I turned around, confirming Xun Guan was indeed behind me, as close as the encircled pentagram would allow. She wasn’t alone. No fewer than four council members were with her, with an additional two Law Guardians and six demons flanking them.

I let out a short laugh and turned back to Dagon. “That was the call you made? You had your demons teleport Law Guardians and some of the council here?”

Dagon’s grin was back in all of its cruel glory. “Yes, and”—he raised his voice so those watching us could clearly hear him—“I know demons aren’t usually the ones to do this with the vampire court, but I’d like to lodge a formal complaint.”

Chapter 43

I actually looked behind me again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. How dare Dagon bring the police to a demon-and-death’s-daughter fight! He truly was an asshole.

“Veritas!” Haldam’s voice cracked the air like a gunshot. Of course, Dagon had made sure the council’s official spokesperson was among those here. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Let me go, and you can make up any story you like,” Dagon hissed, now too low for them to overhear. “Kill me, and they will all see you for the traitorous abomination that you are.”

I’d often feared that one day, I would slip up and be caught. Turns out, my fears hadn’t been ambitious enough. You didn’t call pools of darkness pouring from me and wrapping around Dagon while magic crackled the air and my silver gaze cut through the ephemeral darkness a slip. It was more like a landslide.

Yet, oddly, I wasn’t afraid. Maybe the ice-cold calmness from my newly blended nature was overpowering the more volatile emotions of my vampire side. Maybe it was the fact that deep down, I’d always known this day would eventually come, so now that it had, it was almost freeing.

Dagon’s gaze gleamed with malevolence. “You can thank Ian for my finding out what your vampire identity was. If he hadn’t sued the council when you left him, it might have taken me months to realize that the bitch I sought and the spouse-abandoning Law Guardian named Veritas were one and the same.”

As if he’d summoned him, Ian appeared. This was the first I’d seen him since we’d been freed from the circles, and I was appalled.

“Taken quite a lot,” he’d said of the effort it took to break down the wall. That didn’t begin to describe the damage. His severed right arm was only a small stump protruding from his right shoulder while his left arm was stripped of all flesh, the horn still wrapped around his knuckles as if it had fused with his bones. His left shoulder only had some rough sinews attaching it to his collarbones, and his whole body looked shrunken, as if it had cannibalized itself for energy during his battle to take the wall down. Worse, he didn’t appear to be healing.

Please let him just need lots of blood. Or time for the magic’s ravaging effects to leave him. Please, let this not be the cost of him saving me!

Whatever his body looked like, Ian himself hadn’t changed. “Who called the bloody cops?”

“Dagon,” I replied, looking back at the demon.

His soul might be swimming right beneath his face, but it didn’t lessen the venom in his smile. It enhanced it.

“Long ago, you stripped me of all my power and position,” he said in a caressing voice. “Take my soul now, and you will know what that feels like, Veritas. And you will rue it.”

He’d never called me by a name before. I’d only ever been “girl” to him. Now, my name left his lips as if it were a curse.

I glanced back at the council. If I tried very hard, I might be able to do what Dagon said and pull off a “this isn’t what it looks like” defense. I could say my eyes and the darkness billowing behind me was the result of a spell Dagon had hexed me with, and point to the dead Anzus and all the damage done to Ian as proof of what the demon could do.

Or, I could think up a cleverer defense. I could literally say anything to persuade them to believe that what they saw wasn’t caused by a forbidden hybrid lineage and illegal magic . . . if I let Dagon go instead of killing him.

That’s why he’d had his acolytes teleport several members of the vampire council plus a handful of Law Guardians here. It was, to use an American term, his Hail Mary pass.

“Kill me, and you lose everything you’ve built during the many years of your life,” Dagon repeated, as if I was too stupid to realize the implications myself.

“Veritas, explain this!” Haldam commanded.

Dagon’s eyes gleamed with almost a feral light. “Yes, explain, or prove what you are beyond all doubt—”

I yanked his soul out. Dagon’s body collapsed at the loss of the writhing, diaphanous form. Seeing it, the council members and Law Guardians recoiled in horror. Then they let out a gasp when I drew Dagon’s silently shrieking soul right up to my face.

“You don’t get away again,” I said. “No matter what this costs me: You. Are. Done.”

Then I threw his foul, reeking soul into the darkness that pooled at my feet, giving the new Warden of the Gateway to the Netherworld—whoever that was now that my father had been fired from or abdicated the position—another passenger to transport to the most feared section of the afterlife.

Shocked silence filled the air. I used it to concentrate as I pulled back my power. To my surprise, it went easily, without the struggle that had marked my former issues with my other nature. The darkness that had pooled around me vanished, too, revealing the dry, hardened earth of winter, and when I turned around, I could see that my gaze now glowed emerald, not silver.

The demons gave a horrified look at what I’d done before teleporting away. Guess they didn’t care about Dagon enough to attempt avenging him, or they knew they’d need bigger numbers to try. Either way, word of what I’d done would travel. If I didn’t have a bounty on my head in the demon world before, I would now.

That was fine. When they came for me, I’d be ready.

Haldam was the first to find his voice. It shook, but to his credit, his words weren’t fearful. “Arrest her!”

What was left of Ian’s muscles coiled; a panther about to pounce. Dawn peeked over the horizon. Soon, the pentagram’s confining barrier would be down. Ian must not think he could teleport us away, so he was readying himself to fight.

“Ian, don’t!”

He paused, anger and incredulousness washing over his expression. “You think I’ll let them take you?”

At that, every one of the Law Guardians drew a weapon. His threat could not have been clearer. But in his current condition, a fight with them could prove deadly for Ian.

I could use my abilities to overcome them, but they didn’t deserve to have their souls ripped out, and I wasn’t sure I could stop myself from doing that versus only tearing out their blood and water. That power felt too close to the surface, too ready to be unleashed again. If I let it out again so soon, who knew what would happen?

“You will let them take me, Ian,” I said, struck with an idea. “Then you’ll call me later, when you’re someplace safe.”

His breath blew out in the harshest of laughs. Then he swung around to glare at the newest council member, who muttered, “You won’t be alive later,” under his breath.