His eyes gleamed and he looked right at me, his bald head crusted with dried blood in places and shiny enough to reflect moonlight in others. His mouth gaped wider than should have been possible, saliva gathering at the corners. He threw his head back and screeched, and chills skittered up my spine.

I tried to suck in a breath, but my throat closed in terror. The degenerate leapt for me, and I shoved my left hand forward, trying to call up the fire that had burned the demon from my mother’s wasted body. But my fingers trembled and remained dark as the monster soared toward me in the air, and time seemed to slow around me.

My heart lurched into my throat and as I dove to the right—my backup plan—Reese’s left hand shot up and out. He snagged the scraps of the degenerate’s shirt as it flew over him, then plucked the demon from the air like picking an apple from a low-hanging branch.

Reese slammed the monster into the concrete, and the degenerate and I hit the ground at the same time. My palms skidded on loose asphalt. I heard a violent explosion of air as collision with both Reese and the ground drove breath from the demon’s lungs.

Finn pulled me up by one arm, and I had an instant to realize Devi was laughing at me before a bright glow lit the alley. Squinting, I turned to see that Reese had the degenerate pinned on its back, his hand glowing against the monster’s chest as the demon kicked and bucked and clawed beneath him.

Reese made it look easy. Maybe it was easy for him, considering his size and obvious strength. I watched him in awe, but I couldn’t imagine ever doing what he’d just done—snatching one of hell’s natives from the air, then driving the demon back to hell before it had even caught its breath.

After a couple of seconds, the degenerate stopped snapping and struggling, and the glow from Reese’s hand faded. He stood and brushed his palm on the front of his shirt, then turned a broad grin on the rest of us. “First kill. Again.” He focused on Devi. “What’s in the pot?”

She scowled. “Only three. Finn hasn’t chipped in yet.” She pulled a small wad of bills from her back pocket and handed them to Reese while Finn added a dollar of his own to the pile. “Neither has Nina,” Devi pointed out, watching me expectantly while more scrapes and animalistic hissing echoed from two different directions.

“She doesn’t have to.” Finn turned to me, and my skin crawled as the other degenerates closed in on us, but my new friends didn’t seem worried, and after seeing Reese in action, I was starting to see why. “You don’t have to,” Finn repeated, to me this time.