Better the Demon You Know E-Book

Deborah Wilde

• Herausgeber: Te Da Media
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

Evil has a scent: lemon.
It was supposed to be a routine drug bust. Arrest some magic jerks and move on, but then a fellow operative is murdered, and Aviva is thrust into a perilous black ops mission to disprove corruption charges.
Meanwhile, her half-sister is being blackmailed for being an infernal, and as Avi struggles to protect her, she’s set on a collision course with the one person she hoped to never meet.
And just when she thought things couldn’t get any crazier, her ex drops a bomb about second chances.
Aviva must navigate a minefield of love, betrayal, and powerful Maccabees gunning for her, to expose her enemies—and keep her secrets hidden. But hey, running for your life is good cardio, right?
If you love Darynda Jones' Charley Davidson and Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires, Big Demon Energy delivers a smart, determined heroine, a banter-fueled vampire romance, and high-stakes supernatural intrigue.
Read the complete series now.

Leseprobe

BETTER THE DEMON YOU KNOW

Bedeviled AF #3

DEBORAH WILDE

Contents

Don’t Just Read It—Be Part of It!

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Sneak Peek of Demon in Disguise

About the Author

Don’t Just Read It—Be Part of It!

Bestselling author Deborah Wilde presents a gloriously funny, wickedly sexy urban fantasy packed with:

• A half-demon with dangerous secrets and an attitude to match.

• A charming vampire whose cryptic agendas are only outdone by his infuriatingly irresistible allure.

• A loyal crew tackling fascinating magical crimes with plenty of sparks (and chaos) along the way.

BETTER THE DEMON YOU KNOW is the third book in the Bedeviled AF series.

Deborah has a chatty newsletter where she shares what’s warming her cold, dead heart, gives sneak peeks and insider information, and holds giveaways.

Join the Wilde Ones today!

Chapter1

Evil had a scent: lemon. It was bright and crisp and brought to mind colorful drinks with paper umbrellas savored in tropical climes after a successful drug lab bust in the jungle.

Well, at least the drug lab part was accurate when it came to today’s mission. Shame about the rest.

In a sales pitch I’d since dubbed “Snow Job,” I’d fallen prey to the lure of escaping Vancouver’s December gloom and rain for a winter wonderland, with the added glory of stopping some Eishei Kodesh from producing a non-magic, yet illicit street drug called Crackle. And when Francesca, the level three leader on this gig, had shown me photos of the pools of steaming hot springs nestled beneath mountain peaks that was our reward once this mission was wrapped up, well, my temptation was complete.

Now, with the compound where we suspected the lab was housed within sight, I was also assaulted by the peppy citrus smell of the drug, taunting me with visions of a world with color rather than an endless sea of white whose glare in the moonlight was starting to induce blindness.

Interestingly, Francesca had left out several key details about this mission: how we’d be strapping on snowshoes (more like tiny torture contraptions than the lightweight paddles I’d envisioned) and trudging over uneven rural terrain, sinking into the snow with each footstep when we weren’t skidding on frozen patches hidden under powdery drifts; the fact we’d be approaching the clandestine lab at night in subfreezing temperatures; and the double my body weight in outdoor fabrics that were slowly sous-videing me to death.

The only sounds had been the sharp crunch of our party breaking the crust on the snow with each step, my hot, damp breathing against the heavy scarf wrapped around my mouth and nose, and the wind that stung my eyes, groaning through the trees.

Francesca held up a gloved hand, her brown cheeks ruddy with cold. Edward, a buff Serbo Canadian and the first of our trio of level two Maccabees on this takedown immediately stopped, followed by me, and then Paul, an older operative who showed photos of his prize-winning Siamese with the same pride as a new dad.

I unsnapped the binding on my snowshoes with the manic relief generally reserved for getting through airport security and scoring coveted concert tickets and tossed them under the massive evergreen next to us with a sigh, rolling my ankles to stretch them out. Sweat ran between my shoulder blades, and my hamstrings and quads burned.

The last twenty feet between us and the barn was partially shoveled, partially tamped down from whoever worked here, and easily accessible.

Snow splatted off the tree branches, barely missing our party, but I didn’t care, lost to a coiled excitement that flared up inside me. Please let our quarries fight back. This city girl was no match for Mother Nature, but most human opponents I could handle just fine, and I was raring for someone to look at me wrong.

Francesca indicated for Paul and me to head for the small barn, while she and Edward checked out the weather-beaten house on its left.

Paul and I bolted silently, keeping low.

Sadly, there was no cloud cover to hide us once we burst from the woods across the exposed ground. The sky was clear and the moon hung low in the sky, illuminating us like nature’s searchlight.

Any chinks in the barn’s siding had been patched from inside. They’d boarded up the windows and soundproofed it well since there was no faint murmur of voices or any sound of electric equipment like the condensers, evaporators, or heating mantles involved in the production of this synthetic drug. Not even the hum of a generator.

It was odd that they’d taken such care, given how remote this property was, and yet Crackle’s lemon scent had managed to defy their other security precautions and ooze into the surrounding woods. I didn’t have time to dwell on it, however, because Paul and I were too busy playing hopscotch through the blind spots of the security cameras.

He grasped the handle of the barn door and turned back to me with his eyebrows raised.

I stuffed my gloves into my jacket pockets, drew the weapon peeking out of the holster attached to my belt, and nodded.

The Zen Zapper was a new design combining electroshock technology with white flame magic. Not only would it physically incapacitate the target, it’d amp their level of calm into an almost compulsion-like desire to chill out and stay put.

I’d proposed the idea a couple of months ago after a case where a White Flame had relaxed a Prime vampire into remaining still long enough to be staked. This was the first working prototype, and if the magic failed, I’d still have its Taser-like capabilities.

After a late-night brainstorming session with the R&D crew generated a shortlist of names that included the Tranquilizer Thunderbolt, the Harmony Hammer, and the Mellow Magic Mallet, we went with Zen Zapper which we’d deemed the best of the bunch.

Paul flung the door open. “Maccabees! Freeze!”

His hands were raised, ready to deploy his orange flame magic, and I had a cool weapon, but there was no one to use it on. The barn was empty.

I gritted my teeth with a sigh, my pent-up disappointment and restless energy bouncing around inside me like a pinball.

The area closest to the door had been turned into a makeshift kitchen. An old stove held a large dented steel pot, ostensibly used to make the candy that formed the delivery mechanism for the chemical high. There was an open industrial-sized bag of sugar on the floor, while multiple mesh bags of lemons were thrown on the countertop next to bottles of yellow food coloring and a candy thermometer. It was almost quaint. Hardly food safe, but I guess that wasn’t high on the list of priorities for drugmakers.

The lab area with its glassware, beakers, flasks, and solvents, on the other hand, was all business. Red jerry cans of gasoline were on hand to power the generators, and a couple of hazmat suits were thrown over chairs.

Piles of the rough round yellow candies were heaped on a long metal table, along with sealed packages of the icing sugar mixture containing the chemical compound that these candies would be dusted with, making Crackle the premier choice for the discerning partier.

The drug may have resembled old-fashioned lemon drops, but sucking on one was more like eating Pop Rocks, hence the name. The euphoria that Crackle induced, however, was all its own.

Both Trad cops and Maccabees had attempted to get it off the streets for years but as with many drugs, it was a losing battle. We’d recently gotten intel that a group of Eishei Kodesh had ramped up production in a remote and rugged area not far from the border we shared with Alberta. Most cities in our province didn’t have their own Maccabee chapters. When things got hairy, Vancouver operatives were deployed as necessary, hence the four of us on this job tonight.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled. All of the barn was visible and there were no other exits. “Where is everyone?”

“Is it a trap?” Paul sifted through a stack of the gold tissue paper used to wrap each individual dose, his expression wary. “Drug labs don’t close up shop for the night.”

“It looks more like they forgot milk and stepped out to the store. In any case, why leave the drugs out in the open with an unlocked door? And leave all the lights on?” I held a sealed bag of powder up to the light. “If they were expecting us and funneled us inside to a kill chute, it still doesn’t make sense to hand the authorities evidence. They could have hidden the candies at the very least. Make a minimum effort to conceal their crimes.”

“Unless they were positive we wouldn’t be leaving again,” he said dryly.

Added to my confusion was the fact that my literal inner demon, Cherry Bomb, the Brimstone Baroness, was showing a marked disinterest in the proceedings. I expected her to be excited to take down bad guys. Even if they were human, not demons or vamps, these drug manufacturers were still dangerous, but I was getting nothing off her except mild boredom.

Maybe snowshoeing lulled her into a coma and whenever she required satiation, I could hit the mountains for some Mother Nature time instead of secretly tracking and fighting demons.

Yeah, I couldn’t rouse up enthusiasm for plan B either.

I surveyed the room yet again, as if it had transformed into a more exciting crime scene. Nothing. I sighed.

Then a bloodcurdling scream rent the night.

Now that’s more like it. I sprinted outside, Cherry now wide awake, with Paul on my heels.

My first read of the scene inside the living room of the lone house on the property was that Francesca had been injured by the Eishei Kodesh engulfed in flames, whom she was attempting to subdue. Except her expression was frustration, not fear.

The fire didn’t hurt the living tiki torch, so he was a Red Flame. Kaden Scott, my brain helpfully supplied from our intel report. Thirty years old, previous conviction of assault.

That was as far as I got with facts and rational thinking, my brain struggling to make sense of Kaden’s unyielding determination to cave his own skull in. He bashed it against the wall with agonized cries, but also a dreamy smile. When his next strike landed with a reverberating thwack, I flinched harder than he did.

The house thankfully hadn’t caught fire since Kaden’s head was flame-free, but one wrong spark would incinerate the faded wallpaper or the wooden slats on the ceiling.

Francesca grabbed an iron fireplace poker and prodded Kaden and his fire magic away from the wall into the center of the room, but she didn’t have a way to take him down that didn’t involve getting barbecued.

The room stank of blood with the tang of lemon running under all of it, while a man on the battered radio sang about rocking around the clock tonight.

Kaden switched up his assault and punched himself in the face until his nose flattened with a sickening crunching sound and the skin around his right eye tore. He hooked a flaming finger into his eye jelly deep in the socket and, with effort, plopped the entire eyeball out. His breathy sigh conveyed the pleasure he took from this, yet it ended on a pained howl that would haunt me to the end of my life. It was heartbreaking and horrifying to see him caught in this deadly thrall, torn apart in equal measure by bliss and agony.

Paul, a hardened Maccabee who’d also done military tours of duty in some of the roughest places in the world, gagged.

Shoot Kaden, Cherry urged gleefully.

To another person, my fine demoness’s suggestion might appear as insane as Kaden. However, Cherry had great instincts, both for our self-preservation as well as ending battles quickly.

“Francesca. Down!” The second she stepped away, I squeezed the trigger, discharging the electromagnetic probes into Kaden’s shoulder.

He seized up, his flames sputtering out, then he crashed onto the floor on his side, still spasming. His face went slack. Was that the same as calm and subdued? Had the Zen Zapper worked?

I ducked into my synesthete vision. I was a Blue Flame with the specific ability to illuminate weaknesses in people, the synesthete aspects of my magic manifesting as sight.

And what a sight he was.

Kaden presented as a human outline colored with jagged streaks of vivid blue along his entire nervous system, like a sugared-up preschooler had deployed their limited coloring skills.

His heart was a large fluttering blue dot while his head and face were a swath of blue, consistent with his physical injuries. Upon closer examination, his mesolimbic dopamine pathway, the part of his brain controlling addiction, was a darker navy than his physical injuries.

I reminded myself that Crackle was not airborne. The drug had to be ingested for it to take effect; we couldn’t be harmed by inhaling its signature scent.

Though this wasn’t Crackle’s normal advertised happy high either. Had they changed the chemical compound producing a new Crackle that caused users to self-harm to outrageous degrees? I shivered. It was good that we were taking these guys out of the picture now.

But had Kaden eaten some of this janky batch? I narrowed my eyes. These guys were professionals. The equipment set up in the barn proved that. This was no rookie mistake. It was lunacy. This crew hadn’t just lost it right before we’d arrived. They were methodical. They’d evaded local law enforcement several times. Why get sloppy now?

I retracted the Zen Zapper’s prongs from Kaden’s shoulder. “Francesca⁠—”

Kaden moaned loudly. He rocked in a curled-up ball, the blood streaming out of his mangled skull mixing with the tears from his empty eye socket.

Francesca pulled off her gloves and placed her palms over his empty socket to cauterize it with her yellow flame healing, while Paul snapped magic-nulling cuffs on him. Better to be safe than sorry.

Kaden gripped my leader’s hand tight, but at her gentle questioning, he simply stared dully into the distance, lost to pain and shock.

Francesca asked Paul to help her turn Kaden onto his side so she could assess the extent of his injuries.

Since they had this under control and Francesca assured me the upstairs was clear, I headed into the kitchen. These people were clearly not fans of washing dishes, but the room was otherwise unremarkable save for the open door leading to the basement and who knew what dangers.

Let’s find out! Cherry mentally fist-pumped.

I poked my head back into the living room. “Did Edward go down there?”

Francesca thinned her lips, her expression strained at my question, but her quiet “Yes” was carefully devoid of any anxiety about her team member. She trusted him to take care of himself, her professional demeanor ruthlessly honed through training and experience.

“On it.” Keeping the Zen Zapper at the ready, I stepped through the trapdoor and into the darkness.

Chapter2

I crept down the narrow staircase and along a short, dimly lit corridor, keeping my back to the wall.

Cherry nagged me to hurry up, but rushing could get me killed.

I peered around the corner.

The corridor was dank and cobwebby, but free of anyone wanting me dead. Unfortunately, there was a closed door at the end of it.

I pressed my ear against it, but when I didn’t hear anything other than the faint strains of the Supremes singing “You Can’t Hurry Love” from upstairs, I wrestled the door partially open from the bloated frame and slipped through. My legs buckled from the spike of excitement that punched through me, courtesy of the Baroness.

Something splatted against the wall above my head and fell onto the back of my neck. It felt like a warm, wet sponge and I yelped, batting it away as I slid on a patch of wet ground.

I looked down to see what on earth that had been and immediately wished I hadn’t.

It was a freaking ear, with a gold hoop still dangling from it.

Cherry made a disgusted sound, chiding me to get my shit together.

Remember when that spider fell on the back of my neck? I suppressed a shiver. Human ears are not better than spiders.

The weak bulbs overhead were strung with a multitude of stripped extension cords. Did these people want a fire? Because that’s how you got a fire.

I moved forward between the many shadows, the air in here so infused with that lemon stank that my eyes watered.

Maybe that was a blessing because it blurred the sight of the mangled bodies.

I sucked in a breath. Sure, the freezing temperature would keep the corpses from decomposing quickly, but what was wrong with the more traditional cellar offerings of canned fruits and winter vegetables?

Only one person in my line of sight was still alive, a woman—missing an ear. Jasmine Bakshi, a seventy-something of Indo Canadian heritage, was the lone female and suspected mastermind of the group. The wiry senior was also providing her own soundtrack to this destruction, humming a peppy tune, which, if memory served, was from the Beach Boys’ catalogue.

There was zero possibility that this businesswoman had voluntarily taken Crackle, and yet my magic sight verified that her mesolimbic dopamine pathway was affected.

I raised the Zen Zapper with a steady claw.

Claw?

I blinked three times rapidly, but it didn’t turn my left hand back into human fingers or erase the frosted toxic green scales striping my skin.

Oh fuck. Oh no.

My teammates would be coming through the door any second now. My heartbeat spiked and the scales bloomed farther up my arm and along my hands, locking down into a protective armor.

Jasmine bit down on her thumb with enough force to tear it half off, snapping me out of one horrified stupor and into another.

I re-aimed my weapon at her.

She growled at me with a mouth full of blood, her thumb dangling off her hand by a tendon.

On the upside, she wasn’t reacting to Cherry Bomb, but damn.

How had Crackle gotten into everyone’s system and why was the drug making these people turn themselves into “some assembly required” humans?

I shot Jasmine with the electroshock/calming magic combo, but before I could rip the prongs out of her torso, she grabbed hold of the connective wires transmitting the electric current and wrapped herself in them, bucking off the floor like it was a mechanical bull in a country and western dive bar.

Ride ’em, cowgirl, Cherry snickered.

So not appropriate, I hissed back in my head, freeing Jasmine from the tangled wires.

Thankfully, her spasming was subsiding and the white flame magic had kicked in. She rolled onto her back with a glazed look.

Sadly, one of the Zen Zapper wires had broken. I dropped the weapon with a baleful glare, intending to have words with Maccabee R&D when I got back for not making it sturdier, and scrubbed a scaley hand over my face. I needed Francesca down here to heal the injured woman.

In my head, Cherry commanded me to breathe. Do you trust our instincts?

I looked from the door to my claw. Yes.

Okay, then,she said. We practiced this. True. It was a new addition to my personal training regime. What are you going to do?

I centered myself, letting my frosted scales armor the exposed skin on my face, and neck, though I didn’t go into my full bulked-up shedim form. There was a moment when I almost changed my features all back because I’d never willingly shown any part of myself in front of humans.

As I always said, I was Cherry and she was me, and we had been working on trust and control in a whole new way these past couple of months. I could reverse it if needed, but for now, my protection stayed in place.

I twisted my Maccabee ring around—it was dim down here, and hopefully, if the pillbox compartment was hidden, the band itself wouldn’t be a dead giveaway of my identity. Using a dusty towel that was flung over a box of Crackle wrapping papers, I triaged the zoned-out Jasmine and made a tourniquet for her hand. Her head was also covered in blood, but the flow had stopped, and the wound appeared shallow.

For her own safety, I snapped magic-nulling handcuffs on her.

A series of low, animalistic grunts sounded from a far dark corner.

“Edward?” I’d forgotten about the other operative.

There was an agonized cry followed by a rusty chuckle.

I hesitated, torn between escorting Jasmine up to Francesca and dealing with this new crisis. Swearing under my breath, I ran deeper into the cellar, my crimson hair whipping into my eyes.

The ground was uneven, and I had to mind my footing and keep my horns from hitting the sloping roof, and then I was pulling up short in confusion.

A demon who resembled the unfortunate aftermath of a wild night between a sloth and a bratwurst sausage sat inside a tall cage made of thick iron bars whose door was secured with a heavy gold padlock. About three feet high, the shedim had bumpy brown skin and stumpy arms with long fingers. Long toes too. She looked dirty and small in the cage, but she was absolutely enthralled with the shivering mass in front of her.

It was a shadow, rocking back and forth—a man on his knees with his arms wrapped around his midsection.

Edward.

I lurched forward to help him, watching in horror as he straightened with a wet hiss of pain and held the small dagger he always carried aloft.

Then he stabbed it into a bleeding wound in his gut.

My stomach dropped into my toes. Were his actions a result of a demonic compulsion or the drug?

Crackle first hit the news back in the 1990s in Vancouver when an Eishei Kodesh rave turned into a horror show. Thanks to the testimony of the few survivors, it was determined that Crackle fucked with the synesthetic quality of our flame-based magic.

Partygoers destroyed themselves chasing the ultimate sensation. Red Flames, who experienced their magic as textures, burned people alive, seeking the feeling of velvet perfection against their own skins.

A Yellow Flame survivor described wanting to achieve the scent of umami, which is a taste, not a smell, but that didn’t stop them from attempting it via cleansing magic, bursting eyeballs and shattering bones in other people in the process.

The partygoers not on Crackle, who were screaming and running for the exits, couldn’t find their way out. Orange Flames, whose magic use was temperature-based, entombed rooms—and bodies—in ice, chasing a glacial coolness in the hot, sweaty warehouse, while the few Blue Flames present, those of us who illuminated weakness, decided now was a good time to turn their synesthete vision into an underwater paradise in a million shades of blue. Which sounded poetic except they’d done it by illuminating tiny flaws in the building’s foundation, directing people to the weak spots.

That in itself wouldn’t have been a problem, but White Flames then stoked people’s enthusiasm to turn the indoor event into an outdoor one. The crowd bashed on those places with fists and furniture, shifting the walls off their foundation until part of the ceiling in the main dance room caved in.

People were buried alive.

A thorough investigation by the Maccabees traced the drug back to a shedim (the plural Hebrew term, used conventionally for both singular and multiple demons, like the word “fish”). This demon, based in northern British Columbia, had infused its secretion into the candy to create this misery and chaos.

The shedim was hunted and killed.

I inched closer to Edward, who snapped at me with his teeth then licked the knife.

The drugs we’d found in the barn were one hundred percent evil organic and needed to be torched. But even with this organic version responsible for the violence these people had inflicted upon themselves, there was no way any of them—and especially not Edward—had taken it.

The shedim was locked up, so she hadn’t physically forced the drug down their throats. Had she compelled them?

Why didn’t she try to compel me?

On second glance, the shedim wasn’t simply sitting there like an evil voyeuse, she rocked back and forth so quickly, it was like she was attempting to get liftoff.

That did not make it better, but it did make me doubt she had any compulsion ability. Ergo, Edward was affected by the drug somehow.

Crackle didn’t go away once the original demon was killed, but it did change into a non-magic, chemically produced version that produced a blissful high in both Trads and Eishei Kodesh—without the carnage.

The version of the drug that we’d expected to seize.

None of that helped me now. I stepped into a shadow, taking a circuitous approach to my teammate so as not to agitate him further.

The Maccabee’s eyes were blank. He grunted each time he stabbed himself, the blade sliding free with a disconcerting slurping sound, but he didn’t stop, despite now being so incapacitated that he’d collapsed onto his back and lay sprawled in the dirt.

I crouched down beside Edward. I’d never used my synesthete magic to suss out a partner’s weakness unless they were so injured that they couldn’t tell me how they were hurt, but when he didn’t respond to me calling his name, I took that as a green light.

There were three parts of his body lit up in blue: his gut wound, his heart, and his mesolimbic dopamine pathway. It was scarily easy in my Cherry form to take the dagger away from my teammate, who had a good fifty pounds of solid muscle on me. He should have fought back hard at what appeared to be a new and different shedim disarming him.

The caged demon growled, her eyes glinting yellow. Not all shedim could recognize infernals, so her hostility could have been toward me as a fellow demon encroaching on her conquest. That would be better, since she wouldn’t assume I was weaker than she was.

Edward didn’t register my presence at all. His only reaction when he could no longer stab himself was to shove his fingers into his wound and try to rip himself open that way.

I slapped magic-nulling cuffs on him, overwhelmed by the carnage, but Edward was bleeding out and training took over. I tore off my jacket and pressed it against his wound.

“Like them submissive?” the shedim croaked and winked at me. She didn’t have eyelids, so it was more one bulbous eye bulging farther out than the other for a moment, but I got the gist.

I screamed myself hoarse for Francesca and Paul, but my teammates upstairs didn’t answer. Ice filled my veins as quickly as Edward’s blood seeping through my jacket. I’d have reverted forms and checked why they’d gone silent, but I was scared to stop applying pressure to Edward’s wound.

Awareness finally returned to his gaze. He flinched at the sight of me, his eyes wide and his skin draining of what little color he had left. Oh, for the good old days of ten seconds ago before he’d seen what I was. At least he didn’t realize it was me, Aviva. Just another rando shedim.

I ignored the sting in my chest. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Hurt! Hurt!” the imprisoned demon cried gleefully, her bumpy skin percolating.

The shedim-induced jonesing at the rave that made the drug newsworthy didn’t match the damage tonight, because those partygoers hadn’t turned their Eishei Kodesh abilities on themselves. Lethal as that original demonic form of Crackle had been, it didn’t inspire self-mutilation.

So what accounted for the difference?

Bratwurst Demon kicked a chamber pot out of her way, upending the full container of urine, which sank into the dirt. Gross.

I moved my jacket to check how badly Edward was still bleeding, and whether I could risk leaving him to get help. Why hadn’t Francesca or Paul come down here yet? Even if they hadn’t heard me calling out, one of them should have come to check on Edward and me.

Had they been ambushed by more Eishei Kodesh drug manufacturers? Our intel report had mentioned only four people. Weren’t Sonny White and Jack Meister the two dead bodies down here?

A drop of sweat trickled down my spine.

Could the compulsion to self-mutilate also be transmitted by touching someone who’d been in direct physical contact with the shedim? Paul and Francesca had touched Kaden with their bare hands, and Edward would have attempted to assist Jasmine.

A thread of worry snaked through me. I’d touched them too. Then why hadn’t I⁠—

I looked at my scaley armour.

You’re welcome, Cherry said smugly.

Yeah, all right. I glanced up at the dirt ceiling, praying Paul and Francesca weren’t turning their bodies into their best deconstructed selves, then shook that dark thought off, and returned my focus to Edward.

His blood had slowed to a trickle. Like his breathing.

I wrenched my eyes to his. They were dull on the life force front, yet jam-packed with his lingering horror at my shedim form.

He took a final shuddery breath and lay still.

I stuffed my sadness—for Edward and this entire situation—down tight. I hadn’t known him well, but he’d been a kind soul, always ready to lend a hand, and a committed operative. He deserved justice.

Retribution, Cherry amended silently, like it was a treat that would cheer me up.

I let out a deep breath at his blood soaking the knees of my snow pants. She wasn’t wrong.

Jasmine was humming again, some slow tune that kept breaking into hiccuped sobs, but she was still alive. As were Francesca and Paul, upstairs.

I hoped.

Check on Francesca and Paul and leave the jailed shedim alive until everyone else was secure? Or take her on myself? I raced through the pros and cons of each but concluded that if my teammates were incapacitated or if touching the shedim (which we’d inevitably do when fighting) induced violent urges, then my armored scales placed me in the best position to take her down so no one else fell victim.

I found the keys next to a severed arm and unlocked the cage.

Bratwurst Demon didn’t move.

“Get out,” I snarled.

Instead of using the open door, she contorted her body like an octopus and slipped between the bars.

I lunged for her with my claws, longing to rip into her, but she sidestepped me.

“Stupid humans thought this would hold me,” she sneered, crushing the gold padlock into a twisted mess. “Foolish children.” No sooner had she dropped the lock into the dirt than her gumption drained out of her and her entire sausage-like body slumped. “Need to eat.”

The shedim wasn’t getting a last meal, but she was right about one thing: she was on death row.

Chapter3

Garroting Bratwurst Demon with the broken Zen Zapper’s wires was a great way to work out tension. Cherry even cheered in my head—and assured me that my scales would keep me safe.

I had to trust her because choking the demon out this way was a close-contact sport. With a grunt, I twisted the wires tighter by one last death-inducing millimeter.

The wires slid cleanly through the demon’s neck. Or rather the section of her sausage body approximating that part.

Her skin smoothed back into place; the shedim was uninjured.

I stared dumbly at the wires in my hand.

She grabbed my forearms and flipped me to the ground, propelled by a rage-fueled adrenaline rush. Her repeated kicks to my ribs were no piece of cake to endure, and her long toes gripping my side briefly with each strike made me shudder, but I wasn’t compelled to aid and abet her in my own destruction, so there was that.

I rolled to my feet, danced in close, and planted a swift right hook to her side.

She undulated and stumbled sideways.

I pressed my advantage, following up with two swift jabs between her eyes that made her jiggle like a bowl of jelly.

The shedim hissed and curled her long fingers into fists, but her arms were still stumpy, and it was like watching a T-rex go two rounds. She tried, bless her, she really did, but she’d never met a fight move that she didn’t telegraph, and I easily avoided her clumsy attacks.

I wailed on the fucker, pouring out my fury at the pointless deaths. Those damn snowshoes I’d been forced to endure were also worth venting about. The drug producers could have plowed the single dirt road leading to their property, but nooooo. We had to do the trek from hell, while the criminals would get a nice, cushy helicopter ride back to HQ.

The shedim smashed her forehead against mine and I stumbled backward, coshing my skull. My ears rang, the room swinging nauseatingly around me.

I slammed the heel of my boot into what would have been the Achilles of a person, nodding in satisfaction when the demon crumpled to the ground, trying to protect that spot from further assault. Methinks I found her kill spot.

I debated using the Maccabee ring that I’d liberated from a half shedim on a previous case. Its owner, Maud Liu, turned out to be my slightly younger half sister. She’d requested the deathbed token from her Maccabee godmother under false pretenses, intending to use it to kill our father.

You know, the demon with whom my ex was running the Copper Hell, a dangerous gaming hall located on a megayacht.

The Brady Bunch, we weren’t.

I’d used the magic cocktail in Maud’s ring twice, with two more doses available, but this was an official Maccabee assignment. Better to use my ring now since refilling it wouldn’t raise eyebrows and save Maud’s stash for hunting demons to feed Cherry.

I flung an arm out for balance because neither the ringing in my ears nor the dizziness was subsiding. If this damned shedim had given me tinnitus, I’d⁠—

What? Cherry asked in amusement. Hunt her down and kill her twice?

Maybe, I thought petulantly. I ground my knee into Bratwurst’s hip and readied my strike. The magic in my Maccabee ring would confirm the Achilles as her kill spot and end her.

She screeched and threw me off before I could activate it, causing me to bash my hip against the cage, and snatched up Edward’s discarded knife.

I tensed, ready to block her lunge and strike, however clumsy it might be.

“I’m not going back!” She plunged the knife into the back of her foot.

Right into her kill spot.

I’d had many emotionally intense moments when time seemed to slow down: through anger, terror, even passion. Not once had disbelief been on that list, and yet I’d swear reality ground to a snail’s pace. Every detail was as clear as if it was allowed its own moment in the spotlight: the blade sinking halfway into the shedim’s foot, her mouth pressed tight in determination or pain, the cracks spiderwebbing across her sausage-casing skin.

Time snapped back like a rubber band. The shedim exploded, brown bits hitting the ground like crispy pork fat before being sucked up by the dirt.

I toed at the spot where she’d made her last stand, my brows furrowed. There wasn’t even a stain to commemorate her existence, so expecting answers was a stretch.

How about just one answer, universe? To one very perplexing question.

Since when did shedim commit suicide?

Yeah, her fighting skills were laughable, and she hadn’t been able to compel me into hurting myself and weakening me, not even to boost her own strength, but still. She should have given her all to a last-ditch attempt to stay alive, because when it came to self-protective instincts, shedim had the market cornered.

With the threat gone, I returned to my human form, my ears ringing and my head throbbing.

A demon suicide unnerved the shit out of me. Their behavior was unpredictable, but in a consistently violent, chaotic, or at least mindfucky way.

Unassailable truth number one: they hurt others. Not themselves.

And what was with her final words? Where didn’t she want to go back to? Okay, two questions, universe. Get on that.

I hurried over to Jasmine, who remained in shock but alive, and helped her to her feet. Through a combination of verbal encouragement and taking most of her weight, I half walked, half dragged her out up the stairs into the kitchen, her cuffs jangling with each step.

I wanted to rail against her for making this awful drug to begin with, never mind bringing a demon into the production chain for the worst version imaginable, but she was suffering and I couldn’t harden my heart to her plight.

“Francesca? Paul?” I assisted Jasmine into the living room.

Whelp, I had my answer as to why the rest of the team hadn’t come to our assistance.

Paul had used his orange flame magic to suck the heat out of Francesca’s body. She was as blue as a Smurf, her teeth chattering, and her body bowed, but while she was down, she wasn’t out.

She’d taken the creative route and reverse engineered her healing abilities to break Paul’s right leg, which he dragged limply along. One of his arms was also twisted and bent at a grotesque angle.

Kaden was dead. Either Francesca’s healing magic hadn’t been enough, or she’d aborted the attempt when she became lost to those demonic urges herself.

I sat Jasmine down on a ratty sofa. She was so far beyond registering my presence that it was like moving the limbs of a doll, albeit one that now hummed “Only You” along with the radio.

“Hey, gang.” I turned the radio off.

Jasmine began shrieking, so I hit the power button again, turning up the volume until she calmed down. Ooookay, no radio silence for this one.

Neither of my teammates reacted to the commotion. Francesca sluggishly prodded Paul and held up her hand.

The temperature around us plummeted and I coughed on the freezing air, my breath coming out in white gusts.

I sprinted toward them.

Paul forced the heat of the room into my team leader’s fingers so suddenly and with such force that they shriveled like wieners left to burn.

How nice. They’d teamed up to better achieve their insane desires of inflicting maximum damage on their own persons.

I stepped forward then back, loath to hurt them further, but even more loath to let them finish each other off. Edward was dead; the rest of my team was getting out of here alive. And with my Zen Zapper a useless paperweight down in the root cellar, I had no way to stun them out of their compulsion.

Choking it was, a move that was more reliable than trying to punch them unconscious. I’d simply put each person in a sleeper hold to cut off the blood flow on either side of their neck and prevent oxygen going to their brains.

Risking that they’d be too far gone to notice my scales, I once more armored my hands and arms. Then I sidled up behind Paul, put my foot into the back of his knee, and lowered him down to my level. I tightly wrapped my arm around the front of his neck, grabbing my shoulder to secure the grip, and flexed my arms to begin oxygen restriction. My other arm got pressed behind Paul’s throat, leaving no gap in my chokehold.

Confident there was no way for him to break free, I squeezed from the sides of my chest, arms tightening, while leaning slightly forward.

Paul coughed. Three seconds later, he was out cold.

Judging by Francesca’s non-reaction to her subordinate choking out a team member, I could have taken my sweet time.

I lowered Paul to the floor.

Francesca prodded him with her toe, giving an annoyed growl that he wasn’t keeping up his end of their mess-each-other-up arrangement. The new friends with benefits.

A moment later, I had two unconscious team members at my feet.

Was nearly asphyxiating your teammates mandated Maccabee training? Hell no. Darsh had taught Sachie and me these moves. A vamp was the perfect person to practice choking on until we were positive we could do it properly. We’d also executed the moves on each other to make sure.

Not fun.

I sprinted for the comms in our backpacks outside, along with a couple more pairs of nulling cuffs for Francesca and Paul, and some latex gloves for me to prevent any physical contact because I had to lose the shedim scales. At least that happened fairly quickly and easily.

The wait for our air evac rescue was interminable. I’d insisted on speaking to healers at HQ the second I sent my emergency request for assistance, and they talked me through all I could do with the first aid kits in the backpacks.

I split my time between Jasmine, and Francesca and Paul, who’d regained consciousness. All three were in shock and unable to process or respond to anything, save for Jasmine clinging to those golden oldies on the radio, humming along with empty eyes.

It was like sitting in a room full of zombies, set to an oddly nostalgic soundtrack.

Thankfully, none of the Eishei Kodesh tried to hurt themselves further.

When they were as stable as I could make them, I dragged Edward’s body upstairs to be with the rest of us. I owed it to him, though I positioned him behind some curtains, out of sight of the others. They were traumatized enough.

I left the two other mangled corpses downstairs. Maccabee HQ was sending a helicopter with fresh meat to deal with the cleanup.

Cherry chuckled. Nice phrasing.

I winced, but I was too tired to feel bad. I slid down a wall onto the floor, gripping a half-empty bottle of water. My clothes stuck to me in cold, sweaty patches, my back throbbed, and my stomach was so knotted up in grief and worry that the power bar I’d been commanded to eat while waiting for the helicopter was nothing more than cardboard lumps in my belly.

I zoned into a loop of grim thoughts, examining every second of this mission for all the places where we should have made different choices. By the time the cavalry arrived, the whir of the rotor blades slicing the air, all I wanted to do was crawl into my bed and pull the covers over my head.

Yeah, well, that was not to be, because the second the chopper landed in the faint pre-dawn light on the roof at HQ in Vancouver, I was whisked inside for a debrief.

First, though, a level three Maccabee forensic tech divested me of my jacket, snow pants, and gloves, wanting to test for any traces of the demon secretion. If this shedim was the same type as the one who’d originally created Crackle, we were screwed because there was very little information on that first demon in our records.

It made a dangerous drug. Maccabees found it. Maccabees killed it. In hindsight, they should have taken the time to question the demon, but twenty-twenty and all that.

Our Maccabee tech would get fuck all from my clothing since I hadn’t worn the jacket or gloves during that gong show, though I claimed to have had both on until after the demon was dead.

I’d worn latex gloves from the first aid kit while triaging the others, which kept me from making skin contact and being affected once I lost my scales. The gloves were in an evidence bag, which I also handed over.

Edward’s blood was on my snow pants. I told the tech they could keep them.

A healer was also present to check me out. Her treatment of my mild concussion was worse than the injury itself, and I was almost grateful when Director Michael Fleischer showed up to personally take my report, given the gravity of the situation.

Michael led me to one of the interrogation rooms—supposedly because it was closer than her office.

Riiiiight.

I had no doubt that she’d listened to the medical emergency details I provided when I first contacted HQ, but despite me hanging half-off the hard metal chair in exhaustion, she had me take her through every step of the events multiple times. To be fair, that was standard procedure and I recited everything as honestly as I could.

Emphasis on “as I could.”

Finally, she stopped the recorder.

I yawned, then covered my mouth with an apology, but I was so ready for bed.

Michael clicked her silver pen, studying the yellow legal pad she’d made notes on. “Just a couple of clarifications.”

“Sure.”

There were more than a couple, but there was only one point she kept circling back to, slipping her reframed question in at different points like it would catch me off guard.

I should have caught on immediately when she took us off the record. There was a shedim involved, and a straightforward mission had ended in tragedy. I blamed fatigue for my taking so long to clue in.

“You’re really fascinated by the durability of my clothing, Michael.” I crossed my arms. “Looking for some advice for your next extreme winter sport adventure?”

She tucked a strand of silver hair behind her ear, her makeup impeccable and nary a wrinkle on her suit, despite the early hour. “I was thinking of doing some backcountry skiing on my next trip up to Whistler. Do you think the gloves you wore while fighting would be suitable for the conditions or would I need protective gear not traditionally found in stores?”

I leaned back with a tight smile. “Would it matter what you used so long as at the end of the day it kept you healthy and whole?”

“No, but if the rest of my party suffered from exposure, and I walked out unscathed, there’d be questions as to how I survived. Especially if one died.”

My expression hardened. “I tried to save Edward.”

She actually blinked. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

“No.” I laughed bitterly. “You just meant to imply a whole host of other things, none of them being ‘Thank goodness my daughter is okay.’”

She opened her mouth, but I held up a hand to cut off her protest.

“Sorry,” I said. “‘Thank goodness my operative is okay.’ I know you don’t like to be familiar at work.”

There had been a short period of time on a case a couple of months ago where my mother believed I’d been killed when my car exploded. The first time she’d seen me afterward, I’d merited an entire shoulder squeeze. Apparently, that underwhelming gesture was supposed to speak volumes about her relief.

She didn’t chide me for my snarky comment. But she didn’t disagree either.

“To answer your question,” I continued, shoving down the familiar flare of anger that she induced, “most people would chalk my well-being up to training and intelligence and leave it at that.”

“Perhaps.” She drummed her pen against the bolted-down metal table. “But I’m not most people. I’m responsible for everyone, and it’s my duty to understand every element so I can make sure nothing like this happens again.”

“I didn’t make skin contact,” I said blandly. “Not much else I can say.” I failed to stifle a yawn. “With all due respect, Michael, Francesca and Paul will be out of commission for the foreseeable future, so you can grill me on protective gear, or you can let me go home and get some sleep so that I can start investigating why the shedim killed herself.”

Michael wrote a final note on her pad. “What does a demon taking themselves out of the picture matter?”

I groaned. The one crucial piece of evidence and she wasn’t picking up on it. “Because that’s not how shedim behave.”

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, Aviva, do not anthropomorphize demons. She was badly wounded, correct?”

“Correct,” I said stiffly.

“Was there any possibility of her escaping?”

I clenched my fists, my mother’s patently patient voice setting my teeth on edge. “No.”

“There you go. The shedim had no way out. She no doubt chose to die on her own terms than at the hands of a human. One last effort on her deathbed to assert power and sow chaos. What matters is that a credible threat is gone.”

“But—”

“But nothing.” Michael flipped the pages of the legal pad closed and set the pen on top, her expression inscrutable. Not for the first time, I wished that my mom was an open book, free and easy with her praise and with her sorrows. If she wore her heart on her sleeve, I wouldn’t have half the problems I did with her. Then again, she wouldn’t be the intelligent role model who, for all her parental failings, I admired the hell out of.

She’d used her yellow flame purifying magic to root out a decades-long systemic corruption here in Vancouver and became one of the youngest Maccabee directors, with a reputation for being a bastion of righteousness, fighting the good fight on every front.

Sucked for me that I was included in that last part.

“One of my operatives is dead, as are three other people,” the director said. “The only thing I care about is gathering as much information as possible to mitigate any deaths in similar situations.” She looked at me expectantly.

“Was this the same type of shedim as the one who originally made Crackle?” I ticked items off on my fingers. “How specifically were the victims affected? How did the Eishei Kodesh find the demon to imprison her?”

“Exactly. We’ll have to wait until Jasmine is cleared to be interviewed for that last point. Hopefully it won’t be long because the Authority will want her transferred to Sector A.”

I shivered at the mention of the maximum-security jail where people who colluded with demons or rogue vamps were sent. Its location was secret, as was its existence from the general public—and to Maccabees below a level two status. Yeah, achieving that goal had come with a hell of a shock with this new information.

Jasmine had been taken to the healers to treat her shock and injuries. She’d seen me as Cherry, and me as me, and I hadn’t figured out what lie to spin to make her believe the first part hadn’t happened.

I had to do something, however, in case one operative’s deepest secret was a fair trade to make her life in Sector A more palatable.

“I’ll follow up with her as soon as possible,” I said.

“You’re not pursuing this.”

I fell back in my chair in disbelief. “You can’t seriously think I wouldn’t!”

My mother’s voice softened. “You’ve been through a lot tonight, Aviva. You need to go home, rest, and then have a session with Sarah.”

It was standard procedure for Maccabees to see our top psychologist and be cleared for duty after a traumatic event, but I wasn’t going to be sidelined. Not on this. The drug bust had spiraled so far out of my control and resulted in so much death and panic that I had to do something. If I walked away now, I’d always have nightmares about today. But if I could put an end to this, then maybe I’d be able to sleep properly again.

Maybe.