Free The Catalyst by Zoe Winters Page B

demon would be in. They could be in
shock or traumatized. It always pissed him off the way they were
brought to him. Could the angels not make the transition more
humane? Were they not supposed to be the good guys?
    As evil as demons were purported to be, at least they
took care of their own, which wasn’t any different from humans who
cared little for other species besides themselves. So why did
humans get so many chances?
    Cain’s dimensions had multiple portal points allowing
them to enter the human world easily. Portal charms could be used
if necessary to open a portal where one didn’t exist, but Cain
didn’t like to do it too much. He worried that it unsettled the
magic.
    The dimension was protected, given that the portal
recognized the essence of demons like computers recognized
thumbprints and only let demons pass. With the exception of
Cole—Cary Town, Washington’s werewolf pack alpha. Cain had given
him a portal charm—several in fact—allowing him and his pack free
access to escape the police state forming in their city.
    It wasn’t that Cain was a big humanitarian or…
theriantarian as it were. Cole had helped him once. A witch had
bound him in a glass bottle. It was humiliating. All it took to
break the spell was shattering the bottle, but she’d put it in a
protected place so no matter what he did, he couldn’t shatter it on
his own.
    In an odd twist of fate, Cole had stumbled upon him,
and in exchange for a portal charm, freed him. It was one of those
things so embarrassing that he’d been willing to do Cole favors for
the hush money factor as much as anything.
    After that, he’d been a lot more careful to make sure
witches weren’t on his menu. He should have learned the lesson much
earlier on, especially after his brother had been trapped for fifty
years in a house by a curse with the most ridiculous reversal
clause he’d ever heard.
    At least the angels dropped new demons near a portal
point so he didn’t have to travel for days. They also dropped them
in deserted areas.
    Since humans had become less superstitious and cities
had grown bigger and technology stronger, letting them see too much
of the preternatural world was no longer wise. And the angels
didn’t want their secrets revealed, either—if only because they
wanted to be seen as elite and top secret. Perish the thought that
someone should have the knowledge of how boring heaven was before
they got there.
    It was the club everybody thought they wanted in,
until they arrived. Like just about any country club, when he
thought about it.
    This demon was female. A succubus. He found her in a
forest in Romania. At one point he would have assumed the woman had
been from that area. But he’d learned over time that where they
were spit back out had nothing to do with where they’d been from,
at least not these days. Once upon a time, they’d been more
organized about it. She could be Chinese or Japanese or American.
She could be anything. It was good that he was fluent in
everything.
    She was in the demon form, scaled reddish-brown skin,
claws, horns popping out over her shoulders, fangs, and glowing red
eyes. Not the best form to catch dinner in. He waited for her to
speak first. He’d have to know what language she spoke so he could
talk to her and help her shift. She looked up at him and scrambled
back, a look of horror on her face. She’d been crying for a while.
Who could blame her?
    But the horror at seeing him? It was harmful to his
ego. It wasn’t the usual reaction from females. He was in his prime
human hunting form. He’d spent his first thousand years fine-tuning
it. No female could resist it. Except this one, apparently.
    “Cain?” She said his name as if willing it not to be
true.
    He hoped this wasn’t some woman he’d had for dinner.
That would be just awkward.
    “In the flesh,” he said. “Whatever we had before… we
don’t sleep with our own kind. So don’t get any ideas.”
    “Ewww, gross. I would never