Free Savior (The Keepers of Hell Book 1) by DANIELLE JAMES Page B

and very familiar voice responded.
         Ash groaned. “Why are you even here?” he asked the demon.
         “Because I keep an eye on what’s mine,” the demon replied. “Thought you could use a hand.”
         “Whatever,” Ash mumbled. He was secretly grateful that the demon had taken it upon himself to help. This way, Ash could pretend he didn’t need the bastard’s help.
         “Lost your knife, huh,” the demon continued as if Ash were going to listen to him. “Well, I seem to have a way with people. Let me do the talking and you can have your precious knife back. Then you get your ass back to work.”
         “Yeah, that was what I was trying to do,” Ash told him. “What are you now, my stalker? Cuz I gotta say, it’s getting a bit creepy. You just ain’t my type.”
         The demon laughed. “You ain’t my type either, asshole.”
         Ash willed his lip not to twitch. He decided a bit of banter might be good, though. Maybe if he pretended to have some sort of rapport with the fucker, maybe, just maybe, he would forget about Elizabeth.
         “Here ya go,” the demon said. “Let’s get on with it.”
         Ash and the demon got out of the cab and walked up to the front doors of the police station. The glass doors were surprisingly heavy as they entered.
         “What can I do for you?” a uniformed officer said from the front desk.
         “I was shot the other night,” Ash started. “I lost my knife and I heard it was here. I would like to get it back.”
         “Name?” the officer asked. Ash told him and the officer typed away at his keyboard. “Says here that it is an illegal blade. It’s been confiscated. Nothing I can do.”
         “Perhaps,” the demon said, leaning onto the desk, “there is. Look again.”
         The officer’s eyes became glassy and had a faraway look to them as he examined the screen once again. “I’ll just go get it for you,” he said after reading the screen again. He stood and walked stiffly to the back of the station.
         “What did you just do?” Ash asked the demon under his breath.
         Fucker smiled. “Got your knife back.”
         A few minutes later the officer returned with a sealed bag. “Gonna need you to sign for it.”
         Ash scrawled his name on the sheet of paper offered by the cop. Then he took the baggie and ripped it open, checking to make sure his knife was undamaged. “Thank you,” he said to the officer as he slipped it into its holster. Then he turned and looked at the demon. “Let’s go.”
         They both walked out of the station, but once they got to the cab, the demon stopped Ash. “This is where we part ways,” he said. “I got another soul to pick up.”
         Ash shuddered. He knew exactly what the demon meant and was glad not to have any part of it. He could just imagine what kind of deal the poor idiot had made. Maybe it was for money, power, or even health. Maybe it was a deal like Ash himself had made. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter because the shmuck who signed in blood was in for an eternity of hell. Literally.
         Ash forced his feet to move back to his home. He ignored the stitch in his side and the pressure in his chest. He knew he was still healing, but the demon needed him alive and wouldn’t have insisted he get back to work if Ash wasn’t able.
         Once he entered his home, he palmed the pendant around his neck and chanted the spell that would take him to Hell.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
         Shax drove the cab slowly; circling the block, making sure his little slayer was on task. That woman was going to be a problem, he could feel it. Besides, she had already pissed him off. As much as the demon enjoyed Ash’s work, it had been his time to die. It had been time for the man to pay his debt to Shax and she stole it from him.
         Shax didn’t like to be stolen from. He was the demon, not her. He