Vivian picked up on my interest, and she gave me a knowing smile. “If Raoul can spare you, you’re welcome to come with us.”

  “Really?”

  “You bagged the demon, so it’s only fair that you get to be on the job,” she said. “But we’ll take the lead.”

  “Sure,” I agreed readily. “When do we start?”

  Vivian laughed. “I’ve been traveling all night, so I’m going to freshen up and eat something first. We’ll head out at noon.”

  “Are you staying here?” I asked her as we stood.

  “If you have room. I normally stay at hotels, but I thought it would be better to be at the command center for this job.”

  “We can sleep on couches if there are no available beds,” Aaron offered. I figured that in his job, he’d probably slept in a lot less comfortable places.

  “We have one bedroom available,” Raoul said. “Vivian, you take that. Aaron and Eugene, we have couches or some army cots you can use.”

  “I’ll show you where it is,” I told her.

  We left the control room and walked to the main entryway to grab her bags. I grinned when I saw the large suitcase and a smaller carry-on. Unlike most warriors, Vivian Day apparently didn’t like to travel light. I might have found a kindred spirit in her.

  I led her to the other end of the Spanish-style villa where the bedrooms were. One room was Raoul’s, and next to it was mine. I’d moved into Sara and Nikolas’s old room after they left because this place was a lot less crowded than the safe house.

  Brock and Mason shared a room with twin beds since they were hardly ever here. Those two lived like college kids, and all they cared about, outside of being warriors, was surfing. If it had been safe to sleep on the beach, I think they would live there.

  I showed Vivian to the room across from mine and left her to settle in. An hour later, I found her in the kitchen making a cup of tea.

  “I always carry some Earl Grey with me,” she said as she added milk and sugar to the cup. “You never know if you’ll be able to find good tea.”

  “I guess not.” I sat at the breakfast bar, resting my elbows on the granite counter. “So, you knew Nikolas when you were kids? What was he like back then?”

  “I met him when we were sixteen, and we trained together. We were very competitive with each other, and I think that’s how we became such good friends.”

  I tried to imagine Nikolas as a boy in training. “I wish I could have been there.”

  Vivian smiled over the top of her cup. “I have a feeling you would have given us both a run for our money back then.” When I raised an eyebrow, she chuckled softly. “I read your file on the way here. You already have an impressive record for such a young warrior.”

  I tried to hide my surprise. I didn’t like the idea of the Council having a file on me, but they probably had one on every warrior, even Nikolas.

  “I started younger than most.” I grinned. “Thanks to Sara.”

  “Nikolas’s mate? I’ve heard a lot about her, and I’m looking forward to meeting her.” She sipped her tea. “I work mostly overseas, and every time I plan to visit them, a new job comes up.”

  “You’ll love Sara. I can honestly say there is no one like her.”

  Vivian set her cup down on the counter. “I believe you. It would take a very special woman to claim Nikolas’s heart. Seems like only yesterday we were setting out into the world, and now he’s mated with a baby on the way.”

  I made a face. “Having seen the way he is with Sara, I can’t wait to see how protective he’ll be over his daughter. If we could go gray, I think this would do it for him.”

  Vivian burst out laughing. I wasn’t sure what it was about her, but I liked her. I could see how Nikolas had liked her, too. She had to be very good to work directly for the Council, but she wasn’t as serious as Aaron or Eugene.

  “So, this is what you do, traveling all over the world to investigate for the Council?” I asked her. “Sounds like you’re not settling down anytime soon.”

  “Lord, no.” She wore a look of mock horror. “Although, don’t say that to my mum. She wants grandchildren, but I’m perfectly content with my life.”

  “Me, too,” I declared. “I have enough people trying to tell me what to do without adding some overbearing male to the mix.”

  Vivian raised her cup to me in a toast. “Amen to that.”

  * * *

  “What was it like on your first official Council investigation?” Mason asked.

  “First and only,” I corrected him. “And it was interesting.”

  I took a bite of my hot dog and chewed slowly as I watched people walk by on the boardwalk in Venice Beach. It was good to be back on patrol after spending the last two days tagging along with Vivian’s team. I hadn’t lied when I said the work was interesting, but I much preferred to be in the action instead of observing.

  I had to admit, the Council investigators were nothing if not thorough in their work. We’d started with Chelsea’s apartment in Burbank, which she had shared with her boyfriend of three years. He’d told us the night she died, she’d gone out with some girlfriends to celebrate a birthday. He was adamant she had never done drugs even though that was the official cause of death. The poor man was devastated, but there was nothing we could do to make it better. Neither the Council nor the human officials wanted the public to know a woman had died throwing up a parasitic demon. It would cause a panic, and that was something we didn’t need.

  After going through her home, we’d checked out her workplace, a dental practice where she’d been a hygienist. That turned up nothing, as did the interviews with Chelsea’s friends who’d gone to the club with her. We’d gone through Chelsea’s neighborhood, visited her favorite coffee shop, and even scoured the little park where she walked her dog.

  While the investigation had turned up nothing, Vivian and I had hit it off and she’d entertained me with stories about the jobs she’d done over the years. She led an exciting life, traveling all over the world, staying in five-star hotels, and driving fast cars. Not to mention the things she’d seen. The lifestyle held more than a little appeal for me, except for the part where she worked directly for the Council.

  A phone rang nearby, and I peered past Mason at Brock as he answered the call.

  “Yeah. We’re not too far from there. We’ll check it out,” he said to the caller before he hung up and looked at us. “Command picked up a nine-one-one call from a woman who claims a giant spider tried to eat her dog. The police aren’t taking her seriously, but Raoul wants us to have a look.”

  “A giant spider?” It didn’t sound like any creature or demon normally found here, but anything was possible after the Hurra incident and the Geel appearance in Alaska.

  “How big is giant?” Mason asked as we tossed our food wrappers and walked to our bikes.

  Brock picked up his helmet. “As big as the woman’s collie.”

  It took us less than ten minutes to reach the address Raoul had given Brock. The elderly woman looked surprised to see us instead of the police, and Brock told her we worked for animal control. That seemed to appease her, and she told us she’d been walking her dog like she did every evening, when that thing came out of nowhere and went after her dog. She described a brown, furry creature with six or eight legs and pincers for a mouth. Brock asked how she’d gotten away from it, and she proudly showed us the stun baton she carried on her walks.

  She told us where she was when the attack happened, and we left her to investigate. When Brock found several drops of blood on the street, we started searching from there. It didn’t take long for me to find a broken basement window in what looked like an empty house. The glass fragments outside the window indicated it had been smashed from the inside.

  I alerted Brock, who made short work of the lock on the back door, and we quietly entered the house, weapons drawn. The door opened into the kitchen where we discovered an assortment of pewter bowls, candles, and packets of brown and red powder. I knew without asking that these items were used by warlocks in spells. But what kind of spell, and where was the person who had cast it?

  “Stay together,” Brock whispered. He led us from the kitchen and into a living room that looked untouched. A search of the first and second floors turned up nothing, but we needed to make sure there were no humans in the house.

  As soon as Brock opened the door to the basement stairs, the stench of blood and sulfur hit us, and I had to put a hand over my mouth. The grim look on Brock’s face when he shut the door again told me it was bad.

  “What is it?” I asked, following him back to the kitchen.

  “Looks like a summoning gone wrong,” he said as he pulled out his phone and called Raoul.

  I suppressed a shudder. Warlocks summoned upper demons and held them captive to strengthen their magic. Summoning was dangerous because it required a powerful spell to pull a demon through the barrier. More than one warlock had ended up dead – or wished they were – because they’d messed up the spell and lost control of the demon. Just because summoned demons weren’t in their physical bodies, it didn’t mean they couldn’t inflict a lot of damage and pain.

  Brock hung up and looked at us. “Raoul and the Council team are on the way.”

  “Why would Vivian’s team care about a summoning?” I asked. As dangerous as they were, summonings were commonplace among magic users, and not something the Council bothered with. Unless, they thought this was more than a normal summoning.

  Mason leaned against the doorframe. “You think that spider thing is a summoned demon that got loose?”

  “Not possible,” Brock and I said together. He smiled at me and continued. “Even if the spell went wrong, the demon wouldn’t have an actual body. It could possess the summoner, but it would look human. That spider might have come from this house, but it wasn’t summoned.”

  “Well, there goes that theory.” Mason’s brow creased. “By the way, shouldn’t we be out there looking for it?”

  Brock nodded. “We’ll go out after Raoul gets here. He wants us to sit on this place until then.”

  Over thirty minutes later, an SUV pulled into the driveway. Los Angeles traffic is a bitch unless you’re on a motorcycle that can maneuver easily around the other vehicles.

  Not exactly the most patient person, I was pacing when they entered the house.

  “Have you been down there?” Vivian asked Brock.

  “No. Raoul said to wait for you.”

  “Good.” She turned to Mason and me. “Ever been to the site of a failed summoning?”

  Mason answered for us. “No.”

  She smiled grimly. “It can be messy, and there might be residual magic, depending on what happened. We’ll go first, and once we give the all clear, you can come down.”

  “Got it.” I watched Eugene set a metal box on the counter. He opened it and pulled out a rectangular device, which he switched on. Seeing my curiosity, he said. “It’s warlock-made, and it detects magic so we don’t accidentally walk into a spell.”

  “Handy device.” I’d never seen one before, and I wondered if it was new technology they were trying out. I thought about how Sara could see through glamours, detect magic, and neutralize spells. Maybe our tech guys were trying to replicate that ability in a device.

  Raoul opened the basement door, and Eugene went first, holding the device in front of him. Raoul and the others followed, leaving Mason and me alone.

  I was more than happy to stay up here for now. It wasn’t that I had a weak stomach around dead bodies. I detested magic. A warlock named Orias had bound me with magic once, a few years ago, and I hated how helpless it had made me feel. The only magic user I trusted was Sara because I knew she would never use her power against me.

  “Crazy shit, huh?” Mason said.

  I kept my gaze on the open door to the basement. “At least it never gets boring.”

  He snorted. “I swear I’ve seen more action since I came to L.A. than most new warriors see in ten years.”

  “You picked the right assignment.”

  “Actually, L.A. was Beth’s idea. If I’d had my way, we would have gone to Westhorne.”

  “Really?” Why would anyone want to go to a stronghold over a place like Los Angeles? Sure, Westhorne was home to Tristan and Nikolas, but nothing beat being in the field.

  He smiled as if he’d read my mind. “I wanted to go there to work with Nikolas, but Beth refused to go because of Chris. We all know how that worked out.”

  “What about now?” I asked. “You still think about going to Westhorne?”

  “And give up all of this? And surfing?” He gave me a look of mock horror. “Not a chance.”

  “All clear,” called Raoul.

  Mason and I hurried down the stairs. I braced myself for whatever was waiting for us. As a warrior, you had to have a strong stomach, but I’d heard how gory a failed summoning could be. I prepared to see blood and body parts everywhere.

  I reached the bottom of the stairs and looked around the open basement in surprise. There was a body and some blood, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected.

  A large circle was painted on the concrete floor in what looked like dried blood. Outside the circle, symbols had been drawn with a crystal placed in the center of each one. At the center of the circle was a smaller one done with more crystals. The inner circle was broken by the body sprawling across it. Based on the white robe he wore, he was most likely a warlock. Or he had been before his chest had been ripped open.

  My eyes took in the trail of blood from the circle to the broken window. Could the warlock have been killed by the thing that had attacked the woman and her dog? And what kind of creature was present at a summoning? My gut told me it was a demon – maybe even a new one – despite what we’d said to Mason about it being impossible to summon a physical demon.

  I shivered at the thought. Our people had spent a millennium identifying and documenting every species of demon on Earth. We knew their strengths and weaknesses, how they killed, and more importantly, how to kill them. If someone had figured out how to bring new demons out of their dimension, the implications were too great to consider.

  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.”