He was wrong.

“Mae! Holy fuck! Mae!”

The solid metal panel had somehow morphed into a screen: He could see through it now, and on the other side, Mae was sitting cross-legged on a bright white marble floor, her head in her hands, her sobs carrying through whatever kind of existential distance separated them.

“Mae!” he yelled as he dropped to his knees.

“What are you doing?” Butch said.

“She’s right there! What the hell is wrong with you? Mae!”

Sahvage touched the metal—and it gave way, his fingers somehow pushing into that which shouldn’t have had any give in it at all.

And as if she sensed him, Mae jerked her head up and looked around.

“I’m here!” He ripped his jacket off and held it out to the Brother closest to him. “Take this.”

Tohr stared down in confusion. “What are you talking about.”

“I’m going in after her. I’m going to pull her out. But I’m going to need an anchor.” He didn’t care how he knew this with such clarity. “Hold this!”

Tohr continued to look at him like he’d lost his mind—join the goddamn club—but the Brother grabbed on to the jacket’s wrist.

“I don’t know where the hell you think you’re going—”

“Your opinion is irrelevant.”

Sahvage braced his body, one foot planted behind him, the other set right on the lip of the door. Then he extended his arm into the steel panel . . .

The sensation was unpleasant, like he was pushing his hand through cold mud, but like he gave a shit. He just kept going, leaning farther and farther forward, his palm, his wrist, his forearm, penetrating through the door . . . and coming out the other side.

Mae reared back.

And then instantly, her expression changed. Sahvage!

Or at least that’s what he thought she said. He couldn’t hear her.

“Take my hand,” he yelled. “Take it—I’ll pull you through.”

Even though he didn’t know whether that was possible. He didn’t know anything other than he wasn’t leaving without her.

“I’m going in,” he said to nobody.

Moving carefully, he put his boot into the other version of reality and shifted some of his weight. That same instinct that told him to make sure to keep one foot in each plane of existence, one on each side of the door, got louder and louder, so he relied on the hold on his jacket’s sleeve as he tilted himself off-balance.

Penetrating the door with his torso gave him a bad case of the shivers, his skin goose bumping, his muscles twitching, his bones aching deep in his marrow. And as his head broke free of the resistance, he was hit with all kinds of sights and smells. Clothes. Something burning. Perfume.

Like he gave a fuck.

Mae was right in front of him. He could finally scent her tears, feel her presence—and hear her properly.

Oh, God, she was hurt. Her face was wounded and—

“Sahvage!”

As she launched herself at him, he grabbed on to her body, but couldn’t spare even a second to check her injuries. “Hold on, my female. Just hold me tight.”

Looking over her head, he had a brief, but indelible, impression of racks and racks of fancy shit. And modern furniture and a kitchen and a bed platform. There was a whole living space in the storage area, but the demon was so fucking clever, wasn’t she.

“Here we go,” Sahvage said.

The last thing he noticed, as he started to pull back, was the white vinegar bottle right next to the door. And the container of salt. And a box of birthday candles.

And a white-and-gray scaled purse that was on fire.

Whatever. He had Mae in his arms, and that was all that mattered.

• • •

Mae had been at the end of her rope, weeping into her hands—when she’d heard something outside the door. And then an arm, a heavily muscled, heavily veined arm, had somehow, in some way, come at her. She’d been so shocked, she’d nearly bolted.

But then she’d scented Sahvage. Clearly.

And then he’d appeared, right in front of her, leaning through the door.

“Mae!”

As he’d said her name, she hadn’t thought twice. She’d sprung forward and thrown herself at him—and the second his solid hold registered, she nearly blew apart from relief. She had never gripped anything so hard in her life.

Sahvage told her something about holding on to him, but that was a command she did not require as she locked on to the back of his neck and all but wrapped her legs around his waist. When he started to retreat through the door, the pulling was terrible, her body stretching until her bones were spears of agony and her muscles strings of white-hot pain. All she could do was bury her face in his thick throat and try to keep breathing.

The trembling came next, chills racing through her, chattering her teeth, spasming her legs. Just as she thought she was going to shatter apart, at the moment when she knew she could take no more, there was a release, all the drag on her body disappearing—

Mae exploded out of the lair, sure as if she were spring-loaded—and Sahvage was her landing pad. As they were thrown back against a corridor’s wall, she banged into his chest, her knee hitting something rock hard, her nose registering all kinds of new smells.

“I’ve got you,” he said in the numb aftermath. “You’re okay, you’re out . . . I got you.”

Mae shook all over, her adrenaline ebbing and leaving her so limp, she couldn’t lift her head.

“It’s all right . . .” Sahvage murmured as he stroked her shoulders.

Gradually, Mae’s senses came back online properly. They were in a hallway . . . outside of a steel door that was closed.

Two enormous males were standing over them.

And a demon was still returning at any second.

With panic, Mae shoved herself up off Sahvage’s pecs. “We need to get out of here. She’s coming back. We need—my house. Let’s go there. The salt will keep her out—”

“Can you dematerialize?”

With Sahvage’s help, Mae managed to stand mostly on her own, but when she lurched to the side abruptly, he cursed. So did she.

“If you have to go on foot, we’ll guard you,” one of the males, the stockier of the pair, said.

As she glanced at him, she realized he had a pair of black daggers strapped, handles down, to his chest. And so did the other one.

The Black Dagger Brotherhood, she thought with awe.

“I’ve got you,” Sahvage said for the hundredth time.

The next thing she knew, he’d scooped her up and started running. With all his strength, he carried her down the concrete hall like she didn’t weigh anything at all, his boots pounding over the bare floor as the two Brothers provided cover in front and in back.

When they got a heavy door with a red exit sign over it, the stockier Brother jumped ahead and held the thing open.

“This way,” he ordered.

Mae felt her awareness come and go, like it had just after she’d been in that accident. Meanwhile, Sahvage just kept soldiering on, running, running, running, as if he had endless amounts of energy and all the power in the world in his body.

Eventually, they came to some kind of delivery facility, a lineup of cargo bays and all kinds of rolling bins suggesting they were in a big building’s mail processing department. The two other fighters immediately went over to one of the receiving areas and broke open a set of vertical doors, rolling the slats up on their tracks—