“Too many,” Jimmy muttered.
We were covered in varcolac blood. We’d hacked up a dozen, but a dozen more had appeared. We needed help, but there wasn’t any to spare.
The federation—that group of demon killers, or DKs, and seers who’d been charged with fighting this supernatural war—had been seriously depleted after Ruthie’s death, and we couldn’t just pick up a few new demon killers at the demon-killer superstore. They had to be trained. New seers had to be discovered. I hadn’t had time to do much recruiting, even before the whole Tartarus-opening, Grigori-escaping incident. And now . . .
Now I wasn’t going to have time to do much but ride the runaway train to Armageddon. Basically, we were fucked. But that didn’t mean we were going to quit. Besides, I had a secret weapon. What I liked to call a vampire in a box.
I lifted my arm, traced my fingers along the magic jeweled dog collar that circled my neck. As long as I wore the thing, I was me. But if I took it off—
“No, Lizzy.”
I glanced at Jimmy. He’d seen me fingering the necklace. Even if he didn’t know me better than just about anyone, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what I’d been contemplating.
One of the varcolacs charged, dragon wings flapping, talons outstretched. Jimmy hacked off his head with only a token glance in that direction. Jimmy was good. I still needed to put a bit more effort into killing things.
I let go of the collar, faced the next varcolac with both hands around my sword and did what needed to be done. I lost track of Jimmy for a while. The damn demons seemed to be multiplying. For every one we killed, two more came out of the darkness. Their wings flickered against the silvery light of the gibbous moon, reminding me of the night the Grigori had flown free, their spirits darkening what had then been a perfectly round orb.
Jimmy cried out, the sound making my heart jolt, my head turn. One of the varcolacs had speared him through the shoulder with a talon, lifting him clear off the ground. Blood dripped into the sand, turning the moon-pale grains black. Jimmy’s sword lay at his feet.
There appeared to be an army of dragon men behind them. Their scaly wings flapped in syncopation, filling the sky with a morbid ticktock. Dragon heads and arms, human legs and torsos that sprouted dragon’s wings.
“Surrender, seer.” The varcolac snorted fire from his nose. Jimmy hissed when the flames started his pants on fire.
“No.” I lopped off the nearest varcolac head, which hit the ground with a dull thud, rolled a few feet and disintegrated into ashes along with the still-upright body. If you killed a Nephilim correctly, cleanups weren’t any problem at all.
“You can’t win,” the varcolac said. “We are legion.”
He was probably right, but giving up . . .
Just wasn’t my style.
CHAPTER 2
“Nice job,” Jimmy muttered.
We were tied with golden chains, staked into the desert ground, naked. Man, I hated when that happened.
“This is my fault?”
I turned my head. The moon sparkled in his dark eyes, sparked off his hair, threading the black strands with silver. The sheen glistened off the supple, bronzed skin of his chest. Sanducci had always been too damn pretty for anyone’s good. Especially mine.
“Had to come to LA,” he continued. “Had to find out what was creeping around in the desert.”
“Isn’t that what we do?”
He sighed. “Yeah. But I don’t think it’s going to go as well as it used to.”
He was right. Where before the federation had been stemming the demon tide, the tide had become a flood, and the dam had a shitload of holes.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Does it look like I’m okay?”
Jimmy and I had always had a volatile relationship. Hell, the first time I’d met him he’d put a snake in my bed; then I’d loosened his teeth. We were twelve.
At seventeen he’d relieved me of my virginity; a year later he’d broken my heart. Same old tune, heard a thousand times before.
Except Jimmy and I weren’t like a thousand other couples. I was psychic and Jimmy—
Jimmy was a dhampir.
My gaze lowered from his face to his gored shoulder, which wasn’t gored anymore. The gaping wound had almost healed.
Most demon killers were breeds—offspring of a Nephilim and a human. With less demon to contend with, they could choose to fight for the forces of good, and because they had demon blood, breeds had supernatural powers. To fight demons of biblical proportions, they needed them.
Jimmy was the son of a vampire and a woman. He was very good at finding and killing bloodsuckers of any type. As a dhampir, Jimmy had mythical strength and speed; he could heal just about anything—although wounds made with a weapon of pure gold took longer, and they stung like a bitch.
My gaze went to the approaching cadre of varcolacs. Each of them now carried a weapon that glinted golden beneath the moon. Hell.