Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei by L.J. Hayward Page A

food for his vampire. For himself, in a twisted sense.
    But he’d come out of it, both then and now. Then, he may have subdued her so Mercy could feed, but he hadn’t let Mercy drain her of blood. Tonight, he’d pulled himself—and Mercy to an extent—back from hurting her in the elevator. Now the demon was gone, there was not a glimmer of wild killer in either of them.
    Still, Erin followed Mercy, wanting to keep her in view, be warned if she snapped again.
    Mercy, bag of blood dangling from one hand, paused in the doorway of a room in the middle of the house. “Yes?” she asked pointedly.
    Eyeing the vampire warily, struck by the contradictions between vicious supernatural creature and sweet faced girl, Erin asked, “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine.” Pale and watery blood bubbled out of a wound in her chest with each breath she took.
    “Do you need a hand with your wounds?”
    Mercy rolled her eyes. “No. Matt taught me how to pull out my own bullets.”
    Erin’s stomach quivered. “Okay then.”
    Mercy stepped back into the room and slammed the door.
    “Fine,” Erin muttered and then went back into Matt’s room.
    He was out of it again, half on the bed, half off it. She’d thought he would have at least fixed himself up before zonking. Considering just leaving him, she went over and tried to wake him up. He mumbled and pushed her away. Fending him off, she hauled him onto the bed properly and took off his boots. He didn’t make his bed and it was easy to pull the sheet out and toss it over him. All the while, he just slept on. Whatever he’d done had drained him.
    She left the bedroom before she could collapse. What he’d done… It had been terrifying. Almost as frightening as the demon. A blast of… something reaching from him to the demon. And six months ago, she’d seen him—or rather, not seen him—move as fast as Mercy in order to chop off Veilchen’s head. Neither feat something a human could accomplish. When she’d told him about the speed he’d used, he hadn’t realised he’d done it. She hadn’t stuck around to find out how that had affected him.
    Yet here she was, in his house.
    She pulled out her phone to call Ivan to see if he could come pick her up, but didn’t. He’d want to know how she ended up out here and her head wasn’t working enough to concoct a story to cover up the truth. She dialled a taxi company, then hung up before the automatic response could get too far. A fare would reach the lofty heights of a hundred dollars at the very least. Not officially on a case, she couldn’t write it off as an expense.
    All in all, it would be easier to stay until Matt woke up and took her back to her car.
    And then what? Try again to convince Ivan to drop Matt from the investigation? The last thing Ivan and Brad needed was some demon lurking around just because Hawkins was involved with them.
    A demon.
    Holy shit. Perhaps literally.
    Escaping from vampires aside, Erin hadn’t been to church since William got sick. Too many bad associations. From William’s family’s response to his illness to Erin’s bitter argument with the blind injustice of life in general, belief in God had begun to feel too hard—too much like they’d been betrayed by the one, uncompromising ally they were supposed to have.
    She’d almost made peace with the idea that God didn’t exist and that William’s cancer was just bad luck. Turn her back on religion and rile against fate instead. It was more understandable. God didn’t exist and life sucked.
    Except that now Hawkins was convinced the thing they’d seen tonight was a demon.
    Erin sank down onto the couch in the living room.             
    Vampires and werewolves. Fine. Those she could wrap her head around, sort of. But demons? Demons that looked like the traditional image of angels? What did it mean? Had she seen a fallen angel tonight? Had she shot a fallen angel?
    Unable to think straight, Erin dialled the hospital where William