Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1) (2 page)

Twigs and underbrush snapped in the distance, and my head jerked toward its source. Humans had culled most of their fellow creatures, but things still lived in the wild areas, things I might need to use magic against.

Now on guard, I twirled my weapons between my fingers as I crept to the car, a nervous habit of mine masked as an intimidation tactic.

Believe you are dangerous and, more importantly, make sure your enemy believes it.

My father’s words echoed in my head as I circled the vehicle.

He’d made sure everyone knew just how dangerous he was.

More foliage crunched close by. Again I peered toward its source, my senses heightened by fear, for now I could make out the distinct sound of footsteps—

I felt it then, that nervous tingling at the base of my spine.

Not one of us.

Human.

It was coming straight toward me.

In a rush I slid the daggers back into their sheaths and sprinted for the tree line, my footsteps silent, unlike the blundering human heading this way.

Whoever it was, they were still far enough from the vehicle that I managed to slip back to my original lookout unseen.

Hidden once more behind the tree, I peered at the car. I could still hear the tormented cries of the native inside the vehicle. Perhaps the person heading this way was a friend. Perhaps they were bringing help with them. Perhaps I would not need to intervene, and I could go home soon.

The injured human made more noise, all of it indistinct.

Muffled
, I realized.

I hadn’t heard them sooner because their cries had been muffled.

A friend wouldn’t muffle his injured comrade. He’d want people to hear so that help could come sooner.

Foe.

I didn’t have time to think of the implications before a great beast of a man cleared the forest to my right.

I was wrong to think the person tromping through the woods was a blundering human. I stared at the man as he headed to the vehicle, utterly captivated. He was human, yes, but
fearsome
. Someone like that wouldn’t have to mask their presence. He was surely the most dangerous thing out here.

Other than me, that was.

I watched him cross to his car, my heart in my throat. I couldn’t say why exactly I was so terrified. Besides the fact that physically he was bigger than me, he couldn’t possibly wield the kind of magic I could.

But he had that look about him, the same look mercenaries and assassins of my world had. Fierce. Stoic. Frightening. Only on a human face it looked particularly cruel and emotionless.

Shame he was handsome. Those features were wasted on someone who would slit your throat before he’d make small talk.

He moved to the rear of the car, which directly faced me. I took in the broad expanse of his corded back as he removed his helmet, setting it on the roof of his car before he unlocked the doors. It was odd, seeing a human that strong, that toned. Most of them looked soft,
domesticated
.

Not this one.

He swung the rear doors open.

Finally I caught sight of the person inside.

I shoved my fist into my mouth to silence my cry.

That wasn’t an injured human.

It was an Infernarus.

Chapter 3

Asher

Inside my Hummer,
trussed up like a turkey, my prisoner winced against the light, his eyes still bruised from the beating I’d given him earlier to get the location of the portal.

In a bucket by the wheel well, his severed hands sloshed in an inch of blood.

Could never be too careful.

I fanned my nose against the stench of ash and blood. “Since you led me to the right spot,” I said, “I’ll make your death as quick and painless as possible.”

My prisoner thrashed against his bindings, jerking like a bull, rocking the truck back and forth. His duct-taped mouth screamed garbled obscenities.

“What was that?” I said, cupping my hand over my ear. “Buddy, you got to speak up.”

He screamed louder, his cries muffled by the tape.

“Nope, still can’t hear you—”

He managed to spit off the tape, which flapped under his hot breath. “You gave me your word, you filthy, cold-blooded, traitorous rat!”

“I’m not particularly insulted by that, actually,” I said, sliding out my hunting knife, tilting the blade up to the light.

In my periphery, a figure shrank behind a tree. My skin prickled.

No, just the shadows deepening.

“Have you no honor?” he spat. “Have you no
pride?
”

I leveled my eyes at him over the blade, no longer smiling. “Exterminating a creature that has no right to be on my planet—no right to
exist
—has nothing to do with honor or pride. There’s an infestation, and I’m dealing with it. End of story. I don’t have to think too hard on that.”

He glared at me. “You gave me your word.”

“Yeah, you said that. Starting to sound like a broken record.” I vaulted into the back of the car and advanced toward him.

He recoiled. “You and your doublespeak. It sickens me. Release me,
human
.”

“Logic. Let’s try it.” I held the knife to his throat, calculating the best angle to cut. “Two reasons I can’t let you go. One, you make portals. Kind of counterproductive, if you think about it.”

He jerked his head to the bucket. “I can’t make portals without my hands. Right now, I’m powerless.”

“Two, first thing you’re going to do is run home and tell all your aunties and sissies and cousies who I am. And I
know
you know who I am.”

The creature’s lips curled. “Jame Asher,” he spat. “Hunter of Infernari. Of course I know who you are. You’re supposed to be dead.”

“And I’d like to keep it that way.” I sank the blade into his throat, and his last words died in a gurgle.

Lana

I pressed my
palm to my mouth, forcing my scream back down my throat. This was some horrible nightmare. Jame Asher, the infamous Infernari hunter back from the grave. Back, and butchering Fidel, the portal master.

Asher sawed away at his neck. As if the hands weren’t enough

He’d taken Fidel’s power with his hands, and now he was taking his life.

A silent tear trickled down my cheek, then another.

I was surprised humans even had a word for honor if they were capable of this.

Save him while there’s still time.

A native might be beyond resurrection, but not us. The soul didn’t leave the vessel immediately. And while it lingered, a body could be repaired and life restored.

Dropping my hand from my mouth, I turned to my satchel, my resolve overriding my terror. I hurriedly unpacked all twenty-six blood bags, careful to keep my movements silent.

This blood was supposed to help dozens, if not hundreds, of lives.

Today, if I was lucky, it would save just one.

I began murmuring the old language under my breath, moving my trembling hands over the blood bags again and again, calling it to me. A wisp of smoke rose along with it. Immediately I felt the magic respond, drawing towards my fingertips and palms. I breathed deeply as I culled it.

Inside the bags, the blood began to bubble. Tiny, ethereal flames bloomed along the surface of the blood, blackening the plastic bags from the inside as I converted the liquid from its crude from to something more refined.

My major affinity was healing, and now I used that affinity to reach out to Fidel as I continued to cull, the magic building up in my veins.

He was dying; I’d seen it, but now I could feel it. Like a fire starved of oxygen, his essence grew dimmer, dimmer . . .

I spared a brief glance over my shoulder. Asher had walked around to the driver side of the car, leaving Fidel unattended.

Perfect.

Turning back around, I forced the magic out of me, shoving it down the affinity-based connection I shared with Fidel.

I knew the moment my power found him. I felt his body jolt as though I shocked him. His essence still lingered beneath his flesh, just as I believed it would. It brushed against my magic, and even though I was petrified, and even though he was still in great danger, I smiled a little. Souls felt like sun on skin. Beautiful things.

I flooded his system with power, enough to jumpstart a stilled heart. Enough to bring the dead back to life. All the while I continued to draw out magic from the blood, funneling the chaotic power into a form I could use.

It took an obscene amount of magic to bring an Infernarus back to life, and this would take even more than usual. I had to waste some of it disguising the sight and smell of the blood as it combusted. It was what the natives called a parlor trick, an illusion that would lift as soon as I stopped pouring magic into it. But for now, it kept the human hunter’s focus off me.

I could sense, dimly, that Fidel’s head had found his body. The magic stitched the mutilated bits of flesh back together seamlessly. I felt him blink his eyes open, felt some base emotion that might’ve been wonder—or thanks. He knew help was here.

Now that he was sentient, it only took him seconds to collect his hands, and with my guidance, we merged them to his wrists. I assisted sealing the last of his wounds, and then I let him take full control of the magic I fed him.

I smiled a little. Jame Asher had picked the wrong day to hunt.

We’d see just how much the hunter enjoyed being hunted.

Asher

I reached into
the front of my truck to get the rest of my supplies. On the passenger seat sat a canister of gasoline connected to a hose and a foot pump—best way to dispose of demons.

Turn them back to the ash from whence they came.

Grunting, I hoisted the canister and slammed it down on the ground.

A faint bump sounded behind the truck, and the vehicle’s suspension squeaked a little. I jerked my head up, ears prone.

No other sounds.

Just the body slumping to the side, right?

I dropped the hose and ran back to check.

The armored, bloodstained enclosure came into view.

One look, and all the breath whooshed out of my lungs.

Empty.

The body was gone.

The head, too.

“Fuck,” I muttered, spinning around three hundred sixty degrees, the skin all down my back bristling with pins and needles. No one in sight.

The figure I’d seen . . . could it be?

Groping behind me, I caught the rim of the bucket and yanked it out, overturned it on the dirt.

Blood trickled out.

Blood . . . and nothing else.

He’d taken his hands with him.

“FUCK!” I yelled.

Demons were notoriously difficult to kill. Like cockroaches.

Cut off their heads, cut off their hands, eviscerate them, drown them, it didn’t matter.

A scuffle of footsteps reached my ears. From the other side of my Hummer . . . no doubt circling back around to ambush me.

Now it was hunting me.

I drew my Glock and flattened myself against the passenger side, panic afire in my lungs. It shouldn’t have healed like that.

The western sky dimmed to teal, the shadowy woods darkened and encroached on my truck.

Night.

In darkness, there was only one smart way to fight a demon—or
demons
, if what I suspected was true.

Run.

Run your ass off.

Demons were natural born predators. They had superior night vision, more acute senses, quicker reflexes, better hand-eye coordination.

I had shit.

Shit
and
a big ass problem. No other demon knew I was still alive. If I let this one escape, I’d have three hundred demons’ dicks trying to crawl up my asshole in about twelve seconds. Which meant I better stay and fight.

The thermal scope. Had that too.

My hand slapped the top of my Hummer, where I’d set my helmet. Scanning the forest, I dragged it over my head and flipped down the scope over my left eye. The world came alive in shades of green and yellow trees, still warm from sunset.

But demons’ blood ran hot—104° Fahrenheit—thing would be glowing like neon.

Explained their vicious hot tempers, too.

Like the fact that this fucker had stuck around to take on Jame Asher when the smart thing to do would be to escape and call in reinforcements.

Still didn’t mean I liked it.

Crouching on all fours, a glowing white figure crept into my periphery, slinking behind the tree line. A tiger creeping in for the kill.

I tensed, my knuckles tightening on the grip, but didn’t let on I’d seen him.

My scope used a fisheye lens, meaning it compressed a hundred and eighty degrees of infrared vision into a nice little bubble. With my truck protecting my backside, the scope let me literally see in all directions at once.

Demons think we have lousy peripheral vision. We do.

But not tonight.

The figure burst from the trees and closed in with lightning speed, appearing as a blurry white streak to my left eye through the scope.

I spun, dropped to a knee, and fired three shots before it reached me. To my left eye, the bullets made white-hot welts in its torso, their entry points glowing even hotter than the demon’s scalding flesh.

But if cutting off the beast’s head and hands—both reattached, to my horror—didn’t kill it, then three bullets stood no chance.

The demon kicked the gun out of my hand, pried off my helmet, and flung it aside, plunging me into sudden blackness. Only the whistle of air alerted me to the kick aimed at my head.

I ducked, but not fast enough. The blow slammed my face into the dirt. My lip cracked, and blood mixed with the chalky taste of silt in my mouth.

I blinked away stars. The next impact, I knew, would pack enough punch to break my neck.

I threw myself to the side, and the kick grazed my ear, leaving my eardrum ringing.

With a lunge, I caught the creature’s ankle and gave it a hard twist, wrenching it around with all my might. He rolled into it with ease, somersaulting over me, and landing on his feet. He came at me again.

Well, shit.

Not a chance of besting him in hand-to-hand combat, not at night.

His heel blotted out the sky. I could picture it then—my skull crushed in, dead in an instant.

I whipped myself into a roll, and the demon’s heel slammed the ground where I’d been, lashing me with dirt.

I kept rolling, all the way under my truck, and popped out on the other side.

His footsteps sprinted around to meet me. I lunged for the driver-side door. The demon vaulted over the hood of the car, metal groaning under his weight. A race.

My fingers jammed under the handle and yanked the door open, slamming it into his face as he swooped in from the side. For a split-second, it stunned him, and I used the distraction to sink my hunting knife into his side, twisting it in up to the hilt.

He staggered backward to yank it out, giving me a chance to get inside my Hummer.

No sooner had I slammed the door shut behind me than the demon’s face thumped against the glass. Rocked the whole truck.

Thought that was a regular window, asshole?

He’d just gotten a faceful of bulletproof glass. Demon proof.

His black eyes narrowed to slits, glaring at me while his hot breath misted on the window.

“Going to wish you didn’t hang around, bud,” I muttered, cranking the ignition.

The engine roared to life, coming alive like a monster under the hood.

He seemed to realize his mistake.

Should’ve escaped when you had the chance.

He backed away, shifty-eyed, then turned tail and ran, his loping silhouette receding into the trees.

I peeled out after him, flicking on my headlights, the high beams, the side-mounted floodlights, and the overhead light rack, bathing the forest in dazzling blue-white light.

Not night anymore, is it?

The reflectors on his tennis shoes bobbed in and out of the glare. I floored the car, and the Hummer lurched over a boulder and blasted through a rotted out log, keeping right on his heels. His palm flashed as he shoved off a tree.

Again,
how?
His head and hands had been severed . . .

Unlike humans, demon cells continued to live and multiply despite massive organ failure. Deprived of a beating heart, oxygenated blood, a central nervous system, their flesh merely entered a state of suspended animation, which could last for days, for weeks . . . indefinitely, given the right conditions.

I’d learned the hard way.

The demon wasn’t dead until he was a smoking pile of ash.

Their limbs re-sprouted, their organs grew back. Their heads . . .

Apparently those could be reattached.

Biologically, they were tough-as-hell little shits, honed over millennia of evolution. They were spirits of darkness inhabiting bodies of flesh. They were held together by evil. By the death and misfortune they harvested from us.

But still.

They were animals.

Once you cut off the head, even if the flesh still lived, the organism would cease to function in any real capacity. That was simple anatomy. A decapitated demon you could safely treat as dead until you got the chance to burn the body.

Only this one didn’t play by the rules.

Suddenly, my quarry feinted left, veering toward the thickest part of the woods. Cursing, I gave the wheel a desperate yank, fishtailing in the mud before the off-road tires gripped, and the vehicle plowed into a nest of undergrowth. Bushes whacked the front grill, clawed at it like skeletal hands before they were dragged under. Visibility down to zero.