I went to inspect the window. I had no experience with summonings, but I knew how to kill things, so I focused on that. Demon or not, that thing was clearly a threat to humans, and we needed to hunt it down before it killed again.
“Raoul,” I called. When he joined me, I pointed at the window. “You guys have this situation under control. I think Mason, Brock, and I should track down whatever broke out of here. I’m guessing it’s the same thing that attacked the woman and her dog earlier.”
He stared thoughtfully at the window for a moment before he nodded. “I’ll go with you. Vivian can handle this.”
“I will hunt the demon,” said a deep, accented voice from behind us.
Raoul and I turned at the same time to face the newcomer, and my stomach gave a little flutter.
“Hamid,” Raoul said. “It’s great to see you again.”
Chapter 3
I didn’t speak as my eyes drank in the most magnificent male specimen God had ever created. Standing at over six and a half feet with shoulders broad enough to make an ogre jealous, Hamid Safar was the biggest warrior I’d ever seen. And the sexiest. The Egyptian warrior had intense ice-blue eyes, thick eyebrows, high cheekbones, a close-trimmed beard, and luscious full lips. His black hair that used to be tied back, was short now, but he was every bit as hot as I remembered. Even his scowl made my girly parts melt.
It had been over three years since I last saw Hamid, not that we had been friends or anything. He’d been all business the few times our paths had crossed, barely even looking my way. Sadly, his lack of interest hadn’t stopped me from lusting after him. It wasn’t something I was proud of, but could you really blame me?
Last I’d heard, he and his brother were somewhere in South Africa, and I had figured it would be many years before our paths crossed again, if ever. What was he doing in Los Angeles, and here at this house in particular? And what did he mean he was going to hunt the demon?
That last question snapped me out of my thoughts. Raoul and Hamid were talking, and I’d missed part of their conversation. Tearing my gaze from Hamid, I looked at Raoul, who was speaking.
“One of our teams will go with you,” Raoul told him.
“I need no team,” Hamid replied brusquely, already turning toward the stairs.
“Hold up,” I said.
Hamid paused and turned back. His piercing gaze held mine, making me almost forget what I wanted to say.
I cleared my throat. “How do you know it’s a demon? And why are you going after it? We’re already on the job.”
“This falls under the Council’s authority, so I am assuming command,” he said without answering my first question. I’d obviously missed the part where he said he was working for the Council.
“Why would the Council care about a summoning?” I’d suspected something was off when Vivian and her team showed up here, and Hamid’s comments confirmed there was more to this whole thing than they were letting on.
Hamid’s scowl deepened. Normally, that would be a turn-on, but I was pissed he was going to take this hunt from me.
“That is not your concern,” he said with the air of someone who was not used to being challenged. He might as well have waved a red flag at me.
Hands on hips, I glared at him. “I’m the one who bagged the Hurra demon, and I found this house. That makes it my concern.”
“You killed the Hurra?” he asked with a note of disbelief that only fueled my anger.
“What? Like it was hard?” The arrogance of this guy.
He narrowed his gaze on me. “You are barely out of training.”
Oh, no, he did not.
“Jordan –” Raoul began.
My hands clenched into fists. “I don’t know how they train warriors where you’re from, but by the time I finished training, I’d already killed at least a dozen vampires. I’ve lost count of how many kills I’ve had since then, but I’m sure you can read all about them in the records. You might be older, but you’re not the only one here who knows how to use a weapon.”
Hamid folded his muscled arms across his chest. Any other time, I’d take a moment to appreciate the sight. Right now, I was too busy trying not to lose my cool.
“Are you done?” he asked as if he were talking to a child.
“No.” I gritted my teeth, wondering if the others could see steam coming out of my ears. “You called the thing that broke out of here a demon. What kind of demon is it?”
“I will know once I find it.”
I folded my arms, mimicking him. “You have no idea what it is or what it can do, and you’re going after it alone? What if you can’t handle it by yourself?”
If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn I saw the tiniest flash of amusement in his eyes.
“Fine. You may accompany me…if you can keep up,” he said a second before he disappeared in a blur.
“Argh!” I threw up my arms and turned furious eyes on Raoul. “Can he do that? Just come in here and take over?”
Raoul shrugged. “He’s the lead investigator for the Council. He can do anything he wants.”
I looked at Vivian, who was standing nearby, watching me with open curiosity. “Is that true?”
She nodded. “Anything within reason that he deems necessary to solve a case.”
“That’s not fair,” I burst out, wanting to stomp my foot in frustration.
Vivian smiled. “Most Council investigators work with the local teams like we are doing. Hamid prefers to do his own thing most of the time.”
I huffed. “How the hell do you put up with that?”
“Hamid’s very good at his job, and he doesn’t talk much.” She chuckled. “Come to think of it, I’ve never heard him say that many words together at one time.”
“Don’t I feel special?” A new thought occurred to me, and I turned back to Raoul. “You said he can do what he wants. Does that mean he can take over the command center and start bossing us around? Because I’m telling you right now, that’s not going to work for me.”
Raoul sighed. “No, he won’t take over, but you need to play nice and cooperate with the investigation.”
“I’d never jeopardize an investigation.” I was insulted he would even think that.
He gave me a pointed look. “And you’ll play nice?”
I stuck out my chin. “I will if he will.”
Brock snorted, and Mason muttered, “Is it too late to get reassigned to the East coast?”
* * *
I was having the most delicious dream when a loud noise dragged me from my sleep. I stared blearily at the ceiling, still caught between the dream and reality, silently cursing whatever had awoken me.
“Jordan, wake up, damn it,” Mason called as he rapped on my door. “You don’t want to miss this.”
I glanced at the bedside clock and swore when I saw it was just after five in the morning. I’d been so wound up last night after my argument with Hamid that I’d had to run for an hour to burn off my anger when we got back. And it had still taken me forever to fall asleep.
Kicking the tangle of sheets off me, I rolled out of bed and went to open the door. “I swear, if you woke me up at this ungodly hour to go surfing, I’m going to beat you with your board.”
Okay, so maybe I was more of a night owl than a morning person.
Mason, however, looked disgustingly chipper, considering how late we’d been up last night. He grinned boyishly at me. “No surfing. I figured you’d want to see the demon Hamid just brought in.”
Suddenly, I was wide awake. “He caught it?”
“Killed it.” Mason turned away from my door. “Come on. He took it to the lab.”
I hurried after him, eager to get a look at the demon. It was dark out, but the house was lit up and buzzing with activity.
In the living room, we ran into Brock, who smirked when he saw me. “Nice jammies.”
I looked down at my matching sleep shorts and camisole. In my excitement, I hadn’t even taken a moment to slip on shoes.
I covered a yawn with my hand. “It’s more than I normally wear to bed.”
His eyes widened, and I hid my grin as I moved past him to the French doors that led to the backyard. Across the yard was the guesthouse, and I headed straight for it. The front door was open when I reached it, and I could hear voices coming from within.
Entering the house, I followed the voices to the bedroom that used to belong to Mason. Now it was a small lab with cabinets along the walls and a metal worktable in the center of the room.
People crowded around the table, blocking it from my view, and I moved around the room until I could see what they were all looking at. My jaw sagged when I saw the creature that took up half the table. Brown and covered in spiky fur, it had a rounded body and eight legs that dangled over the edge of the table. Even dead, it had a menacing appearance. That old woman must have nerves of steel to have saved her dog from this thing.
“Do we know what it is?” Vivian asked. Like me, she looked like she’d recently woken up, but she’d managed to pull on jeans and a shirt.
“Yes and no.” George wore a serious expression as he tapped the screen of the tablet in his hand. “It’s a demon, but preliminary tests don’t match anything in our database.”
A collective gasp went through the room.
Raoul studied the demon. “How accurate are the tests?”
“Ninety-nine point nine percent,” the healer replied. “We’ll send it to Valstrom, but I doubt they’ll find anything different.”
Eugene picked up one of the demon’s legs and examined the black claw at the end. He was wearing protective gloves, and he held the leg away from him.
I inched closer to the table for a better look. “An undocumented demon? What does that mean?”
“It means this demon is new to our world,” said a gruff voice that could only belong to one person.
I lifted my gaze to Hamid, who stood just inside the doorway, towering over everyone else. His hair was wet, and he’d changed his clothes. I watched as his eyes moved up my body to meet mine, and goose bumps spread across my skin as if he’d physically touched me.
Heat blossomed in my stomach, but it was immediately doused by a wave of irritation when I remembered the arrogant way he’d dismissed me last night.
“Are you saying that dead warlock was able to summon a demon in solid form?” Brock asked, drawing Hamid’s attention away from me.
“It wasn’t summoned,” Vivian said, and it was the most serious I’d seen her since we met. “They would have had to open the barrier to bring it through.”
Everyone started talking at once, while I just stood there trying to grasp the implications of her statement. There was no one – human or otherwise – on Earth that should be able to open the barrier to the demon dimension. It was that way for a very good reason. There were supposedly billions of demons on the other side of the barrier, enough to overrun the earth if they ever found a way out of their dimension. A breach in the barrier between our worlds could end life as we knew it.