Wherever this pair of demons were going, they were in a hurry. Gunner glanced over at Rocco. His brother hadn’t needed any convincing to hunt with him tonight, and he’d taken it as a good sign.
But looking at him now, Gunner wasn’t so sure.
Roc’s eyes were all predator, black and focused on their prey. The skin over his face was taut and lined, at odd angles, as if his Kishi demon was right there below the surface ready to explode through.
“You solid?” Gunner asked as they flew above the two leathren demons.
He gave him a sharp nod. “Something’s not right.”
Roc was right. Leathren preferred their own company. Two together like this was unusual. They fed off other people’s pain and suffering. They were scavengers in Hell, absorbing the screams and cries of the damned. On Earth, they followed pain and suffering wherever they could find it. But they weren’t known to share.
There had to be suffering close by, and for these demons to willingly put up with each other, the payoff—feeding off the suffering of whoever was providing these fuckers with their dinner—had to be big, which meant someone was in some serious pain.
Roc slipped his blade free, angling his body, preparing to swoop down.
“Wait,” Gunner said. “Someone could need our help. You kill these demons now, we might not be able to find them.”
Rocco growled low but did as Gunner asked. A month ago, hell, a week ago, there would have been no stopping him. He would have already questioned, tortured, and slaughtered both demons as soon as he’d seen them, convinced they might know something about his female.
So far, his efforts to learn anything about Kyler and what had become of her in Hell had been fruitless.
They turned onto a street. It was a swank part of town, lots of mini-mansions and big yards. An empty lot was up ahead, and the demons picked up pace when they saw it. They headed toward a cordoned-off mound of topsoil and—
Vanished.
“Fuck.” Things had been quiet since they’d raided a warehouse—a fucking prison—a few months ago. Gunner and his brothers had freed a bunch of demi-demons being held against their will by a powerful demon on Diemos’s payroll. Somehow the current ruler of Hell was communicating with the demons here on Earth, and he and his army had abducted demi to exploit their powers, to use them as weapons, to help grow his army and have them ready and waiting when Diemos finally escaped Hell and took over Earth.
Grace, Chaos’s mate, had been one of those demi, and if it wasn’t for her little goth friend, Grace would probably still be a prisoner. The other female had helped Grace escape, and then she’d texted with details of where to find the rest of the demi who had been abducted.
Because of her, they’d been able to take out a lot of the demon army tasked with guarding the demi as well.
What they hadn’t done was find the little goth female who had helped them or the powerful demon behind it all.
Roc sneered. “Fuckers are back to their old tricks.”
They both landed and walked onto the empty lot, turning, searching the shadows. They’d been ambushed like this before. Demons seeming to vanish into thin air only to pop back up with a whole bunch of their buddies. Gunner stood there stiffly, Roc at his side, and waited, expecting it.
But nothing happened.
No hoard of demons holding rusty knives appeared, and it didn’t look as if the two leathren had any intention of coming back either.
“Let’s keep searching the area,” Gunner said, because something seriously fucked up was going on.
Chapter 2
Luna lay in the dark, strange sensations in her belly growing stronger, twisting as if they were in some kind of battle.
Sir had his arms slung over her waist, his naked body pressed against her back, his fingers still deep in her hair, fisting tight even in sleep.
She wanted to pull from his fucking hold, tear a leg off the bedside table and stab him with it. Then she wanted to go to the bathroom and wipe the stickiness from between her legs, followed by shoving her fingers down her throat and vomiting up his blood, hot and toxic, sitting in her stomach.
Escape the awful way her body felt every time she drank from him.
She wouldn’t do either of those things. He’d let her out of the basement a week ago, after two