They should be here by now.

Staring at the digital clock on the nightstand, Lily clenched her jaw, her heart pounding in her chest. Her hands and feet were tied, the rope also fastened to the headboard of the bed the brutes had thrown her on after dragging her into the house, so Lily had no way to get free. It had surprised her how normal the house seemed, with nice if bland-looking furniture straight out of a catalog, and a level of cleanliness suggesting that either whoever lived here had some OCD going on, or this was a model home in a new community.

She tried—again—to loosen her bonds. To no avail.

Honestly, where were Merle and the others? They shouldn’t need this long to track her.

Sounds of movement in the hall. She snapped her head up, her body tensing for whatever—whoever—was coming. The door to the room opened, and two demons slipped inside—female demons.

Lily’s jaw dropped when she recognized the two witches who’d gone missing a few weeks back. Well, they weren’t witches anymore. Turned like her, they had the unmistakable aura of pranagrahas, and the swirling signs of their demon markings adorned their upper arms and the skin above their necklines.

“Aveline,” Lily whispered, meeting the eyes of the fair-haired, blue-eyed witch-turned-demon, youngest daughter of the Novak family. She just started college when she disappeared without a trace.

Lily’s eyes darted to the other witch-turned-demon, whose normally brown complexion had taken on a pallor, as if she was suffering from some sickness. “Sarai.”

Like Lily, Sarai had been next in line to inherit her family’s magic, had been groomed since birth to one day become head of the Roth bloodline. With no siblings or cousins, that bloodline had now been severed.

Aveline’s eyes shimmered as she stepped up to the bed and unfastened Lily’s ties, her porcelain skin even paler than usual, echoing Sarai’s loss of color. Both witches-turned-demons looked as miserable as withering plants denied sunlight.

As soon as her hands were free, Lily pulled the younger female into a hug. She’d never been close to either Aveline or Sarai, since their families were only loosely connected within the witch community, but what had happened to all three of them now forged a bond that lay heavy among them, regret and anger at a destiny none of them had chosen.

Aveline exhaled a shuddering breath and turned away, sniffing, while Lily hugged Sarai, too. No words. There were no words for the magnitude of this crime.

When they separated, Lily swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Are there any others? Like us?”

Sarai shook her head. “Just the three of us. They had more in the beginning, but they died when they injected them with an earlier version of the serum.” A muscle twitched in her jaw. “Apparently it took them a few tries to get the dose right.”

The other missing witches… So the locator spells for them had failed because they’d already been dead. She closed her eyes for a second. “Merle and my mom are coming to get us out of here. They should be here any minute. We should start getting ready to kill these fuckers and bail.”

Aveline and Sarai exchanged a glance that raised the hair on Lily’s neck.

“What?” she asked, her heart thundering.

“We’re—” Aveline began then broke off, her throat working as she swallowed hard. Her aura oscillated with shame and fear.

“Mated,” Sarai finished. Her sea-green eyes held a hard glint. “They made each of us mate with one of them. If we kill them—”

“You’ll die, too,” Lily rasped.

Mouth in a grim line, Sarai nodded, her mahogany curls bobbing. “And if we run, they’ll find us through the mating bond. We’re fucked for life, Lily. Because the greatest part of all this? Mated females need prana from their partners every night.”

Lily frowned. “Wait. So you don’t have to kill?”

“Oh, we do. This nice little tidbit is just in addition to our need to take someone’s life force. Once mated, females need to sample their partner’s prana. But not by breath or blood.”

“How…?”

A bitter hardness twisted Sarai’s features, the intensity of it hinting at the answer even before the other witch-turned-demon spoke. “Wanna guess what else besides breath or blood carries prana?”

Lily’s hands fisted, her stomach roiling with a combustible mix of nausea and fury. “You have to have sex with them.”

Aveline whimpered and turned away.

Muscles twitched in Sarai’s cheeks, her energy pattern a contained storm of hatred. “So even if we locked them up instead of killing them to keep us alive, we’d have to go to them. Every. Damn. Night.”

Lily’s breath left her on a hollow sound of horror, her heart heavy, so heavy at the two lives ruined. She was struggling for something to say just as the door flew open and in strode Asshole Leader from the van.

Aveline flinched and visibly shrank in on herself, and even without confirmation, Lily knew the black-haired bastard was Aveline’s mate. His ice-blue eyes darted to each of them, then locked onto the petite witch-turned-demon cowering against the wall. His upper lip peeled away from his teeth as he stalked toward her, grabbed her hair, and slapped her. Aveline yelped and closed her eyes, her small frame trembling as much as her aura.

“You were supposed to get her ready,” the male demon snarled, “not hold a happy-sappy reunion.”

Red-hot rage slamming down over her vision, Lily lunged at the bastard. She got one good kick in before pain sliced across her side, making her jump back. Blood—her blood—coated the dagger Asshole Leader was pointing at her. Another pranagraha had entered the room, restraining a fuming Sarai.

One side of Asshole Leader’s mouth tipped up as he held the blade in one hand, his other still gripping Aveline’s hair, making her wince. “I don’t mind etching a few new markings into your skin,” he said to Lily, his voice as cold as his eyes. “But I’d rather have you intact for the ceremony, so your future mate can enjoy you unspoiled.”

Lily’s stomach dropped to her feet. Oh, hell no. If those sick fuckers thought they could mate her off like that, they were dumber than a sack of dirt. She glanced at the digital clock, and dread curdled her blood.

Where are you, Merle?

* * *

The sounds of fighting reached Alek before he even made it to Gehenna. Two blocks from the demon bar, the night sky was lit up with magic, power cracking the air like lightning. Invisible and undetectable to humans, for otherworld creatures this kind of power display had the same effect as a cacophony of human noise had on forest animals—they scurried away in utter terror.

And sure enough, the area around the fight was so blatantly devoid of any otherworld creature presence, it almost felt forsaken.

Alek parked his truck a street away and jogged closer, peeked around the corner into the midst of what appeared to be…a battle between witches? Merle, Hazel, and Basil faced off against Juneau Laroche and two other witches, using parked cars and recessed doorways as cover while they hurled spells at each other. Two more witches lay unmoving on the street and sidewalk, an arrow protruding from the chest of one of them.

Well, hell. Fight to the death it was, then.

Given the lethal nature of the conflict and the time ticking away for Lily, he felt no remorse when he sprinted with his demon speed to the nearest of Juneau’s witches—who’d just shot a spell at Merle from the shadow of a van—and snapped her neck like a twig. She crumpled to the pavement.

While he avoided the witch’s spell with a duck-and-roll, Merle spotted him behind the van. She gave him a grim nod and shot to her feet again, throwing out some form of short-lived shield to block an incoming charm.

“You’re down to two, Juneau,” she yelled as she dove for cover in a doorway. “Stop this fucking madness before more of us have to die.”

Silence echoed between the houses, all spells and arrows halted. Still, power hung in the air, palpable and thick as humid summer heat. It pulsed and crackled, and Alek could taste the charge with every breath he took. If he didn’t have a stake in this conflict, he’d have fled like all the other otherworld creatures.

“You will pay for their deaths.” Juneau’s voice, a terrifying whisper magnified and creeping along the pavement, the walls, raising all the hairs on his body.

Peeking out from behind the van, he caught a glimpse of Juneau and the remaining witch running away.

“Their blood is on your hands,” Merle yelled after them, stepping out of the doorway. Hands clenched so tight her knuckles flashed white, she added in a hoarse whisper, “I didn’t start this insane fight. I never wanted any of this.”

Tears glistened in her eyes as she looked at the fallen witches. Inhaling a shuddering breath, she walked to the nearest one, closed the dead woman’s eyes, and muttered a prayer with her hand over the witch’s heart.

“Travel well,” she whispered, her hand shaking as she pulled it back and stood. “Hazel?” she asked as she wiped her eyes.

“I’ve got them.” The other Elder witch approached the second of the fallen.

Merle nodded and turned to Alek. “You here to help us with Lily?”

“Yes.”

“We have a problem.”

Gesturing for both Hazel and Basil to stand down as Alek emerged from behind the van, she briefly explained who he was, then beckoned him to follow as she jogged to the mouth of an alley a few yards back. There, behind a dumpster, she crouched next to the slumped form of Rhun, stroking his hair away from his face.

“He won’t wake up,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’ve healed all his injuries as far as I could detect them, and I keep trying to nudge him mentally, but he’s just…shut off.”

And with him, the only way to find Lily.