“You have nowhere to go,” the demon told the two males as it slipped off the desk.
Crow’s eyes widened in fear and panic. “There’s no smoke. They’re the flames of hell.”
The demon smirked. “And now you are trapped, just as Harper was. For that, you will pay.”
Eyes wide, Roan swept out his hand, and the tool box flew at the demon’s head. It ducked, but the edge of the metal box clipped the demon’s temple hard enough to slice into flesh.
“That is something else you will pay for,” it told him.
“You don’t want to hurt me,” said Roan.
Oh, but it did. The demon gave an evil grin. “You cannot compel me.” Not right then, when the raw power it wielded over the flames was trickling through its veins; hot as hellfire, thick as syrup, bubbly as sparkling champagne. It sent sparks of electricity shooting to every nerve ending and filled the demon from head to toe, smoothing into every extremity.
The demon felt Harper reach for dominance. It ignored her. The demon would keep control. It would have vengeance. It would kill these people for daring to harm Harper.
It could compel its prey to surrender, but it didn’t want to defeat them that way. It wanted to fight them, to make them bleed, to show them it was far from helpless. Wanted them to be the ones who were trapped and afraid, knowing no help would come.
“If I’m dying, you’re dying too,” snarled Roan.
One item after another went flying at the demon. Furniture, tools, a sparkplug, a kettle, a toaster. Crow curled up against the kitchen cupboards, leaving Roan to fight the battle. All the while, the trailer creaked and shook as the flames ate at the walls.
The desk tipped up, smashing into the demon’s shoulder, sending pain radiating down its arm, but the demon didn’t move to stop Roan. It wanted him to see that no matter how powerful he was, he was also completely helpless right then. He was at the demon’s mercy… and it had no mercy.
Spotting its boot under the table, the demon snatched it and whipped out its blade. “You will bleed soon, just as I do.” The demon infused hellfire into the knife, enjoying the glint of fear in Roan’s eyes. Harper pushed for dominance again. The demon fought her easily while it was filled with so much power.
Roan hurled a succession of balls of hellfire – one, two, three, four. The demon ducked, dodged, stooped, and sidestepped, evading each one. The tray of surgical implements flew off the counter and at the demon’s face. As it batted them away, a fifth ball of hellfire hit its chest. Skin sizzled and blistered, but the adrenalin dimmed the pain.
Roan’s gaze darted around as he searched for something else to throw. The trailer no longer had walls or a ceiling and the flames had consumed most of the objects. All that was left was the fire-free patch that the three of them now stood on.
The demon bared its teeth in a feral smile. “You have nothing —” It squinted as a white unnatural light shined in its eyes. Crow rushed out of the light, scalpel ready. The demon slashed at his arm with the blade, making Crow stumble back in alarm. “Like to cut people, don’t you? Now you’ll feel the burn of my blade.” The demon plunged it into Crow’s gut. His eyes bulged and he stilled, looking at the blade with disbelief. Done with him, the demon called to the fire. A golden flame hooked around his neck and yanked him into the fire.
Roan’s demon rose to the fore with a growl and charged, scissors in hand. The she-demon wrestled them out of its hand, fisted its shirt, and slammed it against the broken desk. “An ear for an ear.” The she-demon cut into the lobe, enjoying its scream. “If it’s death you seek you may have it.”
The demon slung its prey into the fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Standing in front of the busted-open gates of the chain link fence that was capped with barbed wire, Larkin asked, “Why would he take her to an old salvage yard?”
Levi looked down at the guard dogs that had both been dealt a gunshot wound to the head, probably courtesy of Crow. “He could have simply come here because it’s local and isolated.”
“I think his dad used to work at a salvage yard,” said Tanner. “Maybe this was the one.”
Knox rolled back his shoulders; his muscles felt tight and cramped. “Maybe.” He didn’t give a flying fuck why Crow had taken Harper there. All he cared about was finding them, and he needed to do it fast. His chest was cold and tight with fear. That emotion was fueling the clawing, hissing, spitting rage in his gut.
His demon was fighting Knox for control. It wanted to be free to do what it did best. To hurt. To maim. To rage and destroy those who would dare take its mate from it.
Honestly, it was tempting. So fucking tempting to surrender control to his demon and let it demolish whatever stood between them and their mate. He didn’t care that this could be a trap or that someone could be trying to goad his demon into surfacing – he just wanted Harper. But what Knox didn’t want was for Crow to know they were there, and his inner demon wouldn’t be even the slightest bit discreet.
“Tanner, release your demon,” clipped Knox, voice guttural. “Find her.”
The moment they had the Audi’s location, Knox had pyroported there with Levi and Larkin – collecting his other two sentinels on the way. He needed the help of Tanner’s hellhound to track Harper, since the GPS signal could only give them the car’s general location. There were no better hunters than hellhounds.
As Tanner stripped and handed each piece of clothing to Keenan, Levi turned to Knox and said, “I don’t think Crow means to kill her. If that was what he wanted, he’d have done it by now.”
True, but if that was supposed to comfort Knox, it didn’t. Not even a little bit. “She’s still not responding to my calls,” Knox said between his teeth. His jaw ached from how hard he clenched it.
“Which suggests she could be unconscious or that he’s done to her what he did to Carla so that she can’t use telepathy,” said Levi. “But we know Harper is alive. Hang on to that.”
He was. It was the only thing keeping him and his demon stable. Or, at least, as stable as they could ever be in a situation like this.
“We also know from prior experience that you can’t keep a Wallis anywhere that they don’t want to be,” said Keenan, voice grim. He was still beating himself up about not checking that Tanner was in the driver’s seat, despite being assured by the other sentinels that they wouldn’t have thought to check either. But Knox wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deal with Keenan’s turmoil. His focus was purely on finding Harper.
Fully naked, Tanner asked, “Ready?” At Knox’s nod, the sentinel released his demon. Bones cracked and popped as he shifted shape. Hellhounds were much bigger and more muscular than normal wolves with coal-black fur and blood-red eyes. They were also fast, strong, vicious, and smelled of burning brimstone.
The hellhound shook its head and snorted, probably agitated by the strong scents of motor oil, dirt, grease, and rusted metal. It raked the ground with the claws of its front paw, making Knox think of a bull scraping its hooves on the floor.
“Find Harper,” Knox ordered, urgency in every syllable.
The hellhound snorted again and got moving. They stalked after the hound as it prowled along the dusty road that weaved through rows of cars, cabs, buses, and trucks. Even through the thickening shadows, Knox could see that most of the vehicles were rusted and dented. Some had shattered windshields while others were missing doors or had been stripped of the seats and front wheel.
Knox strained to hear voices, but the only sounds were that of glass crunching beneath their feet and the whistling breeze rattling open doors or raised hoods. “Where are they?” he growled, stepping over a stray sparkplug. “She’s got to be here fucking somewhere.” But all he could see ahead of him were more vehicles, stacks of tires, and a rusted forklift.
They kept on walking for what quickly began to feel like hours. With every moment that passed, his panic grew and his control started to fray around the edges. The longer she was with Crow, the
more likely it was that Knox wouldn’t get to her before Crow could kill her. He could be hurting her right now. Chest squeezing at the idea, Knox closed his eyes. The bastard would pay for whatever he did. And he’d pay in blood.
The hellhound came to an abrupt halt. Growled. And then headed east at a fast pace. Adrenalin shot through Knox as they trailed after the hellhound, ready to —
In the distance, a loud, banshee-like screech of fury split the air. Instinct sent Knox charging toward the sound, even as the ground began to shake beneath him, causing the debris at his feet to rattle. Then flames seemed to explode out of the ground bordering a trailer far ahead, making him and the sentinels jerk to a halt. They were high, ferocious, blinding… and all too familiar to Knox.
“The flames of hell,” Levi said in utter shock.
Keenan stumbled backwards, almost tripping over the hellhound. “Holy fuck.”
Larkin gaped. “Knox, what… I mean, did you —”
“I didn’t call them,” Knox told her, breath coming fast.
“Harper called them?” asked Levi.
Apparently so. And just how the fuck did that happen?
Later. He’d work that out later. Now, he needed to get to her. They rushed toward the fire, only stopping when the blistering heat emanating from it became too much for the sentinels to bear. He urged the flames to ease away, but they flickered only slightly. Frowning, he tried again. They still didn’t calm. Instead, they leapt, danced, swayed, and consumed whatever they touched.
Levi raised a hand to shield his reddening face from the searing heat. “Make them die down.”
“I can’t,” clipped Knox. “They won’t answer to me.”
Larkin’s brow pulled together. “Why?”
“Because they’re answering to Harper.” She was the one who’d somehow managed to conjure them and her emotions were, literally, feeding the fire. By the way the fire was raging, so was she.
It hissed. Popped. Spat. Crackled. Sizzled. Snapped. Heat waves shimmered in the air – air that now seemed heavy and thick. Thick with power.
“I have to get to her,” said Knox. He was the only one who could walk through the flames.
“The fire’s starting to spread,” warned Tanner, pulling on his clothes now that he’d shifted once more.
The sentinel was right. The ragged line of the flames moved slowly but steadily closer to them. Metal creaked and glass shattered. Vehicles toppled and crashed onto others. The scent of hot metal and burned rubber filled the air. Hell, the heat itself was melting the cars. It was a good thing the flames of hell didn’t operate like normal fire or there’d be several explosions going on around them, given how much gas was in the yard.
He tensed at what could have been the sound of a male crying out in pain, but Knox couldn’t be sure he’d truly heard it while the fire roared so loudly around them. “I’m going in,” said Knox.
Levi grabbed his arm. “Bury your anger, Knox. Those flames are wild and furious, which means she is too. A demon that out of control can be an extremely dangerous thing. Harper needs you to be calm right now.”
Well aware of that, Knox nodded. He had no chance of easing Harper’s anger if he wasn’t calm himself. And if he didn’t manage to calm her, the flames would keep on blazing and consuming whatever they touched. No pressure. “I’ll bring her back.”
Taking a deep breath, he walked through the shimmering waves of hot air and right into the vivid, glowing tri-colored flames. A scorching, prickling heat engulfed him as the flames lashed and whipped at his skin, but they didn’t scald him; they couldn’t.
The ground itself was so hot, he could feel the baking heat through the soles of his shoes as he walked deeper into the fire, searching for any sign of his mate. All he could see were melting cars and tires being swallowed by the fire. He stepped over a partially consumed forklift, glancing around while his demon frantically urged him to hurry and find her.
A male scream.
Knox whirled toward the sound, tracking it through the flames. He heard the very familiar sound of his mate’s voice, but it was her demon speaking.
“If it’s death you seek you may have it.”
Another male scream, this one closer, rang through the air.
Knox hastened his steps, edging his way toward the —
And there she was. Standing with her back to him on a fire-free patch of metal that was covered with a dirty carpet – all that was left of the trailer. Her wings were blazing and surrounded by a strange kind of faint magma aura.
He stepped out of the fire and up onto the carpet, making the metal base creak and rock slightly. “Harper?”
She slowly turned her head to glance over her shoulder, and pure black eyes bore into his. He went absolutely still. Her demon was in control, and that wasn’t good; not if the demon was as furious as the fire. A need for vengeance could be riding it hard, even if the threats were now nothing but ashes. And a demon in that state was almost as bad as a rogue.
It didn’t react to his presence. Didn’t say anything. Just stared at him through chillingly cold eyes, its expression completely blank. He wasn’t sure if it even recognized him. That would be bad, since he didn’t want to end up having to defend himself against his own mate. “Do you know who I am?”
The demon slowly turned to face him, and he sucked in a sharp breath. There was a shiny silver and black bruise on one side of her face, as if something big and hard had smashed into it. Blood was dripping from a thin, deep slash on her temple. The skin of her upper chest was raw, blistered, and peeling. There was a clump of blood so dark it was almost black crusted around her earlobe. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, blood was dripping from a slice just above her blood-soaked boy shorts. Son of a bitch.
His demon roared in his head and lunged to the surface, but Knox beat him back just in time. She needed a calm influence, not his demon. Still, it was hard to subdue the entity when he himself was boiling with the same ice-cold rage. “Baby… I should have got here sooner, I’m sorry.”
If the apology meant anything to the demon, it didn’t show it. Just continued to stare at him, face blank. A full-body tremor ran through its body – a jerky movement that made him think of a junkie. It was totally bloated on the power it was wielding over the flames. Knox could completely understand why. He knew how it felt for his own demon: energizing, intoxicating, a rush like no other. And very, very hard to come down from, especially for a demon in a rage. Shit.
Forcing his tone to stay smooth as he spoke over the roaring fire, he repeated, “Do you know who I am?”
It gave a slow nod.
Despite his relief, he didn’t cross the space between them. He wasn’t sure how his proximity would be received at that moment. Mate or not, the demon could be angry with him for not coming sooner and saving it from Crow. “You’re safe now.”
“They hurt her,” it told him in a disembodied voice that had a cutting edge to it. Incredibly protective of Harper, the demon was as mightily and righteously pissed as he’d expected.
Fuck, so was he – especially when he could see and smell her blood. But he put his own emotions on lockdown; this was about his mate now. Harper had once brought him back when his demon took over, and now he needed to do the same for her. He also needed to find out who “they” were. One was obviously Crow, but the other… he wasn’t sure.
“They can’t hurt her again,” said Knox, taking a slow and risky step forward. Thankfully, the demon didn’t warn him off.
“They would have killed her,” it added, hand twitching slightly.
“I know, but they’re gone.” No doubt consumed by the flames.