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An entire body-wracking shudder took over me, and thankfully I had Zandren on one side and Drak on the other to keep me from buckling under the weight of dread.

“Do others know about the escape route to the meadow?” I asked, clenching and unclenching my fists as tingles raced down my arms into my fingers. “Could there be a trap set over there?”

“It’s possible,” Drak said softly, “but unlikely. Lerris has more ambition than he does intelligence. He routinely underestimates people.”

Maxar’s phone buzzed again. “Leno and Groy smell four demons and six Phaceanesh.”

“Easy,” Zandren cooed. “Just because we’re outnumbered doesn’t mean they’ve got us.”

“How are the Phaceanesh out if its daylight?” I asked, needing to fill the room with anything other than the deafening silence.

“Umbrellas,” Ryden said simply. He seemed completely bored and kept scratching at the collar of his shirt like it was rubbing on his neck. He probably wasn’t used to wearing clothes. Zandren said his father spent most of his time in bear form these days.

“Groy says they’re getting ready to open the door to the cave,” Maxar said.

“Into positions,” Drak announced, moving away from me and grabbing some weapons on his way to his position at the door. Zandren and Ryden were both shielding me while Maxar was already whipping green and black flames up into the air.

“It’ll all work out, Little One,” Zandren said. “You’ve got this.”

We moved the tied-up mages and vampires out of sight so none of Lerris’s henchmen could free them. I snapped my fingers. “I almost forgot.” Then I quickly whipped up flame-rope crowns for all of us to wear to block out any demon mindfuckery. Maxar made one for Drak, who seemed less than enthused to wear one, but did anyway.

“Remember, the main objective here is to get Lerris into the cage,” Drak said. “Those who are with him have made their choice. If they’re with Lerris, they’re our enemy. No mercy.”

No mercy.

I was prepared to show Lerris and Howar no mercy, but the idea of taking more lives didn’t sit well with me at all.

The door jiggled and started to move upward, exposing several sets of shoes, legs, and torsos.

My feet were cemented to the floor of the cave as my gut spun and my blood was more like ice chips in my veins, beating uncontrollably in my ears.

When the door lifted to reveal Lerris and his associates, it only took him half a second to figure out it was a trap. But Maxar only needed a quarter of a second to lasso a fire rope around my uncle’s legs and haul him into the cave like a calf at a rodeo.

The four demons with Lerris rushed toward us, doing their best to enter ourminds, but the fire crowns were working. I concentrated on all the anger and pain inside of me over Gemma and Delia, until a red ball of energy built in my mind, and eventually in my hands. I zeroed in on the demon battling it out in hand-to-hand combat with Drak and fired away at him, sending him flying into the wall of the cave, an enormous sizzling hole in his chest. His mouth hung open in shock. Drak lunged forward and plunged his fangs into the demon’s neck, but Maxar seemed to have other ideas and with one hand still holding the rope around my uncle’s legs, Maxar made a fire sword with bright-green flames, walked up to the demon with a hole in his chest and lopped off his head like it was no more than a jack-o-lantern on a fencepost.

My jaw dropped.

“Only way to kill a demon is to behead them,” Maxar said. “That’s one down.”

It wasn’t just demons we were battling though; it was Phaceanesh too. Now that they were no longer in daylight, the creepy nightwalkers ditched their umbrellas and had Ryden and Zandren significantly outnumbered. The older bear dropped to all fours when he had a moment of reprieve and quickly shifted, which gave him a significant advantage. He was tearing Phaceanesh in half with one swipe of his paws.

Lerris was still fully conscious and incredibly pissed off he’d been bested by a half-human mutt. He didn’t make Maxar’s job easy, and fought with everything he had as my mage gruffly lugged him across the cave floor toward the blood cage. I covered him from the other demons and Phaceanesh, sending out blasts of fire and entering the Phaceaneshs’ minds, tearing their right lobes away from their left lobes until they screamed in agony and dropped to the ground clutching their heads and thick black blood poured from their nose, ears, and eyes.

“Omaera, behind you!” Maxar shouted, just in time for me to turn around and see a Phaceanesh barreling toward me, his red eyes gleaming, fangs out. “Thesword!”

Oh, right!

I forgot all about Moloch’s Sacrifice on my back in its scabbard, and with less than perfected finesse, I managed to unsheathe it, wave it around in the air just as the Phaceanesh leaped up. Maybe it was luck, the Fates, or I had some sword-wielding skills after all, but Moloch’s Sacrifice and the Phaceanesh’s neck connected at just the right time, and another head rolled across the floor.

“Noooooo!” Lerris screamed as Maxar continued to haul him across the cave floor. Was he yelling over the nightwalker dying, or over the fact that I was using the sword he coveted?

Something told me it was the latter, because Lerris didn’t have a soul for it to be the former.

Maxar had him on the altar of the cage now, but since the cage floated midair, we needed to figure out how to heave my uncle up into it.

“What the hell is that?” Lerris exclaimed, still writhing and fighting against his ankle bindings. I walked up to him and conjured my own flame-rope—this one green, so it would hurt the whole time it was on him—and I bound his wrists too.

“Haven’t you ever heard of a blood cage, uncle dear?” I asked before bending down to take him by the ankles while Maxar grabbed him by the shoulders, and together, we lifted him up and tossed him through the door of the blood cage. Once he was in, the flame-ropes disappeared from his limbs, and we slammed the door.