Ava shot up to a sitting position, as a moan ripped from her throat into a full-blown scream. The progenitors surrounding her, closing in on her with their bat-like faces and maggot-white skin, dissolved into the surrounding darkness, and her mind checked off familiar objects in the room—the chair beside the armoire, the dull gray drapes covering the window, the pale sketch of a skull framed on the wall, white-washed antlers poking out above the print, and the incessant tick of the clock beating out the rhythm of her slowing pulse.

Safe.

Fingers drifting across her throat, she glanced back at the chain hanging from the bedpost, the Diablis steel that’d kept her from flashing away. Not that she would. Even the most frightening Wrath demon, Ferno, would be better than facing Oliver and his gorilla-faced sidekick, who loved nothing more than to torture her for their own sick amusements. Ava would gladly take Ferno’s torment any day of the week, over what those twisted bastards considered good fun.

She patted a hand on the bed beside her, recalling her earlier awaking from dreams. She could’ve sworn Calix had crawled into bed beside her, his big arms enveloping her, his scent calming her. A quick sweep of the room told her he wasn’t there, but the phantom touch that lingered on her skin argued that she hadn’t dreamt it.

As an incubus, Calix had the power to enter her room at night, as he so often had when Ryke had company of his own. Had her brother known that the demon visited her as she’d slept, he’d have summoned the darkest magic against Calix, but as it were, Ryke always found some distraction in the many females he’d entertained long into morning. Their screams would sometimes keep Ava awake, somewhere on the cusp between agony and pleasure—she could never discern which through the walls. She wouldn’t put it past her brother to have tormented the females in vile ways, and still, they’d practically lined up at his door to sleep with him. Made her sick, the way Ryke had abused his powers of persuasion for his own selfish gain.

Fortunately, his tricks had never worked on Ava, as she was certain he’d have attempted to take her in the same manner.

Calix had been a godsend those nights. He’d often appeared when she most needed him, and he’d sweep her away into what Ava had come to view only as a fantasy, because good things didn’t often happen to the Nephilim. He’d taken her to places she’d never otherwise been, while whispering promises she’d never believed—promises of bonding, of children, and happiness. Happiness the likes of which she’d never known before, and if she had to be honest, would never know, even if she wanted to fall into Calix’s illusory.

If the incubi were the prostitutes of the underworld, then Nephilim were the trashy counterparts living in trailer parks and dumpsters, waiting like predators to feed their twisted sexual desires. At least the incubi felt some remorse for what they did to humans. The Nephilim thrived on sexual violence and torture. Most of them, anyway. And even if her very genetics made them an unlikely match, Ava had wanted to believe those promises Calix’d offered her, because at least she’d know some peace in her life.

She wanted Calix more than she’d ever wanted anything.

Sliding from the bed, her feet hit the cold hardwood floors, and she padded quietly toward the door. Calix’s shirt hung loose on her, long enough to cover her ass, but thin enough to remind her she was in a house full of sexually-charged demons. She cracked the door and, slipping through, tiptoed down the hall toward the staircase, eyes searching for Calix, nerves on edge all the while.

Should she run into Logan, in particular, she might’ve fared better back at the abandoned hospital.

The sound of voices drifting across the foyer piqued her hearing, as she reached the bottom of the staircase. Crossing over the marble tiles, she reached the cracked door of what she knew to be Gavin’s office and peeked inside. Through the dim lit room, she could just make out skin. Lots of it. Muscles flexing. Grunting. Heavy breathing. Rhythmic thumping against the furniture. All the distinct sounds of sex. She quickly realized the voices had actually been moans, and Ava’s eyes shot to the cascades of red. The male rutted behind the female, groaning with every slam into her body bent over the desk. Clothing lay scattered on the floor and desktop, as if the two had damn near torn them off each other.

With his back to her, she couldn’t make out his face, only a tight muscled ass and cords of steel that braced him, as he ground that ass into the female, but the dark hair left her questioning which of the brothers she’d stumbled upon.

Calix? Surely he wouldn’t … but then again, he’d been desperate to feed. She’d seen it in his hollow cheeks and dark circles. He’d starved himself.

Why, she didn’t know, but perhaps it’d become too much for him.

Hands clenched to fists, she sent up a quick prayer that the male who clearly had a hankering to fuck something, as he stood in plain sight railing into the female, without a care in the world that someone watched or could possibly hear them, wasn’t Calix. It’d be bad enough that she couldn’t sate him herself, but seeing him fuck another woman in front of her would throw Ava into crazy bitch mode.

They’d toyed with the idea of threesomes and foursomes when the two of them had dated a while back, but that was well before Oliver had ruined Ava. When jealousy had been nothing more than a fun and kinky pastime the two had indulged in on occasion.

A force hit her from behind, slamming her skull into the wall beside the door, and fingers dug into her neck as she stood pinned in place.

“Well, what the fuck do we have here?”

She recognized the gravelly voice of Calix’s brother. Logan. Her heart slammed inside her chest, and she braced her hands against the wall, pushing back against his grip. “I’m looking for Calix!”

“Yeah. I see that.” With a bruising grasp of her shoulder, he spun her around, and his hand slid to her gullet. Red glowed inside his irises—the signature effect of a pissed off Wrath demon. “Didn’t think you’d have the fucking balls to come back here, bitch.”

The door beside her flew open, and the redhead from before stepped out of the office, straightening the shirt Ava had seen slung beside her on the desk. Behind her, Calix’s eldest brother, Gavin, followed, looking more disheveled than she’d ever seen the usually well-kempt male, with his shirt buttoned wrong, his belt undone, and his hair sticking up from his head. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Logan gave them a once-over, silently shaking his head, before his stare returned to Ava. “Caught this fucking peeper watching the two of yous. Might want to keep your little fuckscapades to your room, know what I’m sayin’?”

“What are you doing here?” Gavin asked her, while placing a hand on Logan’s arm. He’d already begun sapping the oxygen reserves in her chest, as white spots floated across her field of view.

“I don’t think so.” Logan snarled, his nails scoring her flesh as he tightened his grasp. Pressure against her windpipe left her squinting with every attempt to swallow. “This bitch isn’t taking my girl again. Should’ve ended her the last time.”

Eyes wide, Ava’s gaze lifted toward the top of the staircase, and in the next breath, her body went cold, clammy, and she stood in the hallway, looking down on the three of them as Logan flipped his palms up. A second later, his gaze swung to her, lips peeled back, and he barreled toward the staircase.

With a choked breath, Ava dashed down the hallway to Calix’s room and burst through the door. “Calix! Calix!”

She quickly scanned the room for somewhere to hide, but the door behind her crashed into the wall, and she spun around, catching sight of Logan filling its frame.

Backing herself deeper into the room, Ava shook with panic. She could only flash to places she’d been before, which would take her to her brother’s burned-down lair, or the abandoned hospital. Throat dry, her pulse hammered inside her veins, as she tried to think of what to do. Where to go.

Logan lurched toward her.

She closed her eyes, visualizing the wreckage of Ryke’s old funhouse of pain, and a bite of cold steel sank into her flesh.

Hands to her throat, Ava scratched at the Diablis that kept her from flashing. The metal grew tighter and tighter the more she struggled—the second goddamn collar that’d been wrapped around her throat in the mere hours since she’d returned to the Wrath mansion. “No! Logan … please!”

“Been keeping this shit handy since the last time you tried to disappear. I’ve been waiting for you. You thought you could steal the only fucking thing in the world I’d die for? Not today, sweetheart. I’m going to watch you fall straight into the hands of Stygius with your cunt of a brother.” Teeth gritted, he gave another yank of the chain, and a burst of stars drifted into her field of view.

“Logan!”

The distant sounds of shuffling, the jerk of the chain, shouts and slams echoed inside her head, before fading out, and Ava tilted her head back and allowed the blackness to take her under. At least then she might know peace. Perhaps the gods would be merciful, they’d opt not to send her Stygius.

It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered. The pain drifted. The view before her shrank smaller and smaller.

“Do you see those stars, Ava?” The voice of her mother echoed inside her head as Ava peered up into the night sky. “They’re all the angels watching over you at night, love. Making sure nothing ever hurts you.”

“Even Nephilim, Momma?”

“Yes, baby. Even Nephilim. Now go to sleep.”