Being evil for so very long, could you ever be what you were before that? Would you even want to? The great thing about being evil is you don’t care that you’re evil. As a matter of fact, you probably enjoyed the hell out of it . . . no pun intended.

The downside of being evil is when someone like me shoots your dragon wings to tatters before ramming a gun muzzle in your open, fanged mouth and liquefying your brain. I grabbed another clip from my bag, slammed it home, and started searching for the voices I’d heard earlier. I was about to call for Griffin again, when I heard him. I ran, following the circular hall. Another demon came at me. I hit the floor and rolled as it passed in a rush over me. Swiveling, I shot it in the back of the head, turned, and kept running until I came to what I vaguely remembered as a banquet room for those who lived in the house. Chandeliers and the finest china, it was all crushed to ivory splinters and crystal dust now. That dust glittered along wings and snake heads, giving the demons the air of something else to be put on a Christmas tree—a very dark, gothic Christmas tree.

There were ten demons and Zeke and Griffin were facing them while standing back to back. They’d been here fighting long enough they’d gone through all their ammo and were now down to knives. That didn’t make them any less dangerous. Zeke was a stone-cold demon killer with a combat knife, because he had no fear, not for himself. No fear of pain or being hurt or even death. Zeke’s mind didn’t allow multitasking. When he was fighting, he was fighting. Period. The only other thought he was capable of was to protect his friends. Kill and protect. In the heat of battle, nothing else existed for him. The Japanese Bushido philosophy said the greatest warrior was one who didn’t fear his own death. Zeke went a step further with not even knowing that he could die. Because he lived in the moment, he didn’t have enough focus left over to consider mortality.

He was in that moment now. He was covered with slashes of demonic claws, but he was also covered from the waist down in black demon blood. As I stepped into the room, he had just slashed a demon’s neck so forcefully with the serrated edge of his blade that the spinal column split and the demon became a black rain.

Griffin was deadly himself, quick as a demon, and smart enough to think like them if he had to—to anticipate their moves. Zeke couldn’t multitask at all, but Griffin was the king of it. He rammed his blade through the eye of one demon, while using his other hand to slash an identical blade across the gut of the brown demon hurtling toward him from the side. A mass of entrails spilled free. It wouldn’t kill the creature, but it was enough to have it tumbling back temporarily.

My boys the killers. I couldn’t have been more proud.

But ten demons . . . now eight and a half. And scattered among the green and brown lesser demons were two gray and one the cyanotic purple-blue of a strangled corpse. Higher demons. Thanks to Solomon, we now knew these were the ones to watch out for—not demon-lite. Those wouldn’t be so easy to kill.

“Guys!” I tossed them two Glock .40s out of my messenger bag. Mary Poppins had her endless supply of goodies in her purse. I had an endless supply of goodies too, and they were more useful than tea and freshly baked biscuits. They both dropped one knife apiece and caught the guns. I stepped back out into the hall to give them a clean line of fire and called as I did, “You, grape gecko, want to play?”

The suffocation-colored demon whipped around and undulated itself toward me with a speed that made a viper look as if it were moving through three feet of tar. It hit me. There was no way to avoid it. No way for a human, at least. Here was another one that if he wasn’t in Solomon and Eli’s league, he was damn close. I did manage to dive to the side quickly enough that although it clipped my side, it didn’t hit me head-on. It did flip me over the rail, the iron hitting me in the ribs. I caught myself with one arm hooking around an arabesque. I hung in midair, my shoulder creaking, and I discovered that my Barney-colored new demon friend might have been almost as fast as Solomon and Eli, but it wasn’t as smart. It perched on the rail above me, baring smoky quartz teeth at me in an arrogantly rapacious grin. It was nice of him to savor the moment. It gave me the opportunity to take its head off at the shoulders. The sound suppressor on the MP5 was only good for one clip. These shots rang loud and true. No matter how big the compound was, someone was bound to hear that and call the police. I coughed as the smoke billowed more thickly and wiped at my dripping face to clear my vision of what had once been a demon who’d thought a little too much of himself.

Tossing the gun up and over the rail, I used both hands to follow after it. I snagged one foot in a curl of metal and vaulted over the rail with several feet to spare. A member of Eden House stood there, a shocked look on his pale face. “Yoga,” I explained. “It’s good for more than making your way through the Kama Sutra.”

But it turned out his shock wasn’t for me and my gymnastic ways. As I picked up my gun, he said numbly, “They’re dead. Everyone’s dead.” He had dark blond hair, rumpled from the battle and darkened by the smoke, and a face marked with demon blood and devastation. It made me wish I’d kept my smart mouth shut.

“Not everyone.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the room I’d only just left. I’d heard the barrage of shots. When I passed through the door, I saw what I expected—a floor awash in dark fluid, the remains of the brown and green demons. The two gray ones were still very much in the game. That changed when they heard us come in behind them. One of them turned in time to see me pull the trigger. It turned to smoke before the bullets left my weapon. The other demon left on its own, disappearing as well. I didn’t know if it was from fear or the fact that its job was as good as completed. From what I could tell, I was standing with the last of Eden House Las Vegas—Zeke, Griffin, and this poor bastard whose own gun slipped from his hand to fall to the floor.

“Our house has fallen.” He rubbed his eyes against the smoke that continued to thicken. “How could that happen?”

Griffin moved up, turned the man around, and pushed him back out into the hall and toward the stairs. “We have to get out, Thomas. The authorities won’t be a problem, but burning to death will. Let’s go.”

The authorities wouldn’t be a problem. That meant one thing. “Trinity wasn’t here, then,” I stated as I followed them, coughing again. We all were. If we weren’t so close to the front door, there wouldn’t have been enough oxygen to make it. If Trinity wasn’t here, he would definitely clear things with the Vegas authorities. They either worked for him and Eden House or he owned them, one way or the other.

“No,” Griffin said as he continued to guide the dazed Thomas as we clattered down the stairs. “Neither is Goodman. They left for Miami. A meeting of the heads of the Houses.” So they were alive, and an alive Trinity was capable of covering up anything.

“The rats always know when a ship is sinking,” Zeke grunted.

“You think they knew this was coming?” I reached behind me to take Zeke’s wrist and pull him along faster. You’d think the man was meandering down to the kitchen for a snack.

“No. I think the Universe sucks. The dicks are eating steak and drinking wine while their soldiers die.” Zeke saw the warning glance Griffin shot from him to Thomas, but I didn’t think Thomas heard a word as we passed out of the house into clean night air. He was young, so young that he had to be newly recruited. His survival had been nothing more than a fluke or maybe he’d hidden during the battle. If so, I didn’t blame him. He looked like he’d never fought a single demon, much less a horde of them.