“It won’t let us know if it wakes up anyway,” Saber replied. “It could be faking now, and we wouldn’t know.”
They all leaned closer to inspect the unmoving monstrosity, but if it was awake, it was hiding it well. Lucien rocked back on his heels as he resisted the impulse to kick it. It was a monster, but he couldn’t kick a helpless prisoner no matter how badly it deserved it.
Thisthingwas a big part of the reason why Callie was in the back of an SUV with Simone, fighting for her life. That reminder caused his hands to flex as the color seeping through his system pulsed and shifted.
He had so much pent-up anger he had to release, but the Savages who hadn’t fled were dead. All that remained was this creature, and Lucien couldn’t take his wrath out on it… yet.
“We might see something in a flicker of its eyelids or a flare of its nostrils,” Willow argued. “We might be able to figure out if it’s awake that way.”
They all studied it, but Lucien couldn’t tell if it was still breathing beneath its cloak, and he had no intention of stripping that from it. Looking at it with the cloak on was bad enough; he’d prefer not to see it naked.
“We need chains,” Killean said. “These ropes won’t be enough to keep it restrained when it wakes.”
“Once the sun rises and takes care of these bodies, we’ll stop at a hardware store,” Lucien said.
He gazed at the dead Savages spread out across the rest area before shifting his attention to the road. They weren’t next to a highway, but the road was busy enough to warrant a rest area. He hadn’t seen another car in a while, but the flow of traffic would probably increase as the day dawned.
“They were pretty daring to attack us here,” he said.
“They’ve been getting increasingly bold for a long time,” Declan said.
“When do you think they started following us?” Asher asked.
“Callie’s apartment,” Lucien answered. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. They didn’t just stumble across us. Someone”—his gaze traveled to the remains of his brother—“was waiting for us nearby. It was most likely Yannis.”
“What makes you say that?” Logan asked.
“Because, whether I like it or not, we were brothers. It’s been hundreds of years since we saw each other, but we know how the other thinks. He expected me to bring her back there, and he was waiting.”
“Why would he expect that?” Saber asked.
“The second I didn’t kill her in that pit, he knew she meant something to me. I was starved enough that I would have killed anyone else, but instead, I saved her. I’m sure some of the other Savages and probably demons suspected it too, but Yannis would have been certain.”
“That’s a long time to wait,” Killean said.
Lucien met his gaze as he replied, “He’s been waiting centuries to kill me. These past weeks were nothing compared to that.”
No one said anything as their eyes returned to the demon.
“If they’ve been following us for that long, why didn’t they attack sooner?” Asher asked.
“They’ve probably been waiting for the right time, or maybe for enough of them to gather,” Willow said. “I’d like to know where they came from in the woods.”
“We’ll check that out,” Declan said.
“At least they didn’t follow us to the compound,” Logan said.
“They wanted the sword,” Declan replied. “They wouldn’t take the chance of us getting somewhere more secure and taking it with us.”
Willow lifted her chin. “They’re not getting it.”
Declan shifted uneasily but didn’t say anything.
“Do you think they put a tracking device on one of the vehicles?” Logan asked.
“We had someone watching over them every night in case they found us. There’s no way one of them got close enough to do that,” Willow said.
“I agree,” Killean said.
