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I took a deep breath and tiptoed up the hall, flattening myself against the wall outside the master bedroom suite. Directly below me, Brad and Lana would be hearing my footsteps right now—where the demon had passed minutes earlier.

From inside the doorway, a faint scuffle pricked my ears.

My hands tightened on the assault rifle’s grip.

It’s just inside...

Lana didn’t realize she needed only to scream to give away the presence of my underground hideout.

She had been in position to kill me—and Brad—yet she hadn’t, and it bothered me. Demons might not be conniving, but they were vengeful. Always. Surely, she hated my kind as much as I hated hers.

So why hadn’t she?

She had every reason to slit my throat. I had sworn to exterminate her species.

She had chickened out. I knew then. I’d been able to sense the shame in her body language—she’d chickened out, and in so doing had doomed her entire race, and now she felt worthless, guilty, dejected. She’d given up.

I chewed on my lip, more bothered by that than I cared to admit. Every hour she seemed more and more human, and it messed with my head.

A scratching sound came from inside the bedroom, jerking me back to attention.

Later, Asher.

Right now, I was about to pump a demon full of lead. The scratching continued, moving around the room’s perimeter. I recalled the suite’s layout, trying to picture it. Like Brad said, the creature was sniffing out the entrance to the shelter, which it would find at the back of the closet.

But not if I killed it first.

Then, ever so faintly, came the telltale scrape of the sliding closet doors retracting.Gotcha.

I spun into the bedroom doorway and leveled the assault rifle at the closet, my finger ready to squeeze the trigger.

But the room was empty.

The closet, now open a crack, appeared abandoned.The fuck?

Heart pulsing like crazy, I strode inside it, sweeping the weapon to each of the corners. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

I crossed the room and pushed into the bathroom, and my reflection in the mirror nearly gave me a heart attack.

Empty.

Oh man, if there was a demon that could make itself invisible, I was going to shit myself.

A shadow flittered in my periphery.

I whipped around, just as a figure stepped into the doorway of the bedroom.

A man.

But no man.

His eyes glowed a dull crimson in the darkness, smoldering from within. He wore a black suit and tie which, like him, seemed to dissolve and reform around him like a swarm of insects.

Blocking the doorway, he’d cornered me in the master suite. A trap.

He’d laid a trap.

Before I could squeeze off a shot, the demon gripped the doorway, his fingers splintering the wood frame, and his mouth opened wider than any human jaw—aimingat me.