“Evashvā vīsh!”

As my voice rang out, I heard his voice in my head, speaking the same alien words. Scorching heat rushed through my body—and the room exploded.

Zylas pulled me down on top of him, arms wrapped over my head, my face crushed against the side of his neck. Light blazed through my eyelids, the roar deafening, arctic cold stabbing my skin in a frigid gust. Crashing, shattering—then a second detonation.

A fireball erupted from the kitchen. Zylas pushed off the floor, flipping our bodies, covering me. The roaring inferno blasted outward—and cold swept in to consume it. The heat and light sucked into Zylas’s body as he pulled in the power.

A wave of shrinking fire danced across us, then faded. The acrid stench of burnt plastic singed my nose.

Zylas braced his elbows on either side of me and raised his head. Our stares met, inches between our faces. Bright, hot power glowed in his eyes, replenished by the flames.

My eyes were wide, my lips parted in disbelief. I didn’t remember moving my hand, but my fingertips were resting against his jaw.

I could feel him. He was there, inside my head, a shadowy presence that tasted of everything he was—power and brutality, cunning and intelligence, resolve and breathtaking intensity. A steely will. The tang of his sharp humor. And a quiet, hollow despair.

“What …” I breathed, awed and terrified.

“You always could hear me, drādah.” His husky whisper sounded in my ears and in my mind at the same time. “You were not listening.”

A hoarse wail broke into my confusion. Zylas pushed himself up and sat on my legs, scanning the room. The furniture was no more than shredded fabric and splintered wood. The kitchen had been demolished, its remains burnt black and the gas range a twisted husk. Uncle Jack’s demon stood unmoving amid the destruction, but the five vampires lay dead on the shattered floor.

“Dad,” Amalia rasped, her voice quavering from behind the heavy dining table, lying on its side and peppered with shrapnel. I pulled my feet from under Zylas and clambered up. Breathing hard as though I’d run a mile, I stumbled toward the table. The feeling of Zylas inside my mind faded.

Sheltered behind the table, Amalia knelt beside her father, hands pressed to his stomach. He lay on his back, his mouth open in pain and horror. Blood flowed over Amalia’s hands and pooled around him. The wounds from a vampire’s claws raked his belly.

“Dad,” Amalia choked. “Hold on, Dad.”

The strength left my legs and I sank to my knees, gripping the edge of the overturned table, still on the wrong side of it. Uncle Jack panted for air, his hands weakly grasping Amalia’s. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her face contorted.

“Don’t leave me, Dad,” she whispered. “Please. Please don’t.”

Suffocating pain rose in my chest. Grief, sharp and fresh, pierced me—anguish for my lost parents, reawakened, and anguish for Amalia, who was about to lose the only parent she had left.

She pushed on Uncle Jack’s stomach, trying desperately to stop the bleeding. A sob shook her body, high-pitched and agonized.

With a soft scuff of a footstep, Zylas appeared beside me. He gazed down at the dying man, expressionless. I bowed my head, unable to watch, my heart breaking for Amalia.

A brush against my arm—Zylas moving. My head came up as he stepped over the barrier of the table. He stood for a moment, then crouched beside Uncle Jack, narrowed eyes watching his summoner, the man who’d torn him from his home, imprisoned him, and tried to enslave him.

The demon’s gaze shifted to Amalia’s tear-streaked face, to mine, and back to Uncle Jack.

“Zh’ūltis,” he muttered.

Then he placed his hand on Uncle Jack’s chest and crimson magic streaked up his arm.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Zylas’s power faded. As his luminescent spell dissolved, the demon lifted his hand from Uncle Jack’s chest. Wrinkling his nose, he wiped his bloody palm on the man’s pant leg.

Uncle Jack drew in a trembling breath and released it. Amalia clutched her father’s hand, but her disbelieving stare was on Zylas.

“You healed him,” she whispered hoarsely.

Zylas rose to his full height, tail snapping irritably, and hopped over the table. Catching my elbow, he swung me off my feet. I yelped in surprise as I thudded against his back, automatically clamping my arms and legs around him.

“What—” I began.

He leaped the length of the living room, nearly dumping me off his back, and sprang out the broken window. Thudding down on the deck, he paused, head swiveling as he scented the breeze.

“Zylas,” I tried again, “what—”

“This is not over. Hold on.”

As I squeezed my legs more tightly around his waist, he shot to the end of the deck and launched off it. He hit the ground and dashed into the forest. Towering spruce trees flashed past, snow swirling down and the icy wind cutting through my shirt.

He ran at full demon speed—fast enough to outstrip the best human sprinter. Tail lashing for balance, he cut past trees, branches whipping against our sides. The ground sloped down, the mountainside sweeping for miles to the city below. I had no idea where he was going or what he was chasing.

Then I saw the flare of crimson light through the trees.

Zylas slowed to a slinking prowl, his steps silent on the snowy leaf litter. The forest opened into a wide swath of dirt and pebbles—an old rock slide. At the edge of the trees, he stopped.

Vasilii stood in the center of the clearing, the grimoire held casually in one hand.

Claude’s demon stood ten paces from the darkfae, his reddish-brown skin contrasting with the dusting of snow. Wings curled against his back, tail snaking across the ground, dark hair tied back from his sharp-featured face. His magma-red eyes glowed with power.

Vasilii slowly canted his head to the right—toward Zylas and me. He returned his attention to Claude’s demon.

“My ability to track my prey surpasses that of even my fae brethren,” he said in his slow, dry voice. “I did not expect you to possess similar skills, Nazhivēr. How did you arrive here so soon after me?”

Claude’s demon smiled coldly. “You have underestimated us from the beginning.”

I shuddered at his deep, rumbling growl. His English wasn’t as heavily accented as Zylas’s but the guttural inflection was the same.

“Have I?” Vasilii whispered. “I ascribed your master only the intelligence he has displayed. He thought me a mere vampire. He thought, by peddling your blood to my nest, he could win their loyalty. He thought me too simple a creature to discover what he searched for, or to seek it myself.”

The demon flicked his tail across the ground, an angry tic that Zylas possessed too.

“Such great boons have come to me, Nazhivēr. Did you know I came here seeking a druid? Instead, I found his territory abandoned.”

I gripped Zylas’s shoulders. A druid? I’d never heard of a druid in Vancouver.

“An unprotected hunting ground,” Vasilii continued, “which I have now claimed. No sooner did I draw the city’s vampires under my control than you and your master so freely handed me even greater power.” Vasilii caressed the grimoire’s leather cover. “And now I have claimed this as well.”