Collateral Damage (Demon Squad Book 8) by Tim Marquitz Page A

against my senses at all. The thing was magically inert, which only made it all the more confusing. I reached down and scooped it into my palm. It was exactly what it looked like.
    A silver, thirty-sided gaming die.
    Karra wouldn’t have been caught dead playing Dungeons and Dragons or any of that shit, so what the fuck was it doing there? No matter what scenario I imagined, nothing explained how something that random had appeared in the house. It was a message, obviously, but about what I had no clue.
    I checked the thing again to make sure it wasn’t mystical, and then shoved it in my pocket. If it meant something, I was gonna need someone smarter than me to suss it out. It had to mean something, sitting there like it was, but damned if I knew what.
    I didn’t even bother searching the rest of the house after that. Everything in it was destroyed and there was nothing of her mother’s that I could take back to Abby for comfort. My chest tightened at the realization that Abigail would never hold anything in her life that had belonged to her mother. Everything was gone.
    That thought sent me on my way. I wound my way through the ruin and returned to the backyard only to be drawn up short as soon as I stepped from the house. An oddly familiar essence pinged against my senses. My breath caught in my lungs, and I could hear the blood whooshing through my veins as a figure stepped around the side of the house.
    “Good morning, Mister Trigg. It’s been a while.”
    My throat went dry at seeing the man I’d thought long dead, yet there he was, standing before me in his trademark suit and crisp tie.
    “Poe?”
    The barest flicker of a smile graced his lips. “In the flesh once more.”
    His cultured voice struck me like a physical blow, stunning me. I’d never expected to hear it again. My heart thundered.
    The last time I’d seen Alexander Poe had been when Gorath and his flunky Mihheer had commandeered the portal Baalth had been using to fuel mystical energy to God and Lucifer to help support the war effort. I’d convinced the aliens Black and White to take Baalth to God for healing, his only chance at survival, but Poe had been lost already. Baalth had asked me to return Poe’s body to Marcus D’anatello for burial, and I’d done just that, making sure the old boy had a decent funeral and pleasant sendoff. All that was very much at odds with what I was seeing right now with him standing before me.
    “How the hell are you—?”
    “We’ve little time for reminiscing, Mister Trigg. My leash is short these days.” I stared at Poe, unable to rationalize his being alive. It didn’t make sense. “I feel, however, that I owe you a kindness for what you did for me… What you did for Marcus.”
    I shook my head. “It was only right, and Baalth wasn’t able to do it himself.” My teeth ground together at the thought of my father’s demon lieutenant. He’d met his end at my hands for having dared to kidnap Karra. What I did to him was nothing compared to what I would do to the holy rollers once I caught up with them.
    Poe must have seen the anger flood across my face and misunderstood it. “Whatever animosity there was between you and Baalth, you were always respectful of me, and I appreciate that. As such, I feel it is only proper of me to warn you as best I can.”
    I met Poe’s icy eyes and saw the earnestness there. Though we’d always been enemies in the technical sense of the word, it had been an honest relationship. We didn’t hate each other or really want to see the other harmed. We were only doing our jobs.
    Poe went on at my silence. “There are things I cannot tell you, though not by choice, so please forgive my vagueness.” Still shocked to see the guy alive and well, I let him talk without interruption. “Most importantly, the beings who assaulted your home go by the unoriginal moniker of Trinity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit they refer to themselves individually. I’m sure you can