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Luther and I exchange a quizzical look.

“I’m missing shoes.” Nova looks at her bare feet. “Never mind.” She waves at us, already starting toward the forest. “We should move. I can protect us if I have to, but it’s best if he doesn’t know I’m back. Not yet.”

* * *

We’re approaching Main Street when Nova stops. She holds out her arms, causing Kole and Mack to bump into them. Tucking her hair behind her left ear, she says, “Did you hear that?”

Both men look at each other. I sniff the air. I can’t smell anything. Mack is doing the same.

Slowly, Nova pivots on her heel and scans the alleyway. We’re in the cut through between the grocery store and Elements Cafe. A few doors down from Rev’s and opposite The Solar Cross.

Nova beckons for us to follow her and moves quietly toward the end of the alley. The red sky is growing darker. For three weeks, there have been no stars, only blackness when night falls.

Nova stops, pressing herself against the wall, then glances each way down the street.

“It’s deserted,” Mack says. “There’s no one here.”

But Nova is frowning. I follow her gaze to The Cross. “Someone needs our help,” she mutters. Then, so quickly I barely see her move, she’s gone. She’s in the middle of the street, then on the sidewalk on the other side.

The five of us follow her, but we’re slower than she is. By the time we’ve reached The Cross, Nova has gone inside.

The bar is empty. Nova is standing in the middle of the room, her eyes flicking quickly over its corners and crevices.

“Nova?” Luther puts a firm hand on her shoulder. “There’s no one here.”

She walks away from him without speaking.

She’s heading for a red curtain on the opposite side of the bar. Kole follows her while the rest of us wait. As Nova tucks her hand inside the curtain and moves it aside, I catch something in the air. Mack does too. “Demon,” we mutter in unison.

At the same time, we both run for Nova, but she’s already pulling back the curtain and standing aside to let Kole unlock the door. With a wave of his hand—clearly, Pete was too dumb to get the locks changed—the door clunks open. Kole heaves it back.

At first, I’m not sure what I’m seeing. It doesn’t make sense inside my head. But when Nova screams, “Leave her alone!” I realize I’m watching a demon feeding on a human.

The girl, who can’t be much older than eighteen, is lying motionless in a wooden chair. Her arms hang limp at her sides. Blood drips from her throat, and large flaps of skin expose the muscle and bone beneath them.

Nausea springs to my throat.

The demon, who has horns—fucking horns—and the same stretched gray skin as the Hellhounds, licks its lips. It lifts a curled fingernail and picks a sliver of flesh from its teeth, then says something I don’t understand.

Next to Nova, Kole is shaking. Black veins are visible on his hands and his neck. Luther and Mack pull him back while Tanner yells, “Nova, run.”

Without looking at him, Nova flicks her fingers in the direction of the door and all four of us skid toward it like we’re moving through butter. When I try to run back into the room, an invisible barrier at the door stops me. We are stuck outside, and Nova is inside. With a flesh-eating demon.

29

NOVA

I stand with my legs hip-width apart and flex my fingers at my sides. My mates’ energy comes in protective waves from behind me, but I push it back.

They need to see this, but they do not need to be part of it.

“Is she dead?” I ask. The tongue I’m using is not from the human realm. It is something else, something long buried. I don’t know how I possess it, only that I do possess it.

The demon assesses me. It thrusts out its pelvis and squares its broad but jagged shoulders in a gesture of attempted dominance. “I paid for one hour with a human,” it says, tilting its head. “But I think I’d like an hour with you instead.” It steps closer. In the chair, the girl’s eyes flicker open. She is conscious, but only just. “What are you?” the demon barks. “You smell… not human, not witch, not vampire.” It licks its salivating lips. “What are you?”

“I’m the one who’s going to kill you.” This time, I speak English. The demon cocks its head the other way, trying to interpret what I’ve said. Its right foot leaves the ground, just by a few millimeters.

Before it has even taken one full step, I have it in my grasp. My magick lifts it into the air like it’s suspended in ice.