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I thought that a healer would have been able to reverse the infection, but in the wake of what Lana told me, I had to face another possibility—that rapid healing accelerated the decay.

And Lana had been pouring her magic into healing.

That’s why the onset was so rapid.

A late-stage infection, like what Lana had, would kill a demon every time.

What she needed was penicillin, and she needed it within the hour.

Or she would die.

Every minute that demon had her was a minute less she had to live.

At the thought, a terrible fear took hold low in my gut, sinking in like claws—a fear I hadn’t known in two years.

Fear for another’s life.

Fear for Lana.

In the five days since White Sulfur Springs, I had gone from her captor to her reluctant ally. At some point in the last twenty-four hours, I had become her protector.

Maybe it was seeing her sick and hurting, the pang of sympathy every human feels for a wounded creature, maybe it was seeing her own kind turn on her, or maybe it was the fact that she’d helped me find the portal.

All I knew was I couldn’t let her die.

Not now, not like this, not at the hands of the very demons she had sworn to protect.

That just didn’t seem fair.

I reloaded my Glock, then dug under the backseat for my sawed-off shotgun.

Locked and loaded, I muscled my way into the foliage, following the trail of trampled grass.

Low ferns scraped my bare calves and wedged under my flip-flops, while the sun winked through a high canopy of palms and broad-leafed hardwoods. As I pushed into the underbrush, the shadows deepened.

I imagined what would become of Lana. Demons didn’t understand antibiotics. Nor did they care. They would let her die, unable and unwilling to help her.

The ground began to rumble.

I paused to listen, knuckles tight on the shotgun’s pump-action handgrip.

It built like a slow thunder, vibrating up through my knees. On the ground, pebbles danced and settled into quivering piles. A wet breeze blew in from the side, whipping the broad leaves to and fro and popping my ears.

I spun toward the approaching thunder.

My hunch had been right; I knew exactly which demon I was up against.

Fuck.

A wave of water crashed through the trees, splashing around their trunks and uprooting bushes, rising ten feet over my head. The wall of seawater slammed into me, dragged me backward, tore the gun from my hand and flooded my nostrils.

Then I was tumbling like a rag doll, dragged under by the currents, pummeled by rocks. My head broke the foamy surface, and I gasped for breath. A swirling vortex slammed me into a low tree branch, and I clung to it for dear life as the flood swept past me, finally draining to rivulets and puddles. With a groan, I dropped to the ground, soaking wet and bruised everywhere.

Then, from out of the dripping trees stepped the demon.

Clad in a skintight suit made of blue fish scales, she had long, flowing blonde hair and watermelon-pink eyes. The demon was more mermaid than girl.

Aecora, tamer of oceans.