Devon was vaguely aware of Finn leaping to his feet and diving at Eric, taking him down, as she threw a ball of hellfire at Leticia, who’d been staring at Jo in shock.
Leticia stumbled backward, colliding with the wall. “Bitch!”
“Aren’t I, though?” Devon’s inner demon charged to the surface with a snarl, appearing in an explosion of smoke with only a flash of pleasure/pain. It blinked its eyes at its prey, blood boiling with rage, leg muscles quivering with the urge to lunge and maul and kill.
*
“You’re wondering why you didn’t scent me,” Foreman said to Tanner. “I can hide my scent. Make it literally vanish. Hiding the scents of others isn’t as easy—I usually only manage to cover them in a fake scent.”
Which was why Tanner hadn’t recognized Muriel’s scent at Harry’s crime scene. “You didn’t change Muriel’s scent today, though.”
Foreman shrugged. “There didn’t seem any point. You still would have followed the scent down here. I just had to be ready to stop you from disabling the bomb.”
None of them would know the first fucking thing about disabling a goddamn bomb, but Knox would easily dispose of it … if only they could get out of this fucking snare.
“You really want to die, Royal?” asked Knox.
Pain shadowed Foreman’s eyes. “I died here a long time ago. Muriel’s right; this ground needs to be purged of the evil here.” He frowned. “I didn’t help her kill the others. Just kept them still for her. Can’t aim that ability on more than one person at a time, though, so I figured it’d be best to cage you all.”
“It wasn’t,” said Knox.
Foreman jumped back as flames shot out of the ground and lapped at the fluid walls of the snare. Flames that were a mix of red, gold, and black that gave off no smoke. “The flames of hell.” Foreman stared at Knox, his face slack. “It’s true, you really can conjure them.”
“They’ll eat this snare, Foreman,” Knox told him, speaking loud enough to be heard over the crackling, hissing, spitting flames. Nothing was impervious to them. “They’ll devour it, and then they’ll consume you just before they consume the bomb if you don’t let us out right fucking now.”
“You’d never spare me.” It was a quiet, shaky whisper.
“I would if you released us. I don’t want to kill you, Royal. I think you’ve suffered enough. But I will end you if you don’t back the fuck down.”
Foreman swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I just can’t. This has to be done.” He shook his head. “You all should have just stayed away.”
A familiar, raging sense of urgency struck Tanner hard, making his knees buckle, his scalp prickle, and his hackles rise. Devon. His heart began to pound like a drum, every muscle in his body went tight, and his hound just about lost its shit.
“Something’s happening,” he told Knox. “I have to get to Devon.” He snarled at Foreman, his eyes briefly bleeding to black. “Open this fucking thing. Open it!”
The male stepped backwards. “I-I can’t.”
“You listen to me,” Tanner ground out, fighting his hound for supremacy when all it wanted was to surface and lunge at the prison it had no chance of smashing through. “My mate needs me. If I don’t get to her now, she could die.”
Foreman licked his lower lip. “I’m sorry.” He genuinely looked like he was, and then Tanner couldn’t see him at all, because the flames spread to the front of the prison and blocked his view.
Breathing hard, Tanner spat out a curse and hurled one ball of hellfire after another at the fluid walls. All the orbs disintegrated. “Fuck!” Nostrils flaring, he started pacing up and down. His hound roared and raged, demanding freedom even as it knew there was nothing it could do—they were fucking trapped.
“I’ll get you to her soon, Tanner, I swear that to you,” said Knox. “As soon as the flames destroy this snare, we’ll be out. It won’t take long. There are already fractures in the walls.”
It didn’t take long for someone to die either.
“I tried notifying Larkin and Jolene,” said Levi, “but I can’t touch the minds of anyone outside this prison. It’s fucking blocking me, just like it blocks teleportation.”
It was also blocking Tanner from touching Devon’s mind to be sure she was alive. Snarling deep in his throat, he punched the fluid wall in front of him. It was like punching an iceberg, and it hurt like a motherfucker. He