“Dead,” it confirmed. “They deserved it.”
“They did. You’re safe now,” he said once again, but the demon still didn’t appear at all appeased by that fact. Come back to me, Harper, he coaxed.
“They wanted to kill you.”
“But they didn’t.” He risked taking another step forward. “You stopped them.” His demon wanted Knox to give it control and let it speak to the entity. It was a good idea but, honestly, he didn’t trust his demon not to join in on the fun. “You need to calm the flames.”
Another fine tremor worked through the demon. “I like them.”
Fuck. It was only right then that Knox really understood how hard it must have been for Harper to bring him back when he’d been in the same state; how scared she must have felt that she wouldn’t be enough to tempt him and his demon away from the power and the rush. And for the first time in as long as he could remember, he found himself beset by self-doubt.
Harper, baby, you need to fight your demon and you need to fight her hard. I’m not sure I can do this on my own. He felt her mind brush his. It was a slow, drowsy touch. He guessed she was exhausted from trying to force her raging demon to retreat. If so, he’d have no help with this.
“You’ll destroy everything and everyone if you don’t calm the flames,” he told it.
“Yes, but then nothing would hurt her again.”
Which was clearly all the demon cared about while it was still so hung up on what had happened to Harper and too high on power. There would be no reasoning with the entity. His only real hope of easing those flames was if he got the demon to pull back and let Harper resurface. Easier said than done, of course.
He took another step forward, but he froze when the demon flapped its wings. Shit, he knew how fast and adept those wings were; it would be a nightmare to catch the demon – not to mention a sight that would attract human attention – if it flew off. “I need Harper right now.”
“They hurt her,” it rumbled, as if he just wasn’t getting the point. “Tied her down. Slapped her. Cut her with scissors. Sliced her open.”
Barely managing not to snarl at what had happened, he reminded it, “And you killed them. You protected her. She’s safe. You’re both safe. You don’t need the flames anymore.”
It blinked.
Feeling a little desperate now, he said, “I need her.” In more ways than he’d ever imagined it was possible to need someone.
The demon cocked its head.
“Let Harper come to me. I know you want her safe. She’s safe with me. You know that.” He slowly covered the small space between them. Just as slowly, he took a chance and reached out to curl a hand around its chin. “She’s tired. Don’t make her keep fighting you. Just let the power go. You don’t need it anymore. Trust me to keep her safe.”
For a moment, it did nothing. Then the entity did a slow blink, and he had glassy forest-green eyes staring back at him.
Thank fuck. He quickly looped an arm around Harper as the power left her system in a rush, causing her knees to buckle. She gave a drowsy moan. “Shush, baby, I got you.” Almost dizzy from relief, he lifted her up, careful of her injuries. She weakly curled her legs around his waist. “Good girl.”
Closing his eyes, he kissed her temple. He had her. She was alive. Injured but healing. His heart was still thundering, and his chest was still tight with fear. The demon inside him shot to the surface just long enough to rub its cheek against hers.
The moment his demon retreated, Knox turned and retraced his steps through a fire that was now beginning to ease. The flames were thinning out and lowering, though the heat was still a bitch. Walking out of the flames, he found his sentinels waiting, their expressions anxious. All four of them rushed forward.
“Is she all right?” asked Larkin, panicked. Her face tightened as she saw some of Harper’s wounds. “Fuck, what did the bastard do to her?”
Knox suspected that Crow, the son of a bitch, had intended to operate on her. “It looks like she fought him hard. She has some injuries, but nothing she won’t heal from.”
“The flames have eased,” Keenan pointed out.
So had the flames on her feathers. “Her emotions were feeding the fire. She’s unconscious now.” Which meant that the storm inside her was over, but it had left a fair amount of damage. Most of the salvage yard was gone, and the ground looked like a blackened, dry riverbed. It was also sprinkled with red ashes – residue of the flames of hell.
Knox tightened his hold on Harper. “Let’s get her home.”
He knew by the tensing of her shoulders that she was waking – finally. After Knox had brought her home, he’d carefully cleaned and checked out her wounds before giving her a quick shower. She’d been so wiped out that she hadn’t once stirred. He’d then put her to bed and lay beside her.
For the past six hours while she’d slept like a log, he’d stayed with her. Listened to her breathe. Watched the rise and fall of her chest, assuring himself that she was fine until the fear taunting him began to ebb away. It still lingered, but it didn’t have a tight hold on him anymore.
Now that she was finally awake, he wanted to hold her, taste her, and soothe her, but she couldn’t even look at him. He understood why, because he understood her. She didn’t like that she’d lost total control of her demon, and she was embarrassed that she’d been unable to fight it into submitting.
Knox brushed his thumb over her bruised cheek. The bruise was now yellow and fading fast. “Do you judge me for the times I’ve lost control?”
After a moment, she mumbled, “No.”
“Then don’t judge yourself.” But she still didn’t look at him. “Come on, let me see those eyes.” Finally, her lids flickered open. Shadowed gold eyes met his. He smiled. “Hey, baby.”
“My demon… it’s not usually like that.” She licked her lips. “It’s protective of me and it’s vicious and cold, but it doesn’t get a kick out of destruction. Earlier, it would have happily watched everything around it burn to the ground.” And it wasn’t feeling in the least bit apologetic about it, to Harper’s utter annoyance. It felt fully justified in its actions.
“Your demon was bloated on a power it’s never before tasted.” Knox tucked her hair behind her uninjured ear. The other was healing but would probably be sensitive. “It got a little carried away.”
She shot him an incredulous look. “Carried away?”
“I thought your demon handled it pretty well, all things considered,” he said, paraphrasing something she’d once said to him after he’d been the one to lose control. Her mouth kicked into a reluctant smile. “That’s my girl.” He kissed her, greedy for a long, thorough taste of his mate. He breathed her in, filling his lungs were her scent. Something in him settled, and his demon relaxed a little. “You scared me when you disappeared.”
“I was kind of scared too,” Harper admitted in a whisper, biting on her lower lip. She detested that those bastards had made her afraid.
“Why didn’t you answer my telepathic calls?”
“I couldn’t. It hurt whenever I tried.” The headache was thankfully long gone, so Harper reached out to touch his mind with hers, glad to feel no pain slicing through her head. “The bastard sucked so much psi-energy out of me that I couldn’t even use a compulsion on him.” Her stomach churned as she remembered the helplessness and terror that she’d felt as —
“Hey, come back to me,” said Knox, tracing the shell of her ear.
Snapping herself out of the memories, she took a deep breath. “I’m okay.”
Knox would be the judge of that. He rolled her onto her back and gently opened her towel. The blisters on her chest were gone and, as he danced his fingers over the unmarred skin, he found that it was petal-soft once more. He slid down her body to examine the healed slice on her stomach. Like the one on her temple, it was now a thin, pink line. “Crow was going to perform a hysterectomy on you, wasn’t he?”
Sensing his anger, she sifted her fingers through his hair. “Yes,
he saw it as a way of ‘buying time’ before he could get to you.”
Knox pressed a kiss to the pink line. “If he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him.” And he’d be sure to make it a long, slow and agonizing death.
“Delia walked in and interrupted him —”
Knox’s head snapped up. “Delia?”
“She wasn’t one of the Horsemen. She turned up at… where were we?” All she remembered was the trailer.
“A salvage yard. Tanner said Crow’s father used to work there.”
“That explains what she meant when she said Crow used to go there as a kid with his dad. How did you find me?”
“The Audi has several GPS trackers. Before you ask, no, I was not secretly keeping tabs on you. All my vehicles have trackers.”
Harper wasn’t entirely convinced, but since the trackers had led Knox to her, she had no intention of complaining. “Anyway, Delia walked in. Moments later, someone came up behind her.” Harper licked her lips, hating to say it. “It was Roan.” A growl rumbled out of Knox, so she stroked his hair again. “He was one of the Horsemen. He killed Delia. Shot her.” And Harper was still finding the whole thing a little surreal.
“He tried to kill you,” Knox guessed.
She nodded. “He wanted Crow to do it, but he refused. So Roan decided to take the matter into his own hands. Only Crow made the gun poof away – it was weird. And that was when Roan picked up the surgical scissors.”
Realization hit Knox. “That’s what happened to your ear.”
She nodded again. “He said Carla once did that to him. I think he talked Crow into hurting her. He called her twisted. Said both me and him were twisted too because we share her blood —”
“Not fucking true.” There was nothing at all twisted about Harper.
She snorted. “If you’d seen my demon at work last night, you might not be so sure. It was merciless.”
“It had every right to be, baby. They hurt you.” He kissed the healing wound again, tempted to go lower, but she was tired and needed care. “I don’t suppose Roan gave the names of the other Horsemen, did he?”
Harper shook her head. “He was just as Nora described. Cold. Envious. Greedy for power. And I never saw any of that in him before. I thought he was an asshole, but not someone who would plot to see you and me dead.” Or maybe she hadn’t wanted to see that potential in him.
Knox slid his arms underneath her back to hug her. “I hadn’t suspected him either. I sensed he was envious of the kind of social and preternatural power I had, and I knew he looked down on you in many ways. But even though I considered him a suspect, I hadn’t really thought it was him. I was leaning more toward Alethea.”
Hearing self-condemnation in his tone, she narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be mad at yourself for not seeing Roan in all his fucked-up glory. He was responsible for his own actions, just as Crow was. And we should probably consider that although Alethea wasn’t the one pulling Crow’s strings, it doesn’t mean she isn’t one of the Horsemen.”
That was the one thing that stopped the last bit of tension leaving Knox’s system: the knowledge that this wasn’t over. Two of the Horsemen were dead, but there were two more to find and destroy. He doubted such a thing would be easy, but it would be done – he wouldn’t accept anything less.
“We were right about one thing,” said Harper. “They want to know what you are so they’ll know how to kill you. They see you as the obstacle between them and the success of their plan.” She slid her fingers through his hair. “I won’t let them hurt or kill you. I’ll annihilate them if they try. Why are you looking at me like that again?”
“Like what?” he asked, unable to keep the smile out of his voice.
“Like I’m cutely deluded for being protective of you.”
He kissed his way up her body, pausing to nip at her pulse. “You’re not deluded, but you are cute.” Dancing his fingers along her collarbone, he said, “I’m going to cancel the event.”
“No, we’ll go ahead with it.”
That surprised him, but then his mate often did. He was used to it at this point. “Baby, you had a rough —”
“We’re going ahead with it,” she insisted. “If we were ever going to cancel the shindig, it would have been for personal reasons, not because of the fucking Horsemen.” She wouldn’t give them that much power over anything in her life.
“You still aren’t fully healed.”
She snorted. “The wounds will all be healed by the time I need to get ready, and we both know it.”
Yes, they did both know it. “You’re tired.” He could practically feel her exhaustion.
“Which I’d say is understandable, considering I expended a whole lot of psychic energy tonight. But I can take a few more hours to sleep it off. But only if you promise to wake me in time to get ready.”
He rested his forehead against hers. “A couple of months ago, you’d be doing a happy dance – at least in your head – if I said I’d cancel the event.”
“Because I didn’t realize how important this was to you at first. Now I do. And almost dying makes a girl realize a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Like celebrating an important event with your mate isn’t really all that awful, especially when he looks seriously hot in a suit.”
Chuckling, Knox brushed his mouth over hers. “All right, we’ll stick to the schedule.”
“And we’ll make an announcement about the Horsemen, warn the other two that they’ll be identified at some point, one way or another.”
He nodded. “We’ll incorporate the announcement into my speech, since that will be recorded and played around the Underground.” Then there was no way the Horsemen wouldn’t hear it.
“Sounds good.” She fisted a hand in the sheets as she forced herself to ask the question taunting her. “How did I call on the flames, Knox? I don’t get it. You said it yourself: I’m not built to handle your level of power.” She didn’t want to handle it. She didn’t like how it had practically drugged her demon.
He gently weaved his hand through her hair, rubbing the silky strands between the pads of his fingers. “I’ve spent hours puzzling over it.”
“And?”
“When did the flames appear? What happened at that moment?”
“I was a mess; I was pissed and scared. My demon took over and unleased my wings. They were on fire.” Which had never happened before.
That supported his theory – a theory he’d telepathically ran past Levi earlier, who agreed it was the most likely explanation. “Your wings share the same colors of the flames of hell – wings that didn’t appear until a little of my power poured into you. I’m an archdemon; that means I don’t just call on the flames; I am the flames. As such, you could say that your wings were born from the flames of hell, like I was.” And that meant they would come to her as they came to him.
Her brows flew up. “You mean that could happen again?” Oh the hell no. Her demon actually smiled, the freak.
“Yes, it could. I know you probably don’t like the idea of that because your demon’s loss of control unsettled you, but I’ll admit it brings me comfort to know you could call on them.” She had the ultimate weapon at her disposal.
“I didn’t do it intentionally.”
“I know, but I’ll teach you how to call them and how to send them away without even involving your demon in the process.” He kissed her again, comforting her this time. “Just like I taught you how to control your wings.”
“It was a good thing you made me practice so much. It meant I could call them easy, even when I was scared and drugged. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have escaped that rope. They burned right through it. Oh, about my demon… convincing it to retreat wasn’t at all easy. It was furious and blitzed on power, and it hadn’t wanted to give it up. You did good. No, not good. Amazing. Totally freaking amazing.”