“I’ve been a little busy,” I muttered, but he was right. It was my job to know. The instant I’d heard the word “barbas” the first time, I should have found out how to kill one. “Clue me in.”
For an instant I thought he might refuse. Since I’d returned from LA, he was behaving as if he could barely stand the sight of me, as if he trusted me even less than a stranger. I couldn’t blame him. He’d been there before Sawyer and Jimmy had managed to cage the new and not-so-improved me behind my fancy jeweled collar. It hadn’t been pretty.
The kid reached into his pocket and pulled out a white flower with a few crumpled green leaves attached. “Hellebore.” At my frown he continued. “A plant used in witchcraft to invoke demons. Specifically demons of Barbas.”
“You brought that thing here on purpose?” My voice rose, cracking on the last word.
“You think I was out there?” He flung his long arm and nearly clipped me in the nose with one huge hand. “All alone? Just for fun?”
I didn’t know what to think. “Why would you—?”
“It’s better to face them on my terms. Right here. When I’m ready for them, one at a time, rather than have them sneak up on me in a group.”
The words like they snuck up on my parents were left unsaid.
I digested that for a second. I liked this scenario a whole lot better than the one where the barbas had somehow found Luther at Sawyer’s compound. This place was supposed to be shielded from prying eyes by Sawyer’s magic.
I let out the breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding on a long, relieved sigh.
“They’ve been searching for me all along.”
My breath stuck in my chest again. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve always known it.” He shoved the hellebore back into his pocket. “I always felt stalked. When the feeling got to be too much, I’d run. Thought I was paranoid, but like they say, you aren’t paranoid if they’re really after you.”
“Why are they after you?”
“I didn’t ask. Don’t care. They killed my family. They die. End of story.”
He sounded so much like Jimmy my mouth fell open. If the kid continued to lure in demons and dust them with ease, he’d be another Jimmy—the best demon killer in the federation. Which wasn’t such a bad thing considering how short my list of available demon killers had become.
“Now that I know what they are,” Luther continued, “that I’m not crazy when I feel evil, when I see things, hear things, now that I know how to kill them . . .” His eyes flared golden fury once more. “I plan to.”
He lifted his chin as if he expected me to argue. I didn’t. The idea of sending him out alone was hard to swallow, but I’d swallow it. I had to.
Besides, the kid had Ruthie now. Theoretically, I was in more danger than he was.
“So you lured him in with hellebore?” Luther nodded. “But how’d you kill him?”
Luther grinned. He was going to be so handsome—if he lived long enough. “Not only does hellebore bring them forth, but if you use it right, damn stuff kills them.”
“How do we”—I made quotation marks in the air with my fingers—“ ‘use it right’?”
“Boil the plant in oil, then dip the tip of a weapon into the juice. Pow!” He slammed a massive fist into an equally large palm, then flipped his hands outward. “Whoosh.”
“Where’d you discover this info?”
There was a brand-new federation database where DKs and seers could enter what they’d learned about the Nephilim from their personal encounters. But I couldn’t recall giving Luther the code.
“Sawyer,” he said shortly.
“Hmm,” I murmured. I wasn’t surprised. “You know where he is?”
The kid frowned. “I thought he was with you.”
“There’s a lot of that going around.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. So, to be clear, you dipped a weapon in boiled hellebore oil. What weapon?”
Luther’s smile was thin and just a little scary. “Me.”
CHAPTER 16
I’d been looking toward the mountain, wondering if, perhaps, Sawyer was still up there, but at the kid’s words I looked right back. “Say what?”
“The spell required a weapon of fury coated in hellebore.”
“A weapon of fury could be anything.”
“In this case, that weapon was me. I rubbed hellebore all over my body.”
“Dammit, Luther!” I clenched my hands to keep from throttling the kid. “You could have been killed.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Don’t do that again.”
His expression became mulish—a quick switch from strong, able man to sulky little boy. “I’ll do whatever I have to. Seems to me it’s a lot safer to take a bath in hellebore than to coat some weapon and hope like hell you’ve got that weapon at hand if a barbas shows up. This way, I’m always ready.”
The kid thought like me, which made it hard to argue with him. Knowing that he was protected the next time a barbas tried to kill him took a small portion of the load off my heavily overloaded mind.
“It would be good to know why they keep coming after you,” I murmured.