Chapter 1

Chapter One

FERN

PRESENT DAY

The truck bounced over potholes, and I gripped the steering wheel tighter. I wouldn’t be able to drive much farther. Pretty soon, I’d be forced to go on foot. The forest was oppressively dark, my dull headlights doing a shitty job of illuminating the horror show that was Oldwood Forest … or what was hiding in it.

The next pothole was so deep that my head almost hit the roof.

“Fuck.”

If I didn’t stop now, I’d get stuck, and I wouldn’t be able to drive back out. That wouldn’t be good, not at all.

The demons who lived in this part of the forest were always on the lookout for breeders. Females went missing all the time in Seventh Circle—the demon part of the city—and were brought out here. If they had no one in their lives who gave a fuck—like, for example, me—then no one went looking for them. Unfortunately, not all the demons who lived out here were idiots. They might not be able to pass as human, but they weren’t stupid. There was a thriving black market for orphaned demon females of breeding age for a reason.

Was I taking a huge risk coming out here? Fuck yes. But there was no way I was giving up or going home now. I had to protect myself. I wasn’t going to end up in another prison with a different jailor. Sadly, strolling through a forest full of sick and twisted demons was the only way to make sure that didn’t happen.

Pulling the truck over, I turned off the engine, and the cab was submerged in darkness.

Don’t freak out. Don’t do it. Breathe.

I fucking hated the dark. Hated it . And as soon as it closed in around me, my mind tried to fuck with me, throwing up memories—so vivid that I was sure I could hear that slow drip, that I could feel the coldness against my skin, that I could hear the screams. I bit my lip hard enough to break flesh, and the flash of pain chased the memories away. Forcing myself to keep breathing slow and steady, I sat still and utterly silent as I listened and let my eyes adjust to the pale moonlight.

You’ve got this. You can do this. You need to do this—

A groan from the back of the truck interrupted my little pep talk.

Time to move .

Quickly getting out, I bounded up onto the cargo bed and pulled the pouch of herbs from my pocket—a mix I’d created that was strong enough to take down an elephant. Speaking of the creeps who kidnapped and sold females, I crouched beside the bound demon, flailing against the bindings around his wrists and ankles.

He hissed, cursing me out. “That wasn’t very nice,” I said and pinched his nose closed. His eyes widened, and he started jerking and twisting. Climbing on his chest, I slid forward, using my thighs to keep his head still, and waited him out. Finally, he opened his mouth for a desperate breath. I quickly sprinkled my special tranquilizing mix onto the back of his tongue, and he gasped it right on down his throat. He coughed, and I snatched up the water bottle from my bag and poured some into his mouth. He gulped greedily to wash away the nasty shit.

Success .

I smirked. “Night-night, fuckface.”

His eyes flashed red, a growl tearing from him, and then he slumped. Out cold. Thankfully, before he could fully recover from the first dose I’d given him and use his powers to take me out.

Following this prick and slipping my sedative into his drink had been the easy part. Getting him out to the truck before he passed out had been a little trickier, but I’d gotten there in the end.

Jumping down from the cargo bed, I opened the tailgate, unfolded the tarp I’d thrown back here, and laid it on the ground. Then, grabbing the demon by his ankles, I hauled him off the back and onto the tarp with a thud. This prick wasn’t your average run-of-the-mill demon. He was powerful, strong, and high up on the food chain. If Rune caught me doing this, I’d be fucked. Lights out, all over for Fern—or worse, I’d be sent to Hell. Rune was in charge of the demons who’d been granted sanctuary and given permission to remain topside. There were rules, of course, and I was currently breaking a big one.

But that couldn’t be helped, and this asshole deserved what he was about to get.

As for why I’d chosen this particular demon? Well, his function, for me, was threefold. First, I’d seen him talking to a couple of demons who’d been hanging around my street, creeps who had been watching my store. This slimy fucker had sent breeder scouts to watch me. It was only a matter of time before they made their move, and I wasn’t going to just sit around and let that happen. No fucking way. So, I’d gotten in first.

Second, I needed an offering of value if this was going to work, and third, he was my ticket to get safely through this forest. With the stench of power rolling off this prick, along with the come-closer-and-die demon aggression seeping from his pores, even while unconscious, the others around here would stay the fuck away.

I’d estimated my success rate at about seventy to eighty-five percent. No matter how you looked at it, those were some pretty spectacular odds.

Far-off calls and cries echoed through the trees, and I shivered, but as long as whatever nasty breed of demon making those noises stayed where they were, everything would be okay. Grimacing, I got down on the tarp and rubbed up against the unconscious bastard so his scent mingled with mine. If any demon did come across me on my own, I’d smell as if I’d been taken by someone they wouldn’t want to mess with.

“Let’s go, fuckstick.” Grabbing the edge of the tarp, I trudged on down the path, heaving my comatose buddy with me.

As I walked, the sounds of branches cracking, of rustling, had me stopping to listen over my huffing and puffing. Yes, they were definitely closer, but my unconscious bud was obviously doing his job and stinking up the place because if he wasn’t, the others would already be here.

It was hard to see the landmarks I needed to find in the dark, but there was an overgrown track, and I was pretty sure I’d managed to stay on it.

Magnolia Thornheart—the witch I’d gotten the information from—was a regular at my store. She dabbled in dark magic, yes, but she’d seemed trustworthy enough, I guessed, and even warned me about several traps that I should look out for. Good thing too—there was a snare up ahead, one I could have easily missed if I hadn’t known to look. She’d definitely be getting a discount the next time she came by the store.

Gritting my teeth, I heaved the heavy demon off the track and around the snare, his head bouncing off rocks and fallen branches as we went. The scent of wood smoke finally reached me, and I searched the forest ahead. There was a glow in the distance. Almost there.

My fingers were cramping, and my thigh muscles and biceps were trembling by the time I stopped at the end of the path that led to a compact, storybook cottage—but not the cute kind, the kind the evil-child-eating witch lived in. The place had been all but swallowed by the forest. Trees butted up against its walls, and one seemed to have gone right through it, its branches forming a canopy over one side of the roof. Light shone from its windows, and where I stood, at the end of the path, was bracketed by two tall trees.

They were decorated with a variety of offerings that had been tied to their branches with twine. Bones with rotting flesh still hanging from them; demon skulls; jars filled with unknown, floating organs; one with pieces of fabric; another with fingernails and a larger one with a wad of matted hair in various shades.

There was only one way to get the witch’s attention and hopefully be granted admittance—blood. It told the crone who you truly were, and revealing who I was would either be a help or a hindrance. I had no idea what reception I’d get. I hoped the witch would listen and agree to help me, but she could just as easily send me away—or worse, I’d end up in her pot. From what I’d learned about the female, all three options had an equal percentage of probability.

A sixty-six percent chance of survival was not the best, but it wasn’t completely terrible either—at least compared to the alternative.

Turning on my phone’s flashlight, I rounded one of the trees at the top of the path and searched for the marking Magnolia had told me about. I spotted a knot midway up it, the color deeper in the center and worn smooth. Slipping my knife from my pocket, I pricked the tip of my finger right over the tiny scar I’d gotten when I was seven. Something in my chest tightened as I watched the blood bubble to the surface, then sent ice shooting down my spine. I shook off the feeling—along with the memory I tried to avoid whenever it surfaced—and pressed the tip of my finger against the knot.

Stepping back, I waited while nerves went manic in my belly. I didn’t know what I’d do if she turned me away. I snorted. Maybe you should be more worried about ending up in her pot.

The cottage door swung open, and I straightened. Not sure what to expect, I braced for anything. A very short female stepped out, stooped low, with wiry gray hair and wrinkled skin. She started down the steps, and a raven cawed, flying from the house, swooping around her several times before settling on her shoulder. As she drew closer, I felt her power. Her blue eyes traveled over me from head to foot and back again, her mouth clamped shut.

Finally, she was standing in front of me, the ward she’d surrounded her cottage with the only thing between us.

“Agatheena?”

Her eyes flashed red, and I let mine do the same. She snorted exactly like I had a short time ago.

“Go on then, child.” She held me trapped in that piercing gaze. “Say it.”

My mouth was dry, and my heart slammed in my chest, but I straightened my spine. “I go by Fern Honeycutt, but my birth name was Estelle Gannon. My father is Gerald Gannon, and my mother was Eleanor Burnside.” My birth name felt, gods, foreign on my tongue. I wasn’t her anymore, and I never wanted to be her again. Ever. “And I believe you are my great-grandmother.”

The raven let out another caw and bobbed up and down on her shoulder.

“Oh, yes, I’d know that tainted blood anywhere, but why are you darkening my door now?”

I bristled. Tainted blood. I huffed a laugh, even as stupid fucking hurt filled me. “Am I not even good enough for you, Agatheena? Will you send me away as well?”

“I send beings away due to character, not blood, and I say yours is tainted because it’s the same blood that runs through my veins. Some see it as bad or undesirable, but I’ve learned to see my mixed blood as an enhancement, a gift.” She looked at the prone demon behind me. “Is that for me then?”

I blinked down at her, stunned by her words. No one had ever called my contaminated DNA a gift.

“Speak, child,” Agatheena snapped.

“Yes, he’s an offering.”

She waved her hand, and I felt the hum of power drop between us. “Bring him in.”

Gathering up the ends of the tarp, I dragged him down the path, following her around the side of the cottage and into a small ramshackle shed. She held out her hand, and the demon lifted from the ground as if by invisible hands. He was spun upside down, and then a rope lashed out of nowhere and coiled around his ankles, yanking him higher and over a thick metal hook, suspending him from the low rafters.

The demon’s eyes snapped open, and he snarled and thrashed. Agatheena slashed her hand through the air again, and his mouth slammed shut. Then she kicked a bucket under him, grabbed a massive dirty knife from the scarred wooden bench beside her, and sliced his throat.

The demon jerked, his cries muffled behind his tightly pressed-together lips as blood gushed from his throat, over his face, through his hair, and into the bucket.

Agatheena walked out of the shed, and I stared, stunned, as the demon went limp.

When demons died, we turned to ash; nothing left. Agatheena had the ability to prevent that from happening though. Our organs held power, but due to the whole disintegrating-into-nothing thing, they were rare and highly sought after. Not just anyone could harvest them.

This had to be seriously lucrative for the old witch.

“Are you coming?” Agatheena said as she walked away.

I jolted out of my stupor and rushed after her as she rounded the cottage and followed her up the stairs. When she opened the door, the scent that flowed out was like nothing I’d ever smelled in my life. It wasn’t bad, but it was intense.

“Don’t touch anything,” she said and waved toward the kitchen. “Sit over there.”

I did as she’d said—I didn’t dare do anything else—and tried not to stare at all the weird shit she had hanging from the rafters and sitting on shelves. There was what you’d expect in a witch’s cottage—herbs, books, bottles of potions, and elixirs—but there were also shriveled limbs, dried entrails, skulls and other bones, and more organs floating around in jars.

Agatheena was preparing us tea by the looks of it, and her raven turned on her shoulder, facing me, his beady black eyes staring a hole through my head.

I avoided making eye contact. “What’s your raven’s name?”

“Dolores, and she’s an excellent judge of character.” Agatheena set a delicate floral teacup in front of me. “She likes you.”

“How can you tell?” I subtly sniffed the vapor drifting up from my cup. I knew herbs better than most. If she was attempting to sedate or poison me, I’d know.

“It’s safe.” She sat, studying me, and I could be wrong, but I thought there might be a look of approval in her eyes. “And if Dolores didn’t trust you, your eyeballs would already be in that jar over there.”

Yep, there was indeed a jar full of bloody eyeballs. “Well, I’m glad she likes me then.”

Agatheena chuckled. “You know herbs,” she said, not a question, and motioned to my tea.

Nope. She hadn’t missed the way I’d been scenting it.

“I do. I have my own store in Seventh Circle.”

Her gaze sharpened. “The need to be among herbs, to learn about them—that’s the witch in you, girl.”

A stab of hurt sliced through me. “The witch gene bypassed me almost entirely. I don’t have a familiar or any magical ability. That’s why I’m here actually. I was hoping you could help me.”

She noticed my fingers tapping against the table. “What kind of help?”

I quickly dropped my hand, but finished counting in my head. One, two, three, four. Four, three, two, one. “I’m being watched. Breeder scouts.” I’d been free from the hell my grandfather had dumped me in for five years, and I would turn myself to ash before I ended up at the mercy of another fucked-up monster.

“What about your family?” Her stare didn’t falter, but her eyes flashed red momentarily.

“My mother was murdered when I was very young, and then my father had me taken away. Apart from you, I have no family. I’m the perfect target. A lone female with no ties.”

Her fingers curled, tightening into a trembling fist. “I sensed Eleanor’s soul in the afterlife, but I could never reach her.” Her eyes flashed red again, but this time, they stayed that way. “It was as if someone was keeping her from me. Just like my Hazel. The coven—has to be—they bound their souls so I couldn’t reach them, even in death.”

Hazel was my grandmother and Agatheena’s daughter.

“Why? Why would they do that to you?”

Agatheena sipped her tea, and I could see her mind ticking over, as if she was deciding what she should tell me.

“Please.”

She blew out a breath and sat forward. “Because my mother dared to fall in love with the wrong male. As you know, her mate was a demon, but when her parents found out, they had him killed, then forced her to marry a widower—a coven elder who had too much money and no heirs. I’d been conceived before the marriage though, and when the coven realized what I was—that I was half demon—they told everyone my father had forced himself on my mother. They lied, and then they cast me out. It didn’t help that I was far stronger than them.” She took my hand and turned it over, searching the lines on my palm. “But you know exactly what that’s like, don’t you, Fern? Our stories are almost identical.”

Yes, eerily so. It was almost like history had repeated itself.

“Except for the bit about my father. Mine was a witch, and I can only guess that it was the demon DNA—passed down from you—that terrified him, which is why he got rid of me.”

Agatheena held my gaze, her glowing red eyes boring into me. “Not just any demon DNA runs through your veins, one of the most powerful and most feared. But that wasn’t the only reason they cast you aside, child.”

“What do you mean?”

“You say it was your father who cast you out?” she asked.

Anger—which I’d refused to let in for a very long time—slammed into me, and my eyes changed. They were glowing red, just like hers now. “With the help of my grandfather.”

“Who murdered your mother, Fern?”

My mouth went dry as the memory of that night flashed through my mind, as the terror I’d felt flooded me.

Agatheena kept hold of my hand when I tried to pull away, her grip far stronger than it should be.

“A demon named Grady.” I couldn’t suppress the shudder, but forced myself to share more when that wasn’t something I ever did. “That’s why I’m here. My freedom was taken from me. I …” I shook my head. “I was a child when I was handed over to a monster. I escaped, and I made sure they couldn’t come after me, but alone, powerless, I’m still vulnerable. I need to know how to protect myself, Agatheena. I refuse to be a victim again.” And seeing those breeder scout creeps around my store had brought home just how vulnerable I was.

Her grip on my hand tightened. “You are a target, great-granddaughter, because you are unique. Evil is drawn to you because of what you are. You are magnetic, you are special, and in the wrong hands, you are incredibly dangerous.”

I scoffed. “Dangerous? No. Despite my parents, I don’t have a magical bone in my body. My demon blood is dominant. I’m not a witch, and sadly, as far as demon powers go, I’m unremarkable. I’m definitely not dangerous.”

“You were lied to. You’re more than remarkable. You’re a threeling, Fern. Extremely rare and, yes, extremely powerful.”

She’d obviously lost it, living out here all on her own for the last fifty years.

“Perhaps coming here was a mistake.”

Her grip tightened again. “Your father was not the male your mother married. You are no Gannon; that coven is not yours, and it never was. Like my mother, her mate was an undesirable in the eyes of her coven.”

I straightened in my chair. “No … that’s not—”

“It’s the truth.”

“How do you know?”

“Your blood, child. My tree knows all. I know exactly who and what you are.”

Magnolia had told me about the tree. She’d told me what it could do. I didn’t think Agatheena was lying. She had no reason to.

“That child has her father’s eyes.”

The words filtered through my mind, pulled from the past, words I’d locked away, like a lot of things from that awful fucking night. The male I thought was my father had said it to my mother the night she was murdered, the night I’d been taken.

“If Gerald Gannon isn’t my father, who …” No, that was the wrong question. “What … was he?”

“You can’t work it out?”

Without thought, I swiped my tongue over my teeth, over the longer-than-normal canines I had. They were sharp as hell, but despite the name, I didn’t think my father was a shifter. Something coiled in my belly—a shameful part of me, urges I kept locked down, which I’d ignored but now couldn’t deny.

“Vampire.”

She grinned, flashing rows of sharp demon teeth. “No. I get why you’d think that though. No, child, you are a soul collector, a deal maker, but, yes, the breed is closely related to the vampire, which means they are blood drinkers. You’re a potent mix—witch from your mother, demon from my bloodline, and also one of the most powerful demon breeds there is from your father—so, no, you’re definitely not unremarkable. You are so much more than you think you are.”

My blood was rushing too fast through my veins. “Witches mate with others all the time—maybe not demon, not as often, or at least not always out in the open. But still, I can’t be the only one with mixed blood.”

“You’re right; you aren’t. There are many like you, but what makes you special, Fern, is that when your mother conceived you with her demon mate, you were one of three.”

What now? “No, that can’t be—”

“Stop interrupting me,” she said, a flash of fury in her eyes.

I forced myself to clamp my mouth shut when the urge to call bullshit was overwhelming, but again, why would she lie? Even if what she’d said seemed utterly insane, I wanted to hear what she had to say. I also wanted to get out of here in one piece.

“I might have been exiled, but I’ve kept tabs on my family,” she said. “Until you vanished, that is. Your mother mated in secret, and she conceived soon after, right before the coven found out about her mate.”

A cold blast hit me, making me shiver.

“They would’ve had to have murdered him, like my own father. A demon as powerful as that, he would’ve wiped out the entire coven before he let them take his female away from him. Your mother didn’t know she was with child though, and the pain of losing her mate was unbearable, enormous, so incredibly strong that it created violent magical and demonic power surges inside her. She was forced to lock them down, to hold it in, or risk exile. Your sisters didn’t survive it, but their powers, their magic, did, and with nowhere else to go, you absorbed them all.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “That can’t be true … it can’t be.”

“I don’t tell pork pies, child.”

Fear churned inside me. “But I don’t have any powers.”

“They’re untapped—that’s all. And for now, that’s what’s keeping you safe.”

“Safe? Without powers, I’m a sitting duck. I have no real way of protecting myself.”

“Is your store and your home warded?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “Good, because until I know more about the kind of power you have, it’s far more dangerous to set them free. Luckily, with all that powerful demon blood, you’re immortal. Just don’t lose your head, and you’ll be okay.”

I’d already figured out the immortal part for myself. A being couldn’t go through all I had and survive, but death wasn’t the worst that could happen to someone—I knew that firsthand. And everything else she’d told me? It definitely wasn’t the information I’d come here for.

I came here for help; now the ground under my feet felt even shakier than before. “What do I do?”

“No idea. Never thought I’d encounter a threeling. In this, my knowledge is limited. I’ll need to do some poking around. Come back this time next week, and maybe I’ll have something for you.” She stood.

My mind was in a whirl with everything I’d learned. “Thank you, Agatheena.”

“You can repay me by bringing me another offering,” she said, then shoved something into my hand. “Protection. Carry it when you move through the forest or when you leave the safety of your ward. It needs to have contact with your skin.”

She opened the door. Magic coiled around me tight, and then I was dragged out by invisible hands.

I all but flew down the path and was expelled from her property, tossed onto the ground.

Oof . I quickly got to my feet and brushed the dirt off my ass as I searched the trees around me.

A roar echoed through the forest close by. Agatheena said the charm she’d given me would keep me safe, but I wasn’t risking it, and I took off at a jog, heading back the way I’d come.