Page 68 of The Sinner and the Gunslinger
The carpet catchesfire. My training flies out the window, and I freeze. Fire. We’re all going to burn. I smell the smoke and remember it’s the same scent Snuggles always seemed to carry. It invaded my dreams.
This is it. I’m going to die surrounded by flames, after all.
Then I hear the sound of heaven. Gunshots. Three in quick succession.Zeke. He’s alive. He needs me. The need to get to him trumps my fear. My hand flails out behind me and blindly searches the floor until my fingers wrap around the hard neck of the whiskey bottle. I swing it at the burning demon.
He takes the hit to the head with barely a reaction. He hisses and snarls. “China doll.”
“Fucking call me that again, I dare you.”
He licks his lips. “I’m ready for my snuggle, little one. I’m going to fuck you hard while your body burns. Do you think he’ll do nothing, just like when I killed his sister?”
His words fill me with rage. I pull the final sanctified hairpin from my bun with trembling fingers.
Flauros starts laughing. It’s an odd, sizzling sound that drills fear into my soul. “It was only a matter of time before I caught up with you again. You’re mine.”
“Like fuck, she is.” Zeke’s voice rings clear in the room. He’s over by the kitchen, bloody lip, jacket off, the businessman dead at his feet. He raises his pistol to the ceiling. The gunshot snaps me out of my daze. Water sprays like rain. The demons suddenly scream as though it’s acid. What the fuck?
“It’s not holy water, you imbeciles,” Asmodeus barks as he shoves the sheikh out of his way and steps over the sleeping Southerner. But even Asmodeus has a glimmer of fear in his soulless eyes.
“Not holy water... yet.” Zeke rolls up his white sleeve, glances at a tattoo, slices a knife across his forearm, and uses his blood to paint a sigil on the waterlogged carpet. He stares at Asmodeus and mumbles a spell.
“Don’t just stand there,” Asmodeus roars at the cowering biker demons. “Attack them!”
But they scramble to hide from the water spray, their movements sluggish from the poison.
Water runs down my face, soaking into me, and all I can think is: thank God I’m not going to burn. Zeke saved me. But then I see Ludovic’s blood pooling in a dark stain beneath his body. Asmodeus steps toward us, focused on me.
I rip the split on my skirt and release the hidden dagger, but Zeke’s voice stops Asmodeus.
“If you want to rifle through his memories,” Zeke warns, pointing at Ludovic’s body. “You’d better be quick. He’s bleeding out.”
Zeke stalks toward me and tugs me toward the elevator. I stumble because I keep glancing over my shoulder to where Asmodeus crouches over Ludovic’s body, water dripping down his hate-filled face. Flauros snarls as he writhes on the water-soaked carpet, steam billowing from his body. “Everyone you love will burn, china doll.”
Before I can breathe, we’re down the elevator and jogging out the lobby door, hailing a cab. We’re both too stunned and cold to speak for the entire journey until we enter the motel room where a certain kind of safety exists.
It all happened so fast. The demons. The fire. Zeke shooting Ludovic—an innocent.
“You shot him,” I whisper, my eyes darting over his face. Like me, he looks like a drowned rat. His eyes are bleak. Wild. Is he okay? He barely moved in the cab. I freeze as a new fear rears its head. “Are you infected?”
Stupid question. He would have attacked me by now. I would have seen the black chaos spiderwebbing from his eyes.
“No,” he answers quietly. He pulls his hand from his pocket and opens his palm. A set of rosary beads dent his skin from how tightly he held onto them. “I think this protected me. But I transferred the blessing to the water. They were a gift from Cisco.”
“You shot Ludovic before Asmodeus cast his spell.”
He gives a grim nod. “Raven said gods don’t worry about the rats they step on to protect the innocent. When Asmodeus called Ludovic a rat, I knew I had to kill him. It was the only way to keep Asmodeus from coming after us.”
“The CCTV footage,” I mumble, remembering how Asmodeus used the barmaid’s blood to gather the information he needed about the ancestors of this Sarah woman who betrayed him centuries ago.
“I can’t believe that was Flauros,” he mutters, running his fingers through his damp hair.
I go to him and cup his face, turning it until his eyes lock with mine. “You were right. It was after me, not your sister. I’m so sorry.”
His brows meet in the middle, and his eyes screw shut as if he can stop the flood of emotion taking over his body. He swallows hard. “I should have screamed. Flauros had my baby sister, and I hesitated.”
“Hey.” I pull his head down to my chest. “You were a kid. It’s not your fault.”
His palms slide up my back. His embrace turns hard and desperate as he rasps against my chest, “One thing,wildcat. That’s my real one thing. Not you, not me, but her. I fucked up. I hated her because she cried so much. But—” he chokes up.
