by Sarah Piper
I needed to say the words that would finally make him understand what he meant to me whether he was ready to hear them or not.
But the space around me had turned cold, and by the time I found the courage to open my eyes, Ronan was gone.
Thirty-Five
Gray
I wake up in my meadow.
Sophie’s there in the distance again, the same place where I last saw her, only this time she’s naked. Her skin is marred with runes—not just across her chest, like in the evidence photos, but all over her body. Each one pulses with fiery red light.
"Sophie?" I get to my feet and run toward her, but the closer I get, the further away she feels. I continue to chase her, running until my body burns with exhaustion.
But the trees are closing in. I just can’t catch her.
“Tell me what to do!" I scream. “Tell me who did this to you!”
Sophie finally stops running and turns to face me, a frown marring her face. “I think you already know, Rayanne.”
“What? What do I know? I can't—”
A branch snaps in the black forest around the clearing, startling us both.
“You should go,” Sophie says. “It’s not safe for you here.”
I try to reach for her hands, but she’s already out of bounds, vanishing into the mist beyond.
I hear the snap again, closer this time, and whirl around to face my assailant. At first, I see nothing but mist and shadow, but eventually a dark shape emerges.
A great canine beast with glowing red eyes looms before me.
His fur is coal-black, bloody and matted in parts, torn away in others. Cracked yellow ribs poke through a festering wound on one side of his body, but if he’s in pain, he doesn’t show it. Those glowing, wide-set eyes burn like smoldering embers in an otherwise empty skull.
Beneath an elongated snout, the creature opens his mouth, revealing two rows of razor-sharp teeth, dripping with black blood and rotten flesh. The sound that erupts from that black cave is beyond primal, as if it were tortured out of him by the devil himself. Every hair on my arms stands on end.
Something else crunches in the forest behind me, and the massive creature before me springs to its hind legs and lunges, two massive paws crashing into my chest. The force knocks me to the ground, and the beast pins me with monstrous paws, his jagged claws piercing my flesh.
Desperate for a rock or a stick, I claw at the ground around me, but there’s only soft dirt and dead flower petals, the scent of rotting lavender filling my nostrils.
I’m bleeding out, which is total bullshit. I’m a witch, my closest friends are demons and a vampire and a wolf, Death himself is practically stalking me… You’d think someone could figure out how to get me out of this mess. Yet here I am, lying in a pool of my own blood, pinned to the dirt by a gruesome hell-beast in serious need of a mercy kill—not to mention a doggie breath mint.
I don’t want to die here. Not in the place of my magic—a place I once held sacred. Not without saying goodbye to the ones I love.
"Please," I whisper, but there’s no one to hear me, no one to save me from the beast. The thing won’t look at me, but its ghostly jaws snap above my face, foul breath and blood and rot raining down on my skin.
There’s nothing left to do but scream.
The crash of a wooden door against the wall jolted me out of the dream, and then Ronan was at my side, hauling me out from under the beast’s powerful haunches.
Only… it wasn't a beast. It was a blanket. And I was no longer in my grove, but hunkered down on my bedroom floor, moonlight streaming through the windows, casting everything in an eerie blue glow.
The bedroom door hung half off its hinges.
Ronan’s body curved around me, shielding me from the invisible assailant. His skin was hot, his muscles tightly bunched and ready to pounce.
“What happened?" he demanded, jerking his head around to scan the empty room. “Where is he?”
I disentangled myself from the cage of his arms, and we both stood up, peering into the shadows. Bed, dresser, bookshelf, a chair that served as a clothes rack. Nothing out of the ordinary.
“It was… just a nightmare,” I breathed, though my skin was still pebbled with goosebumps. And my T-shirt was…
We both noticed it at the same time, looking down in sick horror. The once yellow fabric was torn and bloody, sticking to my abdomen in dark, wet patches.
“A nightmare with claws?" Ronan grabbed the bottom edge of the shirt, slowly lifting it to reveal three thin slashes across my abdomen. “Jesus.”
What the fuck?
I pulled the shirt back down, trying not to wince. “It doesn’t hurt that bad.”
Ronan wasn’t even listening. His eyes were black as night.
He stalked out into the hallway, tension and anger rolling off him in waves as he yanked open the linen closet door and dug around for the first aid kid.
“Bathroom,” he said. “Come on.”
I sat on the edge of the tub with my shirt pulled up, trying to describe the beast from my dream as Ronan patched me up. The gouges weren’t actually that deep, but they stung like a bitch, and when he pressed the gauze to my skin, I sighed in relief.
“I’m okay,” I said, trying to reassure him. But Ronan was in his own world, quickly losing himself inside his own silent rage. “Ronan, I said I’m—”
“Stay inside,” he ordered, snapping the first aid kit shut. “Don’t open the door for anyone but Asher.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
“No one but Asher, Gray.” He shoved the first aid kit back into the closet and stomped back into the living room, jamming his feet into his boots. Without another word, he wrenched open the front door, and then he was gone, storming out into the endless dark of Blackmoon Bay.
I didn’t even have time to be shocked. Minutes later, a motorcycle rumbled to a stop out front, and I peeked out the window to see Asher dismounting and sauntering up my path, looking for all the world like the prodigal son returning home from some epic carnal conquest.
When I opened the door, he was standing on the porch, helmet in one hand, a paper bag in another. His hair was matted from the helmet, but unfortunately it didn’t dull his infuriating good looks.
“Whiskey or tequila?” He held up the bag, sea-blue eyes flashing in the moonlight, grinning that maddening grin of his. “Pick your poison, Cupcake. ‘Cause you and me? We’re in for a long night.”
Thirty-Six
Ronan
I hated the fucking desert. Felt too much like hell, which was probably what Sebastian liked about it.
Well, that and the hookers.
“You look hungry, baby.” A dark-haired woman with fake tits and pointed red nails ran one of her talons down my chest, hooking a finger in my belt loop. “I can take care of that for you. Fill you up until you’re more than satisfied.”
“I’m good, thanks.” I removed her hand from my pants and sidestepped her, stalking over to the office’s floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Vegas strip. Beyond the glittering lights of the city, the wind tore through the dark desert, but I didn’t feel it up here on the forty-second floor.
Not for the first time, I wondered how long it would take for nature to reclaim this place, bury it all under an ocean of sand and time.
I closed my eyes, pressing my forehead against the glass.
Sebastian loved making me wait. Making me sweat.
I’d been here twenty minutes already. Turned down three of his favorite women. Ignored the mahogany bar set up in his office.
I was about to throw a chair through the windows and fuck up his ten-million-dollar view when the bastard finally strolled in.
He was a scrawny fuck, with thinning gray hair he slicked back over a head shaped like a potato, a greasy gray goatee trying hard to cover his pockmarked skin. Dressed in a three-piece suit and dripping with more gold than the Federal Reserve, the man looked every bit the casino boss he fancied himself.
His accent, though? That shit was peak Colonel Sanders right there.
“Ronan Vacarro,” he drawled, shooing the woman out and shutting the door in her face. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Gray was attacked by hell hounds last night,” I said. After wasting my fucking time all night, the Prince of Hell wasn’t getting the pleasure of small talk. “I want to know why.”
Sebastian’s mustache twitched. “Attacked? Impossible. She—”
I slammed my fists against his desk, splintering the polished wood. “She woke up screaming and bloody. Her shirt was slashed across the middle. And she described your precious pets to a fucking T. So don’t stroll in here and tell me what’s possible.”
He raised an eyebrow, but showed no other reaction to my outburst.
I hated his mind games. He beat me every time.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked, heading for his bar.
“No.”
He grabbed a glass decanter and poured two drinks anyway, passing one to me. “Have a drink, boy. It’ll calm your nerves.”
I took the glass, set it on a filing cabinet behind me.
Sebastian ignored the slight.
Settling into the leather executive chair behind his now-demolished desk, he sipped the bourbon, nodding his appreciation. Shit probably cost more than this whole building was worth, knowing his flashy tastes.
“My hounds are trained to protect my investments,” he said, waving a hand in the air as if my fears were just minor annoyances fucking up his otherwise perfect night. “If she got hurt, she brought that on herself.”
I leaned back against the windows, arms folded over my chest to prevent myself from reaching over and choking the shit out of him. “Do you actually believe the bullshit you’re spewing?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Unlike the rest of you, hounds don’t go rogue. They don’t let their feelings cloud their judgement. They don’t even have judgment. I say jump, and you know what they say?”
I rolled my eyes. “How high?”
“No. They don’t say a damn thing because they’re too busy following orders.”
“So you’re telling me there’s another threat?”
“The beasts wouldn’t be there otherwise.”
I considered this. The hound had attacked Gray—or protected her, depending on whose story you believed—in her magic place. I didn’t know the exact mechanics, but my understanding from other witches who’d accessed magic that way over the years was that a being could only manifest in another witch’s magical realm if that being shared a deeply personal or spiritual connection to the witch, and had the ability to perform a magical working to make the connection. They also needed something that contained the witch’s DNA, like blood or hair.
For that reason, most of the witches I’d known in the past had been very careful about properly disposing of things like hair from the shower drain or fingernail clippings or anything else that could’ve been used in dark spellwork against them. The practice had fallen out of favor after most of the covens were forced underground. I didn’t know any witches today that still followed it.
“Do you have any idea what’s hunting her?” I asked.
“Many things are hunting her, boy. Always have been, always will be. Why do you think she’s so valuable to me?”
“You don’t believe in that prophecy bullshit.”
Sebastian took another sip, then stroked his goatee. “Doesn’t matter. Other people do. And as long as people believe she’s packing that kind of mojo, they’ll hunt her. Everyone wants power, Ronan.”
“Like you?”
“Well, I have power. I’m simply preventing it from falling into the wrong hands. Not to mention carrying out my end of a binding contract.”
“Gray doesn’t even know it exists.” I shoved a hand through my hair, knowing the argument was pointless, but trying again anyway. “If I could tell her the truth, maybe she’d have a shot at protecting herself.”
“You know the rules, oathbound.”
Yeah, I knew the rules. Memorized them. Every contract, every soul, every demonic order may as well have been tattooed to the inside of my eyelids. Didn’t make them go down any easier.
“Break the contract,” I pushed. A risk, sure. But what choice did I have? I couldn’t just stand around with my dick in my hand while Gray’s eternal future went up in smoke over some bullshit deal she had nothing to do with.
Sebastian rose from his chair, crossing back to the bar in search of the ice bucket. “How long have you been in this business, Ronan?”
“Long enough to know there’s always a loophole.”
“Not this time.” He dropped a few cubes into his glass, then topped it off with more booze. “Here’s the problem as I see it, son. You’re allowing your emotions to cloud your reasoning, and those emotions are confusing you on a very important point: You’re not human.”
The comment wasn’t surprising, but it still stung. “I was.”
Sebastian frowned, deepening the pits in his cheeks. “This again? Ronan, you really should see someone about these issues. There comes a time in every man’s life when he must stop blaming his adult problems on a shitty childhood. After hundreds of years, I’d expect you to reach that conclusion on your own.”
I was smart enough not to take that particular bait.
“There is no loophole,” he said again. “Make me a better offer, and we’ll talk, but there’s no loophole.”
“Fine. You want a life? Take mine.”
“I already own your ass.” He tipped his glass back, polishing off the drink. When he lowered his glass again, bourbon dripped from his shitty goatee. “Lighten up, boy. The contract isn’t all bad—it offers her certain protections. She’ll be my responsibility soon enough, and you can move on to a fresh new deal. Help me get through some of this backlog.”
“You’re assuming she’ll die soon.”
“Sources tell me she’s getting closer every day.”
I felt my eyes go black, my rational mind shutting down, my body preparing to lunge. I will tear out your throat, Prince...
Sebastian must’ve sensed my intentions, because when he looked at me again, his eyes were glowing red.
A silent fucking threat that got the job done every time.
He was the boss after all. The master.
“Now, if that’s all, I have other pressing matters to attend, like ordering a new desk and sending you the bill.” He opened the door, dismissing me as easily as he’d dismissed the woman.
“My best to Gray,” he said as I walked out, his demeanor as calm and cool as a desert oasis. “Oh, and Ronan?”
I turned to look at him over my shoulder, already knowing what was coming next. He’d said it every fucking time we parted ways. Two centuries of that shit?
No wonder I had issues.
Sebastian smiled, his eyes glinting with the sick pleasure he took in lording his eternal hold over me. “Don’t forget your place, boy.”
Thirty-Seven
Asher
Ronan’s witch was everything I hated in a woman.
Total pain in the ass. Too smart for her own good. Gorgeous as hell. And a hundred and fifty percent off fucking limits.
Hands on her hips, she squared off with me in the living room, refusing to give an inch. “Do you know where Ronan went?"
I let my gaze roam over her curves, down to the bloody slashes in her shirt.
Jesus.
My fists tightened, nails digging into my palms. No wonder Ronan sounded so blitzed on the phone. Get here, he’d said. Fucking now.
I pointed at her shirt. “I suspect he's having a chat with whatever did that.”
She folded her arms across her midsection. “That was a nightmare.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself, Cupcake.”
I had no idea what the hell happened. All I’d managed to get out of Ronan was that she’d been attacked in her sleep, probably by a hellhound.
Ig
noring me, Gray turned away and stalked down the hallway. When she came back, she was wearing a baggy, ugly-ass Seattle Seahawks sweatshirt, hiding everything woman about her.
Made me miss that pink-and-white getup she’d had on in the park that day. The one that’d made her look like a cupcake.
Good enough to lick off all the frosting.
“So are you just going to stand there staring at me like an idiot all night?” she snapped.
“Would you like that, Cupcake?”
She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Hmm. Is this the part where you tell me how much of a real man you are, and bait me into begging you for something?”
“Is that a challenge?” I asked.
“Is that a yes?”
“Mmm.” Made my dick hard just thinking about it, but… Nope. Bad idea. Terrible. The worst. “Your boy Ronan would lock my ass in a devil’s trap faster than you could say abracadabra, little witch.”
Her cheeks flamed, and she stormed off into the kitchen, giving me no choice but to follow.
Reaching up into a cupboard over the sink, she pulled down a couple of shot glasses, then set them down on the table, gesturing for me to sit.
I hung my helmet off the back of the chair and pulled the booze out of the bag.
“Hungry?” she asked. “I’ve got some leftover chicken fajitas from El Sarape if you’re interested.”
“Yeah?” My stomach rumbled, and I smiled up at her, first real one all night. “Sure, sounds good. Thank you.”
“You want me to zap it?”
“Nah. Cold is just fine.”
She got out a plate, set it all up for me.
Taking the chair across from me, she said, “He’s not my boy, you know. Ronan and I are… We’re just… We’ve known each other a really long time.”
“Yeah?”
