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“That was you?” His eyes shown with tears. “You ladies saved lives today. I don’t know how those ferals got through our defenses, but if it hadn’t been for you, there would’ve been many casualties before we could figure out what was going on. We have you two to thank.?
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He hugged us again, finally noticing the box in my hand.
“Why do you have that?” He gestured at the antique.
“The demons were after it,” Raquel spoke up in a breathless voice. “We fought off over a dozen breaking into your office.”
“Psyche’s Urn?” He frowned at us, disbelief in his light blue eyes. “But why would they want that? As far as I can tell, it’s just a trinket. A useless artifact with no imbued powers. A fairy tale.”
“They definitely wanted it,” I replied, sticking my chin out. “They died for it. We have to figure out why.”
At that moment, Georgia came racing toward us. The blood had drained from her face and she was clenching a torn t-shirt in her hands.
“Has anyone seen my boy? Has anyone seen Gabe?”
Panic whittled a hole in my chest as I turned to scour the crowds for a sign of him. It was nearly impossible, due to the nearly two hundred Nephilim gathered on the grounds.
“Those demons dragged him off.” Noah Brown appeared at her elbow, concern etched into the lines on his forehead. A trickle of blood trailed down from his lower lip. “One minute, he was fighting right next to me. The next, I saw them yanking him into the forest. I tried to go after him, but a feral got in the way.”
My lungs struggled to bring in air. He couldn’t be gone. I continued to search over the crowds, hoping against hope that Noah was wrong and Gabe was still nearby. Maybe he’d fought off the ferals in the forest and was on his way back here now. He was the best warrior I knew. He would win.
Despite Luke’s warning touch on my arm, I broke away and ran toward the edge of the forest. My eyes scanned the trees. My green-eyed angel was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t made it back.
Blinking wildly, I almost missed the figure lurking in the shadows. A tall man with a long, handsome face and flashing black eyes. Despite the heat, he was wearing a woolen suit entirely in black. A sympathetic smile pulled at his sensual mouth, as if he knew what panic coursed through my veins.
I stopped moving and stared at him, wondering who could be so brazen to stand in a demon-infested forest close to the home of a clan of deadly warriors. He didn’t look like any human I’d ever seen. Or demon.
“Hello.” His voice was sickly sweet and dark like molasses. He tilted his head in greeting. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again, Lizzy Redding.”
Clutching my dagger tighter in my hand, I squinted at him. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
His lips parted in an amused smile. “Don’t you know me?”
“No.”
I looked past him, into the dark woods. I didn’t have time for this. Gabe was missing.
“Well, I know you.”
He stepped closer. In his eyes, a smoldering sensuality lit.
I wrapped my arm around my stomach, feeling suddenly naked under his gaze.
Extending a slender arm, his pale hand reaching for mine, and he smiled again. “They call me Seth. You’ll be seeing a lot more of me from now on.”
I didn’t care who he was. Right now, I needed to find Gabe. And he was getting in my way.
A shout came from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see Luke and a few Nephilim sprinting our way. By the time I looked back at Seth, he’d vanished into the trees. A cold wind breathed on my neck, raising the hairs along my skin. Why had he seemed so familiar? Surely, I’d remember meeting someone as unsettling as him.
The cold breeze blew again and suddenly, I knew the answer. The realization chilled me to the bone. That chilling presence. The innate evil in his eyes. The immense power rolling off of him. There was no question.
A Prince of Hell had come to Westward Manor.
Chapter Eleven
Luke made me wait in the ballroom with the rest of the panicked Nephilim. Despite my demands that I be allowed to go after Gabe immediately, he put his foot down and calmly explained that he had sent highly trained scouts out into the forest to look for signs of him. Scouts who had far more experience tracking than anyone in this entire room, myself included.
