Page 21 of Monsters of Midnight

“Don’t worry about my business,” Ratchet said coldly.

“Shouldn’t you be doing something to help Ryder?” I asked.

“Since when is all you care about Ryder?” Ratchet asked. “You realize he’s your dead girlfriend’s ex-husband, right? There’s all sorts of wrong around that.”

“Ratchet!” Katrina called from where she was nursing Ryder. “There’s no need to talk like that.”

“I’m just stating the truth,” Ratchet growled.

“You’re under the influence of the flowers,” Katrina said. “You need to knock that shit off.”

“Everyone calm down. There’s a call coming in,” Lady Albright said, nodding toward where the row of crystals on the table was emitting a screen to shimmer up from them.

The room got suddenly silent, as if everybody except me knew exactly who the call would be coming from.

“Ratchet, you’re going to have to explain yourself,” Katrina said.

“There’s nothing to explain,” Ratchet said, but he went silent as he turned toward the screen.

“What happened in Perú.” The tan-skinned, beautiful woman on the screen was cold, imperious, and left no doubt of who was in charge.

Ratchet swallowed and composed himself. “Madame President.” He gave a brief nod to the screen.

She glared at him. “Call me Vina, demon. What happened to Ryder?”

“He got injured by monsters,” Ratchet explained.

“That’s never happened before,” Vina said.

“Well, it happened this time,” Ratchet said. “Maybe he’s just getting old.”

“He’s a demigod,” Vina responded, her eyes flashing a warning Ratchet shouldn’t become insubordinate.

“That’s right. He’s a demigod and I’m a demon. You expect just the two of us to stop the flood of monsters coming into this place. Well, I’ll tell you it’s going to be really hard to do without any more resources from the DGC,” Ratchet explained.

I couldn’t help but support his idea. After what I had seen in Hawaii with Cade, the DGC seemed to need to take a much more active role than they were doing so far.

“Well, maybe if we would get timely reports, we would have a better understanding of what was required,” the president explained.

“Well, your demigod Cade has made some crazy changes to how he wants to do business,” Ratchet outlined. “If you watch what he’s doing now, you’ll see he’s resurrected his brother.”

“Demetrious?” Vina asked. “He was slain by Hercules. He can’t be resurrected.”

“Well, maybe you want to explain this to Cade, because he most certainly did that,” I said, moving to stand next to Ratchet. “I saw it with my own eyes. He was chasing me and trying to inhabit my body.”

“So, he’s not fully formed yet in his body?” Vina asked.

“He wasn’t the last time I saw him,” I said.

“He looked pretty real when we were in Peru,” Ratchet shrugged nonchalantly.

Vina’s face formed tight lines as she stared at Ratchet. “You weren’t able to defeat him?”

Ratchet looked down at his hand before slightly shaking his head. “No,” he said. Then to my shock, he reached his hand down and grasped mine. It was lower than they could see on camera, but he was holding it tightly as if looking for reassurance. I shifted my eyes quickly to him, and I could see the pain he was in.

“Ryder’s been injured,” I said to Vina. “We need some back up and some support here. I don’t think they can do it with just Ryder and Ratchet.”

“Who are you?” Vina asked. There was a tone of condescension in her voice.

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