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Too late to pretend he didn’t know what Eryn was to him. He needed to know what he was up against. His dad’s words rattled in his mind. That if any team could defy a prophecy… “We’re one of the few teams who won’t hesitate to go up against pure demons. We have, more than once, and come out stronger for it.”

Lexi glared into her mug and sniffed hard. “Have you killed anyone yet, for giving up demon hunter secrets?”

“I’d rather not start with you.”

She snorted and put her feet up on the lip of the firepit. “Why’d you mention prophecies?”

“Because I know things I shouldn’t. Because my grandmother told me something awful would happen… to the woman I was destined to marry.”

“What?” Lexi shot a look at him.

Fucking hell. He clenched his teeth and couldn’t look at her. “This is my fault. I doomed Eryn to die. I need to know what I’m up against, before I fuck this up any worse and she dies because of me.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s ours.” Lexi’s lips pulled tight, a brutal challenge in her look.

Breath frozen in his lungs, he searched the crystallized honey of her eyes. She was dead serious.

“If this goes wrong, could you kill Eryn?”

The truth rushed over him like the wind, slicing through the fire, and he knew it might come to exactly that.

That his dooming her to death would be by his own hand.

Why his grandmother had known he should be truly terrified.

“Why would I need to kill Eryn?”

She bit her bottom lip, then drew in a shuddering sigh. “How can you tell if someone’s a pure demon?”

“Most are obvious, because they don’t look like any creature from this realm. The others look mostly like you or me. Some of the older texts call them simply ‘the immortals,’ but so few cross over that there’s not a lot of information about them. Demon hunters are descended from one. Ryan’s father is one. There is a lot of diversity among the immortals, like Tromos—the original vampire sire. Immortals are tough. They’ve got abilities like nothing else in this realm, and their abilities vary widely.” He paused and tilted a look at her. “Banshees are pure demons, but a weaker immortal subspecies, I suppose, as they’re not much tougher than a vampire. That one from Astoria, did you handle it?”

Lexi clutched the back of the chair and scrunched her nose with a thick scowl. “That wasn’t a banshee.”

That scream. Her guilt.

His breath stilled in his chest. Intuition raged. Fuck, he should have realized. “No, she wasn’t.”

“I didn’t get to perform the autopsy, as she was brought in after I’d gone home, but I looked at the report.” She gritted her teeth and shook her head.

“And?”

“She had wings.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Not that you could see, but her scapula folded in strangely. The doc who did the autopsy said he was examining her back, and when he moved her scapula just so, huge feathered wings unfolded. I don’t know why vampires and werewolves make sense to me, but this was wild.” Lexi laughed with sad eyes. “Maybe not as wild as prophecies.”

“Her scream was different. Not a banshee’s scream.” Typha had screamed like that, an immortal, humanoid demon. “That’s why you won’t tell me Eryn’s secrets.”

“Not until I can trust that she’s safe from you—and that you’ll be safe from her.”

13

Blood flowed between her gloved fingers. Smeared on the man’s skin as she held pressure over the gaping neck wound. Pulsing, slowing, each surge of blood was weaker than the last.

Eyes closed, consciousness distant, the man had less than a minute to live.

If Eryn cracked open his chest and massaged his heart to keep his blood flowing, she might be able to draw it out.