I pushed away, angry at him for yelling at me, only to cringe. My thrust caused a ghastly pain to shoot through me. I hunched over and instinctively grabbed where it hurt. My fingers sank into the large bloody chunk missing from my shoulder. I shouldn’t have looked. I really shouldn’t have, because the ruptured blood vessels and mangled flesh caused me to become abruptly faint.
Aric caught me before I hit the ground and yelled for Emme. I barely heard the last few splatters of demon remains drench the earth. We’d won the fight. By some miracle, we’d all survived. My sisters hurried over, screaming when they saw my condition. You know you’re in bad shape when women who’ve decapitated vampires can’t bear the sight of you. They pleaded with me not to close my eyes, but the horrible ringing in my ears made it hard to understand their speech. My eyelids drooped as if lined with tar, despite my struggles to keep them open.
Aric continued to hold me while Emme touched my skin with trembling hands. “Hang in there, baby,” he whispered. “Don’t leave me.”
Emme’s soft yellow light surrounded me. Slowly I regained my strength. My head began to clear, and the horrible pain receded. The moment I healed, I broke free from Aric and put ample space between us. Damn, I was furious. “It’s not okay for you to yell at me!”
Aric’s expression went from shocked to glaring. He yanked on the shorts Liam tossed him while narrowing his eyes at me. “Those things could have raped or killed you because you didn’t listen to me!”
I threw my hands in the air. “Did you honestly expect me to leave you?” He didn’t answer. “My God, I don’t believe this!”
Gemini interrupted calmly as his other wolf leapt into his back. “The girls were a great help, Aric. They fought well and valiantly.”
Gem’s words did little to calm Aric. His jaw clenched tighter as he continued to lock eyes with me. “That’s not the point.”
Koda held Shayna, who leaned heavily against him as if barely able to stand. “Enough of this. We need to get the girls to safety.”
I couldn’t keep the bite out of my voice as I stalked past Aric. “By the way, you’re welcome!”
I stormed off, leaping over the creatures’ body parts and limbs that now mimicked dead branches. I paused when I reached the last one. Frustration inveighed me to stomp it to dust. It crumbled easily. Another hour and the remains would probably disintegrate. The knowledge brought me no comfort. More were out there. The attack had proved that much.
My arms crossed as I continued forward. I ignored Aric when he caught up to me. He didn’t say anything, and no longer appeared angry, but the anger heating the space between us made it clear neither of us was in the mood for chitchat.
The smell of fear and death stopped me less than a mile from the car. I ran toward the source with Aric at my heels, horror-struck by what awaited beneath a steep incline.
A herd of beautiful deer had been mutilated by those hideous monsters. Some were still alive, twitching and bleating in pain. Others were just chunks of leftover flesh. The bucks had fled, but not the does. They’d apparently chosen to stay with their dying babies. I froze in place, torn between crying and screaming. But it wasn’t until Emme and Shayna gasped behind me that I was finally able to pull myself away.
“Please, Liam,” Emme begged, “I can help them.”
The wolves ignored my sisters’ desperate pleas and stalked toward the suffering beasts. The bays and whines amplified. The deer had sensed the arrival of new predators and realized their inevitable end. I felt my breath quickening, knowing what was coming and unable to slow my racing pulse.
The sickening crunch of necks being snapped echoed like gunshots in the silence of the forest. I focused on Gemini comforting Taran. She buried her face in his chest and covered her ears. “They’re coming for me,” she whispered in a trembling voice. “I know they’re coming.”
Shayna and Emme openly bawled. Aric tried to reach out to me, but I wrenched away from him and moved toward Emme and Shayna. I wrapped my arms around them and led them away from the horror.
No one said anything until we reached the car. But when Koda tried to hold Shayna, she released me and climbed into the backseat with Taran and Gemini. She wouldn’t look at Koda. Koda dropped his head and stepped into the driver’s seat.
Liam held out his arms to Emme. Emme focused on his large hands, the same ones that had just finished the deer. Koda and Liam had acted in the name of mercy. I knew that, and I was certain my sisters did, too, except that didn’t mean their actions were any less disturbing. Brutality and death constantly lingered in the wolves’ existence. Not in ours. At least, not now.
“Go to him, Emme,” I urged quietly. “None of this is his fault. He did what he had to.”
Emme approached Liam slowly. He gathered her in his arms and told her he loved her. And just like that, they were back to their normal selves. Aric and I, not so much.
Aric blocked my way when I attempted to get into the front passenger seat. “You’re not sitting with me?”
I met his frown with a glare. “
Taran broke the uncomfortable silence on the ride home. “For shit’s sake, where the hell did all those demons come from?”
Gemini’s tone was dark when he answered, “We didn’t destroy all the demon lords. There must have been more.”
“No shit,” she muttered.
Emme spoke softly. “B-but there haven’t been more bodies—or missing people or anything—since the fight in Death Valley. Even the rogue vampires haven’t presented themselves.”
Aric answered from the back. It hurt to hear him speak. “They’ve probably been lying low, especially since they realized we could call them forth. Either that or they’d gathered enough food to last them.”
We’d reached the highway. “Pull over, Koda,” Taran yelled. “Shayna’s going to be sick.”
Koda scrambled out of the car with me right behind him. He held back Shayna’s hair while a multitude of cars sped past us. When she finished, he took off his shirt and handed it to her.
Shayna’s tears streaked her trembling frame. She twisted Koda’s shirt between her long fingers. “I’m sorry, puppy. The gore was just too much. And those poor deer, I couldn’t take it.”
“It’s okay, baby. Just don’t be afraid of me. I love you. I could never hurt you.”
Shayna wrapped her arms around Koda’s waist. “I’m not afraid of you,” she choked between sobs. “Please don’t think that.”
Koda picked her up and carried her to the car, tossing Aric the keys along the way. When we climbed back in, Emme switched seats so Koda and Shayna could continue to hold each other. It was such a sweet moment between them. I couldn’t help envying their love.
Aric sat next to me and cranked the engine. He glanced my way. I turned to look out the window and rested my forehead against the glass, not ready and not willing to speak to him.
We arrived home to find Danny cooking in our kitchen and Bren lounging on our couch. Bren jumped up, growling, as soon as he got a whiff of us. “What the hell happened? You smell like evil.”
I kicked off my shoes and strode into the kitchen to wash my hands. Yeah, like that did much. “We were attacked by a horde of demon children.”
Danny placed the spatula down on the spoon rest and gripped the sides of the counter. “When you say horde . . . ?”
“Fifty, maybe sixty,” Liam answered. He took a beer out of the fridge, twisted the cap off with his teeth, and chugged it.
“None of this makes sense,” Danny said. “It would take an entire army of demons to produce that many offspring, and there are only a few strong enough to leave hell.”
Liam stood against the wall with his arms crossed. He glanced over at Emme, who sat on the couch quietly. “I think they were after our girls.”
