done. We won’t be long. If Vi turns up, do the thing and get it over with.”
But a thought occurred to me, something we’d neglected to consider. “If Vi stops my heart and for some reason we can’t restart—”
“Don’t say that,” Cora cut in. “We will bring you back.”
I locked gazes with her. “But if something goes wrong and you can’t, then Hunter will die. Even if you bring him back, he’ll die because I won’t have completed the Tribus mating.”
“Fuck,” Grayson said.
“I can’t go through with it until we have him back, and I’ve…You know.”
The thought of mating with Hunter evoked a cocktail of contradictory emotions. I didn’t have a soul connection to him like I did with my guys. Our connection was purely primal, purely physical. But it was all we had for now. It would have to do.
Grayson laced his fingers through mine as if to say, it’ll be okay.
“In that case, we better work fast,” Cora said.
She winked out, but Uri hesitated a moment, his gaze on me. I strode over and wrapped my arms around his waist in a tight hug.
He sighed and hugged me back. “I’ll see you soon.”
He released me, and then he was gone.
I leaned back against the counter, suddenly deflated. Fuck, why did life feel like I was on a fucking hamster wheel right now?
“I’ll make us some food,” Grayson said.
“I’ll do it,” Bobby insisted. “You guys rest.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue, and all I’d eaten for hours was cheesy toast. “Can we have chicken or steak?”
“We can have both,” Bobby said with a smile.
Grayson took my hand and tugged me into the lounge. He sat and pulled me onto his lap where I curled up and closed my eyes.
Uri and I hadn’t done much sleeping, and my body clock was totally out of whack from going back and forth from the Underealm. Had Conah received the phoenix? Would he come? The poor vamps in the garage deserved to feel safe. What if we got attacked by super vamps again?
“Fee.” Grayson’s chest vibrated soothingly beneath me. “Stop thinking and sleep. We can sort it all when you’re rested. Sleep. I’ve got you.”
As I slipped under another thought occurred to me. If they stopped my heart and I didn’t wake up again, I might end the Underealm’s hope of escaping Mammon’s rule, but if I was honest, that wasn’t the worst fear in my heart. The worst fear was that I’d never see my guys again. I needed to see them one last time.
I needed Conah to come here.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mal
There is death all around us. So many demons slaughtered, too many injured. Mammon struck hard and fast, and the fucker left carnage in his wake. The south barracks held by my battalion is in pieces. The building where my soldiers live has been decimated, and dead bodies strew the flatlands as far as the eye can see. The sky is gray and churning, reflecting my inner turmoil.
Fresh troops will be here soon; in the meantime, the handful of survivors drag the dead into piles ready to be burned while the injured sit around small campfires nursing their own wounds. Feathers litter the ground, black and red, like a carpet.
Yes, fresh troops will come, but for what? To meet the same fate as the ones that came before them. I should have been here.
I should have been here to lead them. We’ve had too many years of peace, and we’ve grown complacent.
Something has to change.
“Daemons,” Conah says from beside me. “I’m not sure what breed yet, but I’ve taken inventory of the wounds, and I will find out.”
“Mammon’s recruiting from the fringes of the Underealm.”
“From the daemons that were pushed out of their homes by the fallen and their offspring,” Conah says. “There’s obviously enough resentment and animosity left for them to fight against Lilith.”
“He must have promised them lands.”
“And he’ll renege on his promise,” Conah says. “Mammon won’t share. It isn’t his style.”
A gentle breeze at odds with the climate of this scene brushes my cheek. I inhale the coppery scent of blood, and my gums ache with hunger. I should feed, but any blood that isn’t Fee’s tastes like ash. I think I might have replaced one addiction for another.
“How are our numbers looking?” Conah asks.
We’ve lost the cadets we’d trained to Mammon. He has them, and goodness knows what he’s doing to them. We’ve lost three battalions of soldiers, and we’ve lost our queen.