With a curse, Jim reached up and rubbed his nape. The sensation had graduated from tingle to roar, and he bowed under the agony now that his adrenaline ebbed a little. God, it just got worse . . . to the point where he couldn’t handle it and sank down on his knees.

Putting his palm on the ground and bracing himself, it dawned on him what was doing. In a case of perfectly bad timing, Matthias had acted on the spell he’d put on his corpse back in Caldwell—

“Go!” Eddie hissed as he slashed and retracted. “We’ve got this! You get to Matthias.”

At that moment, Adrian offed one of his pair, his crystal dagger going deep into the thing’s chest before he jumped up onto the stoop to avoid the spray. The sprinkle of buckshot hit the other demon he was fighting—

Oh, shit. The black oily bastard absorbed the spray—and doubled in size.

Jim glanced back Eddie, but the angel barked, “Go! I’m telling—” Eddie dodged a strike and threw one of his own with his free fist. “You can’t fight like this!”

Jim didn’t want to leave them, but he was quickly becoming worse than useless—his buddies were going to have to defend him if this ringy-ding-ding got any more acute.

“Go!” Eddie shouted.

Jim cursed, but stood up, unfurled his wings, and took off in a shimmer . . .

Caldwell, New York, was more than two hundred miles west—assuming you were a human on foot, bike, horse-back, or in a car. Angel Airlines covered the distance in the blink of an eye.

As he touched down on the front lawn of McCready’s joint, he saw the unmarked parked at the curb . . . and the fact that an entire block was without electricity . . . and knew he was right.

Matthias had come calling.

Just the man’s style.

Jim headed across the grass, and felt like he was going back in time . . . to that night in the desert that had changed everything for him and Matthias.

Yeah, his summoning spell had worked.

The question was what to do with his prey.

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 24

Standing in Grier’s kitchen, Isaac totally approved of the way she took care of business. In the midst of the chaos, she was calm as she worked the phone and the security system: A quick one, two, three, and she had cut off the fire alarm, called in a false report, and reset the system. And she did it all crouched behind the counters, protected and hidden.

Definitely his kind of woman.

With her on top of things, he was free to try to figure out what the hell was doing in her backyard. Twisting around so that his body remained tucked away, he searched through the glass . . . but all he got was just the wind and a whole lot of shadows.

Yet his instincts were screaming.