jostle it. I wasn’t moving until Azi allowed it. “How about a thank-you instead of being a complete asshat?”
The demon blinked, and Jax’s stormy gray eyes clouded over in confusion—then rage. “Your actions were not to save my life. They were to save his—which is a waste since he is already dead.”
Of all the things I’d expected the demon to come back with, that wasn’t on the list. The temperature plummeted, and in that moment the only thing keeping me from crashing to the ground was the demon’s grip. “What?”
It watched me without answering. Jax’s head tilted to the left, and then to the right. Like it was listening to something only it could hear.
The silence, along with the almost blank stare, was too much to handle. I balled my fist and, forgetting for a second that it was Jax’s body, I let loose and, as hard as I could, punched his shoulder where it looked like one of the carnivi must have gone to town. “Answer me!”
Azi righted Jax’s body and squared his shoulders. There was the smallest hint of a flinch. “I will not relinquish control of our body. Therefore, he is as good as dead.”
I wanted to argue. To kick and scream and fight until my hands were bloody and there was no strength left in my bones. But what good would it have done? The only way I was evicting that bastard was by getting my hands on that stone. And with Van gone, that task had just gotten a hundred times more complicated. At least Jax was still in there. Still safe for now.
“Focus,” I snapped. “What now?”
“We know where she hid the stone. We go there. I believe her last remark was her way of telling us that you would be able to take the stone from its resting place.”
I’d gotten that, too, but I’d hoped it had slipped the demon’s notice. I should have known better. Getting the stone would solve Azi’s problem, but without Van to wield it, I didn’t think I could use it to save Jax. “It can’t be as simple as walking in and snapping it up.”
“Possibly not. But Zenak will bring her to the cave. He will force her to hand him the stone. We know where. And we know when.”
“They could still get there first.” Either Azi was packing some serious ammo I wasn’t aware of, or the demon had lost its ever loving mind.
“Zenak will undoubtedly send minions to impede us. I imagine they will come at us from all ends. The task will not be an easy one.” It leaned Jax’s body toward me, so close that his turbulent gray eyes filled my vision. “But as you humans say, it wouldn’t be worth it if it were.”
I resisted the urge to push closer and instead took a step back. We had one day until the last full moon. This plan had a lot of problems. There were too many variables and loopholes for disaster.
Unfortunately, it was all we had.
…
It killed me to leave the park without at least trying to find Van, but in the end I knew Azi was right, so we headed back to her car. A throwback to my wilder days, I was able to easily hotwire the thing and get us on our way.
With a little on-the-go cell phone research, I found out that the Dandus Nature Preserve was a sprawling expanse of two hundred and forty acres nestled in the small town of Valley High, New York. Valley High was a town just outside of Buffalo, about six hours from Harlow. Since we were currently still in Virginia, that was an almost fourteen-hour drive, and about five hours in, we decided to stop for the night.
Well, I decided.
Azi had argued that I didn’t seem tired—and it was right—but Jax’s body had several nasty looking wounds from our throw down with the carnivi. Claiming fatigue was the only thing I could think of to get the demon to stop and let me tend to them. I stopped at a drug store, used the last of our cash, and bought some first aid supplies.
Luckily I had an idea about how to score us a room for the night, another trick from my earlier years. I drove us to a small motel just off the highway and waited for my moment.
It took about two hours before I found what I needed—a family of three leaving their room. I waited for them to get