I blinked. I knew Camille had been training, but I hadn’t expected that maneuver. But I had my own battle to attend to. I turned and sent my knife hurtling into the chest of one of the bikers who was headed directly for me. He yelped, grabbing the hilt and yanking it out of his flesh. Tossing it aside, he barreled down on me. I aimed a round kick for his face and caught him directly in the nose. Grunting, he stumbled back from the force of the blow and I took the opportunity to rush him, knocking him to the ground. I didn’t have a blade in hand, so I grabbed his neck and began to squeeze. But his hands were around my waist, so tight I was having trouble breathing.

Everyone else was engaged, so I’d have to get out of this myself. And the one way I could think of was to shift. I forced it to come fast—it would hurt that way, but what the fuck, it would save my life. As I shifted into Panther, the Tregart shrieked, obviously not expecting to find himself hugging a hundred and twenty pounds of muscle, claws, and teeth.

I leaned down and bit him with the killing bite, snapping his neck with one victorious growl. As soon as I smelled his death, I let go and raced over to Marrow, who was backing up, trying to get out of the way. Smoky and Morio were each fighting a couple of the demons, and Camille was readying another spell. I bounded across the room. Marrow saw me coming and—eyes wide—began to stumble back against the wall. I knocked her down, not bothering to toy with her. One good bite across her face and she was done.

I turned back to pounce on one of Morio’s attackers. He was pounding the other against the wall head first. I bit the ankle of mine and yanked, dragging him off balance. As he fell, I held him down while Camille landed on him from the other side, dragging a knife across his throat. Morio and Smoky finished off their opponents and we stood down, Morio and I shifting back into our regular forms. While we were transforming, Camille and Smoky turned off the lights and locked the door.

After the shop was secure, Camille called Chase. Morio waited in the front, while Smoky, Camille, and I headed to the back of the shop. The space was bigger than one would think—in fact it looked like they’d rented the shop next to them and opened up into it.

The back offices were as big as—if not bigger than—the main storefront. There were the usual supplies, everything you’d expect to stock a sex shop, but when we began tossing cupboards and drawers, we found evidence that the Tregarts had most definitely been running sorcery through the shop.

Bottles of unknown potions—Camille identified them as magical—filled one drawer. Another drawer held a handful of firebombs. And we found three drawers filled with bags of odd-looking components. Camille stuffed everything into a bag. As she started on the desk, ruffling through the paperwork, my phone rang. I flipped it open and pressed Talk.

“Delilah, it’s Chase. We’re out in the driveway. Let us in but don’t turn on the lights yet.”

I leaned out to the front. “Morio, let the cops in. Chase is here.”

As Smoky and I headed to the front, Morio opened the door for Chase and Yugi. Chase flashed his light around and grimaced.

“You guys did a number here. What’s the story?”

“Tregarts. Demons. They started the fight. This shop is a front for sorcery. Ten to one, Van and Jaycee funded it. What do we do?”

“You’re sure they’re demons? Nobody will come to the station, missing them?” He frowned, looking around at the mess.

“Nobody. They aren’t human. They aren’t Fae. And I doubt if Van and Jaycee are going to come knocking on your door to file a missing demons report.”

“Then we have the cleaning crew come in here, take care of this. The bodies…do you need to take them to Queen Asteria?”

“No…but we do need to get rid of them. We also need to make a trip to Otherworld to warn her about the fact that Wilbur may have inadvertently leaked that the spirit seals are with her.” I glanced over at Smoky. “Tomorrow, we head to OW.”

Camille entered the room, flipping through a date book. “I think I found something. Most of the notes are actually business oriented—one thing I’ll say about Van and Jaycee, they’re savvy. They were actually already in the black, according to the books. Taking in more than they were expending every week. But that’s incidental.”

“What did you find?”

She pointed to one of the pages. “On February thirteenth there’s a notation for ten p.m. that reads SCH. That could stand for Supe Community Hall. And here’s one for today. Eight p.m.—Vespa. Let’s see if…” She flipped back a week or so. “Yep…here it is. Two p.m.—Folkes.” We’ve got them on all three incidents.”

“But this group…they’re just the front. You know Van and Jaycee set up the hits. Anything that tells us where we can find them? Phone numbers? If we don’t find our way to them, they’re going to know something happened here and they’ll retaliate even worse.” I was now second-guessing our actions. But we had no choice. They’d ID’d us and once they came out swinging, we couldn’t back out. Even if we’d left the minute we sensed tension rising, they would have known we were on to this place.

“Phone numbers, check. I picked up their phone book. But it’s going to take a little time figuring out who they belong to. Addresses—no. But I suggest you grab the laptop that’s on the desk in back. I wasn’t sure what cables we needed to go with it.” She pocketed the day planner and the address book.

I slipped into the back and retrieved the computer, making a quick search for any CDs or DVDs that might be around. Who knew whether they kept their records on the hard drive or on a disk? When I returned, Chase was talking to a couple of his cohorts. The bodies of the demons were gone. I frowned, looking around.

“Where’d they go? The Tregarts?”

“Smoky, Shade, and Roz took them away.”

“Shade? Roz?” I glanced at Camille and she smiled.

“I called them while you were getting the computer. We’re closing down the shop and they may figure out we had a hand in it, but they won’t be able to tell what went down for certain.” She motioned for me to follow her outside.

Morio and Chase followed behind us. Shamas was waiting there, along with a specially trained hazmat team from the FH-CSI and a number of armed Fae guards. I recognized them from the Triple Threat’s militia. They had arranged a mutual-aid pact with the FH-CSI several months ago.

As soon as everybody was out and away from the building, the team headed into the building.

“What are they doing?”

“Cleanup. The guards will stick around to protect them. It won’t take them long—apparently they have a number of magical techniques that standard hazmat teams don’t.”

I nodded. Sounded like as good a plan as any. There was a flash from within the building, and mist wafted out. It smelled vaguely like bleach, but with something underlying.

Camille slapped me on the back. “Come on, let’s get out of here before Van and Jaycee show up. We’re not prepared to fight them tonight.”

“Then what are we going to do tonight?” I was tired, achy actually—today had been filled with so much stress, and the fights of the past two days were wearing on all of us.

“We’re going through the computer, day planner, and phone book to see what we can find out.” She slid into the passenger seat of my Jeep, yawning. “And I’ll be damned if we’re setting one foot out of the house until morning.

“Be careful. Don’t jinx us.” As we waved to the others and pulled out of the parking lot, Camille’s phone rang.

She flipped it open. “Hello?” A second later she mouthed Vanzir to me and continued to listen. After a moment, she sucked in a deep breath. “Are you sure?…When did he call?…And he’s positive?…Does he want to see us tonight? No? Tomorrow? Okay, we’re on our way home.” She slammed the phone back into her purse. “Motherfucking hell, to paraphrase Menolly.”

I glanced at her quickly, then pulled my gaze back to the road. “What’s going on? Please tell me we don’t have another explosion or fire to attend?”

“I wish. This is far worse.” She slammed her hand against the dashboard.

“Hey, watch it. Snowdrop doesn’t like rough treatment.”

“Snowdrop? You named your Jeep Snowdrop?” She stared at me with an incredulous look but then shook her head. “Doesn’t matter right now. That was Vanzir. Carter called him. We’ve got a new demon general in town.”

Crap. I wanted to hit something, but we were speeding along the freeway at sixty miles an hour and taking my hands off the wheel wasn’t the best idea. “Okay, fill me in. I don’t want to wait.”

“Vanzir will do that at home. All I know is his name is Gulakah and he’s known as the Lord of Ghosts. And he’s just arrived in Seattle.”

I swerved over to the side of the road and parked, flipping on the hazard lights. We weren’t supposed to unless we were in a fender bender or had a flat tire, but I didn’t give a damn right now. If a cop wanted to ticket me, so be it. I opened my window to let the rain stream in. Usually I hated getting wet, but tonight I just needed a cold shock to the face.

“Can’t we catch a break? Can’t we deal with just one monster of a problem at a time? I’ve finally learned that rose-colored glasses aren’t any way in which to see the world. I’ve learned to be tough. I’ve learned to accept my destiny. But damn it, just once, can’t we let somebody else handle the bad guys?”

I wanted to cry, but as I sat there, Camille’s hand on my shoulder, I realized that—for now—there was nobody else. We had allies. When Shadow Wing broke through, if he did, the dragons would come to help us. And Queen Asteria would send help. And the Triple Threat were marshaling their own army. But for now, for the skirmishes in between, those were just for us. Because we’d landed—either for destiny or chance—on the front lines of this war. And we were here to take care of the vanguard.

Camille stroked my arm, then let out a long sigh. “You know, when Hyto kidnapped me, all I could think about was axing his sorry butt. Delilah, we fought a dragon and won. An old, crafty, powerful dragon. And we’ve killed off three demon generals so far. Now, we face another. So what? We’ll kick his ass back to the Sub-Realms. Because that’s what we do. We fight. And we win. And even when we falter, we still come out to fight again. We’re survivors.”

Wiping my tears, I rolled up the window. “Yeah…I guess you’re right.”

“Damn straight. Now let’s get home so we can go through all this crap, eat ourselves sick on Cheetos, and find out what Vanzir has to say about this new freak.”

“Sounds good.” And with that, I eased back onto the road, and we headed home.

Chapter 16

As we burst through the doors, everybody was already in a flurry. Vanzir had the household laptop out and open. Since I used mine a lot, we’d bought a general one for the house so everybody didn’t have to keep borrowing mine. He was typing while Morio—still in his coat—was watching over his shoulder.

As we trailed in, Hanna took our coats and bags and pressed mugs of hot soup into our hands. We settled wearily at the kitchen table, where a tray of sandwiches waited. I grabbed one and bit into it, too tired to even notice what it was until an explosion of beef and cheese hit my mouth, along with some spicy spread I couldn’t identify. But it woke my taste buds up, for sure.

“Okay, let’s hear it. What or who the fuck is Gulakah?” I had no energy to stand on niceties.”

Vanzir pushed back the computer. “Carter doesn’t have a lot of information on him, but he sounds bad. We’re not sure how or when he got over here, but there’s no question that he’s in Shadow Wing’s pocket. This isn’t another case like Stacia, where the servant is trying to outwit the master.”

“Okay, so he’s for real and he’s not even going to ask us to play in his sandbox.” I tapped my finger on the table. Stacia had tried to bargain with us. She had been out to take over Shadow Wing’s position and had tried to win us over to helping her. The enemy of my enemy and all that crap. “You mention something about ghosts?”

Vanzir nodded and pointed toward the e-mail that Carter had sent after his call. “Gulakah is known as the Lord of Ghosts. He was originally a god in the Netherworld, where he abused his power over the innocent dead whose souls have not been laid to rest. His brother, Shekah, cast him out to the Subterranean Realms and took his place. He cursed Gulakah to preside over the angry ghosts who exist between the worlds—those who choose not to move on because they’re so furious. The curse is to last ten thousand years, and then Gulakah will face a jury of gods to see if he’s fit for reinstatement.”

“So we’ve got an angry demon, demoted from godlike status, prowling around Seattle. How long has he been over here?” I was thinking about the spate of ghostly activity that had been going on the past few months. Angry ghosts had almost killed Morio.

“Carter says he doesn’t know when Gulakah got here, but it can’t have been more than two weeks ago from what he can piece together. I’ve looked up everything I can find on this demon, but the mentions are sparse. A few websites from paranormal investigators who’ve turned up the name in séances or through mediums, but nothing concrete.” He circled a note on the steno pad. “I’ve got an idea, but you aren’t going to like it.”

“Tell us. Right now we have to entertain every possibility.” Things were getting worse and worse, and we couldn’t afford to lose any more innocent victims.