The bastard stretched and arched his back at an odd angle like he was boneless and fucking elastic, avoiding the orb—but barely. Jonas tossed an orb of his own. Knox returned the favor. And on and on it went.
Snowflakes and tree bark flew in the air each time a ball of hellfire missed its target. A couple had hit Knox, but they weren’t powerful enough to really hurt him. Jonas, on the other hand, was weakening. Several patches of flesh were blackening and peeling from his body. The scents of blood and burning flesh pleased his demon immensely and—
Knox was standing in his Underground office. Another illusion, he knew. Recalling that pain had snapped him out of the last one, he dug his fingertips into a wound on his arm. The world around him shifted back to normal … just in time for him to see a long beam of fire soaring his way, aiming for his head.
Ducking, he let out a stream of hellfire from his palm as if it were a flamethrower. Jonas’s eyes widened—no doubt because the stream had the head of a snake. It slithered toward him fast, hissing loudly. Jonas tossed several balls of hellfire at it, but they had no effect.
“You motherfucking bitch!”
The pain in his mate’s voice snatched his attention. He looked and saw her foot was caught in a fissure in the ground and she was struggling to wrench it free. He used psychic hands to pull her to safety and—
Knox staggered as blazing pain lanced through his shoulder and skidded down his arm. Jonas, the bastard, had buried a fire beam in his shoulder. Grinding his teeth, Knox slowly pulled out the beam, hissing as it scraped against bone.
He slammed his gaze on Jonas, only then noticing that the bastard’s attention had moved to Harper. That was when Jonas slung a ball of hellfire at her. Wicked fast, Knox threw one of his own—the orb crashed into Jonas’s, knocking it off-course. The motherfucker had tried to hurt Harper. Now, his demon was no longer amused. No, it was pissed. And it wanted to have some fun of its own.
*
Icy psychic hands roughly snatched Harper’s hips and dragged her out of harm’s way. But it was only mere seconds later that the tentacle came at her again. Dizzy and uncoordinated, Harper couldn’t move fast enough to dodge the fucker. It wrapped around her yet again, squeezing hard this time—hard enough to cut off her breathing. And Harper decided she was done playing. She grabbed the tentacle, releasing the protective power tingling her fingertips—a power that rushed through Alethea all the way to her soul.
Alethea screamed, and the tentacles shrunk away, dumping Harper on the ground. Lifting her head and spitting out snow, Harper watched as a shaking Alethea dropped to her knees and then slumped to the ground, sobbing her little black heart out. Relishing the sight, Harper’s demon bared its teeth in a bloodthirsty smile.
“Bitch.” Splaying her fingers in the snow beneath her, Harper pushed to her feet and began tugging out more barbs—
“No! No! Stay the fuck away!”
Jonas’s panicked words made Harper’s attention snap to him. Blinking rapidly to clear her fuzzy vision, she saw that Knox was … well, no longer Knox. In his place was a figure of raging flames. The archdemon was having its fun. And—like the fire-snake on the ground—it was stalking Jonas. Unsurprisingly, the Prime’s eyes were wide with shock and horror. There was no mistaking what Knox was. Not now. And Jonas knew he didn’t have even the slightest chance of winning a battle against an archdemon. He was fucked.
Breathing hard, Harper watched in grim satisfaction as Jonas backed away, hurling orbs of hellfire that had no effect whatsoever on the archdemon. The dumb bastard then tripped over his sister, who was too caught up in her own pain to even notice. On his ass, he scooted backwards, only stopping when he felt the heat of the tri-colored flames behind him.
“Alethea, get up, run!” warned Jonas. The fucker really did love his sister. But not enough to try dragging her to safety. No, he left her curled up like a fetus.
The archdemon stiffly halted in front of him. It was impossible to know what it was thinking. It had no facial features—not even eyes—though she knew it saw everything.
Staring up at it, Jonas shook his head. “Don’t you—” His back bowed as he was wrenched from the floor by an unseen force and then slammed back on the ground hard enough to send a tremor through the earth. Then he was writhing. Thrashing. Face scrunched up in a terrible agony.
Crack.
A rib? His spine? She wasn’t quite sure. It was doing something to his insides. Something that caused another sickening crack. And another. And another. Yep, probably his ribs.
His back arched again, and he coughed up blood. It splattered on his chest and dripped down his chin. Not a pretty sight. Then his hands slapped on his head and he fisted his hair as he roared in pain. A roar that rose in volume when his leg snapped at an unnatural angle. She winced, but she felt no sympathy for him.
He gurgled, eyes bulging, and his hands flew to his neck in a panic. The archdemon was choking him. And as Jonas’s face turned crimson red and his eyes started to become bloodshot, she realized that—oh, fuck—it was going to kill him. Not part of the agenda.
Staggering toward the figure of flames, she said, “No. Drop him.”
The archdemon’s head slowly turned to face her, but he didn’t release Jonas. Unable to sense its frame of mind, she touched its psyche. Rage. Well, that wasn’t exactly surprising. “You can’t kill him.”
It just stared at her.
Her demon rolled its eyes and forced its way to the surface. “We want them to suffer,” it reminded the entity. “There are far worse things than death.”
Still, the archdemon didn’t do anything. And now Jonas was turning blue.
Knowing that her demon wouldn’t do much to calm the entity, Harper resurfaced. “Asher’s waiting for us. We need to get to our boy.”
A flaming hand reached out and feathered its inferno-hot fingers down her wounded cheek. That gentleness said a lot. It was pissed that she was hurt, but it wasn’t intoxicated on power or out of control—it could never have touched her like that if it was.
That was good. She could work with “pissed”. Drunk on power? That was a whole other story.
“I’m okay,” she told it. “I’ll feel a fuck of a lot better when I know these two motherfuckers are shackled in the Chamber that Knox told me about. You remember your playroom, right?”
The crazy fucker still didn’t respond.
“They need to suffer big time for what they would have done to Asher. So, let’s make sure they do. Yeah?”
The archdemon’s head stiffly turned back to face Jonas. And then the Prime sagged, hacking and heaving in air. The “snake” slithered around him, keeping him trapped.
The fire then began to peel away from Knox’s head, gradually lowering, but his eyes were black. The demon hadn’t retreated yet. It prowled toward her, face blank, taking stock of her wounds. “She will pay dearly for each bit of pain she inflicted on you,” it promised in a chilling, disembodied voice.
“Damn fucking straight she will.” Harper would see to that herself.
The demon stroked its fingertips down her throat. “I don’t like the smell of your blood. She will—”
Something snapped tight around her ankle and yanked, making her hit the ground hard. Tentacle. Then she was skidding along the earth toward Alethea, who was still curled up on the floor but had managed to—
The archdemon pyroported to Alethea, long flames flickering from its fingertips, and sliced out its hand. The flames cut right through the tentacle, hacking it clean off … which meant half her arm went along with it. The bitch screamed. Really, it was a scream like nothing Harper had ever heard before in her life. An ear-ringing, bloodcurdling, stomach-churning sound that echoed all around them. And fuck if Harper gave a shit.
Standing, Harper glanced at Jonas. He seemed to be clamping his lips together, as if to stop himself from shouting out anything that would gain him the archdemon’s attention.
Right then, said archdemon fisted his hand in Aleth
ea’s hair and yanked hard enough to pull her upper body off the floor. Obsidian eyes glittered at the she-demon, and Harper saw the lethal intent there. Honest to God, it was like dealing with a child with a one-track mind.
Harper rushed forward. “Don’t. She wants you to kill her. Don’t give her the easy death she’s looking for.”
Black eyes cut to Harper. “Nothing about her death will be easy.”
“But death would be an escape from the pain, right? You want her to have an escape? Because I sure don’t. Not for a long time. And think about it. What sounds scarier to the rest of the demon world—that we killed the people who targeted our son, or that we have them secured in your playroom where they’re tortured for our amusement?” Personally, Harper thought it would add to the “targeting Asher would be a humungous mistake” message.
The demon stared at Harper, unblinking. Then it ceremoniously dumped Alethea on the floor, but not before doing something to her mind that made her pass out.
Harper let out a long breath. “Can we get back to Asher now? Speaking of Asher … it would have been nice if you’d shared that he’s an Anubis.”
“If you had known the truth from the moment of his birth, you might have feared him. His demon would have sensed that fear and withdrawn from you. You needed to first see that he was primarily a child. A boy who also happened to be an Anubis.”
While she got the entity’s point … “I would never have seen him as anything other than my son.” But she couldn’t really expect the demon to understand that—not when it couldn’t experience love, let alone imagine the strength of parental love.
“His demon would never harm you,” it assured her.
“Just as mine would never harm him.”
The demon stroked its thumb along her jaw, and then it retreated. Knox gently pulled her to him and kissed her forehead. “The sight of you injured is pissing me off,” he said, tone soft with menace.
She leaned into him. “I’ll heal. First, we have to check on Asher, decide whether to let Drew live, and transfer Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum to the Chamber.”
“Yes, we do.” And Knox was looking forward to the latter. With a single thought, he made the flames of hell ease away. He’d stopped them from spreading beyond the circle, so their surroundings were still intact. Davis was standing with Noelle, who was holding Asher, while the sentinels guarded them.
Asher grinned at them, flashing his dimples and waving a hand that was holding Hound. “Ma!”
Crossing straight to him, Harper smiled and pulled him into her arms. “Hey, baby boy.” He frowned at the sight of her injuries, but she distracted him by blowing raspberries on his palm.
Levi frowned. “What’s with the snow?”
“We heard some kind of storm,” began Tanner, back in his human form and wearing clothes that Knox knew he’d handed to Davis before he shifted shape. “But we couldn’t see a thing because the flames were too high. Speaking of flames … ” Tanner gestured to the ones that were keeping Drew captive.
Knox turned to Harper. “Baby, any chance you can rein them back in?” They were called by Harper, so they wouldn’t answer to him. She took a deep calming breath, and the flames eased. Clarke had shifted back into his human form and was sitting on the ground, pale and sweating.
“Levi, keep an eye on Jonas and Alethea, would you?” Knox moved to stand in front of Clarke. The hellcat didn’t stand—possibly because he was naked, or possibly because he was too drained from fighting off the incorporeal. Maybe it was a little of both. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain why you were working with Alethea and Jonas.”
Clarke’s jaw hardened. “It wasn’t like that.” His gaze slid to Harper. “It wasn’t.”
“Then tell me what it was like,” she said.
“I can’t. I want to, but I can’t. That fucking practitioner put me under some kind of compulsion that binds me from being able to tell anyone anything about him, Alethea, or Jonas.”
Harper looked at Knox. “Is that true?”
“Let’s find out.” Knox plunged himself into Clarke’s mind. It took him only moments to confirm that … “He’s telling the truth. I’m going to break the compulsion, Clarke. It’s going to hurt.” To the hellcat’s credit, he bore the mental pain in silence. When it was over, he shuddered.
“Now tell us what you know,” said Harper.
The hellcat looked up at her. “I never worked with them, I swear. But I knew I’d fucked up and I needed to somehow make up for it. Not just because you didn’t deserve what I’d done, but because I’d hurt my sister and left her torn. So, when I was approached by a human without a scent who told me they could help me get revenge on Knox, I figured it was the incorporeal and I went along with it. The incorporeal led me to Charles, who insisted on the compulsion. I hadn’t expected that, and I really hadn’t expected to learn that Alethea was alive. I pretended to side with them.”
“Why did they want you?” Harper asked.
“They somehow knew about my ability to detect what breed of demon a person is,” replied Drew. “They thought I’d know what Thorne was. I lied and said he was a phoenix. Harper, I never intended to let them hurt you or your son. I figured I could help you somehow, and maybe redeem myself in the eyes of my sister.”
“When did you go to the house where she’d been staying?”
“A few days ago. Alethea and the practitioner took me there. She wanted me to see the cage; wanted me to know her plans to put you in a cage like that. I think she was testing me to see if it would piss me off—she didn’t quite trust that I’d let her kill you, even though I’d made out like I was more upset that you and I would never run Jolene’s lair together than I was by you being with someone else.
“I wanted to go to another practitioner and have them undo the compulsion, but Jonas had taken my cell phone, and they watched me too carefully. I can hear thoughts directed at me, but I can’t talk to someone telepathically. I had no way of asking for help or giving anyone a heads-up. I could only go along with their plan and hope I could step in to help you, which I did. I wasn’t working with them, Harper. I swear to fucking God, I wasn’t.”
Knox tutted at him. “You’re telling the truth, but not the entire truth. You’d wanted to redeem yourself, yes, but you’d also wanted to be Harper’s hero; the one who saved the fucking day. That’s why you didn’t contact someone the moment the incorporeal approached you.” Knowing that Knox had not only tortured him but robbed him of his memories had left Drew feeling weak and somewhat unmanned. This had been his attempt to prove to himself and others that he wasn’t weak.
“If I’d thought they’d insist on a binding spell, I would have done,” Drew insisted.
“Maybe, maybe not. I still very much doubt that Jolene will be happy with you. You broke her trust by staying instead of leaving for Cuba. But that’s between you and her. Before I take you to her, I need to remove some of your memories.” Clarke could not be allowed to remember that Asher was an Anubis or that Knox was an archdemon.
The hellcat ground his teeth. “Take the fucking memories. I owe it to Harper and Devon to fix my fuck-up.”
“You need to take some memories from us, too,” Davis guessed.
Knox looked at him. “I wish I didn’t.”
“Protecting Asher is important,” said Noelle. “We would never betray you by sharing the knowledge, but that doesn’t mean someone couldn’t somehow access our memories. If we don’t have the information, we can’t be used against you.”
“Thank you for understanding,” Harper said. “Now let’s get this done so we can get those two assholes to the Chamber.”
Nodding, Knox turned to Clarke. “You first.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Two weeks later
Walking into the living room, Harper came to an abrupt halt. “What the fuck happened here?”
The four sentinels, looking varying degrees of frazzled, all sighed in relief as she entered. Cushions, books, DVDs, and Harp
er’s knick-knacks were scattered around the room all over the hardwood floor. The lampshade was burned to a cinder, which explained the smell of smoke. Most notably, a ball of hellfire was hovering in midair.
Amidst all the chaos, Asher was sitting on the rug surrounded by his toys, Levi’s cell phone, Tanner’s car keys, Keenan’s wallet, and Larkin’s purse. He was also safely within his shield, humming.
Smoothing a hand down her raggedy jeans, Harper walked further into the room, high heels clicking on the floor—hobo or not, she was going to a party in heels. “I was gone, what, twenty minutes?”
“That’s all your son needs to cause utter mayhem,” said Tanner. “Basically, he decided it would be funny to pyroport stuff from the shelves into his little hands, and then he pyroported them in random places around the room. Once he got bored of that game, he started pyroporting our stuff right out of our pockets and adding them to his little collection over there on the rug.”
“When I tried to get them back,” Larkin cut in, “Asher playfully hurled a ball of hellfire at me. I dodged it, but it set the lampshade on fire. Of course, Asher thinks the whole thing is one big game, so he found it rather funny and saw no harm in throwing more balls of hellfire around the room. Levi’s been catching them mid-air with his telekinesis and putting them out, which Asher also found funny.”
Stifling a smile, Harper gave her son a stern look. “Asher.”
He smiled. “Ma!” And then he was engulfed in flames that pyroported him right into her arms. She caught him with an oof. Since mastering that skill, he disappeared frequently—freaking her the fuck out—and then she’d have to run around the house searching for him, totally frantic. She often found him in the strangest places, including on top of the fridge. Her heart would be in her throat every time. Thankfully, he couldn’t travel further than a few rooms away or he’d be off the estate every five minutes.
Harper gave the sentinels an apologetic look. “Sorry, guys, but it’s hard to be mad at something this cute.” Especially while he was wearing his little hobo suit, complete with the fake beard-scruff that Larkin had drawn on his chubby cheeks and chin.
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