“Who’d you have to call?”

Markus’s question snapped Ginny out of her convoluted thoughts. “Eddy. I called my friend Eddy Marks.”

“I hope it was important.” Markus backed out of the parking space he’d taken at the supermarket. Without Tom. The vet had insisted on keeping the cat for observation, which suited Ginny perfectly. Damned cat had really chewed up her hand. She peeked under the bloody towel and wished she hadn’t looked.

“You were gone so long I had to take Tom in to see Dr. Buck by myself.”

Ginny scowled at him. Her hand still hurt like the blazes and not once had Markus thanked her for risking life and limb to catch his stupid cat. “Well, Tom is your cat, cousin of mine, and I would really like to get back to the house so I can clean up the mess your sweetheart of a cat made of my hand.”

Markus stared straight ahead. “Aren’t you gonna ask me what the vet said?”

Ginny shook her head. “I figured you’d tell me if he had any idea what happened.”

Markus curled his lip and made a snorting noise. “He says they’re all possessed. Idiot. I knew he was into crystals and vortexes and all that New Age stuff, but I thought it was just for show.” He laughed. “He’s dead serious.”

“Possessed? By what? The ghost of Christmas past?” Ginny stared out the side window as Markus drove the few blocks home. Possessed. It sounded totally unbelievable, but how else do you explain a cat with four rows of teeth, glowing red eyes, and a scream like a banshee on meth? A scream that sounded horribly familiar.

Since her memories of that crazy night in Evergreen had resurfaced, Ginny’d had the bear’s ear-shattering scream stuck in her head. A scream that was nothing more than a louder version of the strange howl coming from Markus’s fat old cat.

Had the bear been possessed? Had some sort of evil entity turned a concrete statue into a slavering, screaming killer? Something had made it come to life. She hadn’t imagined the damned thing, though until her memory had started coming back, she’d thought it was just a weird nightmare.

But all those animals at the vet’s—the birds and bunnies, cats and dogs—every last one of them acted unnervingly similar. Screeching, trying to bite, flashing those rows of sharp teeth, and staring with glowing eyes.

Possession didn’t sound all that crazy when you took it in context with what they’d seen today.

With what had attacked her just a few days ago.

With Tom’s vicious attack this morning. Damn but her hand hurt, but then, so did her brain, just thinking along those lines.

Markus turned the car into the driveway and pulled into the garage. “Okay. So maybe he’s not an idiot.” He shut off the engine and turned in his seat to stare at her. “How else do you explain all those animals? They weren’t normal. Birds don’t have teeth. Rabbits don’t hiss and snarl and screech like that little bunny we saw today. Something’s making them act crazy. If they’re not possessed, what’s going on?”

Without waiting for an answer, he got out of the car and slammed the door. Ginny sat in the front seat for a few minutes, thinking of Tom and the other animals they’d seen at the veterinarian’s clinic…thinking of the concrete grizzly that had attacked her.

Thinking of Eddy’s friend Alton. Why did she know he was the reason she couldn’t remember anything? Now that she was away from him, the memories were growing clearer by the moment. She recalled him saving her from the bear, walking with her, even laughing with her.

Most of all, she remembered his kiss.

What she couldn’t remember was why he’d kissed her—or why she’d kissed him and then totally forgotten it. She hardly knew the man, and Ginny Jones did not come on to strange men. Not ever. But she knew one thing for certain—Alton was the only reason she’d come to Sedona.

None of this made sense, and Eddy hadn’t been much help, either. She’d merely said to hold tight, that she was sending someone, but she wouldn’t give Ginny any details about who or why or what the hell was going on.

Muttering under her breath, Ginny rewrapped the bloody towel around her hand and followed Markus into the house.

 

Covering vast distances via the vortex might be more disorienting than moving between dimensions, but the 1,030 miles between Mount Shasta in northern California and Bell Rock in Sedona, Arizona, took less than a minute down a dark tunnel lit only by HellFire’s crystal light.

Alton entered a cavern very much like the one he’d just left in Mount Shasta. HellFire quivered in his grasp. Portals to other worlds glowed against the rock walls. He looked into one that seethed with shades of red and black. There was something inherently loathsome about it, something foul.

No doubt about it—this portal led to Abyss.

HellFire was drawn to the gateway between Abyss and Sedona like filings to a magnet. The sword’s vibrations transferred to his hand, his wrist, up his arm. Anger flowed from the crystal. A powerful sense of purpose.

This, then, was the demon’s newest entrance, the one that allowed them access into Earth’s dimension. It was only a few feet from the portal he’d just crossed through. Obviously the demons had discovered a new route to Mount Shasta, coming through from Abyss here in Sedona and switching to the Shasta portal, bypassing the need for the more direct gate he’d closed between Abyss and Mount Shasta.

HellFire glowed brighter, stronger. Alton felt the pull increase as the sword tried to reach the portal to Abyss. “As you wish, my friend.” He stepped close to the swirling gateway and aimed the sword. A burst of power shot down the length of the blade and the portal suddenly glowed deep red, then orange and yellow, hotter still, until the rock turned almost white and began to flow and melt beneath HellFire’s attack.

Within moments, the portal had melted shut. The sword no longer vibrated. Breathing deeply, Alton lifted the blade away from the quickly cooling rock. What had been an active portal between Abyss and Sedona was now nothing more than a smooth black wall of cooling, melted stone within the Bell Rock vortex.

Alton sheathed his sword, passed through the Sedona portal, and stepped out on the rocky ground near the top of Bell Rock. It had been centuries since he’d last been to the Arizona desert. He’d forgotten just how beautiful it was. The sun was beginning to set and he stood for a moment, lost in the glory of a desert sunset and the brilliant reds and golds of the rugged, wind-shaped bluffs. The gentle breeze seemed to sing to him, a deep hum that resonated within his—

“Where the hell’d you come from?”

Alton spun to his left and blinked. Row after row of mostly gray-haired men and women, many of them wearing loose robes or colorful skirts, sat cross-legged in the dirt.

Well, crap and nine hells. He’d materialized out of the solid rock, right into the middle of a geriatric meditation group.

Straightening to his full height, Alton pressed his palms together, fingers extended beneath his chin, and bowed his head. His waist-length blond hair, unbound, flowed over his shoulders like silk and he knew his almost seven feet of height, aided a bit by his tooled cowboy boots, made him look pretty impressive to this group of humans.

“I come from within,” he intoned. He kept his voice unnaturally deep and bowed his head once again. Then, biting back a powerful urge to laugh, he looked straight ahead and walked solemnly past the rows of brightly garbed folk.

Popping out of the portal in the midst of an evening meditation class of aging New Agers hadn’t been an issue the last time he was here. Of course, it had been a while—give or take six hundred years.

He really needed to get out more.

Still chuckling, Alton found a well-traveled trail that took him down off the mountain and into a parking area. The light was beginning to fade. Only a few cars and one old, beat-up, but artfully decorated bus remained. He figured the bus must be here for the group he’d surprised up on top.

Maybe he could catch a ride into town with them…or not. Grinning at the thought of Lemurian royalty hitching a ride on a dilapidated bus painted with rainbows and flowers, Alton set his backpack down in the dirt and pulled out the cell phone Eddy had given him.

He carefully followed the steps Eddy had shown him, found Ginny’s number, and pushed the button to connect the call. He almost cheered when Ginny answered on the second ring, but he managed to control himself.

“Is this Virginia Jones?” he asked.

There was a long silence. Long enough that Alton wondered if he’d done something wrong.

“Who’s this?”

Nope. That was Ginny. “This is Alton. Eddy Marks’s friend.”

“How’d you get my number?”

Definitely Ginny.

“From Eddy. Ginny, I’m in Sedona. Is there any way you can come get me?”

“Sedona? How the hell did you get to Sedona so fast? I just talked to Eddy a couple of hours ago, and there’s no way you could have come…”

“I’m here, Ginny, and I’ll explain everything once I see you. I’m in the parking lot at Bell Rock. Do you know where that is?”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. And you’d better have some answers for me because I’ve definitely got questions for you.”

Before he could answer, the line went dead. Alton stared at the phone for a moment before calling one more number. Eddy’s voice mail came on. He left a message and wondered where she’d gone, why she hadn’t answered the phone. Then he tucked the little contraption in his pocket and leaned against a rock. Folding his arms across his chest, he waited impatiently for Ginny while the night grew dark around him.

 

Ginny hated to admit how glad she’d been to get away from Markus as she drove her little Ford Focus into the parking lot at Bell Rock. She’d barely seen her aunt and younger cousins all day, and she had the feeling Aunt Betty was as freaked about her as she was over the damned cat.

In fact, this whole trip was turning out just weird.

Then the headlights swept over a tall, breathtakingly familiar figure, and thoughts of Aunt Betty and Tom slipped out of her mind. Damn, she’d forgotten how gorgeous Alton was.

Why didn’t she have any old college friends who looked that hot? She’d not seen his hair hanging loose before. On any other man, long silvery blond hair hanging all the way to his waist would look horribly effeminate. On this guy, it was flat-out sexy. Her fingers practically twitched with the need to run them through the silken strands.

A twitch she’d damned well better get under control right now. She knew for a fact she couldn’t trust this jerk any farther than she could throw him, and as big as he was, she sure as hell couldn’t throw him very far.

He pushed himself away from the rock he’d been leaning against and walked toward the car. He had that long-legged, self-confident saunter that made Ginny’s stomach muscles clench at the same time it set her nerves on edge. She unlocked the door.

Alton opened the door and looked inside the little car. “Hello, Ginny,” he said. Then he frowned, tossed his bag in the back, folded his lanky frame like a pretzel, and slid into the passenger seat.

Or at least tried to.

“Hi.” She cleared her throat and hoped her voice wouldn’t crack again, but the man literally took her breath even as he pissed her off. “You’ll have to push the seat back. Little lever down on the side.”

He fumbled with the catch and shoved the seat back as far as it would go. His knees still stuck up in front of him, but he managed to get the seat belt fastened and the door closed.

He was too close. Much too close. Too tall, too sexy, too overpowering. Too…everything. The combination scared the crap out of her. She’d never dealt with a guy like him in her life. “How tall are you, anyway?” She checked the rearview mirror. No one was coming, so she pulled ahead to the parking lot exit.

“Eddy measured me. I’m six feet, eight inches tall. But I’m wearing boots. I think they give me a couple more inches.” He tilted his head and stared at her. “Why? Does it matter?”

“Matter?” Ginny glanced to her right and then back at the road. “No, it doesn’t matter. I was just curious.” She shot him another quick glance. He was still just as hot. “What matters is how you got here so fast. I just talked to Eddy a couple of hours ago. You haven’t had time to catch a plane, and even if you did, how did you get to Bell Rock? Why not a bus station or an airport?”

“What happened to your hand?” He reached across her front and softly touched the thick bandage wrapped around her left hand.

“My cousin’s cat bit me. The one with teeth like something out of a cheap horror movie.”

“Will you be all right?”

Now that was a question she could answer on a lot of different levels. Sitting so close to him was doing things to her insides she didn’t want to think about. He got to her on so many levels she didn’t know where to start. Even the low timbre of his voice seemed to vibrate deep in her bones.

She reminded herself that same voice in her head was the reason she’d come to Sedona. She was not going to trust him, no matter how hot he was. Ginny took a big breath and let it out. “I’ll be fine, if it doesn’t get infected.”

“Did you see a healer?”

“A healer? You mean a doctor?” Crap, she knew absolutely nothing about this guy, other than the fact he was Eddy’s friend, and she’d trusted Eddy as long as she’d known her. As pragmatic as Eddy Marks was, Ginny couldn’t picture her being close friends with someone into all that mystical stuff, but a healer? Next thing, he’d probably be offering herbs and magic crystals. She shook her head. “I haven’t had time.”

He nodded. “I will look at it later.”

“You?” She laughed. “Dr. Alton?” She glanced at him one more time before looking back at the road. “What is your last name, anyway? All you told me was your first.”

He hesitated a moment too long. Ginny shot him another quick look and he turned away. Then he looked back at her and smiled. “Artigos,” he said. “Alton Artigos.”

“That’s different. What nationality?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure. It’s an old family name. Probably changed over the years. Greek, maybe?”

“Yeah,” she said, watching the road ahead. “Maybe.” It came to her, just how little she really knew about Alton Artigos—if that was his real name. She really needed to call Eddy and find out a little more about this guy. Working for the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Department had turned her into a total cynic when it came to men, but it was her dating history that had really taught her the truth—the nicest looking guys could hide some pretty ugly secrets.

Then he chuckled. She wondered what he was laughing about, but she remembered the sound of his laughter. They’d laughed a lot that last night when he’d walked her home from town.

Before he’d sent her to Sedona.

She really needed to ask him about that. In fact, she needed to ask Alton Artigos a lot of things.

They drove in silence through town. Ginny spotted a Burger King about the time her stomach rumbled. She didn’t hesitate and pulled into the parking lot. “I haven’t had a thing to eat all day. Let’s stop here, okay?”

She turned off the ignition without waiting for his answer, and Alton followed her into the restaurant.

 

Alton wasn’t certain what it was about Ginny Jones that threw him so totally off balance, but one thing he was sure of—walking behind her and watching the shift and sway of that perfectly heart-shaped bottom atop her long, long legs had suddenly become one of his favorite pastimes.

She was so tall and lean and moved with such a fluid grace that she mesmerized him. When he stood behind her in line, the top of her head came almost to his chin. Even Lemurian women were not as tall. He liked that about Ginny.

Liked the fact she looked him straight in the eye without backing down or turning demurely away as a Lemurian maiden should. Liked the intelligence swirling in her fascinating tiger’s eyes.

“You want a Whopper? Cheese on that?”

Alton blinked. “A what?”

Ginny laughed. “Earth to Alton? I asked if you wanted a Whopper with cheese or would you rather have something else?”

He shook his head. He had no idea what she was talking about. “Whatever you’re having.” He dug in his pocket for the wallet Ed had given to him. He still wasn’t certain if he had their currency straight in his mind, but…

“I’ll get it. You can buy when we go somewhere expensive.”

She smiled at him. He loved the way her eyes twinkled and her full lips spread into a wide smile. Loved the glossy, dark red color she’d painted on her full lips, and…oh, my. Loved hamburgers and French fries. The tray Ginny grabbed carried a raft of scents that made his mouth water. He’d had these once before when he’d been out with Ed Marks. Alton followed Ginny to a booth in the nearly empty restaurant. He slid into the seat across from her.

Ginny handed him a wrapped burger, picked up the two bags of fries, and dumped them out on the open paper. Then she proceeded to squirt a huge glob of red catsup next to the pile.

Luckily, he’d had similar meals and knew what to do with the fries. He dragged one through the catsup, popped it into his mouth, and sighed. It was so easy to forget demons when faced with a really good French fry.

This was fast becoming his favorite Earth meal. Lemuria had nothing like this. Nothing at all.

They ate in silence for a few moments. Then Ginny took a swallow of her drink and wiped her mouth with a napkin. Her golden eyes gleamed.

Alton swallowed and carefully wiped his lips with his napkin.

“Why did I come to Sedona?”

He hadn’t expected that. Didn’t think she’d make the connection between his compulsive suggestion and her trip.

“Because you have cousins here?”

“Cousins I haven’t seen for years because we’re not all that close. Then all of a sudden you walk me home one night and I have this overwhelming need to fly to Sedona and hang out with cousin Markus and the twin brats. Why? What did you do to me?”

Alton sighed. Eddy and Dax had suggested he bring Ginny in on everything, but he hadn’t really thought of how he was going to do it. When in doubt…

Honesty generally worked best. He’d learned that the hard way when he was a kid and tried to lie his way out of trouble. Lying just got you into more trouble.

“I wanted to keep you safe and I wanted you gone. You were a distraction I didn’t want or need, but my compulsion put you in worse danger. I’m sorry, Ginny. That was not my intent.”

“You arrogant son of a…” She glared at him. “I knew you did something. I knew it! You hypnotized me, didn’t you? I can almost hear your—”

“Not really hypnotism. More of a compulsion.” He reached across the table and gently took her hand, the one that was wrapped in white gauze. “This never should have happened. It’s all my fault.”

Ginny looked at his hands supporting her injured one. Then she raised her head and stared directly into his eyes. “I don’t understand. How could I be a distraction? I hardly know you. And what do you mean by a compulsion? How could you compel me to do something I don’t want to do? Why did you want me to come here? And what is going on with the animals?”

Alton glanced around and realized the restaurant had emptied out entirely since they’d been eating. “I have a story to tell you that you will find unbelievable. Open your mind, please, and accept what I say. I’m not going to lie to you, Ginny. Your life is in danger. Many lives—an entire way of life—are in danger unless we prevail.”

Ginny slipped her hand free of his grasp and sat back in her booth. She folded her arms across her chest and her dark brows knitted together in a very attractive frown. “Why do you sound like you’re frickin’ nuts?”

He smiled. Then the absolute impossibility of the situation caught him by surprise. He burst out laughing. “Maybe because I find myself wondering exactly the same thing?” He reached for her hand again, the uninjured one this time. She let him take it. He gently squeezed her fingers. Ginny didn’t pull away, something that pleased him more than it should have.

He gazed directly into her beautiful eyes and tried his best to explain. “Just a little over a week ago, some strange things began happening in Evergreen. Eddy told me that it was right after she went out for coffee with you, that very night, that she first discovered Dax.”

Ginny’s eyes went wide. “She told me Dax was a friend from college. That you were a…”

Alton nodded. “I know. She had to come up with something quick, something to explain two men who couldn’t possibly exist. In fact, Eddy found Dax unconscious in her potting shed. He was badly injured, a man on a mission, very much in need of help.”

Ginny sputtered and he said, “Bear with me, Ginny, and I promise to answer your questions after I tell you everything. Will you just listen?”

Ginny stared at him a moment. “Okay. But that means I get to ask you a lot of questions.”

He smiled. “I promise to answer all of them.” He squeezed her fingers and took another sip of his drink. “Dax is not human. He was a demon, cast out of Abyss, the place you call Hell. He was hired as a mercenary and promised he would receive his place in Eden, your Heaven, should he prevail. His job was to fight a demon invasion in Evergreen. He enlisted Eddy’s help and the two of them, realizing they couldn’t stop the demons on their own, eventually came to my world—”

“Whoa!” Ginny shook her head so hard her thick black curls slapped her cheeks. “Not human? Your world? That’s a little bit too much to—”

Alton held up his head. “Ask when I’m done. There’s more.”

She glanced at their clasped hands, raised her head, and glared at him. “If you’re just puttin’ me on, I’m gonna be so pissed.”

He grinned. “Not putting you on, Ginny. I am not human, either. I am Lemurian, from the—”

“No.” She shook her head so hard her dark curls bounced and she covered her eyes with her bandaged hand. “Please. Do not tell me that Ed Marks was right and there really is a lost world of Lemuria. I don’t want to hear that at all.”

He really shouldn’t be enjoying this so much. Gently he tugged her hand away from her eyes. “I know. Eddy’s had to, as she puts it, eat some crow, though we never thought of Lemuria as lost. It’s been in the same place in a separate dimension from yours, deep inside the volcano you call Mount Shasta for many thousands of years. Except when the volcano erupts. Eruptions tend to cross dimensions. Then we move everything to Sedona and wait until stuff settles down again.”

He looked down at Ginny’s long fingers nestled against his longer ones. Her dark, chocolaty skin against his fair color emphasized their differences as nothing else could. She was human. Mortal. He shouldn’t feel this way about her. Attracted by her beauty, her sense of humor, her beautiful golden eyes.

He was the closest thing to Lemurian royalty they had. She was a 911 dispatcher in northern California. He was immortal, already thousands of years old. She was, according to Eddy, only thirty-one. He shouldn’t be looking at her and hoping against hope that she would believe him, that she would fall in with his story, no matter how absurd it might sound to her.

He shouldn’t care so much.

He raised his head and looked at her. She watched him warily, like an animal held in thrall by a predator’s eyes. He didn’t want her to fear him. Didn’t want her to think he was nuts. “I would like to take you there, to Lemuria, someday. If I can ever go back.”

“If? Why can’t you?”

“When Eddy and Dax and Bumper and Willow found their way through the dimensional portal into Lemuria, they were arrested and put into jail. When I helped them escape, I went against the edict of our ruling body, the Council of Nine. For ignoring their ruling, I most likely have a death sentence on my head, but I believed Eddy and Dax when they told me that the fate of many worlds rested on the battle they were fighting.”

Ginny was shaking her head now. He couldn’t lose her, but all of this had to be more than any mortal could accept. She tilted her head to one side, and it was almost as if he could see her mind processing what he’d told her, trying to figure out what, if any, of his tale was true.

“Those weird reports we had in Evergreen, the ceramic and stone figurines turning up in pieces around town, that big battle where people destroyed all the statues from the cemetery. Was that part of this so-called demon invasion? What about the garden gnome that ate Mrs. Abernathy’s cat?”

He couldn’t have stopped his smile if he’d wanted to. “And the gargoyle that was supposed to stay put on the old library building but kept flying away, and the bronze statue found in pieces inside Eddy’s house. We discovered that demons from Abyss were slipping through a dimensional portal to Earth. Unable to exist in their natural form outside of Abyss, the demons needed avatars, but they had to be something of the earth. Stone figurines, ceramic, metal, concrete…”

“The bear? That bear that attacked me? It was a demon?”

He nodded. “Actually, it was a bunch of demons, working together. That’s part of what makes this invasion even more sinister. They’re working together, under the orders of a powerful demon we’ve been calling the demon king, for want of a better name. We thought it was marshaling demons as an army, but we discovered that it was actually bringing them to Earth’s dimension as a source of power. They came through the portal and found avatars so they could remain, but once the avatars were destroyed, the demons turned back into wraiths. Their energy was absorbed by the demon king. Eddy was finally able to destroy the gargoyle a couple of nights ago. It was a horrible battle. We could have died if not for Eddy.”

Ginny leaned back in the booth. Her hand slipped free of his. He flexed his fingers and thought of reaching for her again, but she was shaking her head, laughing as if he was telling her a really funny story.

“You’re nuts, aren’t you? I swear, Alton, you almost had me going, at least until you said Eddy was the one who destroyed the gargoyle. Eddy has the softest heart on Earth. She couldn’t destroy anything, even if her life depended on it.”

The images of that last battle flashed into Alton’s mind. Like Ed, he still had nightmares. “That’s quite possible, but in this case, Dax’s and Bumper’s lives—and her father’s—depended on her. She took my crystal sword when I was injured—a brave act that put her in grave danger—and destroyed the gargoyle. The demon king survived and escaped back to Abyss, but Eddy not only saved my life and her father’s, she gained immortality for herself and Dax, and even for Bumper. Of course, that’s because Willow now resides within the—”

“Uh-huh. Immortality? A crystal sword? This I’ve got to see to believe.” Ginny stood up and gathered the remains of their meal. “Alton, you’re quite the storyteller, aren’t you?”

She walked away with the tray filled with their trash. Alton checked the sword strapped across his back and thought of removing the glamour that kept it hidden from human eyes. Then he glanced up and saw the teenage employees watching him from behind the counter. Later. He couldn’t do it here.

Ginny walked out of the restaurant without a single glance to see if he was coming. Alton followed her through the door.

She was halfway to the car when he noticed movement in the shrubs ringing the parking lot. A skinny animal that looked like a feral dog was slinking along the edge of the bushes, barely visible in the dark. It stalked Ginny, shadowing her as she walked toward the car. The scent of sulfur carried on the gentle breeze.

Alton drew his sword and raced toward the creature. At the last moment, the animal turned toward him and screeched, a loud banshee wail that raised the hairs along Alton’s spine. As it crouched low, its eyes glowed red. Light from overhead lamps glinted off rows of razor-sharp teeth.

It jumped, springing at Alton with impossible speed. Alton turned to meet it. He swung HellFire.

The sword balked at the last moment. Alton’s arm jerked with the unexpected change in direction and he hit the beast beneath its ear with the flat side of the blade.

It toppled to the ground, unconscious but still alive. Ginny screamed and came running. The questions tumbled out of her, faster than Alton could answer.

“What was that? Ohmygawd! It’s a coyote. They never attack people! What did you do? Where’d that sword come from? You didn’t have it in the restaurant. I would have seen it! What happened?”

He wrapped an arm around Ginny’s shoulders. She was shaking like a leaf. “It’s okay,” he said. “Hold on, just for a moment.”

He held his sword up. “HellFire. You stopped my swing when I would have killed the demon. Why?”

The crystal sword glowed and he felt the power race from the hilt to the blade. “It is wrong to kill a living avatar. The death of an innocent creature will feed the demon’s power. Touch my blade gently to the beast, over its heart. I will draw the evil to me.”

Alton heard Ginny’s soft gasp, but he concentrated on the sword, on gently laying the tip of the blade against the coyote’s chest where he thought the heart must be.

A black mist began seeping out of the stunned animal. Alton drew it forth with the crystal blade until the coyote shuddered and relaxed. The mist reeked of sulfur, but before it could escape, Alton slashed through the wraith with his blade.

The mist burst into flames. Ginny’s short little scream cut off as the air filled with the stink of the dead demon and a puff of black smoke disappeared into the darkness.

Before Alton could explain what had happened, the coyote sat up, shook its head, and took off in a wobbly run toward the nearby fields.

Ginny stared at the sword in his hand. “That smelled just like the veterinarian’s clinic. Oh shit. Everything you said? No. It can’t be. Okay, bud…your moment’s over. Explain.”

Alton held the sword out in front of them. The light it cast was bright enough to leave shadows. “Ginny, meet HellFire. I’ve carried this sword since I was a very young man. It has only recently begun to speak to me. A couple of nights ago when Eddy destroyed the gargoyle, we fought a terrible battle, one where all our lives were at risk. Dax’s borrowed body, his avatar, was killed, but because of Eddy’s bravery, all of us achieved status as warriors. Dax was given his life back and he and Eddy were gifted with immortality when Dax made a deal with the Edenites. My sword replicated itself, creating two more exactly alike, so that Dax now carries DemonFire while Eddy carries DemonSlayer.”

Ginny didn’t say a word. She stared at the sword. Then she raised her head and stared at Alton, and he realized she was in shock. He did the only thing he could think of.

After carefully stowing HellFire in the scabbard once more and setting a glamour on the glowing sword so that others might not see it, Alton wrapped both his arms around Ginny Jones, pulled her body close to his, and kissed her.