Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Asher looked at him with a delighted smile and clapped. “Da!”

Knox brushed his mind over Asher’s—it was a greeting and a reassurance. He didn’t dare go to him, though. Black shucks could kill with a single bite. Not that Asher seemed at all worried by its close proximity. On the contrary, he seemed pretty content. As for Harper … she didn’t appear so happy to see Knox. In fact, she was glaring at him hard.

This is your big plan?she clipped. Walk right into the line of fucking fire? Seriously, are you out of your everloving mind?

“Charles,” clipped Jonas.

A mere moment later, a band of dark magick surrounded Knox. Then, suddenly, he was inside a glass cube. No, not a cube. It was a large display box, much like the one that the incorporeal had spent God-knew-how-long trapped inside. Knox didn’t react other than to casually stuff his hands in his pockets.

His demon did nothing more than bare its teeth. Its anger was no longer hot and out of control. It was now vibrating with a cold fury that allowed the entity to think. It knew Knox’s plan and had confidence in it. Moreover, it had confidence in Asher’s demon; believed it would protect him.

Knox didn’t say a word as the siblings exchanged smug smirks, practically bouncing in delight. He’d purposely approached them from behind so that they’d have to turn their backs on Harper and Asher to look at him. Knox wanted their attention divided. Wanted to make it hard for them to keep tabs on him, Harper, and Asher at the same time.

Eyes bright, Alethea laughed and pointed a finger at Harper. “And you thought he couldn’t be caged.” She laughed again, turning to face Knox. “See, no one is omnipotent.”

Knox simply looked at her, bored. Her smugness faded. She seemed … disappointed. As if she’d expected panic and anger.

Alethea jutted out her chin, defensive. “It was easy enough to capture you once we discovered what you are.”

They know what I am?Knox asked Harper.

They seem to think they do.

Jonas tilted his head. “I must admit, I was surprised when Drew told me that you’re a phoenix. They are so few of them left. No more than a handful. But it makes sense. They’re strong, powerful, and dangerous. They’re also practically impossible to destroy, since they are reborn from their ashes over and over. But there are ways to kill them for good. And we know just how to make sure you’re not reborn this time.”

It didn’t surprise Knox whatsoever that they were still clueless as to what breed of demon he was. Still, he said nothing.

How tough is that damn box?Harper asked Knox.

It can’t keep me contained. It’s designed to keep aphoenix contained. I’m not a phoenix. He could pyroport out of it, no problem. Let them relax in the illusion that they’re safe, baby. The shuck and the hellcat will relax too and hang back a little, giving Asher space.Then I can pyroport to him and take him to Davis and Noelle. Levi and Tanner will deal with the hellcat and the shuck, and you and I can then take out these other motherfuckers.

I absolutely adore my part in your plan, but don’t wait too long to act. Alethea and Jonas plan to get a video of Asher being torn apart by the two beasts while we’re caged and forced to watch.

Bastards.His demon roared its fury, but it kept a grip on its control. Is there a reason the shuck keeps whining and acting odd?

If there is, I haven’t the faintest clue what it could be. Where’s Levi and Tanner?

They’re close.And they’d follow what orders Knox had given them.

A smirk spread across Alethea’s face as she tapped her nail on the glass box. “I’ll bet you’re surprised to learn that Jonas and I are Horsemen. I’ll bet you didn’t think I was smart enough to carry out such a plan. Wrong. Jonas and I have worked together every step of the way.” She slung a put-out look at Jonas, adding, “Except for the part where you tried getting an alliance with Lucifer and the use of an archdemon, of course. You’d failed to tell me about that.”

“Which I apologized for,” Jonas said through gritted teeth. “Let it go.”

She sniffed. “Fine. Let’s get on with this. I’ve been looking forward to the moment when Knox would be forced to watch his mate and child die.”

Harper glared at them. “You could really stand there while two beasts tore an innocent child to pieces?”

Pursing his lips, Jonas was quiet for a moment. Then he smiled and glanced at Harper over his shoulder. “Yes, I believe I can.”

“I guess it’s not like you haven’t killed a kid before,” Harper clipped, referring to whatever demonic child was sacrificed to free the incorporeal.

“No, it’s not,” Jonas freely admitted. “I first killed a child when I was seven. Cordell ordered it done. As I said, he was insane. Being without an anchor was too much for him.”

Harper’s face fell. “He forced you to kill other children?” She sounded unable to wrap her head around it.

“I can’t count the number of times I whipped or caned another child for ‘rebuking’ his advances or some imaginary slight.” Fury blazed in Jonas’s eyes. “That sick fuck liked children, you see. He would take in stray demons and their children; then he would kill the adults and keep the children for himself.”

“He had a household full of them,” added Alethea, voice flat, gaze focused inward. “He liked to hurt them. Abuse them. Most of all, he relished their fear.”

“If they bored him—and by bore him, I mean if they didn’t show the appropriate amount of fear when he hurt them—he would make one of the other children kill them.” Jonas swallowed. “His sentinels were of the same ilk as him, and so he sometimes shared us with them. Some were particularly brutal.”

Despite what they’d been through, Knox couldn’t find it in him to feel any sympathy for two people who were planning to sic two beasts on his son and then kill his mate.

Harper frowned. “You were initially stray demons?”

“Little history lesson,” said Jonas. “There was once a Prime by the name of Houston Steward—Knox will remember him. He was my father; Alethea’s father. He wasn’t extremely powerful, but he was strong. Good. Honorable. A true leader. But his lair was small, and larger lairs kept coming along, plucking the strongest members out of our lair. It got smaller and smaller, until it was too weak to stand on its own. The remaining demons were forced to become strays or join other lairs. Only those who were utterly loyal to my father stayed.”

“The other lairs were well-aware that ours was so frequently targeted,” added Alethea. “Some did try to help when he appealed to them for aid. Nora—she was Prime of Dario’s lair at the time—tried. Isla’s old Prime, Rhea, also tried; Isla was actually one of her sentinels at the time, so she did what she could at Rhea’s command. But did the other Primes offer to help him? No.” Her upper lip curled. “They were happy to take in those who fled the sinking ship.”

Jonas placed a supportive hand on her shoulder. “It wasn’t until the death toll got too high that the other Primes acted. Our father was dead by then. The other Primes didn’t care about that. They didn’t care about the lives that were lost. They only stepped in because those deaths came close to attracting human attention,” he said bitterly.

“Our mother fled with us.” Alethea’s eyes dulled with pain. “Cordell took us in, killed her, and made our lives a living hell. We had another sibling. Isaac was only three.”

Jonas let out a shaky breath. “He was so small and frail. His body couldn’t take Cordell’s brutal ways. He died of internal injuries. And all that could have been avoided if the other Primes had just united to stand with our father. Instead, they turned a blind eye.” He glared at Knox. “You turned a blind eye. If you had stood with my father, the others would have left him alone out of blind terror.”

“You’re not being realistic,” said Knox, bluntly. “Either that or you aren’t fully aware of the truth.”

Alethea’s hands balled up into fists. “We know the truth.”

“Then you know that your father aimed to build an army and declare war.” He noticed the way both siblings stiffened, but Knox went on, “He approached demons from many lairs and tried persuading them to join his side and be an ‘inside man’ for him, much like you did with Roan.”

Houston had even tried it with Knox’s demons. Loyal to the bone, they’d come to Knox about it. He’d warned Houston that if he attempted such a thing again, Knox would put him through a world of pain. Houston hadn’t bothered him after that.

“The Primes that targeted your father didn’t do so merely because his lair was small,” said Knox. “They did it because he was trying to turn their own demons against them. He’d even succeeded with some and ordered them to kill certain members of the lairs—often the anchors of the Primes or sentinels. Such a thing would never go ignored. I’m not sure who led you to believe he was good and honorable, but that isn’t the truth.”

“Then why would Nora and Rhea have stood at his side?” Alethea challenged, red-faced, eyes blazing.

“He had strong alliances with them. The rest of the Primes, including me, suspected that Nora and Rhea had agreed to band with him to form an army, but we couldn’t be sure, so no action was taken against them. Your father brought that devastation upon himself. His family, however, didn’t deserve to suffer for it. It’s regretful that you did—”

“Regretful?” Alethea sneered. “Don’t pretend to feel compassion. It’s not an emotion you’re capable of. What you are very capable of doing is manipulating others, and that’s exactly what you’re trying to do to us right now. You’re feeding us lies, hoping to shake our faith in our father. It won’t work.”

Yeah, Knox could see clearly enough that they wouldn’t believe him. “No one knew Cordell was abusing children. Not until after he’d turned rogue.”

“Probably not,” said Jonas, face hard. “But I strongly doubt they would have intervened even if they had known. Nora and Rhea would have, but no one else would have given a damn.”

They were wrong. Generally, Primes didn’t interfere in the business of other lairs unless their actions attracted human attention, but Knox would never have overlooked children being abused. Still, he didn’t say as much. The siblings would only think he was trying to placate them.

“And now I’m done talking.” Jonas turned to Charles. “Get your iPhone out and be ready to start recording.”

Knox, if you plan to do something, you need to—

The shuck dipped, coiled to spring, and growled long and low in its throat. The noise made everybody stiffen. Except for Asher. Knox’s heart would have skipped a beat in panic, but it didn’t for the exact same reason that Jonas, Alethea, and Charles exchanged confused looks. The shuck wasn’t growling at Asher; it was growling at them.

“Grant, stop pissing around,” Jonas snapped.

The shuck barked and snapped its teeth so hard Knox was surprised they didn’t crack. The hellcat rounded Asher and sidled up to the shuck with a hiss of warning at Jonas, as if it also planned to protect Asher.

It was the perfect moment for Knox to pyroport to his son and get him to safety, but his demon ushered him to remain still. To watch. To have faith in Asher and his own demon. Fuck if Knox would stay right where he was while his son was in danger, but then he froze as his demon did the unexpected. It finally told him what breed of demon Asher was.

Not a sphinx. Not an archdemon. Not a hybrid. But a breed that had qualities of the two.

Knox, do something,Harper urged.

Knox met her eyes and echoed words he’d heard her earlier say to Alethea. I won’t have to.

Just then, Asher’s face blanked and his eyes bled to black as his demon surfaced. It opened the palm of its little hand. Narrowed its eyes. And then the shuck—lightning-fucking-fast—lunged at the practitioner with a roar. It knocked him flat and ravaged him with teeth and claws. Charles screamed in agony, but it wasn’t just the shuck causing that pain. No, the practitioner was blurring around the edges. Like he was splitting. And then he did. His body sagged to the floor, eyes wide open, and his soul whooshed over to Asher and seemed to sink into his open palm.

Looking at his mate’s face, Knox watched as shock, dread, and realization slammed into her. There was only one breed of demon that could call to souls that way. A rare breed. A feared breed. One that tended to remain in the abyss of hell.

Jonas shook his head. “No. No, he’s a sphinx. Sphinxes cannot harvest and deliver souls to hell.”

Anubis.The soft whisper came from Harper.

Yes, he’s an Anubis, said Knox. It fit. Like sphinxes, they were of Egyptian descent. But instead of walking the Earth, they dwelled in the depths of hell and served it faithfully … just as archdemons did. Asher had a mother who could touch souls and a father who could kill as easily as he could breathe. Anubis demons could call to souls and deliver them to hell just as effortlessly as they could call to objects around them. They could also kill a person without even touching them, much like Knox could.

What’s more, Anubis demons also drew and communicated with living death omens such as black cats, crows, owls … and black shucks.

Breaths coming short and fast, Alethea bit out, “No. I am not dying today.”

Jonas shot two balls of hellfire at the shuck and telekinetically sent it careering into a tree just as Harper’s cage abruptly went up in tri-colored flames that began to quickly eat through the iron bars.

The incorporeal surged out of Charles’s body and flew at the hellcat just as the beast was leaping at Alethea, causing it to topple on the floor and whimper as it fought the incorporeal’s attempt to possess it.

“Die, you little bastard!” Alethea shot a ball of hellfire at Asher, who let out a wave of gold energy that dissolved the orb and knocked her flat on her back.

Levi and Tanner skidded out of the trees and went straight to Asher protectively just as Knox pyroported out of the box and moved to stand behind Jonas. Trusting Harper and his sentinels to deal with the hellcat and shuck, Knox snapped his hand around Jonas’s throat, baring his teeth. “Really, Jonas, how stupid can two people be?” Knox tossed him at a thick tree. Of course, Knox could have snapped his neck and killed him instantly, but he didn’t want him dead. No, he had much more interesting plans for Jonas and his bitch of a sister.

Levi, Tanner—stay with Asher,Knox ordered. The hellcat and the shuck tried to protect Asher, but I don’t trust them. Don’t let them near him or allow them to escape.

Struggling to his feet, Jonas threw an orb of hellfire at Knox, who sharply side-stepped it. Grabbing Alethea’s hand, Jonas dragged her toward the trees. Both tossed more balls of hellfire as they ran.

Neatly avoiding the orbs, Knox asked, “And where is it you think you’re going?”

*

Harper stiffened as the ground tremored. Mere seconds later the air buzzed, pulsed, and thickened with a power that purred against her skin. It was a power that lived inside Knox, and he was apparently setting it free. The sheer, raw force of it stung her eyes, squeezed her chest, made her teeth rattle and caused her ears to ring.

Striking, ten-foot high flames erupted out of the ground in front of Jonas and Alethea, forcing them to skid to a halt. Cursing loudly, they changed direction and fled. A jagged line of red, gold, and black flames devoured the undergrowth as they raced past the motherfuckers and cut off their escape. Harper’s demon grinned.

Branches snapped, leaves crackled, and trees groaned as the flames consumed them while quickly forming a circle around the siblings and Knox. He wasn’t just trapping them, thought Harper. He was toying with them. And now she couldn’t see shit.

Asher looked up at her. His demon had now retreated. Good. She kissed Asher’s head. “I’ll be just a minute, baby.”

There was a loud, feline whimper. Harper turned just in time to see a whirl of hazy vapor erupt out of the hellcat, which it had obviously failed to possess. And she knew it would flee. Knew it would thrust itself into some animal and hightail it out of there. Not a fucking chance.

She called to the radiant flames that were consuming the last of her cage. A pretty red one snatched the incorporeal out of the air and curled around it. The haze squirmed and twisted, attempting to escape, but the flame tossed it into the fire. There. Done. Which was anticlimactic, since she would have liked to torture it a little first, but she had no way of containing it. Besides, she was much more interested in hurting the fucking dolphin.

The hellcat staggered to its feet and looked at her, eyes unreadable. Taking a leaf out of Knox’s book, she directed the crackling flames to form a circle around the beast, imprisoning it until she could figure out what the fuck to do with it.

“The shuck’s dead,” Levi told her. “Little bastard tried to rip my throat out.” Which meant that Asher didn’t have control over such creatures for long. God, he was an Anubis. Later … she’d think about all that later.

Harper gave Levi a thankful nod. Looking from him to Tanner, she said, “Stay with Asher.” There was something else she needed to take care of—or someone.

She headed right for the large circle of flames. They roared, crackled, hissed, and spat. The air shimmered with the waves of heat. It was a horrendous heat that seared her skin but, as always, caused her no harm—not even when she walked right through the flames like they weren’t even there, making Alethea’s mouth drop open in shock.

Harper sidled up to Knox, eyes on the siblings. “I don’t know why they look so shocked that their plan failed,” she said to him. “I mean, I did warn them. Why do the bad guys never listen to me?”

Knox shrugged. “No idea, baby.”

“You won’t find me easy to kill,” growled Jonas.

Knox blinked. “Why ever would you think that I intend to kill you?”

Jonas seemed thrown by that question, but then he scoffed. “Don’t expect me to believe you will allow us to live.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Knox told him. “Even a long, painful death would be merciful, considering all you’ve done. And I’ve never been merciful, have I?”

“Oh, Jolene will want her shot at you, too,” Harper told the siblings. “And my uncle Richie, Heidi’s dad. Oh yeah, he’ll want some quality time with you both. Hey, Knox, we don’t have to take these fuckers straight to the Chamber, do we? I don’t want to kill the bitch, but I do intend to kick her skanky fucking ass. It’s been a long time coming.”

Torturing her would be fun, sure, but it wouldn’t be enough. Harper needed the bitch to feel defeated. Needed her fear. Not fear of pain that Harper would inflict, but fear of Harper herself. She also needed to vent every bit of the helplessness she’d felt when they’d kept her separated from her son.

“No, we don’t have to take them straight away,” replied Knox. He liked the idea of toying with his prey for a while. “There’s no harm in you and I having a little fun first, baby.”

“Excellent. Why don’t you—”

Alethea stomped her foot like a kid having a tantrum, which would have been funny if the ground beneath Harper’s feet didn’t suddenly give away. Harper threw out her arms, swaying. A crack spiderwebbed along the ground in front of her and Knox, who grabbed her arm and pulled her backwards as the cracks widened. Her body shook, and her teeth clattered as tremors bucked the earth. The earthquake seemed contained within the circle of flames, as only the trees inside the area swayed and cracked.

Knox raised a brow at Alethea. “You don’t think a few cracks in the ground will truly be enough to keep us away from you, do you?”

The ground beneath their feet settled, and Alethea narrowed her eyes. A strange haze then rippled the air, blurring objects and muting colors. The trees began swaying again, but there was no earthquake this time. Instead, a harsh wind built around them, tossing Harper’s ponytail, flapping her clothes, and sending leaves skittering along the ground.

She planted her feet wide, standing firm against the biting, buffeting wind. She had to squint and raise a hand to her face to guard her eyes. It howled and moaned as it rushed around them. Trees creaked, branches splintered, and loose leaves hit her face and arms—it was truly surprising the wind hadn’t uprooted any of the trees.

“Lower the flames!” shouted Alethea, wind whipping her hair into her face. But, of course, Knox didn’t.

The wind went from cold to glacial as snowflakes whirled around them. The blades of icy wind sliced at Harper’s skin just as the flakes pelted her hard enough to sting. Within moments, a carpet of snow began to build on the ground and weigh down branches. Harper had to admit that the raw power of it was impressive.

“The cold won’t put out the flames, Alethea!” Knox yelled over the sound of the whistling wind. A wind that began to ease, lowering the onslaught of snow until the blizzard finally stopped.

Their once-green surroundings were now almost completely white, and Harper honestly felt like she was in freaking Narnia or something. I’ll take care of this bitch. You concentrate on Jonas.

Trusting that Knox could deal with the asshole alone, Harper put the two of them out of her mind. In that moment, no one else existed but her and the bitch in front of her. Harper smirked. Oh, she was going to enjoy this. It had been a long time coming. “There’s nowhere to go, dolphin,” she taunted in a little singsong voice.

“No one plays with me like I’m prey,” Alethea spat, glaring at Harper with utter hatred. Then the weirdest fucking thing happened. Black cables shot out of Alethea’s sides. No, not cables, Harper realized, as she spotted the octopus-like suckers. Tentacles. Worse, they were barbed tentacles.

Harper whipped her stiletto knife out of her boot, infused it with hellfire, and braced herself. The tentacle lashed at her like a whip. She sliced at it, making it jerk back as Alethea hissed in pain.

Two tentacles came at her this time. Harper ducked, avoiding one. But the other wrapped around her waist and lifted her from the ground, contracting around her body like a snake. The suckers felt like rough sandpaper, and they scoured their way through cloth and skin, drawing blood. Worse, the barbs lodged themselves in her arms and sides.

With a war cry worthy of a highlander, Harper stabbed the tentacle hard over and over. Alethea let out a cry of her own, though it seemed to be a mix of pain and fury. The tentacle threw Harper at the ground, which earned her a mouthful of snow. Spitting it out, Harper pushed to her feet and faced the dolphin. And she noticed something … odd. There were stab wounds on the dolphin’s arms … as if each wound that Harper had inflicted on the tentacles had somehow transferred to Alethea’s limbs. Maybe the appendages were linked somehow due to the tentacles functioning much as an extra set of arms—Harper didn’t particularly understand it. Didn’t care to. But she did like knowing that the more injuries she delivered onto the tentacles, the more hurt Alethea would be.

So each time one of the tentacles tried belting, flaying, or grabbing her, Harper slashed and stabbed and sliced at them. The hellfire ate at the flesh of Alethea’s arms, and each screech of pain made Harper’s inner demon laugh.

At the same time, Harper tried digging the barbs out of her skin, but there were some she couldn’t quite reach. It wasn’t until she found herself feeling strangely weak and lethargic that she realized that—fuck a duck—the barbs had released some kind of drug in her system. If she wasn’t powerful and anchored by Knox, they might have knocked her on her ass long ago.

Swaying, vision blurring, Harper couldn’t brace herself for the next attack. A tentacle struck her hard, sending her flying through the air. The breath gusted out of her lungs as she hit a tree hard and then fell to the snow. Oh, this bitch needed a few of those barbs lodged in her rectum.

Snatching her knife from the depression in the snow, Harper charged at Alethea on unsteady feet. She stumbled to a halt as her foot got caught in something. It was a crack in the ground, she realized. Fuck. She struggled to pull herself free. Couldn’t. A tentacle lashed her face, scraping strips of skin away. “You motherfucking bitch!”

*

As his mate focused her attention on Alethea, Knox locked his on Jonas. The male kept glancing around, as if hoping a gap would appear in the flames surrounding them. “There will be no escaping this, Jonas. You’ll have to face me. Or do you prefer letting your sister fight your battles for you?” he taunted. The male’s eyes narrowed to slits and—

Knox blinked, suddenly finding himself stood in a boardroom with his sentinels and the other Primes. It wasn’t real, he knew. It was an illusion. But he didn’t know how the fuck to break out of it and—

Red-hot pain slammed into his chest, burning and sizzling his flesh, and Knox was once more in the rainforest. He didn’t need to look to know he’d been hit with a ball of hellfire. Fucking asshole. With a snarl, he conjured a lethal orb and launched it at Jonas.

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 Alethea’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.”