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He thought of nothing as he let loose on one of the targets, ignoring the desperate whimpers the three of them uttered, begging for their worthless lives, entirely forgetting about the lives they’d taken, the women they’d broken with their disgusting actions. Blood sprayed the air, coating his skin and clothes like paint.

Darien didn’t feel it. He never felt anything when he collected. It was easy to lose himself as he struck, forgetting about his problems. There was nothing in these walls but violence, nothing but cold and uncaring men who hunted demons because they couldn’t get rid of their own.

The world would be a better place, if only slightly, once these three were gone. It was what he told himself—how he justified his actions, every life he’d ever taken.

The nights of Angelthene were dark and full of monsters, but nothing was darker than his past. And he would work at drowning it for the rest of his existence, pushing it below water by whatever means necessary, until the day it stopped coming up for air.

—

Loren awoke from a dead sleep shortly past Witching Hour. She wasn’t sure what had roused her; the house was dark and silent, so she figured it was the absence of the Darkslayer in the bed beside her that had kept her from dreaming peacefully.

Another night, and he wasn’t here, which meant the tonic had done nothing to help him. She wasn’t sure how long this would go on for, but as she stared at the candles flickering on the nightstand, she started to feel sick to her stomach, and she wasn’t exactly sure why.

Grabbing her phone off the nightstand, she checked for any messages or phone calls, but there was nothing. He must’ve gone to the Pit. But he rarely stayed out past two o’clock, so another couple hours at the most, and he should be back in bed beside her.

She laid back down and tried to fall asleep again, pulling the quilt and sheets over her face. Her stomach twisted with hunger, a growl carrying through the room like the whine of an animal. After what happened at the Chalk Door, she’d lost her appetite, so she’d skipped dinner and opted for a hot shower to loosen her muscles and erase the stench of the Pale Man’s habitat. The tattoo on her forearm was shifting from a pale blue to a dull red that lit up the quilt; she needed to eat something.

Loren got out of bed and padded to the dresser. She felt around inside the third drawer until she found her favorite pale blue hoodie and pulled it on. The house was cold tonight. Slipping her phone into the pocket of her hoodie, and her feet into her fuzzy slippers, she made her way out of the suite, walking quietly in case the others were sleeping.

When she made it downstairs, she was about to enter the kitchen when something made her pause. She kept her feet light as she walked over to the front door, unlocked it, and poked her head out.

Darien’s car was here, and so was Max’s SUV. There were more vehicles in the garage, she knew, which was where Darien usually kept his truck, but she didn’t bother checking to see if that one was missing. He rarely ever drove it, unless it was to leave the city.

As she was shutting the door on a cool breath of wind, a sound floated up from the basement. Voices, but she couldn’t tell whose or what they were saying. She wondered if Darien and a few of the others were doing strike training again.

Still groggy with sleep, and slightly lightheaded from the dip in her blood sugar, Loren walked to the basement door and made her way down the steps, the icy temperature raising a chill on her skin. The sound she’d heard was gone, but all the lights were on down here. She was sure she hadn’t imagined it.

She knew better than to go down the corridor up ahead, where they usually took any victims that required a more thorough killing, so she turned left instead, walking past the gym. There was a door open just ahead, and that was where she stopped, her feet stumbling to a halt.

The spacious room wheeled as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Soon her stomach was wheeling too.

There was blood all over the floor. So much blood, the cement was black with it. Darien was standing over three battered bodies, no shirt on, his skin covered in blood that wasn’t his own, a crowbar in hand—it, too, was covered in so much blood, it was dripping with it. The look on his face was wild, his eyes blacker than she’d ever seen them as he spoke quietly to the dying man at his feet—the only one still alive—who begged for his life to be spared. Three other Devils were with him—Jack, Travis, and Maximus. All of them were covered in blood too, their clothes and faces soaked with it, their own weapons dripping, puddles of red everywhere. Literally everywhere.

Shit. She’d made a mistake. She wasn’t supposed to be here.

As she stumbled away from the door, her slippers scuffed on cement.

Darien was gripping the crowbar, preparing to strike one of the men with a killing blow, when his eyes snapped to her face. That look was still there—a strange mixture of being both dead and alive at the same time.

Loren pressed her hand over her mouth.

And then Darien was shouting. “I told you to shut the fucking door!”

Travis’s magic lashed out with a blinding sweep of his arm, and the door slammed in her face.

BANG! Smoke that smelled like blown-out birthday candles dipped in icing coated the hallway, her hair billowing over her shoulders from the force of the door shutting. There was a hint of smoke in the air that she tried to blink away, but couldn’t.

Suddenly dizzy, Loren staggered into the wall, steadying herself against it with a shaking hand.

Her fault—that was her fault. She knew better than to come down here, especially this late at night, but she hadn’t been thinking straight, hadn’t been thinking at all, had only wanted to see Darien and bring him back to bed with her. Darien, who—

She refused to finish the thought. Loren closed her eyes to stop her surroundings from gyrating, but it only made her feel worse. Her stomach had turned into a cyclone, and her head spun just as quickly.

It reeked of blood down here. Blood and piss, as if their targets were so frightened, their bladders had loosened.

She didn’t know how she did it, but she made it back to the staircase, the floor dipping and rising with every step. Lowering herself to the stairs, she half-crawled up to the main floor, repeatedly swallowing back the need to vomit, bile coating her tongue. The sweat prickling across her skin told her she had only minutes to make it to the bathroom.

When she reached the top, she pulled herself to her feet and hurtled down the hallway. Vomit had crawled up her throat by the time she skidded to a stop in the bathroom and fell to her knees before the toilet, coughing up bile and what little else was in her stomach. There wasn’t much in there, so thankfully it didn’t take long for her to stop heaving.