The phone rang, and Shade grabbed it. He listened for a moment, then hung up. “We need to get to the hospital.” His sinister grin matched the evil glint in his eye. “Paige just woke up from her coma.”
It was a monster with a hundred eyes. Some had been smashed, others were so clouded they couldn’t be used. The thing stared at Tayla through the rain and fog, mocking her with its silence.
It was The Warehouse, the one where she’d been born, the one she always came back to because the hunting was so good, though now she wondered if there was another reason she kept returning to this place. Maybe she was suffering from some sort of demon compulsion to return to her birthplace, because eight hours after fleeing Eidolon’s apartment, she found herself before it once again, and with no memory of how she got here.
All she knew was that her feet were bleeding, she was soaked, and she was angry. She crossed the street, not caring that cars had to slam on their brakes and honk their horns to keep from smashing her. Several drivers cursed at her, then cursed more when she presented them with a middle-finger salute.
She walked into a wall of stench as she stepped inside the building. Human waste, smoke, rotting food. She’d always ignored the odors and the filth, but today she catalogued it all in her mind. This was where her mother had spent a lot of her life. Here, among the graffiti-scarred walls, the discarded hypodermic needles, the rats and cockroaches.
The Soulshredder had done this to her mother.
A sound, faint, female, carried over the scratching of rodent claws on concrete, and Tayla crouched, crept toward the east wing. Several voices rang out behind her—laughter, probably coming from the western offices where crackheads liked to hang out. The dozens of exits in that part of the building provided a safety net for them, especially during police raids.
“Leave me alone, Bryce.” Ahead, a woman sat in a corner, blood dripping from her nose, her stringy blonde hair matted to what looked like dried blood on her cheek. A bulldog of a man stood over her, meaty fist cocked back. The woman scrambled away, but he caught her and punched her hard in the head.
Curiously calm, Tayla stepped out of the shadows, prepared to pound the man into dust. A vampire did the same, at the other end of the room. A large male, it seized the man by the back of the neck, slammed him against the wall, and buried its fangs deep into the human’s jugular.
Whimpering, the woman lurched to her feet and fled the room, not sparing a glance back.
The wet sound of sucking cut through the other warehouse noises. Bloodlust shimmered in the air like an electric current, dancing off Tayla’s skin. She’d never noticed the sensation before, or maybe she had, but assumed it was part of the adrenaline rush that filled her before battle. It felt curiously good. Seductive, even, and she had to plant her feet firmly to keep from moving closer to the bloodsucker and his prey.
Just a few days ago, Tayla would have taken out the vamp and saved the man, which seemed ironic, given that the human had beaten the crap out of a smaller woman and might have killed her. Now Tayla just watched.
“Funny how sometimes humans prove to be bigger monsters than demons, huh?”
Tayla whirled around. The first thing she saw was a pair of luminous green eyes that were level with hers. The second thing she saw was the fist connecting with her face.
Tayla’s head snapped back. “Ow!” She returned the favor with an elbow in the black-haired woman’s jaw.
The woman wobbled on her feet before steadying herself, one corner of her black lipstick-stained mouth tipping up in a half-smile. “It’s good to finally meet you, Tayla.”
Tay touched the back of her hand to her stinging lips. It came away with blood. “Right. Finally. Who the hell are you?” Whoever she was, she was pretty, with long, thick eyelashes, high cheekbones, black and blue hair braided into two pigtails that would have looked ridiculous on anyone older than seven, but that somehow worked on her. Probably because she was dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl. On crack.
“My name’s Gem.”
“Well, Gem, now that we’re all buddy-buddy and on a first-name basis, you want to tell me why you introduced me to your knuckles?”
“So many ways to answer that.” Gem studied her black-painted nails. “How’s life in The Aegis treating you?”
“You must be a demon.” Something struck Tayla as being familiar. Gem’s eyes . . . so green. Tayla had seen them before.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because demons seem to lack the switch in the brain that warns them when they are about to say something stupid.”
“I knew you’d have a sense of humor.”
“Enough of the cryptic shit. How do you know me?”
“I’ve always known you.”
“Jesus Christ,” Tayla muttered. “I don’t have time to play games.” She turned on her heel, not sure where she was going but desperate to get away from Cryptic Goth Chick.
“You have very little time for anything, slayer. You’re dying. And not slowly.”