I was burning alive from the inside out. The slicer was killing me.
I needed to drop it.
If I dropped it, the pain would stop.
Then I heard a grunt from where Noah and the demon were struggling. The demon still had Noah pinned to the ground. He lowered his knife further, the sharp edge of it against Noah’s neck. Droplets of blood formed around it.
Noah’s blood.
Shifters were strong, and they had the power to heal themselves. But they weren’t invincible. Noah was pushing back at the demon to stop him from lowering the knife further. They were locked in a standstill. But if the demon sliced the knife through Noah’s neck, Noah would die.
I refused to let that happen. The slicer was burning me alive, but I wouldn’t let it win.
Hadn’t Noah and Sage said that if I had any sort of “ability,” it was pure stubbornness?
I needed to push through. Quickly—before I collapsed from the pain, and before the demon lowered that knife through Noah’s neck.
So I ran. I ran toward the demon, even though it felt like my raw, blistering skin was peeling away with every movement. Like my body was going to crack apart and break into pieces.
I got closer, and closer, until I was standing right behind the demon.
Noah’s eyes widened when he saw me.
The demon’s back was toward me, and he was so involved in his power struggle with Noah that he was oblivious to my presence.
The pain was so intense that spots clouded my vision, but I forced myself to focus. I had one chance to run the slicer through the demon’s heart. I couldn’t mess up.
The magic of the slicer—the same magic that was burning me alive—let it cut through muscle and bone like butter. So I didn’t have to worry about the demon’s ribcage or spine getting in the way. I just needed to aim in the right spot. If I missed the demon’s heart, or if I didn’t slam the slicer down hard enough, that was it. I’d lose my element of surprise and there would be no second chances.
But I knew how to use a knife. Noah had taught me during our training. And while I might not be strong, I had my body weight to work with.
Hopefully that would be enough. I just needed to bear through the fiery pain for long enough to see it through.
I could do it. I’d gotten this far—I wasn’t giving up now.
So I raised the knife in the air, putting the entire force of my weight behind it as I slammed it slightly left of the demon’s spine. It cut through his flesh easily. I buried the blade in deep, as far as it could go, until only the hilt remained.
The demon turned to ash in a second. Since he’d been pinning Noah to the ground, I saw Noah through the dust of the demon’s remains.
Noah’s warm, brown eyes were the last things I saw before I dropped the slicer, toppling over and blacking out completely.
39
Noah
“Raven!” I screamed her name and reached for her, catching her in my arms before she hit the concrete.
Fear ripped through my heart as I looked down at her. Her skin was red and blistered, like she’d just walked through the fires of Hell. And no matter how many times I said her name, she was unresponsive.
I would have thought she was dead if I couldn’t hear her beating heart. It was weak, but it was there. Thank God.
I needed to heal her.
Luckily, I was prepared for this. Raven acted tough, but as a human, she was more fragile than she knew.
Since she’d joined the hunt, I’d secretly been carrying around healing potion in case she needed it. My weapons belt didn’t leave much space for potions—it could hold the teleporting potion I’d used against Azazel, plus one other.
With Raven tagging along, using the other spot for healing potion had been a no brainer.
I didn’t want to set Raven down. But to give her the potion, I had to. So as gently as possible, I laid her down on the ground beside me. She didn’t move or make a sound—she was out completely.
It was probably for the best. Being unconscious stopped her from feeling any pain. And judging from the severity of her burns, she would have been in a lot of pain.
I opened the pocket of my weapon belt and brought out the plastic vial full of light yellow liquid. But I cursed myself as I looked down at it.
Raven wouldn’t be able to drink the potion, since she was unconscious.
I couldn’t even get mad at myself for not bringing a potion pod, because a pod wouldn’t have been enough to heal her injuries. Pods were the easiest way to deliver potions, but they weren’t as strong. Drinking potions was ideal, since potions worked best from inside the body. Which was why I’d been carrying around the vial of healing potion.
But there was one other way to deliver potions. The method commonly used on strong, unwilling supernaturals.
Injecting.
I didn’t have any needles with me. But I did have two tranquilizer darts full of the anti-teleportation potion for greater demons.
I could work with that.
I pulled out one of the darts and pushed down on the syringe, squirting the light purple potion onto the ground. Once the dart was empty, I uncapped the vial, dipped the needle inside, and pulled on the syringe to fill it up. I worked slowly and methodically, trying to get as much of the yellow potion into the dart as possible.
As I worked, I couldn’t get over the shock at what Raven had done. She’d wielded the slicer herself. The first time she’d tried to hold the slicer—back at the pool house—she hadn’t been able to touch it because of the heat coming off of it.
Her current condition showed why.
She hadn’t been able to touch the slicer because the magic in heavenly weapons was too powerful for humans to handle.
She should have bolted out of the alley and left me to battle the demon myself.
Why hadn’t she run when I’d wanted her to? I used the imprint bond.
I supposed I was right that while I’d imprinted on Raven, she hadn’t imprinted back. It explained why I’d been able to sense her desires through the imprint bond, but she hadn’t been able to sense mine.
A wave of guilt overwhelmed me. I was responsible for Raven. I was the one who was supposed to keep her safe.
Yet, she’d risked her life for me.
She shouldn’t have had to do that. That demon was stronger than any other I’d ever encountered—besides Azazel, of course—but that was no excuse. I was a trained fighter. I should have been able to overpower him.
I would have been able to overpower him… if he hadn’t thrown that potion pod at me that had prevented me from shifting.
I’d heard of a spell that prevented shifters from shifting—like the one the rougarou had on the handcuffs when they’d captured us in New Orleans. It was a rare, dark magic spell. Only a witch as strong as the ones in the vampire kingdoms could cast it. All shifters had heard legends of such a spell, but those handcuffs were the first time I’d come across one.
A potion that stopped shifters from shifting was unheard of. It shouldn’t exist.
Suddenly, someone appeared in front of me, nearly interrupting my concentration as I finished filling up the needle.
Sage.
My need to help Raven had been so all consuming that I’d tuned out Sage fighting that strange shifter on the other side of the alley.
The shifter with the demonic red eyes.
I glanced at where they’d been fighting. The shifter was dead. I wasn’t surprised—Sage was a tough fighter. Her brother had been training her to protect herself since before she could walk.
But despite the shifter’s red eyes, it hadn’t disappeared like the demons. That was an annoyance, but not the end of the world. We’d just have to make a call to the local witches so they could send a crew to deal with the body.
We’d do that after Raven was better, of course. I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything until Raven was better.
“Noah?” Sage said my name as she kneeled down beside me, looking
at Raven’s burned skin in horror. “What happened?”
“I’ll fill you in later,” I said. “After she’s healed.”
I pricked the dart full of healing potion into Raven’s arm and pushed down on the syringe, releasing the potion into her body. This wasn’t an exact science—I didn’t have to get it into a vein or anything. All that mattered was that the potion got inside of her body. From there, the magic would do its work and return Raven to the fiery, stubborn girl I knew and loved.
Once the dart was empty, I tossed it to the side and pulled Raven back into my arms.
I caressed her face, waiting for the red to fade from her skin—for the burns to return to normal.
“Come on.” I rubbed the spot where I’d pricked her arm with the dart, as if that would help the potion circulate faster. “Get better.” I repeated my desire for her to get better over and over again in my head, hoping to connect to the imprint bond and will her to heal. The connection I shared with her might not have worked when I’d wanted her to run from the alley, but I needed it to work this time.
Nothing happened.
My chest felt hollow, and it hurt to breathe.
It should have started working by now.
“We need more healing potion,” I said. “It must not have been enough.”
“Noah.” Sage placed her hand gently on my arm. “I’m so sorry. You know healing potion doesn’t work if—”
“Stop.” I glared at her, cutting her off before she could continue. Because I had a pretty good feeling about what she was going to say.
Healing potion doesn’t work if the wounds are fatal.
But I could still hear Raven’s heartbeat. It was weaker than usual, but it was there. Yes, her skin was badly burned, but the healing potion should have been able to heal a surface level injury like that.
Unless… no one knew what happened when a human held a heavenly weapon for so long, let alone used it to kill a demon. What if her skin wasn’t all that was burned?
What if her insides were burned, too?
It would explain why the healing potion wasn’t working.
Just thinking about the possibility made me feel like I was crumbling to pieces.
This couldn’t be the end. I knew I hadn’t wanted to tell Raven about the imprint—I’d given Sage a lot of excuses about why that was, but none of those reasons were true.
The truth was that I hadn’t wanted to tell Raven about the imprint because I feared she hadn’t imprinted back. My life so far had been a series of disappointments. Women tended to see me as a guy who was good for a bit of fun in the moment, but not for long term. They always had someone else out there—a soul mate who was the perfect match for them to spend their lives with.
Someone who wasn’t me.
I didn’t think I could handle another disappointment like that. Especially not from someone who ignited my emotions as much as Raven.
The truth was that I was falling in love with Raven, and it absolutely terrified me.
Now, holding her dying body, I regretted my decision not to tell her about the imprint more than ever. Because while I knew it was unlikely… what if she had imprinted back?
I’d only know if I was honest with her. So I swore to the angels up in Heaven—if Raven survived this, I’d tell her everything. If she didn’t return my feelings, so be it. At least I’d know I tried.
With that decision, I shifted back into focus. Because sitting here sulking wasn’t going to save Raven’s life. If she was going to live, I needed to get with the program and take action to make that happen.
“Run and get the car from the hotel,” I told Sage, quickly switching gears into focus mode. “Drive it back here and pick us up. I’ll carry Raven out of this alley and wait for you on the street.”
With Sage’s supernatural speed, I imagined it should take her a few minutes, tops. I’d nearly told her to find the closest car on the street and hotwire it, but if the police got on our tails, it would waste precious time we didn’t have.
“Why?” she asked. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going back to the local witches in Brentwood,” I said. “And they’re going to save Raven—even if they have to use the darkest magic in their arsenal to do it.”
40
Raven
I was back in the cell—the same cell from the nightmare I’d had the first night I’d stayed with Noah in the pool house. The walls were made of rock, and the floor was dirt.
The cell was part of a cave. A cave transformed into some kind of underground prison.
At least, it seemed like I was underground, from the lack of windows and the condensation on the rock walls.
I wasn’t alone. Well, I was alone in the cell, but there were other cells nearby, and two of them were occupied. I recognized the occupants from my previous dream. The chubby, homely woman in the cell next to me stared down at her tray of food. Only bars separated our cells, as if whoever built this place was too lazy to build actual walls. She absently stirred her bowl of oatmeal, staring at the glass of water beside it. Her eyes were empty—as if all the life had been sucked from her soul.
The beautiful woman in the sparkly clubbing outfit still occupied the cell across from mine. Her dress was covered with so much dirt and grime that it had lost its sparkle. She sat hunched down on the floor, leaning against the wall with her hands splayed out beside her. Her lips were stained red, a few drops of it on her chin.
Next to her was the bloodied body of a dead squirrel.
Had she been eating the squirrel?
“What are you staring at?” She sneered. “Does my lunch look better to you than yours?”
I glanced at my lunch—it was on a tray to my side. Oatmeal and a glass of water. Well, I guessed the bowl had once been full of oatmeal, since that was what was the lady next to me had. My bowl was licked clean.
Before leaving for Europe, oatmeal had been one of my go-to breakfasts. It was easy to make and healthy.
Since getting back home, I hadn’t touched it. Just the sight of it made my stomach swirl.
Suddenly, the pieces started to fit into place. Because when I was gone, I hadn’t been in Europe. The rougarou had told me that my memories had been erased and replaced. They didn’t know where I’d been. But the memories had to be somewhere in my mind, buried beneath the surface and trying to claw their way out.
The last time I’d had this dream, I’d thought it was just that—a dream.
Now that I was back here, and now that I knew my trip to Europe had never happened, I was starting to see this vision for what it truly was.
A memory.
All of this was real. It had actually happened.
Could I control what I did here? Or was I just an onlooker to my memories, unable to participate in them?
There was only one way to find out.
“Why are we here?” I asked the girl across from me—the one who had been eating the raw squirrel. “Who locked us up here?”
Good. I could interact with the dream… or vision… or memory. Whatever it was, I could control my actions while here.
“Seriously?” The girl rolled her eyes. “Did Geneva slip some memory potion into your oatmeal today?”
“Geneva…” I repeated the name. It sounded so familiar.
A picture of what Geneva looked like was on the edge of my mind. I tried to reach for it, but it remained fuzzy.
Why couldn’t I remember who she was?
“Stop getting distracted, Raven.” The woman from the cell next to me spoke up. Her voice was harsh and creepy, and she stared at me with wide, alert eyes, like she was a ghost in a horror movie. “Your subconscious brought you here—to this exact moment—for a reason. Watch. Listen. Learn. Your life depends on it.”
The alertness vanished from her eyes, and she turned away from me to continue staring blankly at her glass of water.
Then she reached for it, dumped the water onto the ground, and threw the glass against the rock wall behi
nd her.
It shattered, the shards falling to the ground.
“Susan!” I screamed her name. The words came out of my mouth so easily that I realized it was something I’d actually said when this was all happening—not something I was controlling now. “What are you doing? You can’t waste your water like that. You need it.”
“I’m done.” She walked over to the pieces of glass and picked one up—a shard so sharp that it glimmered in the little light that we had down here. “I doubt we’ll ever be let out of here. Even if we are, I don’t want to go back. Not now that I know what monsters are out there. So I’m getting myself out of this hellhole. Judge me all you want, but it won’t be long until you’ll want to do the same.”
“What are you talking about?” Horror filled me down to my bones. “What are you going to do?”
She stared and me pityingly and smiled. “I’m getting myself out of here,” she said. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
Before I could plead with her to stop, she brought the glass down to her wrist and dragged it across her skin. Blood poured out of the wound faster than I thought possible. She must have been running on pure adrenaline, because she transferred the glass to her injured hand and repeated the same thing on her other wrist, digging in just as deep.
She dropped the shard and slid down to the ground, balancing her arms on her knees as she stared at the blood seeping out of her wrists. The blood dripped down along her legs, collecting in a puddle on the ground.
I screamed and ran to the bars at the front of my cell. “Geneva!” I yelled, since I knew she was still in there. She always came to collect our dirty dishes—and to collect our blood—after we finished our daily meal. “We need help! Susan needs help! You need to come back! Now!”
The girl across from me also ran to the front of her cell and was gripping the bars. She pulled at them so hard it was a miracle they didn’t rip right off.
But she wasn’t screaming for help. No—she’d gone completely feral. Her eyes were wide with hunger, and she snarled at Susan, her fangs out as she stared at the growing puddle of blood at the woman’s feet.
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