Page 24 of Nexus
Only an idiot would stick a bare blade down their pants. I tried to shove the sheath down the back of my trousers, but was having trouble without a mirror to help me position it correctly.
“Give it here!” my unwilling accomplice snapped and snatched the weapon from me.
I turned my back to him to hide my smug smile. I had a feeling it would become a petty pleasure to make Ruen assist me with duties that he hadn’t signed up for. My smile turned into a grimace when he rammed about six inches of the sheath into my pants. “Ow! Did you have to jam it in so hard?” I complained. It had barely stung when it had scraped my skin, but he didn’t know that.
He lifted his hand and sternly pointed at the apartment building. “Hurry up and get in there before they get away!” he hissed.
Rolling my eyes at his theatrics, I jogged across the road. Only having one weapon ready when facing multiple foes wasn’t a smart move, but I needed the advantage of surprise. There was no way they’d open the door if they saw I was armed. The door might be reinforced like mine was and would be hard to kick down. Besides, I didn’t think I’d need more than one blade, since I was dealing with such low-level adversaries.
The elevator was out of order when I entered the foyer. “Figures,” I said sourly, then began hoofing it up the stairs. While I didn’t have enhanced hearing, one of my talents kicked in. I could feel my enemies four floors above me. There were eight lesser demons and one weapon would be plenty to eradicate them.
I was breathing hard by the time I reached the top floor. Bending over to rest my hands on my knees, I waited for my heart to stop racing. I was glad Ruen wasn’t here to witness this embarrassing scene. He would no doubt get on my case about not being fit enough to keep up with the bad guys. So what if I couldn’t run them down like an Olympic athlete? I had my ways of dealing with scumbags and none of them involved sprinting.
Chapter Nineteen
MY MONSTER RADAR LED me to a door halfway along the hall. Hushed voices came from inside. They seemed to be arguing about something. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, since they were distracted. I tried the handle to find it was locked, so I couldn’t barge in and start swinging my machete around.
“Time for plan B,” I murmured, then knocked on the door.
The voices went silent, then I sensed one of the demons approaching the door. Yanking it open, he looked like a normal, if scruffy human. His hair was short, greasy and matted. It made my skin crawl just to look at it. “Yeah? What do you want?” he asked with a scowl. Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that hadn’t been washed in recent weeks, I could smell the foul stench of hell spawn beneath his grime.
“I need help,” I said, faking a distressed tone. “I had a fight with my boyfriend and he kicked me out of our apartment. I need to borrow your phone. Can I come in for a minute?”
Looking me up and down, he shook his head. “Get lost, tubby. Find someone else to mooch off.”
Snickers sounded from his cohorts as he tried to swing the door shut. My hand shot out to stop it. “What did you just call me?” I asked, tone going glacial at his rudeness.
The other demons joined him, crowding around him to examine me as the door was opened wide. “You’re fat,” one of them said with a sneer.
“You’re so big your boobs don’t even fit into your bra,” another one added.
“Your face is okay, but you’re too big for even us to want to screw,” one at the back told me.
My blood had begun to boil at the first insult and my rage grew at the slew of insults. “I’m not fat!” I snapped. “I’m curvy!”
“Your pants are so tight you probably needed three people to help you pull them on, tubby,” the creep who’d opened the door said nastily.
“That’s it,” I said ominously. “You’re the first one who’s going to die tonight.”
Laughter broke out at my pronouncement. “What are you going to do, sit on us and suffocate us with your blubber?” he retorted.
“My name is Saige Sterling and I hunt scumbags like you for a living,” I said. Instead of fleeing in terror, they burst into laughter. “You’re all so weak that this is going to be one of my easiest jobs ever,” I said and reached behind me for the machete. It was only my second official job, but they didn’t know that.
“You’re delusional as well as fat,” the scruffy demon said.
“Normally, low-level demons like you would rate about pimple level on my monster radar. You guys are so pathetic you’re more like a rash,” I taunted him, still trying to reach the handle of my machete.
In retaliation, the hell spawn drew his hand back to punch me in the face. Unlike me, he couldn’t sense other monsters and he thought I was just a helpless human. Catching his fist with my free hand, I finally grabbed the handle of my weapon. Drawing it in triumph, the entire sheath came with it. “Damn it!” I grumbled when the demons roared with fresh laughter. “I’ll do this the hard way, then,” I added, then rammed the end of the sheath into my quarry’s throat.
Gagging and doubling over with a crushed larynx, he let out a pitiful squeak when I snapped his wrist with a sharp twist of my hand. Kneeing him in the face as he fell, I knocked him out cold.
I pulled the sheath off my weapon and tossed it behind me into the hallway. “This is the part where you all start screaming,” I said with a smirk, then stepped through the door.
We were too high up for my quarry to leap through the windows to safety. There was only one exit and I was blocking it. The room would have been bathed in blood from my wild swings back when my mom had first started training me how to hunt. With a decade of experience behind me, I’d honed my skills to be far more precise.
One of my talents was being able to sense my foes’ weaknesses. Being on earth meant the demons were in human forms. If we’d been in the underworld, things would have been very different. Since they were so pathetic and vulnerable, a simple stab to the throat was enough to end their lives.
The screaming began after I killed the scruffy creep who’d opened the door. Shock made them slow to react. I was able to wipe out three more of them with neat stabs before they could run. Closing the door behind me, I locked it and engaged the safety chain, then I went hunting.
