His brow furrowed, suspicion crowded his cornflower-blue eyes. There was a second when I thought he’d slam the door in my face, or worse, the business end of a shotgun. But he only stared at me, his gaze slowly drifting down my body before meeting my eyes. With a jerk of his head, he stepped aside. “Inside, now.”

I stumbled forward, shuddering and quaking. My teeth chattered in an awful grating sound that smothered his words. “I’m s-sorry, I c-can’t hear you.”

He lifted his hand and pointed to a mammoth crackling fire. I stumbled toward the sight, and careened down two stairs to the sunken living room. The smell of char and soot filled my nostrils as I collapsed on the warm stony hearth.

Orange flames danced and flickered against my skin as I lifted my hands to the warmth. Within a minute, I was thawing, within three, I could speak without risk of biting the tip of my damn tongue.

“Here,” he handed me a tumbler with an inch of whiskey in the bottom.

It didn’t last long, sliding down the back of my throat to set fire to me from the inside.

“Why are you here now?”

I flinched with his words. There was a look in his eyes, a kind of resignation. “Your son…Titus.”

His breath caught, resignation now swallowed by fear as he took a step toward me. “What about him? What about Titus?”

“He’s in Intensive Care at Harbor Metropolitan Hospital. There was a fire…he swallowed superheated air…there was nothing they could do. But there is something you can do.”

He flinched, and there was a tiny shake of his head as he lowered his gaze. I was losing him, letting him slip away before I’d even started. Do something…say something! “I know about you. I haven’t told anyone, and I won’t tell anyone. But your son needs you, Mr. Banks. Titus needs you now more than ever. If I could just help him somehow, help that part of him that isn’t human.”

He jerked his eyes to mine, his skin paled and then turned ashen. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think it’s time for you to leave.”

“No…no…please,” I was losing him…I shoved up from the hearth, hands out, pleading…I’d never pleaded in my entire life. “I love him. I love your son, and I cannot let him go. I cannot let him die, not without a fight.”

He stepped away and then turned toward the stairs to the entryway. “You have to. I’m sorry…I’m sorry,” his voice cracked into a thousand shards. “I can’t help you.”

Desperation turned to hate in the flick of a switch. I lunged forward and gripped his arm, wrenching him around to face me. “Can’t, or won’t?”

And there was that old cop stare, the one where he’d just stepped in something vile. “Get out. Get out of my house now.”

My hand fell from his arm as I stepped backwards. “You’re all the fucking same in this town, aren’t you?”

The soft thud of a door closing sounded behind me.

“By ‘all the fucking same’, you mean we protect our own? Then yes, Ms. Payne, that we do.”

I spun at the familiar voice and stared at the sheriff. “You?”

“Me,” he answered and looked to Reginald Banks. “Uncle, everything okay here?”

“Ms…Payne, or whoever the fuck she says she is, was just leaving.”

There was a nod of the sheriff’s head before he murmured. “Good, have a nice hike down to your vehicle, Ms. Payne.”

“No…no fucking way,” I snarled and turned on the gutless prick who wouldn’t help his own son.

“Don’t,” he growled. “Don’t you fucking look at me like that. You don’t know what we’ve been through. You don’t know the shit this will cause. Just by you being here, it’ll set things in motion I can’t control.”

Hate ebbed for a heartbeat. “What things?”

There was a shake of his head. I lifted my hand, the sigil blazing bright along my palm, tiny flickers of midnight flames dancing between my fingers. They had no idea the lengths I’d go to…

“Others came here, threatened my uncle…threatened me. Said we’d burn…said the whole town would burn if we talked, especially to a redheaded woman who looks exactly like you.”

And that lick of fire burned deeper. “Who?”

The sheriff shook his head. “Didn’t give his name, said there were others, a woman who’d be watching us. A hag he called her.”

I flinched with the word. Panicked thoughts raced through my mind. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Not a coincidence. “A hag…specifically that word?”

The sheriff nodded. “I thought it was unusual, given how clean-cut he looked.”

I clenched my fists as that smug piece of shit Henry Mughausser filled my mind. “You have a computer, yeah?”

Sheriff Braeburn looked to his uncle. “I’ve got a cell…”

“Look up a Henry M-u-g-h-a-u-s-s-e-r, and tell me if that’s him.”

Reginald shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

It did matter. It mattered a whole fucking lot. Braeburn fiddled with his phone, fingers dancing across the screen before he stilled. There was a second before he lifted his head and met his uncle’s stare. “It’s him…this is the man who threatened us.”

“Henry Mughausser, a member of a cult called the Nine.”

There was a gasp from both men. “The Nine, that’s what they said…the Nine will be watching. The hag sees everything.”

I nodded. “They killed my mom, and a few weeks ago my grandmother. They want to use my father, but right now they’re trying to kill someone I love…” I turned my head to Reginald. “Your son, Titus.”

“Tell her,” Braeburn murmured. “Tell her what she needs to know.”

“I tell her and there’s no going back. They’ll come for her, just as they’ll come for us.”

I shook my head. They were discounting one very obvious course of action. “Not if I come for them first.”

“Tell her,” Braeburn urged. “And let the cards fall where they may.”

Reginald turned then, and strode up the stairs toward the other side of the cabin. I watched him leave, convinced that with each step he took away from me, he’d somehow never return.

“He’ll be back,” Braeburn murmured and went to a beautiful polished timber bar near the wall. He grabbed a glass and splashed the bottom with whiskey, before turning and lifting the carafe.

I mounted the stairs and stepped closer. “Why are you helping me?”

“Because I hate to see the bad guys win. It’s that simple, Ms. Payne.”

“Lorn,” I answered, watching him pour a little in the bottom of my glass before turning.

“You said these people want to use your father. He’s obviously a prominent man.”

I lifted the glass to my lips and took a sip. I’d need it. “You could say that.”

The sheriff lifted his own glass, slowing as he asked the question I dreaded. “He is?”

Lie. The word filled my mind. But then it slipped through my fingers. These men were ready to lay down their lives, the least I could give them was the truth. “Lucifer, the High Lord of Hell.”

He gulped, coughed, lunged for the corner of bar, and held on while Reginald stepped from the hallway back into the living room. He took one look at his nephew, who was wheezing and hacking, and murmured, “Everything okay here?”

“Oh, sure,” Braeburn hissed and tried to swallow. “Apart from the fact that we’re talking to Lucifer’s daughter here. We’re going to Hell, aren’t we? Jesus fucking Christ, I threatened you…I said—”

“It doesn’t matter,” I shook my head, “none of it matters. All I want is the truth. All I want is a way to save Titus.

Reginald handed me a photo, it was color, taken a lot time ago, of a beautiful woman with long blonde hair and deep blue eyes, holding a baby in her arms. I tried to search for a spark of recognition and found none.

“That was Miriam when I first met her. She was so beautiful, God, she was beautiful.”

I looked at the baby in her arms...deep dark eyes stared back at the camera, with a tiny crease between his eyes. Even then he scowled. When I first met her? The words captured me. “What do you mean, when I first met her?”

“Exactly that,” Reginald answered. “Titus was already six months old, and there was no father around to help her. I fell head over heels in love. It didn’t matter she already had a son, after our first date I was already smitten. We were married within two months of that photo and as far as I was concerned, Titus was mine.”

Not his father…not his real father. Hope seemed to slip through my fingers. “Who…who’s his biological father?”

Reginald reached out and took the photo from my hands. “She never said and I never pushed the issue. We were married, and as far as anyone else knew, I was the father. A few of the guys at the station had an idea, but they never mentioned it to me, nor I to them. We were a family…a beautiful family, until…”

He turned away from me then. I could see the pain in his face.

“The accident, right?” I murmured. “The car accident.”

“It was no accident,” fragile words stained with hate spilled from his lips. “They killed her, they took her from me without blinking an eye. The Nine, you call them? They were the ones that came to me that night, showed me pictures of what they’d done to my…to my…then they showed me the burned-out car. Said it was the only way to account for the damage they’d done, and they’d not only do the same to me, but to Titus, if I ever spoke to anyone.”

Jesus…Jesus…It wasn’t just me…wasn’t just my mom they killed. It was all connected…somehow, we were all connected. “Did she tell you anything at all about who he was before she died?”

Reginald just shook his head. “All I have is this. She said it was the only photo he ever allowed her to take…I guess one look at him and it says it all.”

My heart was pounding, filling my ears with deafening sound as he lifted his hand and held out an image of a man.

My belly trembled, relief washed over me, for a moment I’d thought…I’d thought…I’d thought it’d be my father. But it wasn’t, although this man had Titus written all over him. The same brooding dark eyes, the same strong jaw. It was a close-up image of him staring into the camera, and for a second I could appreciate how that might’ve felt for Miriam.

The heat of desire surged with the thought. I scanned his face and then the open collar of his shirt, to the medallion around his neck.

“You can keep that,” Reginald muttered. “Don’t know why I kept it all these years, but I did.”

He drew my gaze, and all I could see was the loneliness and pain—all caused by the Nine. “I’ll find them. I promise you, I’ll find them, and they won’t bother you ever again.”

His shoulders curled, head lowered. “I was a coward then and I’m still a coward now. I made a choice to turn my back on a promise I made to a child…to a son, and I’ll regret that every day for the rest of my life. I came here, hid in these mountains and I lost myself, and I don’t know how to get myself back.”

I knew that feeling. Right now, I wandered on the same lonely highway, and it was so easy to just slip away. I lowered my gaze to the image. It was all I had to hold on to. “This is a start,” I answered. “Standing up to them, giving Titus a fighting chance, it’s a start, and right now this is all I have.”

“What will you do now?” Braeburn asked. “Go back to Harbor?”

I clenched the image tighter. Go back with an image…what good would that do? The Nine knew who he was…they knew it all. Henry Mughausser’s face lingered. I knew what I’d do before I said the words. “No, I’m going after Mughausser. He has what I need…information and his goddamn life. I plan on taking them both.”

Braeburn turned white under the soft glow of the fire. There was a moment where the silence was filled with the cracking of the fire before the sheriff answered. “Good. Whenever you’re ready Lorn, I’d like to give you a lift to your car.”

I upended the rest of the whiskey into my mouth and set the glass onto the counter. “This is one of those times I could say something with substance. But there’s only one thing to do now…and that’s prepare for them to come after you and hope to God I get to them first.”

“You’re not his type.” Reginald turned to me and lifted his gaze. “And for that I’m so very thankful. I heard about his marriage to that woman…I also heard it broke his heart.”

“It did, and I’m taking that as a compliment. Titus means a lot to me.”

Reginald nodded. “I’m glad he finally has someone willing to risk it all for him. The man deserves that. I’m sorry I couldn’t be that for him.”

Braeburn slid his glass onto the bar and turned toward the back door. “When you’re ready, Lorn, I’ll be in the car.”

Reginald turned, and then lifted his gaze to mine. “I know this means little, but I do love him. Will you tell him that, however this turns out? Tell him that I’m sorry and that I tried.”

I gave him a slow nod, gripped the image, and turned toward the kitchen and the back door of the cabin. It was the only thing I could do, give a father a sliver of peace. But I gripped the knob of the back door and I turned it…and I walked from that cabin knowing in my heart I’d never see Reginald Banks again.

The engine of the cruiser started with a growl as I closed the back door behind me. The past seemed to rise up in front of me, of another place and another time…and another officer.

My heart skipped a beat as I slipped off my pack and climbed in. The blast of warm air cast strands of hair from my face. Braeburn shoved the car into gear and then backed out of the steep drive.

“Don’t blame him. He has his failings, but when he left Harbor he was a damn mess. At the end, he was in and out of the hospital, drugged up to the eye-balls, talking about how the entire police force was out to get him. It took a long time for him to do the basic things to take care of himself. We bought this place for him up in the mountains…being up this high gives him a little peace.”

He talked a lot, this man, and I leaned back against the seat and listened.

“Those were some crazy times indeed. I was only a kid, but I remember.”

Braeburn swung the wheel and nosed the car along the tiny lane. There was nothing but darkness up here, no lights to guide the way, just blackness as far as you could see.

We drove the rest of the way in silence until his headlights splashed against the side of my old Corolla. “Your carriage, madam.”

I liked him, he reminded me of Titus. I gripped the handle and yanked. “Thanks, Braeburn, you’re an okay guy…for an asshole.”

“All part of the small-town charm,” he answered as I climbed out of the car and shoved the door closed behind me.

Headlight splashed against the ground, lighting the way as I walked to my car and hit the button. The locks released with a thunk before I climbed in and started the engine.

Small-town charm, my ass. Braeburn lifted his hand and gave a wave as I shivered in the bitter cold of this old thing. I shoved the car into gear and swung the wheel, praying this time the tires would grip.

The car rolled forward and then backwards, until I gave it a touch more gas. There was a delayed reaction, like someone suddenly gave a push, and then the car rolled off the shoulder and back onto the road once more. “Thank you, God.”

I nosed the car across the wide road and then headed back toward the town. The image was still in my mind, and as I hit the edge of town and passed the first streetlight, those dark eyes found me.

He was Titus, alright, deep brooding eyes and a mouth to die for. I wondered what he’d been like in the flesh. If this was any indication of the kind of power he wielded, then no wonder Miriam was smitten.

Only, where was he now?

And what the hell was he?

Some kind of incubus?

The looks fit, but if Titus was his son, then surely I would’ve sensed it somehow. No. He was something else, something more powerful, something more secretive…and I had one more stop to find out what that was.

I gripped the wheel and stifled a yawn. I could sleep when this was over. Right now, I needed one more long haul. Greenwich City was a good three hours’ drive along the state line.

I’d get halfway and then stop to sleep. Tomorrow I had a date with a piece of shit called Henry Mughausser, and there was no begging and pleading on this earth that would save him.