Collateral Damage (Demon Squad Book 8) by Tim Marquitz

probably why I liked having my guns so much. There was something primal about bustin’ a cap in someone’s ass. Shit, that alone could probably explain nearly every case of police brutality out there. “Stop resisting, hippy!” Pop!
    “Okay, CB, watch the kid. You need anything, ask the fuzzy butler. Got it?”
    The head wobbled, his way of nodding, and went back to singing.
    After that, I slipped into the shadows and opened a gate out of Hell. I cast a quick glance back at my daughter sleeping peacefully on my bed guarded by the sub-demon, and wondered for about a second if I was making the right choice.
    I sighed. “Cover for me, CB.” It wouldn’t be me if I did, so I stepped through the gate and sealed it behind me.

Eight
     
    The first place on my list was the house Karra used to share with her father, Longinus, after he’d been resurrected. Given the systematic way the other houses connected to us had been laid to waste, I didn’t hold high hopes that this one would be intact.
    Sadly, I was right.
    Whatever wrecking ball had hit it had done its job in spades. Like the others, caution tape encircled what was left of it, which wasn’t very much. The skeletal frame looked like giants ribs stretching toward the sky, the roof entirely gone, and the once pristine yard was covered in a layer of soot. The place was a black smudge in the neighborhood from where I surveyed it from above.
    I’d hoped to find some of the assholes responsible but it was clear the damage had been done a while back. They were long gone. And judging by the way there were no cops or reporters casing the scene, I was thinking maybe they hadn’t put two and two together yet, determining that this house was connected to all the chaos. That was probably a good thing, but what did it matter now?
    I dropped into the backyard after scanning the area with my senses, and crouched there for several minutes, making sure I hadn’t been seen. With the sun out, I was as obvious as I could be. Up in the sky I’d conjured up a blurring effect that would camouflage me from folks on the ground, but it took a bunch of concentration. I didn’t want to be distracted by trying to do it now. Fortunately, the neighbors had day jobs or were out. I hadn’t seen so much as a curtain flutter as I made my landing. I made my way inside.
    The place was worse than any of the others. The carpet was scorched and soaked at the same time, everything inside torched as though it’d been spray with napalm. The refrigerator and dishwasher were literally melted into slags of misshapen aluminum that would fit right in at any museum alongside the other pieces of abstract art. The floor was warped and creaked as I strode across is, tiles poking up at odd angles. The whole place reeked of char and melted plastics, a Barbie doll barbecue gone horribly wrong.
    I stepped into Karra’s bedroom, and then left without more than a glance. While she’d taken most of her personal belongings to our shared house, she’d left the furniture behind. It hadn’t fared well. The room was a pool of brackish water and scorched…well, scorched everything. There was nothing left. I drifted down the vague remnants of the hall, peering in the other rooms. They were pretty much the same. Nothing but ash and memories there. It wasn’t until I drifted into the living room that I spied something that wasn’t black and burnt. Something shimmered in the gloom, set dead center of the wreckage.
    My heart skipped a beat at seeing it. There was no way anything that pristine had survived the destruction of the house. It had been placed there purposely, like the sigil had. There for me to find.
    Senses on high alert, I went over to the thing and knelt down beside it to take a closer look. My brain scrambled to make sense of what it saw. It was nothing like the sigil, which is what I’d expected. Some sort of message from the holy rollers as to their machinations, but it wasn’t that. Nothing pinged back