Morning brought us a cold breakfast and planning.

“We need to do something other than running and hiding.” I took another bite of lunchmeat. It was filled with shitty preservatives and On High knew what else, but it was protein and placated my wolf.

Placated-ish.

“We need a secure location where we can regroup as well as more info on what’s going on with Nancy’s baby and what Lucia wants with it so we can better protect her.”

Nancy frowned and cupped her generous belly. She’d been quiet all morning, seemingly more subdued than the day before. Probably because spending the night in an abandoned drug den was a real reality check.

“If we could go home,” Jezze nibbled her lower lip, “I could check my books and see if there’s anything about predestined births or drawing power from children in utero.”

I’d already filled Jezze in, and I could already see her mind churning as she rolled the puzzle around. It was probably her way of keeping busy and I hated the strain that still lingered around her eyes. But she was coping and that was the best I could hope for.

“Home is out of the question.” I didn’t even have to think about that. “Lucia will have our houses, bar, and any other frequent haunt under close observation. We can’t be sure anywhere is safe anymore. Her thralls could be lurking around the next corner. We need a place outside her influence.”

Way, way outside.

“I may have a solution.” Sam’s dark voice rolled through me, his eyes more red than blue after our passionate kiss.

I ignored the sensual need that slithered through me. “Yeah?”

“The Occult Historical Society has a library and museum just outside Silver Springs. On the surface, they’re a fringe organization who caters to humans who believe in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Tween myths. It’s actually a front for a tween organization that studies and records the history of the supernatural and paranormal in the world. If anyone other than Jezebeth or Helene would have information about Lucia’s plans, it would be them.”

Too good to be true? Probably. But Sam was… Sam. And staring at him—at my mate—I put my faith in him.

Gag. Faith.

“How do we know they’re not enthralled?” Jezze rolled a water bottle between her hands, a rapidly growing pile of ripped paper decorating the table top. She tended to shred things when she was upset. After the last twenty-four hours? Yeah, I was surprised I didn’t find more bits scattered everywhere.

“The place is isolated, warded, and protected by psychic safeguards.” He shook his head. “It’s very unlikely they’ve been compromised.”

“You think they’ll help?” I’d heard of the group, but never had direct contact with them. Who needed historians when I had to deal with what was in front of me, not behind me?

“They take a neutral stance on affairs between On High and Hell, but our circumstances are unique. Both divine and infernal forces are being threatened.” He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling, taking a deep breath before letting it out slowly. I sensed his unease, his worry, his hope. “Yeah,” He lowered his attention to me. “Yeah, I think they’ll at least be sympathetic.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I pushed away from the wall and headed for the door. “We’ll avoid main roads and I want to switch cars again. The sedan has probably been reported by now and we don’t need to deal with some cop if the plates are run.”

We drove a short way before we found a more middle-class neighborhood where we ditched the sedan and snared another SUV from a small apartment complex. There was still the chance it’d be reported stolen before we reached our destination, but I’d deal with that when the time came. I hoped that if someone was home in the middle of the day, they would be one of those people who rarely left the house.

We stuck to back roads as much as possible, keeping away from crowded areas, but it wasn’t long before we ran into trouble. Fuckers.

I turned down a side road and drove through a sparse suburban area, a scattering of houses on one side and a stretch of woods on the other. My nerves tingled, a tightness between my shoulders that told me a shit storm was on the horizon. The skin on my arms rippled, my wolf pressing for release, its tension adding to my own.

When I turned down the next curve, I saw why. A large number of people, mostly human with a few tweens mixed in, wandered down the street in a daze. They didn’t seem to have any purpose—they didn’t look as if they had a destination in mind. They just… wandered.

And there were enough of them to block our path.

“Shit,” I muttered and threw the SUV into reverse. I whipped us around and sought a different route out of town.

We passed by one road and then another, people wandering out of their houses and into the streets. It felt random. None of the humans and tweeners looked like they had a focus. After we turned down a few more, repeating the same retreat, I realized they did have a purpose. They were boxing us in.

“She’s trying to find us.” A wave of anger and suppressed rage hit me, Sam’s emotions adding to my own. “She probably has her thralls out in every town between Orlando and Jacksonville, searching for us.”

“And she’s going to find us if we don’t find a way out.” Yeah, sometimes I could be Captain Obvious.

I pulled onto a busier road, figuring the thralls wouldn’t be able to block that kind of traffic. We made it a few more miles without interference, but then cars randomly stopped all around us. People climbed from their cars, leaving them idling in the street, and meandered across the asphalt in that same sightless daze. Others blared their horns, shouting at the thralls to fucking move already, but there were too many for us to just drive past them.

Unless I decided mowing down innocents was a thing I could do.

Which. I. Hadn’t. Sense my frustration there?

I spat a curse and tried a side street that took us past a little pizza place, but I only got halfway down the road before a half dozen people in chefs’ uniforms wandered out the back door and into the road—blocking my path.

I put us in reverse, twisting to look out the back windshield while I slammed my foot on the gas. Only to have to hit the brakes twice as hard so I didn’t run over a woman pushing a stroller. She slowly hobbled behind us, taking small shuffling steps, before she froze in place. The woman slowly turned her head, staring through the back windshield, and met my gaze.

Then, she raised a shaky hand, moving ever so slowly, and pointed.

At us.

At me.

At motherfucking Nancy.

I spun around and pounded the steering wheel. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Ahead of us, the pizza chefs now pointed at the car while more thralls wandered in from the main road. They surrounded us, encircling the car and acting like a human fence. I shifted the car back into drive and clenched the steering wheel. I didn’t want to run anyone over, right? Especially not someone who was being controlled by a heinous hell bitch from another dimension. But it looked like the only way to escape.

I moved my foot toward the gas, then froze. My foot went numb, then leg, then more… I tried to move my hands, but they remained frozen and my entire body felt as if I was stuffed in cotton—warm yet confining. I couldn’t raise a finger. I couldn’t move at all.

I glanced out of the corner of my eye, searching out Sam, and saw that he was just as frozen. His jaw was clenched tightly, eyes glaring out of the front of the car, but whatever power had me frozen affected him as well.

Ahead of us, one of the chefs held up a knife. He sliced open his palm and then leaned down, drawing on the asphalt with his blood. He painted a circle on the road, uneven and lopsided, but a circle nonetheless. His movements were slow and choppy, like a puppet, while he drew arcane sigils at the perimeter. Whoever was controlling his mind and movements knew what they were doing.

When he formed the last, an eye-searing light filled the air and then gradually faded. The air above the circle warped and twisted, and a tall, graceful woman stepped forward. She wore a sleeveless dress of dark violet, the hue matching her dyed hair, and it swayed with her every seductive step. She had a luscious figure, and her lips quirked in an alluring pout. Sex. Pure sex.

She strode forward, portal slipping closed behind her, and headed straight for our car.

I’d never seen her before, not in person or in books, but I had no doubt that this was Lucia.

“There you are,” she purred. There was a seductive edge to her dark beauty and the air around her waved with energy. Like the heat streaming off a road in the desert. Real yet still not real.

I clenched my teeth tighter and gripped the steering wheel even harder—the only moves I could make. I sensed her power slipping into my head, delving into my mind. When she spoke, I didn’t just hear her in my ears, she also reverberated in my mind and violated my thoughts.

Each of her movements was precise, a choreographed roll of her hips and delicate click of her heels on the pavement. She was seduction personified, and I could see why she’d chosen sex as a method of collecting power. She was sex.

Her beautiful dark eyes slid over us, moving from one to another while we remained in the car. Captive.

Lucia held out a hand toward Nancy. “Come, my dear. Come with me, and I promise you won’t be harmed.”

I glanced at Nancy in the rear view mirror’s reflection. She was frozen, but with a flick of Lucia’s fingers, Nancy was able to move. I tried to move as well, but I couldn’t shift an inch. Fucking bitch.

“Come to me,” Lucia flicked her hand and the car door opened. “You have no idea what I can do—what I can offer you. Let me show you.” The purr was tempting, a lulling sound you wanted to hear forever.

But it had nothing on Sam’s deep, booming voice, and that memory severed some of Lucia’s passion-inducing spell.

Nancy shook her head, voice wobbling. “No. I won’t let you hurt my baby.”

“I won’t hurt the child.” Lucia’s voice was a silken whisper. “If you cooperate, it won’t be painful at all. Your baby will be born perfectly healthy.”

Right. Perfectly healthy even though all of its powers would be drained away. I didn’t know if Lucia was telling the truth—doubtful—but even if she could, the child would never be the same. Plus, there was the danger the crazed bitch would present once she gained the kid’s strength.

Nancy shook her head again. “No. No, stay away from me. I won’t let you hurt my baby.”

Lucia’s smile vanished, her lips pressed together in a thin line. “I would prefer not to get rough with you, dear. Don’t make me come over there.”

Oh, sure, that was gonna work. I was tempted to roll my eyes. That threat never worked on two year olds, let’s not even consider how an adult would react.

I wondered why Lucia even bothered with the seductive compromise routine. She could just pull Nancy from the car and drag her away.

Except… My thoughts pieced together, mind working to push beyond Lucia’s influence.

Except her power was limited. She wasn’t human, she was a demonic entity whose soul was tied to another dimension. Once she was slowly crafting with Silaran. She’d only been able to come to the tween because of blood magic. Like Uncle Luc, most of her power remained in her own dimension. She was weaker in the tween.

Which meant it was probably taking everything she had to keep me, Sam and Jezze immobile with her psychic power.

Fuck yeah, motherfuckers.

I could fight the bitch. If I could draw on enough energy, I could break free of her psychic grasp and get us the hell out of here.

Lucia kept talking to Nancy, trying to convince her to come quietly, but I thrust her voice from my mind. I tuned her out, instead, focusing inward. It was hard with her voice penetrating my mind, but I managed to focus elsewhere.

I reached down, deep, to the only source of power I could tap into—Hell.

Hell was home. Hell was my family’s. Hell was mine.

Most of the time, when I called on hellfire, it was to burn things. Obviously, right? It was raw, destructive. People. Things. It ate it all. When I unleashed its power, I could burn through flesh and bone, raze cities and melt steel and stone. It was beautiful in its feral strength, in its untamed form. Most of the time, I had to hold it back, to keep it under control so I didn’t spread too much destruction.

Destruction ala Chicago, which we still don’t talk about.

Yes, it could destroy, but it could also build. Sometimes, when I was in battle and running on empty, I pulled on hellfire to stoke my internal furnace and get me back in the game. It was a shot of combustible adrenaline, giving me a burst of strength and stamina that would get me through to the end of battle.

Was it dangerous? As a dem who wasn’t a full dem, could I hurt myself with it? Sure. That was what made it extra fun. The energy wasn’t natural to me and running on hellfire meant I pushed myself past normal limits. I could end up so exhausted that I’d pass out for days.

Plus, there was the whole “literally set myself on fire that I can’t control” thing.

Which… made it extra fun.

I reached into Hell, my touch gentle as I tugged on the darkest, deepest fires. The ones that tempted me to ruin. The ones that whispered those naughty thoughts. I channeled it all, using it to empower my body. The trembles started at my feet, sliding through me and raising my temperature. The numbness faded, like frostbite warded off by burning flames. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, my head spinning with the rush. I focused the energy that slowly consumed me, harnessing it to ward off Lucia’s hold. Her magic attempted to slow me down, hold me in place, but my hellfire wouldn’t be contained.

Not by her. Not by me.

Evil had a special taste, a sweetness that dems savored and consumed with abandon. It was like a drug, tempting and alluring, cajoling. It wanted to fill me now, always. And I let it, just for a little while.

Wisps of smoke uncurled from beneath my fingers, the scent of burning plastic joining the stench of fear inside the SUV. A growl built deep in my throat, my wolf anxious to burst free, to voice its fury. It didn’t always play well with my hellfire, but for once, those two parts of me were on the same side.

Burn.

Kill.

Free.

The muscles in my jaw regained feeling, teeth grinding together with increasing pressure, and the growl transformed when it reached my throat. It morphed into a great, bellowing roar. It shook the car, the air, the very world around us. Powered by hellfire and rage, it boomed through the space.

With a sudden jolt, my body was my own again. Lucia staggered back, stumbling two steps while she clutched her skull. When I’d snapped her ties, the psychic feedback had jarred her like a blow to the head. It destroyed her concentration, and Sam and Jezze recovered their senses at the same moment.

Jezze leaned out the window, an orb of magic already dancing on her fingertips. She pulled her arm back and launched it at the nearest group of thralls in front of us. It slammed into one, bouncing from body to body and knocking them to the ground.

“Go!”

I didn’t have to be told twice. I hit the gas, aiming for the gap in the thralls. I raced past stunned men and women while more jumped at us, trying to grab the SUV. A couple got a grip on the luggage rack and pulled themselves up, balancing their feet on the running board. They knocked out windows and reached for us, fingers clutching and pulling.

Sam shoved one away from the passenger side and then grabbed the steering wheel while I grappled with another. The car veered out of control while I pummeled the thrall in the face. I hit him again and again and again, my rage rising, hellfire scorching my blood. The wolf didn’t help the situation, the animal thirsting for blood.

The next punch sent the thrall falling to the ground with a sickening thump, probably breaking a bone when he hit.

I couldn’t find any sympathy right that second. Not when my own survival had to come first.

We broke past the swarm and onto an open road. I stomped on the accelerator, needing to get away before I did something… regrettable… with the power consuming me.

Then Lucia appeared in the middle of the road, blocking our path while wearing one of those seductive smiles.

I grinned and leaned forward, pressing the pedal even harder. I aimed right for the bitch, just aching for the satisfaction of running her ass over.

“Caith…” Sam grabbed the SUV’s grip handle bolted into the roof.

In the back seat, Jezze quickly buckled her seat belt while Nancy double-checked hers.

I gripped the steering wheel even tighter, excitement growing with each passing foot.

Die. Kill. Die. Kill.

Lucia didn’t even try to move, and that should have been my first warning.

Just before the SUV slammed into the woman, she held up her hand, palm facing us. A wave of force shot from her, the pulse of energy forming a nearly invisible ramp, and before I could react, we were on it. We launched into the air, propelled by the magical energy Lucia manifested.

The vehicle launched high enough to clear the stoplight at the end of the road with a few feet to spare and then the nose dipped. The road came up at us fast and I lifted my arms, as if that would somehow save my ass from meeting the pavement face first.

“Jesus Christ!” My scream joined the others and a single, male voice cut through us all.

“Actually, I’m his exact opposite.”

I whirled in my seat, staring at the newest member of our party. Uncle Luc appeared in the back seat, settled right between Jezze and Nancy, looking perfectly calm and composed in his tailored suit.

As if he didn’t care we were falling toward a whole bunch of pain.

“Uncle Luc!” I screamed his name and then stopped. Somehow I’d had time to shout at him instead of becoming a red spot on the ground.

I turned back around in my seat and looked down at the road. There it was, still in front of me, just a few feet from the vehicle’s nose. The SUV hung suspended in mid-air, frozen by a barely visible field.

Then the back tires lowered, straightening us out. It dropped to the road with a loud thud, bouncing on the shocks before finally settling into place.

I sat there—mute—clinging to the steering wheel. Finger shaped impressions were melted into the wheel from the hellfire, and I slowly unpeeled my fingers. Bits of melted plastic clung to my skin, each move bringing forward a sickening sucking sound.

Blech. Things hadn’t been so icky before the invention of plastic.

I fully twisted in my seat and met Uncle Luc’s stare. Then I shifted my gaze to the world behind our SUV, to Lucia stalking toward us. She held her hands out to her sides, flexing her fingers. Dark, crackling energy sparked at the tips and her sexy smile wasn’t so sexy anymore.

Uncle Luc slowly turned to watch Lucia as well, and the super bitch… froze in mid step. She clenched her hands into tight fists, snuffing the growing magic into nothingness. She narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw, that glare in place for several moments. If looks could kill and all that…

Uncle Luc smirked and chuckled.

Did the man take nothing seriously? Like, really?

A moment later, Lucia vanished, fleeing back to her new dimension. All around us, thralls regained their senses. People looked around in confusion, some rubbing their heads in obvious pain. One by one, they moved away, a few asking others what had happened, and it seemed none of them had any memory of attacking us.

Which was good, I supposed. Then no one could sue us for hurting them.

“I suggest we get moving.” Uncle Luc faced me once more. “Lucia knows she can’t yet face me, but that won’t stop her from trying. And as you know, my powers on this plane are limited.”

“Right.” I turned back around and focused on driving. Uncle Luc faced some of the same limitations as Lucia. While he was still far stronger than Lucia… no one wanted to get into shit if we didn’t have to.

I got us going in the right direction, heading straight for Silver Springs. In the backseat, Nancy clung to Uncle Luc and nuzzled his chest, letting out a sigh of relief. And unholy fuck, he actually put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

I think he even actually kissed the top of her head.

I didn’t care what On High and Uncle Luc originally agreed to, the apocalypse was on the horizon. Uncle Luc was actually being… nice.

Well, I could only deal with one “the world may be ending” issue at a time. For now, I kept an eye out for threats for the rest of the drive. Even with my uncle at our sides, I knew we weren’t out of danger.

Not by a long shot.