She was right, we still had to find Hunter and the super vamp puppeteers. “Fine, if Conah comes to help with Kristoff, I’ll pass along a message. If he doesn’t, then…Then I’ll do it without them being here.”

“Leave it to fate,” Uri said softly.

Cora didn’t argue this time even though I could see she wanted to.

“I’ll be back in a bit.” Grayson strode around the counter and headed down the back corridor toward the training room.

I didn’t need to drop my shields to know he was freaking out. “Excuse me, guys.”

I followed my mate.

I found Grayson beating the shit out of the punch bag with his bare fists, no wrap-up. He’d taken off his shirt, and his muscles rippled with every swing.

“Give me a minute,” he bit out as he continued to punch.

I locked the training room door, tugged off my shirt, and unbuttoned my pants. He faltered and slapped a hand onto the punch bag to halt its swing.

I kicked off my boots and shimmied out of my jeans.

“Fee…” His voice was thick.

I strode toward him, trailing my hand from my breasts down my abdomen to my pubic bone. “If you want to hit something, then I’d rather you hit this.”

He bridged the distance between us with a growl, and for a little while, there was only the two of us.

Grayson and I emerged from the training room to find Cora and Uri flanking Bobby at the island while he studied his laptop screen.

“I found something,” Bobby said to us. “The symbol you drew…I did a search for recent sightings of it on any buildings or any locations, and I got a hit. Look.”

He turned the laptop to show us a grainy photograph of a signposted track where he’d blown up the sign. There were regular town names on the sign and if you weren’t looking for it, you’d totally have missed the tiny circular symbol on the bottom left-hand corner of the sign.

“It’s a lead,” Grayson said. “And it’s not too far from here, either.”

A lead to finding Hunter. “Let me change clothes and grab my weapons belt, and we can go.”

“Wait,” Uri said. “We have no idea what we’re walking into. We need to scope out the area first.”

He didn’t look at me, his attention focused on the laptop screen. “Can you pull up a map?”

Bobby tapped buttons, and Uri nodded. “Yes, I know where that is.”

“We’ll check it out,” Cora said. “We can jump to the location and jump back out once done. We won’t be long. If Vi turns up, do the thing and get it over with.”

But a thought occurred to me, something we’d neglected to consider. “If Vi stops my heart and for some reason we can’t restart—”

“Don’t say that,” Cora cut in. “We will bring you back.”

I locked gazes with her. “But if something goes wrong and you can’t, then Hunter will die. Even if you bring him back, he’ll die because I won’t have completed the Tribus mating.”

“Fuck,” Grayson said.

“I can’t go through with it until we have him back, and I’ve…You know.”

The thought of mating with Hunter evoked a cocktail of contradictory emotions. I didn’t have a soul connection to him like I did with my guys. Our connection was purely primal, purely physical. But it was all we had for now. It would have to do.

Grayson laced his fingers through mine as if to say, it’ll be okay.

“In that case, we better work fast,” Cora said.

She winked out, but Uri hesitated a moment, his gaze on me. I strode over and wrapped my arms around his waist in a tight hug.

He sighed and hugged me back. “I’ll see you soon.”

He released me, and then he was gone.

I leaned back against the counter, suddenly deflated. Fuck, why did life feel like I was on a fucking hamster wheel right now?

“I’ll make us some food,” Grayson said.

“I’ll do it,” Bobby insisted. “You guys rest.”

I didn’t have the energy to argue, and all I’d eaten for hours was cheesy toast. “Can we have chicken or steak?”

“We can have both,” Bobby said with a smile.

Grayson took my hand and tugged me into the lounge. He sat and pulled me onto his lap where I curled up and closed my eyes.

Uri and I hadn’t done much sleeping, and my body clock was totally out of whack from going back and forth from the Underealm. Had Conah received the phoenix? Would he come? The poor vamps in the garage deserved to feel safe. What if we got attacked by super vamps again?

“Fee.” Grayson’s chest vibrated soothingly beneath me. “Stop thinking and sleep. We can sort it all when you’re rested. Sleep. I’ve got you.”

As I slipped under another thought occurred to me. If they stopped my heart and I didn’t wake up again, I might end the Underealm’s hope of escaping Mammon’s rule, but if I was honest, that wasn’t the worst fear in my heart. The worst fear was that I’d never see my guys again. I needed to see them one last time.

I needed Conah to come here.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Mal

There is death all around us. So many demons slaughtered, too many injured. Mammon struck hard and fast, and the fucker left carnage in his wake. The south barracks held by my battalion is in pieces. The building where my soldiers live has been decimated, and dead bodies strew the flatlands as far as the eye can see. The sky is gray and churning, reflecting my inner turmoil.

Fresh troops will be here soon; in the meantime, the handful of survivors drag the dead into piles ready to be burned while the injured sit around small campfires nursing their own wounds. Feathers litter the ground, black and red, like a carpet.

Yes, fresh troops will come, but for what? To meet the same fate as the ones that came before them. I should have been here.

I should have been here to lead them. We’ve had too many years of peace, and we’ve grown complacent.

Something has to change.

“Daemons,” Conah says from beside me. “I’m not sure what breed yet, but I’ve taken inventory of the wounds, and I will find out.”

“Mammon’s recruiting from the fringes of the Underealm.”

“From the daemons that were pushed out of their homes by the fallen and their offspring,” Conah says. “There’s obviously enough resentment and animosity left for them to fight against Lilith.”

“He must have promised them lands.”

“And he’ll renege on his promise,” Conah says. “Mammon won’t share. It isn’t his style.”

A gentle breeze at odds with the climate of this scene brushes my cheek. I inhale the coppery scent of blood, and my gums ache with hunger. I should feed, but any blood that isn’t Fee’s tastes like ash. I think I might have replaced one addiction for another.

“How are our numbers looking?” Conah asks.

We’ve lost the cadets we’d trained to Mammon. He has them, and goodness knows what he’s doing to them. We’ve lost three battalions of soldiers, and we’ve lost our queen.

“Crap.” I sigh. “Are we going to win this war when it starts?”

Conah snorts. “The war has already begun.”

He’s right. Mammon is chipping away at us. While we push our efforts into recovering Lilith, he’s slicing into our defenses. We’re going about this all wrong, and suddenly I know what we need to do.

“We have to stop looking for her.”

Conah frowns across at me, his sapphire eyes bright against the grime and blood that smears his face. “What?”

“It’s what he wants, don’t you see? He wants us to focus on finding her. That way, we leave our troops without the commanders they need. That way, he slowly disables our defenses.”

I can see from the tightening around Conah’s eyes that he’s considering this too.

“We need to change strategy.”

His chest heaves, and he doesn’t argue with me, so I continue.

“We stop searching, and we start fighting back. Lilith put her blood, sweat, and tears into raising Imperium, into ruling the Underealm. We can’t let Mammon get the throne. We can’t let him win.”

“There is no Imperium without its queen.”

“And if we don’t change tactic, there will be no Imperium for the queen to come back to.”

“Azazel won’t like this,” Conah says.

“Azazel is a warrior, a general, but right now he’s thinking like a son. I’ll speak to him when he gets back from the east barracks.”

I don’t even want to think about what we found there. There were no survivors. Nothing but ash. Whatever attacked the barracks razed it to the ground. The fact it didn’t come south means that the firepower is limited. Still, the east must be fortified, and Azazel is busy setting up new troops and building traps. These barracks are our first defense for Imperium, and if they fall…Well, we’re not going to go there.

“If he kills her…” Conah says.

“Lilith is an original. It won’t be easy.”

“But not impossible,” Conah says. “But you’re right, Imperium has to come first. The people need to be protected. It’s what Lilith would want.”

“Which means it’s time to tell them the truth.”

Conah’s jaw is tight as he scans the vista of death. “I think it’s too late for that. I think the truth might already be out.”

A gust of air pushes my hair back off my forehead, and then a phoenix lands in front of us. I recognize its blue and purple plumage instantly.

It’s one of ours from the quarters.

Conah and I exchange glances, and I know he’s thinking the same thing as me.

Fee.

The phoenix’s throat convulses. It spits out the silver cylinder that contains a message and then flies off.

Conah is quick to retrieve the cylinder, wiping it on his pant leg before flipping it open to get to the scroll inside. He scans the message and then chews on his lip.