I would’ve been rolling my eyes if they weren’t right about the witch thing and he wasn’t holding a very large gun. “Calm down. You all know who I am. I make baked goods and drive possibly too fast on my fabulous motorcycle. Come on.”
“He’s a demon! Nancy told us what she saw.” Evan and his shorter brother—a ruddy-looking guy—started going on about demonic traits and what Pastor Rob had said about the real possibility of Satan and his influence in Franklin.
“Now, hold on.” I held up my hands. “I promise you that we are the good guys. You do not want to see real bad guys. Believe me.”
“So you admit there is supernatural activity here?” Evan’s brother was recording me now with his phone. His cheeks had gone paper white. “Do you, Coren Connelly, admit that your new associates are not natural?”
Okay. That was enough. “Listen. I have a friend inside. Titus. Remember him? The incredibly nice guy who runs the MMA gym in town? Yeah, you took classes last year, Evan, if I remember right. He was in…he was in a car accident and he is really banged up. I have to get in there and see if he needs a trip to the ER. So can y’all just go home and let me take care of Titus?”
Lucus and his brothers stood beside me now, bristling. All I had to do was say the word and they’d have this group begging under their lure and bleeding from multiple wounds. But I definitely didn’t want that. First off, these idiots were just that—idiots. They didn’t mean anything by this. They thought they were helping out their aunt. Second, ripping a bunch of people apart in the middle of a neighborhood wasn’t going to make our quest any easier. It would be tough to save the world from the inside of a prison cell.
Gripping his rifle, Evan opened his mouth to shout at me, but his cousins and brother gently pulled him back.
Dain smoothed his beard and looked down at his hip leather shoes. “We’ll let you take care of Titus. He’s good people. But Miss Coren, you need to be gone before things get ugly.” When he looked up, his gaze threw a warning.
Showing off that preternatural grace, Lucus stepped forward. “Dain, I suggest you and your kin forget this location entirely.”
Lucus’s lure suffused the air, and my knees wobbled, heat blooming between my thighs and my thoughts growing fuzzy. “Lucus.” My tone said Don’t.
Dain’s lips parted, and he stumbled a step. Evan blinked beside his cousins, and they traded glances, eyes glazed.
“Go,” Lucus whispered to the group like a lover.
Several of the guys bowed their heads, and the entire crew turned away. They climbed into a red F150 and a black Escalade and drove away. I touched Lucus’s arm. His lure faded, but my body was still ripe with mind-numbing lust.
He cupped my face with one hand and studied me with his bright green eyes. “Let us heal your friend.”
I nodded, inhaling deep breaths of fresh air in hopes of clearing my head as we hurried inside. His influence had worked, but as sure as I was that Mondays suck, I knew those guys would be back. We had to come up with a plan.
9 Coren
I led my fae fellows inside. “Should I have told them about the wyvern? I mean, I thought maybe if I just made it seem like they were overreacting, they’d shove off.”
Titus lay on my couch with his long legs spread across the rumpled cushions and my Tennessee Bakes monthly magazine rolled up beside his battered tennis shoe.
“What happened out there?” Hekla wiped a damp cloth over Titus’s face.
We told her about the exchange.
“I don’t think you could’ve sold them on a dragon they can’t see.”
“Why not? They think I’m a witch and the rest of you all are demons. I can’t see a dragon being a big stretch.”
But Hekla didn’t seem to be paying attention to what I was saying. She kept muttering, “I hate myself,” over and over.
I sat beside Titus and patted his knee through his jogging pants. “Lucus is going to fix you up a little more, all right?”
Lucus placed his hands over the bite mark on Titus’s pale neck. He had partially healed the wound already, but the skin remained swollen and red. Titus’s eyes opened, and he let out a sigh.
“Thanks, man,” he said, his voice a croak. “Thanks to all of you. I can’t even process what I saw there. What happened. It’s kind of foggy, honestly. Did someone really drink my blood?”
“It’s totally acceptable to pass out even thinking about it,” Hekla said. “I hate myself.”
I hit her arm. “Stop saying that. It’s not your fault.” The guys would think we were talking about Titus being taken, but I knew Hekla was actually beating herself up for crushing on Kaippa.
Baccio stood by the windows, his shadow crossing the living room like a dark ghost. “Vampires are a plague on the world. Don’t blame yourself for his actions, Hekla.”
Lucus, Hekla, Aurelio, and I did a double take.
“Whoa. Did you just say something nice?” Maybe I was still high from Lucus’s lure.
Baccio turned and raised an eyebrow. “I only speak the truth. We should kill Kaippa.”
“We still don’t know what the repercussions of such a death would be,” Lucus said, taking his hands from Titus’s neck. The skin at the site of the wound was nearly perfect. “If we kill Kaippa, the demon dragon may shift into something even more difficult to battle because Kaippa was included in the original casting of the curse.”
“Coren?” Hekla handed me a cup of tea.
I realized I was staring at the carpet and shook myself before accepting the hot mug. “I have no idea how we’re going to slay this demon wyvern thing. No. Idea.”
Lucus sat on the table with his knees touching mine. His earnest gaze calmed my heart. “You
