“Dante’s guarding the door. Nothing will get through.” He lifted his head, the color draining from his face. “Gods, all I smell is Emberline’s blood.”
“I know.” I swallowed. “I fucking know.”
We turned the corner together, into a long, empty hallway lit by flickering LED’s, casting a blue-white glow on the stark walls.
“No,” the word burst out of me like a moan. “No.” We both charged, jostling for space in the tight corridor, both of us racing toward the only thing that mattered.
Emberline was sprawled halfway down the corridor in a puddle of water and blood, dressed in nothing but her underwear, a knife still clutched in her hand, a metal shackle bolted around one wrist, the attached chain stretching into the room behind her…
I followed the line of that chain, and every one of my savage instincts flashed back into place at what lay beyond her, the vampire twitching on the floor, a hook punched through his thick neck.
Bruno. He was going to fucking die. He was going to suffer.
But she was more important than vengeance.
“You’re safe, Emberline. We’re here.” I brushed wet hair away from her face, and her eyes fluttered. I lifted her wrist, her pulse jumping beneath my touch. “She’s alive,” I could barely breathe from relief. “She’s alive.”
“She’s lost a lot of blood, and those cuts on her wrists are deep,” Gabriel’s eyes drifted back to the room, back to Bruno, something even colder than rage burning in his eyes. “We need to get her to a healer.”
“Dante should be here when she wakes up,” I said. “He has to know she’s okay.”
Gabriel nodded, looking back down the hall like it was the last place he wanted to go.
“Then let me go and talk some sense into my brother.”
56
DANTE
My back remained to the doors leading to the basement.
I was the wall our enemies would never get through.
None of these fuckers would ever touch my wife.
“Emberline.” Her name tore out of me, raw and broken as the smell of her blood filled my nose, all of my senses.So much blood.
She couldn’t be dead.She couldn’t.
Another brace of guards rushed me, and I ashed them where they stood, the entire upstairs of the fortress clogged with choking black smoke. Not that I cared. Fire consumed me, tore through every vein, erased every thought, until there was nothing left but heat and hunger and ruin. My grief had opened the door and let the demon take me over completely. I dissolved beneath the storm of its wrath, the primal fury at being condemned to an existence spent bound inside my mortal body.
I tried to regain control, but how could I, knowing my wife was dead?
Emberline had been imprinted on my soul, but the demon had been imprinted on my bones, the witch’s runes carved into my marrow, and no matter how hard I pushed, the demon didn’t budge.
Somewhere outside mycircle of awareness, Gabriel was shouting.
Flames were devouring everything around me, and I did not care. Furniture curled, burst into flames, fabric vaporized. Stone blackened and cracked until the fortress didn’t feel solid anymore, ready to collapse beneath my feet.
The scent of her blood was so strong. Our bond flickered like a dying star. Here, then gone, then back again, each pulse weaker than the last.
The ifrit howled inside me, feeding on the destruction, the violence, the rage, flames growing wilder with every passing second. Soon, there would be nothing left of me, just like the Druid had warned.
Nico and Gabriel would get Emberline out.They would protect her. A calmness washed through me, a sense of rightness.
They loved Emberline. She loved them. Thiswasright.
As soon as they were free of this place, I would bring it all down. Bury myself and the demon in the darkness beneath a million tons of rock where nobody would ever be able to dig us out, and this would be over.
