Blaze (Dark in You 2)

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.