Lothaire

When another bullet plugged him in the back, he hissed over his shoulder, baring those fangs. “One— moment,” he snapped.

Ellie sneaked a glance at the cops; they looked too confounded to react.

And behind them, Ephraim and some of her cousins had come running up the mountain, rifles in hand. They’d slowed in shock upon seeing the demon.

The male sneered, “Mortals,” then turned back to her. “Listen very carefully, Elizabeth. I am Lothaire the Enemy of Old, and you belong to me. After considering my options, I’ve decided I will allow you to go to jail this eve.”

“Y-you’ve got the wrong girl! I don’t know you—”

Talking over her, he said, “In your human prison, you’ll be hidden from my kind, which means you’ll be relatively safe while I continue my search. I will return for you in two years. Or so.” He gave her a harsh shake. “But if you try to harm yourself—and therefore my female—again, I will punish you beyond imagining. Do you understand me?”

“Your female? I’m not yours!”

“I wouldn’t have you.” He narrowed those red eyes. “The glorious being who lives within you, however . . .”

“I don’t understand! What’s inside of me?”

He reached his free hand toward her face, his black claws glinting in the moonlight. Ignoring her question, he huskily murmured, “I will have her, my queen, forever.”

When he brushed a strand of hair from her face, she flinched. “Unhand me, demon!”

He stared down at her even as he addressed another in that deep, hypnotic voice: “Saroya, if you can hear me, sleep until I return for you. When all my plots and all my toiling come to bear.”

Saroya? It has a name?

With inhuman speed, he rose, looming above Ellie. More words in another language followed, then he disappeared into thin air.

The shaken deputies closed in on Ellie, their jaws slack. Sweat ran from their foreheads even as their breaths smoked. One cuffed her silently, while the others aimed their pistols in all directions—even up.

Ephraim and her cousins looked stricken; they could do nothing to save her, short of killing four cops in cold blood.

Her stunned mind finally registered that she would be taken alive.

The red-eyed demon had prevented her death. And Ellie burned to kill him for it.

2 Ridgevale Correctional Center for Women, Virginia

PRESENT DAY

Does the condemned have any last words?” the warden intoned.

“No!” Ellie squirmed against her bonds on the gurney, pulling taut the electrodes dotting her chest. With each of her frantic heartbeats, the nearby EKG monitor spiked. The IV tubes snaking from each arm swayed back and forth. “No, I’m ready!”

She might have felt dread that she was about to die, but urgency overwhelmed all other emotions. She’d had death snatched from her grasp once before.

And the demon was stirring inside her.

Fearing “Saroya” would rise and attack everyone around her, Ellie had taken no last meal, had met with no family or chaplain. She’d inventoried her worldly belongings—ChapStick, college textbooks, four dollars in change, and her journals—with a swift efficiency.

Ellie had made peace with her fate long ago, had hungered to die ever since the night of her arrest. She’d written apologies to the victims’ families, saving them to be delivered after she was gone.

“Please hurry, sir,” she begged the elderly warden.

At that, a hum of murmurs broke out in the next room. The witnesses behind the tinted glass window didn’t know what to make of her behavior, didn’t know how to process such an unusual murderer.

She was young, had filed no appeals to her sentence, and by all accounts had never displayed violent behavior growing up.

There had been run-ins with the law. Some minor—getting caught parking with boys. Some not so minor—poaching on state lands and refusing to testify against family members or cooperate with law enforcement.

But there’d never been a drop of human blood spilled by her hand until a yearlong killing spree.

Saroya had been busier than Ellie had ever dreamed.

“I’m ready.”

The warden frowned at her, and the two prison guards flanking him shuffled uncomfortably. Against all their best efforts—and Saroya’s—they’d ended up liking Ellie, admiring her quiet determination to educate herself, to earn a degree, though she had no future.

Ellie had always had a good sense of people, and she’d ended up liking the three back. “Thank you for everything.”

“Then God be with you, Ellie Peirce.” The warden turned toward the adjoining control room. As the guards followed him out, one briefly laid his gloved hand on her shoulder. The other gave her a quick nod, but she could tell he’d be affected by her passing.

The door shut behind them, a deafening final click. I’m alone now. She stared after them, comprehending that no one would be getting out of this room alive.

Alone. So scared.

I didn’t want to have to die. . . .

She gazed at her arms, strapped to the padded supports. Her wrists were taped, her palms up. The two IV lines were a dozen feet long, running from her inner arms to a pair of portholes in the wall behind her, continuing into the control room.

Half an hour ago, a nameless, faceless doctor had started a saline drip back there. At high noon, he would add a trio of chemicals, and moments later, the nightmare would be over forever.

Have to finish this. Almost there.

Funny what one would think about on the verge of death. How many people knew—to the minute—when they’d pass on?

She doubted anyone had ever gone to her own execution with such a feverish drive still spurring her, with a goal and an iron will bent on achieving it. Far from muting her determination, jail had only honed it, like adding layer after layer of plating to shore up a mountain train trestle.

I’m about to win. To beat her. Saroya had risen only twice in the last five years, both times in the first few months. Ellie’s blackouts had resulted in the permanent disfigurement of two fellow inmates.

All done with her bare hands.

Long dormant, the demon now stirred. Sensing its own doom? That’s right, you’re going down, bitch.

Only two things could save her life at this point.

An unexpected call from the governor.

Or Saroya’s powerful red-eyed mate.

Not a day went by that Ellie didn’t think of the fiend named Lothaire the Enemy of Old. She’d seen the male appear out of thin air and then vanish, had seen bullets annoy him. Members of her family, the sheriff, and those deputies had witnessed these things with her, no matter how many times that up-for- reelection sheriff told her they hadn’t. . . .

She craned her head back to look at the clock on the wall behind her. Three minutes till noon.

One hundred and eighty seconds until death slipped down the tubes.