Embers (Dark in You 4)

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.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Two weeks later

Walking into the living room, Harper came to an abrupt halt. “What the fuck happened here?”

The four sentinels, looking varying degrees of frazzled, all sighed in relief as she entered. Cushions, books, DVDs, and Harp

er’s knick-knacks were scattered around the room all over the hardwood floor. The lampshade was burned to a cinder, which explained the smell of smoke. Most notably, a ball of hellfire was hovering in midair.

Amidst all the chaos, Asher was sitting on the rug surrounded by his toys, Levi’s cell phone, Tanner’s car keys, Keenan’s wallet, and Larkin’s purse. He was also safely within his shield, humming.

Smoothing a hand down her raggedy jeans, Harper walked further into the room, high heels clicking on the floor—hobo or not, she was going to a party in heels. “I was gone, what, twenty minutes?”

“That’s all your son needs to cause utter mayhem,” said Tanner. “Basically, he decided it would be funny to pyroport stuff from the shelves into his little hands, and then he pyroported them in random places around the room. Once he got bored of that game, he started pyroporting our stuff right out of our pockets and adding them to his little collection over there on the rug.”

“When I tried to get them back,” Larkin cut in, “Asher playfully hurled a ball of hellfire at me. I dodged it, but it set the lampshade on fire. Of course, Asher thinks the whole thing is one big game, so he found it rather funny and saw no harm in throwing more balls of hellfire around the room. Levi’s been catching them mid-air with his telekinesis and putting them out, which Asher also found funny.”

Stifling a smile, Harper gave her son a stern look. “Asher.”

He smiled. “Ma!” And then he was engulfed in flames that pyroported him right into her arms. She caught him with an oof. Since mastering that skill, he disappeared frequently—freaking her the fuck out—and then she’d have to run around the house searching for him, totally frantic. She often found him in the strangest places, including on top of the fridge. Her heart would be in her throat every time. Thankfully, he couldn’t travel further than a few rooms away or he’d be off the estate every five minutes.

Harper gave the sentinels an apologetic look. “Sorry, guys, but it’s hard to be mad at something this cute.” Especially while he was wearing his little hobo suit, complete with the fake beard-scruff that Larkin had drawn on his chubby cheeks and chin.