Demon Night

joined her, and she looked up at him. “Can we help him from in here?”
    Jake nodded. “If you’ve got a good shot, you can take it. Just make certain it won’t hit either of them.”
    “Okay.” She drew in a long breath. “Mark, do you have any guns? Rifles or anything?” Anything that would do more damage than her pistols.
    “Yes.” His strained response came from directly behind her. She glanced back; he was staring out at the lawn, his expression bleak. “What is that thing, and where’s my father?”
    The “thing” was growing, his clothes vanishing. Crimson skin stretched over his muscles, and his wings were so incredibly beautiful…but not .
    Charlie swallowed hard. Ethan and Sammael were circling it now, each taking a different side and splitting its attention.
    “It’s kind of a demon,” she said quietly. She’d have taken Mark’s hand before she said the next part, but she thought her skin might frighten and repulse more than it would comfort him. “It took possession of your father’s body after he died.”
    So fast. She blinked, and suddenly Ethan’s and the nephil’s swords flashed. Then Sammael’s, coming in from behind.
    “Goddammit,” Jake muttered, dropping to his knee and aiming through the window. Their positions changed too quickly for a gun to be useful. Jake was trying to follow them, but he hadn’t yet fired a shot—and Charlie was even slower. She stared, feeling helpless.
    “What do you mean, died? It murdered him?”
    It took her a second to remember what Mark was asking, but she couldn’t take her eyes from Ethan. A stain had begun spreading down his pant leg.
    “No,” she finally said. “Vladimir and Katya did after they withdrew from their agreement with him.”
    “The vampires?” A harsh note slammed into her—hate, anger, grief. “Animals. They shouldn’t be exposed, but slaughtered.”
    “They were. The thing out there went back and killed them.”
    “Good,” Mark said. A moment later, she heard his footsteps retreating from the room.
    Jane made a soft sound as Sammael took a slice across the tip of his wing from the nephil’s blade. Charlie squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t handled any of that very well, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Ethan’s blood was dripping over the lawn, the drive, and he was weakening; so was Sammael. And they couldn’t contact anyone for help—
    Her eyes flew open. “Jane, do you still have Drifter’s old phone?”
    “It’s upstairs,” her sister whispered. Her hands were clenched tightly in front of her. “But the battery’s dead.”
    Jake didn’t look from the window. “Where’s yours, Charlie?”
    “In Drifter’s cache. Maybe Mark—”
    Jake was shaking his head. “It’s still in his car. Drifter knew he had yours?”
    “Yes.”
    “Check your holsters, then. He’d have hidden it, so Sammael couldn’t destroy it like he did ours.”
    Charlie blinked, then gave Jane one of her pistols to hold and reached into her right holster. Her eyes widened, and she drew her cell phone out. “No service,” she said, and met Jake’s gaze. “Are you going, or am I?”
    Jake stood and took the phone. “I am. I’ll be in again as soon as I’ve contacted Selah.”
    White feathers and Ethan’s back suddenly blocked their view outside. Exposing himself, slowing himself down. “Go, Jake,” Charlie rasped. “He’s keeping them from seeing what you’re doing.”
    Jake vanished the phone and ran out of the room, toward the rear of the house. She heard more footsteps, but they were Mark’s, coming from the game room. With the rifle, hopefully—Ethan ducked away from the window, his wings vanishing again, and the nephil was there on the porch, just beyond the pane of glass.
    Jane gasped and stumbled back, but Charlie focused on the nephil’s form, took careful aim. It was moving from side to side, easily parrying every thrust of Ethan’s and Sammael’s swords, but maybe unloading a clip into its head would make that just a little more difficult—
    The glass in front of her shattered, and her ears rang painfully. Charlie blinked and staggered forward, stared at the cracks radiating from the neat hole in the center of the window. Blood beaded on the glass like scarlet dew on a spider’s web.
    Her chest hurt. She couldn’t breathe or see. Then the window collapsed, a shining waterfall of broken glass, and everything was clear again.
    Directly in front of her, the nephil had a bullet hole