Page 22 of Rites of Passage

I’m joking.Brimstone chortled.That crow is as innocent as they come.

Mae flipped a middle finger at Brimstone and stormed toward her bedroom.

“What’d you say to her?” Nikolai asked the wheezing fox.

By the time she’d showered and changed, Nikolai was wearing a T-shirt and their order had arrived. Mae’s stomach gurgled loudly at the smell of garlic and cheese permeating the apartment. She joined Nikolai at the dining table and pulled out a chair.

A piece of pepperoni flew in front of her face and landed next to her hand just as she sat down. Hellreaver whizzed past her and hoovered it up. She frowned at the mess around Brimstone and the weapon where they were scarfing down their extra-large servings of pizza.

“How come you guys barely spill a speck of food at my mom’s house and yet here you act like total pigs?”

Your mother’s a scary woman, Brimstone said.

Mae arched an eyebrow. “And I’m not?”

There are pink bunnies with halos on your pajamas, Hellreaver said helpfully.

Mae glanced at her outfit. “There’s nothing wrong with my pajamas. They were a gift from Ryu.” She scowled. “And they’re cozy.”

“Ryu needs to rethink her clothing choices for you,” Nikolai grunted. Lines creased his brow. “On the other hand, better her choices than that damn incubus’s.”

Mae’s eyes glazed over slightly. She still had the lingerie Vlad had gifted her for one of their outings a few weeks ago, the night they’d trashed a strip club. The scraps of lace and silk fitted her to a T and made her look like a sex goddess. She shivered.

She could only imagine what he would gift her as nightwear.

“How did your day go?” she muttered to Nikolai distractedly.

“Funny you should ask. I’ve got something to show you.”

He wiped his hands on a napkin, rose, and went into the hallway to grab his leather jacket. He was fishing something out of his pocket when he froze.

A horrible smell was filling the apartment.

That wasn’t me, Hellreaver protested.

Goosebumps broke out on Mae’s skin. She stood slowly, her gaze sweeping the room. “Nikolai?”

The sorcerer was staring at the window opposite him. “Fuck!”

Glass smashed all around them. A horde of monsters stormed the apartment in a foul miasma of decaying flesh.

CHAPTER13

The corrupt powerof Hell washed across Mae as the creatures lunged toward her.

“Hellreaver!”

The weapon flashed across the table and slammed into her hand, metal warming her palm. She swooped beneath the claws flying toward her face, roundhouse kicked the fiend who’d attacked her in the gut, and sliced the head off another. The monster’s ochre eyes dimmed. His skull bounced next to her feet, the unholy radiance of his pupils blinking out. By the time his body hit the floor, he was human once more.

“What the heck are these things?!” Mae shouted as she blocked strike after strike, the misshapen creatures’ claws raising sparks where they met Hellreaver’s blades. The aura of darkness crowning the monsters’ heads and enveloping their bodies was so thick, it was almost solid. “They don’t look like regular demons!”

Brimstone growled beside her, hackles raised and pupils aglow as he amplified the energy within her soul.

Nikolai blasted two of the monsters surrounding him with spheres of white magic and stabbed another one in the eye with his spear, Alastair similarly focusing his powers where he crouched on the sorcerer’s shoulder. “They’re ghouls! I met one for the first time today!” His alarmed gaze locked with Mae’s across the apartment. “They must be after the key!”

She elbowed a monster in the face and front-kicked another in the groin, Hellreaver taking chunks out of the creatures attempting to disembowel her. “What key?!”

Nikolai bunched up his jacket and lobbed it at Mae. “Here! Guard this!”

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