movies to know he and the FBI agent were playing to a script.

“No problem.”

Her head felt heavy, as if she hadn’t slept in days. She suspected it was an after-effect of whatever had taken place between her, the fox, and the pendant last night.

Dickson pulled a chair over and sat down, a notepad in hand. “How about you tell us what happened the night of the incident in your own words?”

Calvarro stepped over to the window and looked at the contractors working in the grounds of the hospital before turning and focusing a laser-like stare at Mae, the afternoon sun streaming inside the room casting her face in shadows.

Mae’s voice was calm as she narrated her account of the events from four nights ago, keeping to the details she knew Hodge would already have provided in his interview, as well as the witness statements from those who had seen her fight the possessed hospital staff and patients who had wreaked so much havoc on those around them. The only things she didn’t speak about were being taken over by another being herself and the magic that had awakened inside her and helped her defeat the dark-cloaked figures who had been after her. As for what had happened with Rose and the devil, Mae omitted mentioning those details completely.

Violet had already told her the people who had survived the attack on the rooftop didn’t recall much about what had transpired in those dreadful minutes. How the witch knew this Mae had chosen to ignore for now. What she did question was whether it was her awakened powers that had caused their memory loss.

“I don’t know,” Violet had told her before she and Miles had left last night, an unhappy Brimstone in tow. The witch had hesitated as she’d climbed out of the window. “But my gut tells me it probably did have something to do with it.”

Silence descended when Mae finished talking.

“The body you were dissecting at the time of the incident was that of one Alexei ‘Colin’ Antonovich, correct?” Dickson asked.

Mae stiffened slightly.

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