Amidst some embarrassed grumbling, several shame-faced Shifters filed out. Linette tried to slink past me, avoiding eye contact, but I stopped her with a hard hand on her arm.

“Not so fast. Let me check you.”

Of all the Shifters, she was the one that didn’t look so hot, triggering all sorts of new and uncomfortable feelings of concern. They had to be from my long-dormant mortal half. It was uncomfortable. I needed a weeklong bath and some good old debauchery or something to purge them. I’m a princess of hell, we don’t do this caring shit.

The female werewolf shivered as she stood in front of me. She wasn’t just slender. Girl was seriously in need of a cheeseburger or seven.

Taking her hand, I let my new instincts guide me. Her stomach was newly healed but she wasn’t out of the woods yet. I was no healer, but the niggle in the back of my brain said there was something wrong.

Closing my eyes, I reached out to find my focus pulled to her stomach. There, under the healed tissue was a cluster of black, dying cells. My breath caught in the back of my throat as I froze for a moment. What the hell did I do now? If that dead patch spread, the infection would kill her, and there was no way Rafe was strong enough to heal her at the moment. How the hell did I get around this? I couldn’t alter the laws of nature…

I almost grinned. No, I wasn’t a healer and I couldn’t alter the laws of nature, but it didn’t mean I had to play by the same rules. I couldn’t heal but I didn’t need to. I just needed to stop her dying, and apparently, death was my bitch.

Working quickly, I called the orange magic from my soul.

“Healer’s lore and witches blood,

Give me strength and don’t delay,

Ward the body and wrap the crud,

Let this wolf hold death at bay.”

At my words, orange magic spread outward from my hands and over Linette’s stomach. She gasped, clinging to my arms with a look of surprise on her face.

“I-it’s warm,” she said in wonder. “I’ve been so cold.”

Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she folded up way more gracefully than I’d have been able to. I’d have face planted loudly on the floor, kissing the lino.

I managed to grab her before she did, her slender weight nothing for my demon-enhanced strength. I hefted her up easily, and realized both Rafe and Lucas were looking at me oddly.

“I lift, alright?” I snapped, handing the unconscious wolf off to Lucas.

“Take her home and make sure someone can stay with her,” I ordered. “She’s not healed but my spell will stop her condition getting worse until Rafe is well enough to heal her properly.”

Lucas nodded, a loose wave of hair flopping forward over one eye. I resisted the urge to reach out for a moment, but then I gave in and tucked it back out of the way. His smile was warm, pleased at the touch, so I glared at him. I didn’t want him getting any ideas.

“I’ll make sure of it,” he promised and ducked out of the door.

I watched him, well… I mainly watched his tight ass in those jeans go and then I turned around to find Rafe watching me. I paused at the hard look in his eyes, my demon senses all tingling as power built up in the room, shivering along my skin like static. The warlock was calling power, probably using the hand under the table that I couldn’t see.

I smiled, my posture and bearing relaxed. “Put it away, Granddad. You’re in no condition to go toe to toe with me and you know it.”

He held my gaze for a long moment and then sighed. The power built up dissipated as though it had never been. I reached out, turning the chair opposite him around and sat down astride it, my forearms crossed over the back. My gaze invited him to elaborate. Now.

He sighed again, running a hand through his long hair and I cut a longing glance at the coffeepot in the middle of the table. The delicious smell wafted through the room, overpowering the smell of so many werewolves and tempting me with its decadent aroma.

“I wouldn’t be a match for you even at full power, would I?” Rafe said, his voice filled with mild challenge, like it wasn’t a surprise to him. At my look, he chuckled. “Come on, sweetheart, this ain’t my first rodeo. I recognize a demon when I see one. Not sure how you managed to get ahold of mortal magic, though. That body you got there must’ve had a strong soul if you can use what magic it had.”

He lifted his coffee mug and took a sip, dark eyes regarding me steadily over the rim as he took a sip. Fucker. I ached for coffee, my whole being fixated on the mug. That’s one thing you need to know about demons… we’re all into indulgence. If you’re clever, you can trap us that way.

“You’re good, I’ll give you that,” he carried on, cradling the mug in his hands. “A hellcat as a familiar though? You might want to be careful there. A few people might be able to recognize them.”

I blinked, keeping my poker face for a moment, and then let it drop. “How’d you tell that?”

I was genuinely curious. No one had run screaming from me since I’d come topside, so I assumed my cover was good. Perhaps it wasn’t though? Perhaps I’d made some kind of human faux pas, like wearing spots and stripes together, or matching a smoky-eye and red lips.

Rafe shrugged, the movement so familiar I might as well have been looking in a mirror. Waving his fingers slightly, peachy-colored magic filled the air as a cupboard opened and a mug floated toward us. In a movie-worthy sequence, the mug, spoon and coffeepot danced in the air as he fixed me a mug. With a flick of his fingers, he sent the mug floating through the air to settle down in front of me gently.

Grabbing it, I buried my nose with a grateful sigh and sucked down some of the blessed fluid. Coffee, the only substance in the world other than G-G-G—fuckit, I can’t even say his name thanks to the curse on all fallen and part fallen—Grandfather, the big man upstairs, capable of giving life. Because, there sure as hell ain’t no life happening in me before at least seven cups in a morning.

“My best friend growing up was a demon.”

I almost choked on my coffee, snorting and swallowing it down in a slide of what felt like molten fricken’ lava to avoid breathing it. Breathing coffee is never good.

“What?”

Rafe nodded. “Thick as thieves we were. Always getting into trouble. If it could happen to us, it did. I always knew he was a bit different… turns out, he’d been possessed by a demon when he was a baby.”

I blinked like a freaking owl. Demon possessions were actually quite rare. It took real power, especially a possession that spanned years like that.

“Turns out his mother had made a deal. She never knew her kid was actually gone and it was just the demon. Not just any demon either.”

My mug froze halfway to my lips. “Oh?”

“Nope. It was Lucifer himself.”

“No. Way.” My mug hit the table with a clunk. WTF… My dad and Uncle Luce had been BFFs? “Oh my g… That’s…”

Rafe nodded, running a fingertip around the rim of his mug. “Never understood why he stayed in the kid for so long, why that mother mattered so much to him but… Being friends with the devil himself? Fuck it, that was cool.”

I hid the depth of my interest. “So, what happened?”

Pain, real pain, flashed across his features for a moment, and he snorted bitterly. “A woman, what else?”

My expression set. Oh crap, this was rapidly heading into ewww territory. At the look on my face though, he started to laugh.

“It’s not what you think. We didn’t fall for the same girl. Turns out the devil has a sister… a twin actually. Lilith… shit, you know all this, don’t you?”

I nodded, keeping my mouth shut about exactly how much I knew of the Morningstar family tree.

“She’s a princess of hell. Not there much though. She and the boss man don’t get on.”

A sad smile crossed the warlock’s lips. “They never did. Too similar.”

“So…” I said when he didn’t carry on. The suspense was killing me. “What happened with Lucifer’s sister?”

Rafe snapped back to the present from wherever he’d been, his eyes refocusing and losing their dreamy cast. “I fell for Lilith. Lucifer found out and banned us from ever seeing each other again. Threatened to bring down the apocalypse itself if we did.”

He met my eyes, gaze steely and hard. “Because of that asshole, I lost the woman I loved. If I ever see him again, king of hell or not, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”

Well… balls.

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. So instead, I took another sip of coffee. Coffee always understands, doesn’t judge, and doesn’t ask stupid questions. Like… What the fuck do I say to that? Instantly, any plan to tell Rafe that I had Lucifer in ornament form in my back pocket died a hasty death.

Shit, what the hell was I gonna do now?

My entire plan for saving the world hinged on my biological father, a powerful warlock, healing Satan himself and thus avoiding a power struggle for the front of hell and preventing the apocalypse… Neither of which would happen if said warlock slaughtered the king of hell while he was helpless.

We. Were. So. Screwed.

Rafe laughed, the skin at the corners of his eyes wrinkling with amusement. “Awkward much? Sorry, you don’t need to know all this… It’s ancient history. Besides… Lucifer never let any of his family out of his sight, so the chance you’re a Morningstar is little to none.”

I was saved from answering that by a knock on the door. Well, I say knock, it was actually more like a frantic hammering. Like a mutant woodpecker with rabies.

I smelled the blood before the door crashed inward, bringing both Rafe and me out of our seats, hands spread ready to cast. Well, Rafe had both hands spread ready to cast. I on the other hand, only had one hand spread for casting while hellfire crawled over the other. No sense hiding what I was now that Rafe had figured it out.

But the figure who burst through the door was not an enemy. He was a beat up wolf. He didn’t make it more than a step into the room, grabbing at the door handle as he slid to his knees on the lino.

“Darius,” he gasped, blood trickling from the corner of his lips. “He has Lucas.”

Twin urges warred within me. The first was to rend and destroy, to lash out everything around me in retaliation…and the second was to panic over losing someone that might actually mean something to me. That was one that I didn’t want to admit to myself.

Lucas was my wolf. Okay, I’m not buying the line that he’s my mate. I am just not the settling down type of girl, even if somewhere deep inside there’s still a five-year-old who dreams of being a princess on her wedding day. What woman doesn’t have that five-year-old inside somewhere? I’d told mine years ago I already was a freaking princess but she didn’t care. It had nothing to do with what the denizens of hell called me, and everything to do with finding my own prince charming. I stuffed those thoughts back down in the box where I kept them in the back of my mind, alongside the ones that kept thoughts of happy families and houses with nice little picket fences, and snarled again.

Lucas was mine and no fucking asshole blood sucker was going to take him from me. Even if I had to bring down the apocalypse myself.

An hour later, concealed in some handy woods outside the big bad vamp’s lair… which turned out to be quite a nice little two-story spread out in the countryside beyond Boring’s limits…I was still simmering. Simmering is perhaps an understatement because Rafe slid me a sideways glance.

“What?” I demanded.

“Might want to dial it back a little,” he commented, nodding toward the ends of my hair, which were steaming and smoking, the locks curling back on themselves as my hellfire tried to break free. “Element of surprise, remember?”

The growl broke free from my throat. Before I was aware of thinking it, I was up out of cover, striding toward the house, Rafe hot on my heels.

“Screw the element of surprise.”

My voice was lower than it normally was, my demon blood manifesting into an almost deeper than hearing sound. It was my outdoor voice… The one that any nicely brought up little demon girl only used to scare the complete and utter crap out of someone.

So far I hadn’t had any cause to use it topside.

Now I planned to employ it without prejudice.

I stormed toward the house and up the neat drive. A flick of my fingers sent the two SUVs parked in the driveway in front of me flying sideways, tumbling over and over in the lawns either side of the drive and leaving a gap for me to walk through.

It was broad daylight but that didn’t matter.

Books and films usually restrict vampires to the nighttime, but that’s where they got it wrong. Some vampires are only around and about in the nighttime, sure, but that’s more a psychological hang-up. Like vampiric OCD or something. It’s not an actual rule really. More a guideline. And it seemed the arseholes that followed Darius didn’t follow the guidelines.

As soon as I broke from cover, the shadows of my anger and vengeance wrapped around me. They practically came out the woodwork. Heads popped up on the rooftop, vamps slithering around the walls from the leeward side of the building… The little suckers even broke through the lawn, clawed hands reaching up through the air in the best zombie impressions I’d seen outside of a horror movie.

Yes, we do get cable downstairs. Movie night’s a big thing. So much so that the removal of movie night privileges is one of Uncle’s favorite punishments. You can disembowel a demon every night for centuries and they won’t bat an eyelid, cursing you all the way, but threaten to cut off their cable and popcorn, and they like totally freak out. Go figure.

Another gesture and the three vamps trying to crawl up through the lawn exploded in multicolored glittery clouds. Even I blinked at that one. In hell, blasting anybody with hellfire tends to end one way… Redecoration in shades of red and scarlet, blood and guts optional extras. But topside, with my hellfire mingling with my mortal magic, the effects were unpredictable.

Way unpredictable.

A small grin flirting on my lips, I took aim at one of the vamps on the roof. A bolt of magic hit him square in the chest. Sure enough his scream was cut off by a poof, and he disappeared in a shower of orange and pink sparks. Butterflies circled through the dust in loops and spirals, making the other vamps sneeze.

“Neat trick,” Rafe grunted by my side, his hands moving as he blasted the vamps that were coming up on our other side.

His magic was peach, I realized suddenly. I’d seen him sling spells when we were overrun with bloodsuckers, rather than sneaking up on them with the element of surprise on our side, but it hadn’t registered. Now that we had the upper hand, I was noticing more and more. Like he rolled his shoulder to make it click before he pretended his hands were guns and “shot” two more vamps from the hip.

Hastily, I unfolded my hands from the gun shape I always used and gave him generic “magic” hands by the time he turned around, the light of battle in his eyes. “Are we doing this or what?”

I grinned, his mood infectious.

“Oh… we are so doing this.” Taking the lead, I charged up the drive and around the corner of the house. A large garage was set back from the house, and my demon senses tingled six ways to Sunday, telling me we’d find Lucas in there. Storming up toward it, I used another blast of hellfire to take the huge double doors off their hinges and stomped inside.

And that’s when it all went to shit.