0.5 Deadly Hearts Read Online Free Page B

She placed the flat of the blade against the exposed eyeball.
    “ Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas! ”
    His cries reached a pitch. His ribs rippled, danced, shivered.
    And then his chest exploded.
    Blood showered over the room, and Elise couldn’t duck fast enough to avoid the geyser. It was hot and sulfurous and it sprayed down her side.
    James’s reaction time had been much better. He peered at her from behind the chair as a steady stream of blood drip-dripped from the seat to the floor. “Well,” he said. “That was a first.”
    Elise wiped a chunk of slippery flesh out of her hair. “And hopefully a last.”
    Rich Harris, priest of the Church of Light and soldier of God, had been split in half by the exploding demon. His pelvis was an open mess of intestine. Organs dangled from underneath the remnants of his breastbone. The rest was gone—including a couple segments of his spine.
    Elise muttered a thousand curses under her breath as she tried to wipe the blood off of her face and hands, but there was just too much of it. Her skin was slick.
    “Okay,” she said, squeegeeing blood out of her tank top. “McIntyre really owes me new clothes now.”
    James laughed as he stood. Of course he could laugh. He only had blood on his right shoe. He plucked something off of her shoulder and flung it aside. “Are you all right? Any problems breathing?”
    “I’m fine,” she said, and it was mostly true. Even though Courevore was dead, she could still hear his voice echoing through her skull.
    He will never love you .
    She didn’t look at James as she peeled off her shoes and socks.
    “I think I saw clothes in Leticia’s size in the other bedroom,” James said. “Maybe a shower’s in order.”
    Elise was grateful not to have to discuss the destroyed body, or anything the demon had said. She ducked out of the room, leaving her shoes behind, and tried not to drip blood on her way to the shower.
    Five minutes and a lot of hot water later, she was dressed again in shorts and a tube top that belonged to McIntyre’s girlfriend. James was waiting for her on the top of the stairs. She sat beside him to comb out her hair.
    He was flipping through his notebook again, but he closed it to give her his full attention.
    “Breeding,” he said.
    Elise’s comb stilled. “What?”
    “You said that you thought Courevore was trying to breed.”
    “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Courevore is one-of-a-kind. He could only breed by impregnating a human woman—which obviously doesn’t work in cases of incorporeal possession—or by some other asexual method. Like eggs, maybe.”
    “Eggs,” James echoed.
    “Well, I hope not, but I think that’s how his type usually make minions. If that’s the case, they could be anywhere.”
    Elise continued to drag the comb through her hair, thinking back on everything that McIntyre had told her about the case.
    Rich Harris lived in a pay-by-the-week motel—hardly somewhere safe and secure to keep one’s offspring. The former victims’ houses had all been swept by the cops and completely cleaned out. Where could that kind of guy keep a demon’s eggs? A storage unit, maybe?
    James interrupted her thoughts by leaning forward and sniffing the air. “What is that?”
    She lifted her arms and smelled herself. “Is there still blood on me?”
    “No, it’s more like…burning chocolate?”
    Elise almost dropped the comb. “Shit!”
    She leaped to her feet and shot downstairs.
    One could never tell what might go wrong in the aftermath of an exorcism. Powerful demons had a way of leaving nasty tricks behind—booby traps, extra minions, things that could explode. When James smelled the smoke, he was certain that Courevore must have set the house on fire on his way out. What he found was a lot more shocking.
    A black haze filled the kitchen. James rushed to open the back door and turn on the ceiling fan. Elise ripped a towel off the rack and pulled the oven open, and smoke spewed into the