Ben’s lips thinned. “Maybe.”
The guard slipped his key into the lock and swung the door open. “Hey, little shifter. Looks like your time is finally up.”
The woman cowered in the corner, her knees drawn up to her chest. Everything about her signified that she was afraid… except her eyes. They blazed with indignation. With challenge. With pissed off fury.
She wasn’t going to give up without a fight.
Quite honestly, Ben gave her five minutes max before she started telling them anything they wanted to know — and then some. He’d already been shown some of the interrogation tools the Malleus deemed worthy for use on prisoners. Not much had changed since the Salem witch trials hundreds of years ago.
“She’s all yours,” the guard said.
“Thanks.”
Ben slammed his fist into the guard’s face, then grabbed him and whacked his head against the metal door. That was more than enough to knock him out cold.
Then Ben looked in at the woman in the corner — this so-called evil creature he was scheduled to torture for information in a few short minutes.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.
He held his hand out to her. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
FIFTEEN
Eden sat on the floor of Triple-A for what felt like a very long time. It was cold, with the broken door letting in the chill of the mid-November evening, but she barely felt it.
Darrak was gone forever.
And she’d just realized she was pregnant with his baby.
He’d told her demons didn’t carry human diseases, so she was safe with him when they’d slept together. The only unexpected side effect had been her black magic.
She’d assumed — well, hell, obviously she hadn’t given it any thought at all.
If she felt morning sickness now, that meant it likely happened the very first time they’d been together.
She was one month pregnant.
“What am I going to do?” she whispered.
Darrak had been sent to the Void — a place of endless nothing. Death for demons and other soulless creatures. The end of everything with no chance to ever return.
It was the absolute worst thing that could have happened.
Andy whined.
“He’s gone,” she told him, her voice quiet and broken. “It’s too late.”
She’d never felt so incredibly helpless in her life. The control, once and for all, had been completely taken out of her hands. She’d wanted to break his curse in order to obtain her freedom and privacy again, but not at this cost.
Destroying him managed to do the trick. The curse was officially toast.
Damn Ben and Caroline for doing this without her permission, for not even giving her a choice.
That was the negative side, the dark side that was ready to give up and just cry, yell, and break things.
But Eden had another side, one that was screaming for her to get up off the floor, to let go of the werewolf she was clutching, and to bloody well do something to fix this.
“What am I supposed to do?” she whispered.
Something. Anything. She couldn’t just accept this. It
“It
No, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t let it.
Darrak had been swept away to the Netherworld, to the Void, and he’d always told her that meant the end of everything.
But maybe it didn’t. Maybe there was still a chance to save him.
After all, Eden did have friends in important places.
Friends who wanted something from her, but it hadn’t been the right time. She hadn’t been taken to the very point of desperation before. Not like this.
Lucas could fix this — he was the Prince of Hell. He might not be able to read minds or see the future, but he ruled the Netherworld and had for an eternity.
Darrak thought Lucas had a master plan that involved Eden, the reason why he was willing to forgive her slipups, her excuses for not following through on her previous assignments for him. The quest for the angelheart and the attempt to slap the silver chain on Brenda for her hellish job interview had both ended in failure.
And yet Lucas was still willing to take some of her darkness away from time to time so her soul wouldn’t be too damaged. It was still gray, even after all the black magic she’d burned through.
Thanks to Lucas.
Eden had to talk to him, and it couldn’t wait another minute.
She scrambled to her feet so fast it made her dizzy. Darrak was gone, no question about that, but it was possible he wasn’t gone for good. She might have a window of opportunity here — a very small one. So small she hadn’t even noticed it before.
This had to work.
Her hand shook as she slid it into the pocket of her coat to find the marble.
Nothing was there.
She reached deeper, then tried the other pocket, patting down the lining of the coat in case it had dropped through a rip in the seam.
Dark panic returned, chasing away her momentary glimmer of hope.
“Where is it?” she choked out.
Her mother and Ben had stolen Maksim’s containment spell while she’d been unconscious. Had they taken Lucas’s summoning crystal, too? It was all she had — the only way she could contact him.
She tried the pockets one more time as if the marble might have magically reappeared. “Why the hell isn’t it here?”
Then, shaking, tears streaming down her cheeks, she sank back down to the floor and grabbed hold of Andy as an anchor. He rested his currently furry head on her shoulder and whimpered.
“It’s too late. I can’t find it. I don’t know where it went. It was my only hope.”
Andy’s mournful whine turned into a dangerous-sounding growl, low in his throat. Eden froze, then slowly swiveled to glance over her shoulder.
Lucas stood behind her, his palm outstretched. On it lay the marble. “You wouldn’t happen to be looking for this, would you?”
“Wh-what are you…?” She was so stunned she could barely form words.
He cocked his head. “I guess you were distracted earlier. You didn’t see me sitting in the corner of the cafe drinking a latte. Looked as if you and your mother were having a lovely family reunion. Warms the heart.”
Magic immediately crackled down her arms, begging to be used. “So you saw what happened to me and didn’t do anything?”
He seemed unimpressed with her show of anger. “No, I didn’t intervene. Sometimes it’s important to let nature take its course.”
He’d just been watching her get tranquilized and thrown in the back of a van while Darrak was trapped in here? “Was this all your doing, Lucas? Did you destroy Darrak?”
“If I wanted to destroy him, I would have done so a long time ago, Eden, and no adorable displays of magic would be able to stop me.” He slid the marble into the pocket of his rumpled jacket.
She wondered, not for the first time, why this was the form he chose to use here in the human world. From
