Free Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1) by Laura Thalassa, Dan Rix

to move your mouth.”
    “You know what, I don’t need this crap right now.” Brad stood and ambled toward the door. “Call me when you’re ready to be an adult.”
    “Sit down,” I barked. “You leave, and you’re a dead man. They’ll be coming after you, too.”
    He shook his head at me. “Man, how do you sleep at night?”
    “I don’t.” I raised my palms. “Truce, alright? No more name-calling. What else did she say?”
    He peered longingly at the door, then exhaled loudly and paced back across the room. “She talked about a connection to other demons,” he said. “Might have been figurative, I don’t know. She’s healing a lot of demons with that blood.”
    “Yeah . . . fuck.” I squeezed my jaw. “She has to die. She’s too dangerous. With that kind of healing ability, every demon could be as strong as an army. A thousand of them . . . they could overrun Earth. They’d be invincible.”
    “Primus Dominus pretty much is .”
    I drew my hunting knife. “You want to do it? Or should I?”
    He flinched. “Jesus, Asher. Just . . . just chill out for ten seconds, alright? Do that human thing. Think. Bargaining chip, dude. You’re in a tight spot, you got Dominus coming at you hard, he’s about to rip your head off—but wait, wait, you have his daughter . . . do I smell a trade?”
    I conceded his point with a grim nod. “No, that’s smart. I agree. But I don’t trust her.”
    “ Her? She’s a kid. Look at her, man. She’s a lamb among wolves.”
    “I trust the ugly ones.” I thrust a finger in the vague direction of her cell. “Not that  . . . whatever that is.”
    “What’s she going to do to you? You’re Jame Asher.”
    “She’s distracting .”
    “Ah, not so easy to villainize anymore.”
    “Shut up. A demon’s a demon.” I slipped the knife back into its sheath and tossed it onto my desk. “I’ll sleep on it.”
    “Thought you said you didn’t sleep.”
    “Central America,” I announced, ignoring his quip. “That’s where the next portal is.”
    Brad drew back. “She . . . she told you that?”
    “No, but she’s about to . . . .” I strode to my map, squeezing my jaw again. “If I can shut down their access to this continent, I can buy us some time. Somewhere near ruins, I’m guessing. A Mayan temple or something like that. See if I can get her to narrow it down.”
    “Bro, you can’t do this. Those portals have been there for thousands of years, longer . . . freaking geological timescales. They’re part of their mythology. They’re sacred to them.”
    I kicked the desk leg and faced him. “My wife and my baby girl were sacred to me . . . and those creatures slaughtered them, used them up like tanks of gas . . . and for what? Some parlor tricks? Every human life is sacred, and they burn through us like kindling to fuel their magic . . .  one cursed family member at a time. So don’t you talk to me about sacred.”
    He held my gaze. “This is wrong, Asher.”
    A faint scratching reached my ears. I tensed, scanning the room for its source, and my gaze slid to the air vent behind the desk, which pinged and began to hiss air. My hand inched toward my gun.
    “It’s your AC, dude. You’re a fucking spaz.”
    “I heard something else.”
    He rubbed his shoulders. “Why do you keep it so cold, anyway? I feel like I’m in a meat locker.”
    Though my heart continued to pound, my muscles began to relax. “The cold throws them off.”
    “You’re sick.”
    I planted my palms on the desk and took a slow, agonized breath. “You’re sleeping in the armory,” I said. “I’ll get you an air mattress.”
    “Nah, I’ll just take a guest room upstairs. You’ve got like a billion—”
    “Lock the door. If anything comes at you, shoot it. Then burn it. We check on the creature every hour. I take first rounds at midnight, you take one. Do not interact with it, do not listen to it, do not give it anything it wants . . . or