He was dying. The blade his former partner, Reynard, had plunged into his back had failed to kill him immediately, but the blow would be fatal all the same. Samuel Santiago could taste sulfur in the back of his parched throat. When he coughed up blood, it was tinged with black. He could feel the burn as the taint from the daemon blade Reynard had used spread its way through his veins.
Daemons weren’t damned. But just like men, they could choose evil paths.
The cab dropped him at a familiar corner in Santa Fe. He was able to walk slowly but surely to the address of the apartment building where his young daughter would be sound asleep. He had a job to do. His Latin-scribed blade was wrapped in burlap and hidden beneath his coat. It and secrecy would be the gifts he’d leave Lily and her mother, Sophia. He’d been wise to forge a deal that would protect her and her mother from Reynard’s treachery, even if he hadn’t been able to protect himself.
It took forever for the elevator to respond to the summons of the glowing button that wavered in and out of focus as he waited. The Rogue daemons Reynard had sold his soul to were blackened by the desire to rule the hell dimension and then conquer heaven. They wanted to reclaim the paradise Lucifer had rebelliously left. Hell was embroiled in revolution. Loyalists against Rogues. But the Rogues couldn’t be stopped by Lucifer’s Army alone. At one time, Samuel had hunted all daemons, but he’d learned that Loyalists had no quarrel with humans. It was the Rogues who desired to enslave and destroy. The daemon king needed help from humans to defeat the Rogues. That fact might save Lily’s life.
Rogues would hunt him down. He looked over his shoulder when a random noise from a nearby apartment made him feel as if they were already behind him preparing to pounce.
The hall was empty. Somewhere in the distance a small dog barked.
Samuel stumbled into the elevator. He jabbed at the button to close the door as if the hounds of hell snapped at his feet. In a way, they did. He didn’t sigh in relief when the door closed. He leaned against the elevator’s humming wall, tense and watchful, as it rose up to the tallest floor. It was almost midnight. They would be sleeping. He didn’t have much time. He couldn’t see them. He couldn’t say goodbye. He couldn’t risk staying longer than it would take to place the wrapped sword on the mantel.
Lily had his blood. For better or worse. He supposed that was a gift he would leave her, too, although it often seemed a curse. His affinity for daemons had led him to join with Reynard in hunting them. It was Reynard’s joy in the hunt, his increased ruthlessness, that had led Samuel to question his gift. He was drawn to daemons and they were drawn to him, but in the end he had decided he was supposed to be the bridge between humanity and daemons, not their executioner.
That realization had come too late.
The Rogues were evil because they sought power and dominion over the entire universe. Loyalists only wanted to build an autonomous life for themselves. Lucifer didn’t fall from heaven. He leaped. Others had followed him. His death at the hands of Rogues had begun the revolution.
Samuel quietly let himself into the apartment. He left his key and the sword on the mantel near the kachina dolls his wife had arranged above the fireplace. The colorful Hopi statues had caught his eye many years ago, even before he’d fallen in love with the woman who carved them. She’d been at a stall in a Native American market. He’d paused, drawn to a spiritual song from the dolls that only his affinity could hear. She would know when she found the sword that it was a farewell. They had only ever had stolen moments anyway. His life wasn’t his own. He hadn’t been free to settle down and live with the family he loved.
Maybe Sophia would understand the deal he’d had to make to protect Lily.
An indistinct murmur was his undoing. His resolve had been firm. Get in. Get out. But he heard a rustle and murmur and he was drawn to his daughter’s bedroom. He didn’t go in. He only peeked from the door. She had murmured in her sleep. He watched as his three-year-old child snuggled deeper into her pillow. The softest whimper reached his ears. Samuel had to reach for the doorframe to hold himself in place rather than go to her.
Was it a nightmare, or did she sense his presence and his pain? Her mother might understand the desperate measures he’d been driven to take, but would Lily?
He watched as soft moonlight from the window illuminated her hand. Her tiny fist opened to reveal a kachina doll that had been grasped in her fingers. A frisson of dread shivered down his spine when he saw it was the doll that had been carved in the shape of a warrior angel. The wings down its back had been painted black long ago by one of Sophia’s Hopi ancestors. Unlike the other kachina dolls that were traditionally carved with indistinct features and masks with rough edges and curves, the warrior angel was like a Renaissance sculpture in miniature form, but crafted of wood instead of stone.
Had a Hopi priest seen his daughter’s future in some prophetic dream long, long ago?
He forced himself to turn away. He spared only a glance for the bedroom a little farther down the hall. Sophia had been a softness to his otherwise jagged life. It had been weakness to love her. But it was strength to leave her now. The wound on his back screamed for surcease that would never come. He had to walk away. He was a deadly magnet on an ordinary day. Injured and weak, he was an irresistible lure to Rogues or anyone with Brimstone in their blood.
In time, Lily would be a magnet as well. That’s why he’d been forced to ask for help.
This time as he made his way to the street, the building around him was utterly silent. No creature stirred. The simple operation of the elevator doors sounded like a shriek. Finally, he made it to the street where he remained on foot. He headed to the bus station. One dogged step after another. If anyone saw him, they would have assumed he was a drunken vagrant. He planned to get on a bus and ride as far away as he could from his precious family before he fell.
He could only hope and pray that the daemon deal he’d made would protect Lily once he was gone.
When the daemon stepped from the shadows, the darkness seemed to cling to his tall, lean form, separating from the black leather of his jacket and the faded denim of his jeans reluctantly. For long seconds, his angular face and muscled shoulders seemed to be draped in a dark winglike mantle. Lily Santiago’s breath caught in her lungs as familiarity punched her in the gut until he came forward another step.
She blinked as he moved, and she exhaled a long shaky breath as the shadows retreated to the corner of the kiva where they belonged. The daemon didn’t have wings. But he should, her senses told her. He should. An impossible familiarity began to foment in her brain. She’d seen this daemon before.
The underground Hopi chamber was a circular room with a packed earthen floor and stacked stone walls. There was only one opening to the sky where an old wooden ladder would have leaned. She’d used a nylon climbing rope to descend the ten feet. The abandoned chamber would have been dark at midday—at midnight only her lantern and the occasional flash of the daemon’s nightglow eyes as they refracted the low light held back the night. The firepit on the other side of the sipapu had been cold for a century or more. She rose slowly from her crouched position near the kachina dolls she had carefully placed for the ceremony she was about to invoke. She gripped a short silver flute in one clenched fist.
“Move
