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“What-the-fuck-ever, dude. You and me both know that you’re no angel.

You’re not here on some divine mission. You’ve been manipulating these clerics since the moment you showed up on their doorstep.

I know what the prophecy really states. I know what the Elioud predicted all those years ago.

And if you knew, you would never have come for me. ”

“Cease trying to plant seeds of doubt in our minds—it will do you no good. I wouldn’t bother begging, bargaining, or attempting to flee either. You could scream, but no one aside for us would hear you,” he taunted.

“Why would I scream? You’re no real threat to me. You never were.”

“You think if you keep us all chatting it will give someone time to save you?”

Nope, she’d just wanted to keep him occupied while she psychically healed . . . and she’d been successful.

He chuckled, as though she were pathetic. “Nobody is coming for you. Even if they did come to this very area, they would never find the monastery. So you see, you are going nowhere. I have you now. Your death is guaranteed.”

It was almost cute that he truly believed that.

“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” she said as the molten force inside her bubbled and snapped.

“It was a mistake on your part to let me live, just as it was a mistake to assume that I’d need rescuing.

Bringing me here achieved one thing only—it allowed me to get to you . ”

She let her inner power rush out of her system. Red-violet flames roared to life around her body, incinerating the magick ropes. As Kushiel stumbled back, shying away from the brightness of the fire, her demon rose to the surface.

Luka ground his teeth, flexing his fingers. “I see nothing.” The GPS signal had led them here, to a desert on the outskirts of Vegas—an endless sandy landscape with rocks, cacti, shrubs, thick grass, and stunted trees.

It was an area that he’d searched once before, having identified it as a possible spot for the monastery. Back then, he’d found nothing.

Of course, he’d taken into account that the building could be somehow concealed, but there would be some signs of human life out here. Footprints. Vehicles. Tire tracks. Litter.

None of those things could be seen. Not during his previous search, and not now.

There were no sounds of human life either. A thick silence had fallen, broken only by the occasional rattle of a bush or flutter of wings.

He scanned his surroundings again—left, right, down, even up.

The sun was beginning to set in the wide-open sky, turning a deep gold ringed with red.

The clouds had taken on a pink/orange hue that held faint dashes of purple.

Shadows were beginning to creep over the landscape, bringing with them a slight chill.

At least they wouldn’t all be baking in the daytime heat while they searched.

“She’s somewhere around here,” maintained Tobe, his phone in hand. “She has to be.”

“Unless the clerics removed her shoes and tossed them here,” said Nikandr. “Though I see no reason why they’d feel it necessary to do that.”

Luka had brought along the twins, but not Daniil—he’d had the teleporter focus on moving Konstantin and Iain’s bodies.

Only Nikandr and Mikhail knew of Naomi’s angelic blood, and Luka wanted it to stay that way.

If Tobe’s prediction was correct, her entity would do nothing to hide its true nature when dealing with the monkhood.

The only others here were Tobe, Jolene, Ciaran, Tia, Alfie, and Beck—people already aware of Naomi’s secrets. They hadn’t called on Khloe, because her mate would have insisted on going into battle with her. No, that wasn’t happening.

Urgency still pounding at Luka—an urgency to find, protect, avenge—he cricked his neck. His demons continued to writhe beneath his flesh, all edgy, hypervigilant, restless, and sending him psychic snapshots of the many revenge scenarios flickering through their minds.

Luka turned, the hard-packed sandy ground crunching beneath his feet, and stalked over to Tobe.

He glanced down at the imp’s cell phone.

On the screen was an overhead map of the area, a thick red dot pulsing in its center.

It only gave them a general sense of where Naomi might be.

She could be up to half a mile away in either direction.

“The signal can’t get any more specific than that? ”

“No,” Tobe muttered, visibly frustrated by it.

Jolene set her hands on her hips. “The monkhood has to be using glamor magick to hide their monastery.”

Luka had considered that. Since the clerics were able to channel divine power, the glamor would be strong.

Still . . . “There should be some evidence of people coming and going, though, shouldn’t there?

It isn’t as if they can teleport.” Almost itchy with exasperation, he called out to his mate again.

Naomi, we’re close. Need a little help finding you. Can you call on your flames?

Her psyche brushed against his. Don’t . . . Luka . . . dandy . . . trust me on . . . home . . .

He sighed. “If I understood her telepathic comment correctly, I should trust that she’s ‘dandy’ right now.” As if he’d be so easily reassured. “I had hoped that the mind-to-mind frequency would be clearer with close proximity, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.”

“Which means we can’t rely on her to guide us,” said Mikhail. “We’ll have to set off on foot and search for her.”

Nikandr nodded. “It would be best to split into groups and head in varying directions.”

“Not necessary,” Tia told them with a flap of her hand. “All we need to do is wait.”

Luka looked at the imps, all of whom were far too calm for his liking. “Wait for what?”

“For her demon to make its move,” replied Tia. “Trust me, it’ll make enough of a fuss for us to know exactly where we need to head.”

Mikhail squinted. “You really think her demon can take on a dark practitioner and a bunch of clerics? If that were the case, it would have done so before now.”

It was Tobe who responded. “Naomi didn’t give it the chance, because she knows that it can’t be trusted to hold back.

” Pausing, he pocketed his cell. “Think of it as a rabid dog on a leash. You’re not going to unclip that leash unless you have no other choice, because you know that the dog will attack without sense or control. ”

“As I said earlier,” Jolene began, “the inner entities of demons with angelic blood can sometimes be unstable.”

Which was one of the reasons why Luka hadn’t particularly wanted Ella to mate Viper. A child carrying both angelic and demonic blood . . . you never quite knew exactly what you were going to get. And then Luka had gone off and mated such a hybrid himself. Fate had to be laughing its ass off at him.

A light breeze brushed over him, carrying the scents of dry air and baked earth.

“It might be better if we just . . .” He stopped talking as a rumble built, snagging his attention.

It vibrated along the ground, drumming at the soles of his feet through his shoes, making sand and pebbles dance and shift.

Alfie stumbled backwards, cursing as a thorny brush caught at his pants. “Well, I’d say that’s courtesy of our girl. We just need—”

A boom reverberated through the air as rocks, earth, and sand seemed to explode upward a short distance away. Echoes of alarm and fear quickly followed, and then . . . well, it looked like people were climbing out of a fracture in the desert.

“They were underground,” Luka realized.

As one, he and the other demons raced toward the scene. Despite the distance, he could hear panicked cries, fire sizzling, and magick crackling. More ground near the fissure gave way, widening the gap, causing all those who’d clambered out of it to fall back down.

There were two more booms as the land on all sides of the fissure collapsed. Trapping the clerics and Kushiel, maybe? Ensuring that they had only one exit?

It occurred to Luka that maybe they’d been using a tunnel system to travel to and from the area, and that Naomi’s demon had purposely blocked the passageways, but he didn’t bother ruminating on it. His priority was getting to her.

More people climbed out of the fracture in the ground, led by a bearded male with shoulder-length hair and a white aura that quickly winked out.

Kushiel, no doubt.

Then a figure surrounded by red-violet flames levitated out of the gap in the landscape, and the tightness in Luka’s chest left him. Naomi .

No, he realized, it wasn’t Naomi. It was her demon. And it was backlit by massive rays of red, black, and orange light that almost hurt to look at.

Tobe slowed his pace. “This is why I said we needed to hope that she’s somewhere isolated—her demon gives no fucks about being discreet.” He gripped Luka’s arm as he staggered to a stop. The other imps and the twins followed suit. “We should hang back.”

Luka pulled his arm free. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I get that you want to help her, but look at her demon—it doesn’t need us right now.”

An oily black gust of power blasted out of the bearded male’s palm, heading right for the entity. Red-violet flames clashed with the gust, ate it whole, and then incinerated the bastard just like that.

Luka’s brows flew up.

A roar split the air as omnidirectional flames burst from the entity’s body, reaching out to the clerics like devilish fingers. Fingers that were tipped with snake-heads. They latched onto ankles and dragged their captives backwards, tossing them into the strange light behind the demon.

Tobe flicked up a brow. “See what I mean?”

Yes, Luka did. Because he saw now what he hadn’t sensed before.

Saw the primeval dark divinity that his mate possessed.

Her inborn connection to the sacred, defiled and twisted into something malevolent, was the source of her inner raw power.

And her demon harnessed it like a master.

Something his own entities found a complete turn-on.

“The demon is also clearly in a fury,” Tia chipped in, “so there’s a good chance it might accidentally kill us. The best thing for us to do is to keep a slight distance from it and deal with the stragglers.” Her gaze sharpened on the men rushing their way. “Here they come.”