Embers

  Not usually, thought Harper. “But my demon will. And since I’m quite sure you’ve been working with the remaining Horseman—”

  Sherryl’s eyes bulged. “What? No! I’m not working with him!”

  “Alethea was. And you were doing her bidding.” Harper pursed her lips. “How did you meet her?”

  The familiar snapped her mouth shut and raised her cleft chin slightly. Ooh, she apparently felt some loyalty toward the encantada. How silly and pointless.

  “You really don’t want to test my mate’s patience,” Knox told Sherryl, tone silky smooth yet coated in menace. “She doesn’t have a lot of it at the best of times. Right now, she’s dangerously low on it.” But Sherryl, obviously dumb as a crumb, still said nothing.

  Face hardening, Harper carefully removed the jeweled metal sticks from her hair. Then, holding Sherryl’s eyes, Harper infused hellfire into the sticks.

  Sherryl jerked back a little in her seat, breaths coming hard and fast now.

  “I’m going to count to four,” Harper said, calm and pleasant. “If I get to two and you haven’t yet spoken, I’m going to stab your thighs with these. Believe me, it’ll hurt like a motherfucker. If I get to three and you still aren’t talking, I will set your fucking nipples on fire and watch the hellfire eat at them—with utter joy and a mental happy dance. And if I reach four and you’re still not singing like a canary, I will proceed to torture you with a slow, sadistic meticulousness that will blow your mind. And Sherryl, you really don’t want that.”

  Eyes wide, Sherryl licked her trembling lips.

  “One.” No response. “Two.” Still no response. Quick as lightning, Harper rammed the flaming metal sticks into Sherryl’s thighs. The familiar screamed, face reddening, spine snapping straight. Harper didn’t pull out the sticks; she held them tight, glaring right into the bitch’s pain-filled eyes. “Told you it would hurt like a motherfucker. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. Thr—”

  “Alethea came to me when she was dating Thatcher!” Sherryl burst out, eyes tearing.

  Harper’s demon sighed, disappointed. It had been looking forward to setting her nipples alight. Disturbingly, it was slightly comforted by the sound of their prey’s blistering flesh sizzling. “Go on.”

  “They didn’t seem serious, but she said she hoped they could have something good,” Sherryl went on, pain dripping from every syllable. “She was … she was nice to me.”

  “Nice to you?” Alethea wasn’t nice.

  “She said I reminded her of her when she was younger,” said Sherryl, words coming sharp and fast. “She took me shopping, clubbing, and introduced me to her friends. She was surprised when she realized I was friends with Ciaran.”

  Harper gave her a look of mock pity. “She wasn’t surprised. That was why she befriended you. She wanted to use you. But I don’t feel in the least bit bad for you, since you used Ciaran. You started dating him so that you could try milking him for info on our family.”

  Roughly, Harper yanked out the metal sticks and took a step back, mostly because being so close to the scent of burning flesh was not fun. Sherryl sagged slightly in her chair, fists clenched, tears dripping down her face, flesh still sizzling. “Why would you help Alethea?” Harper asked, but Sherryl was busy gaping at the blood seeping out of her charred jeans. “Why did you help her?”

  Sherryl swallowed. “All she wanted was some info on what the Wallis imps did with their time. Said she was worried they intended to attack her at some point so she wanted to monitor their movements and habits. It seemed harmless to tell her stuff.”

  Harmless? Harper’s demon hissed, tempted to lunge to the surface. For now, it was content to let Harper lead. “And just what did you get out of it? Don’t tell me you were just being nice like Alethea.”

  Sherryl hesitated, gaze darting to the side. Would she never learn?

  Harper thrust one of the sticks into the familiar’s shoulder, and the air was filled with the sound of yet more skin sizzling. She waited for Sherryl’s horrific scream to die down before she spoke. “I believe my mate warned you that I was very short on patience. Now, answer my damn question.”

  Taking a shuddering breath, Sherryl squeezed her eyes shut. “She paid me for the info, and she said she’d arrange for me to transfer to her lair.”

  Knox arched a brow. “You don’t like having Thatcher for a Prime?”

  “It’s not that,” replied Sherryl, opening her eyes. “My ex is part of Thatcher’s Force. He’s making things difficult for me. I just want out.”

  “Hmm.” Knox twisted his mouth. “Where did she go when she left her home?”

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. She just said it was someplace safe.”

  “But you stayed in communication with her?” asked Knox.

  “Only through telepathy.”

  Tipping his head to the side, Knox said, “You must have known that Alethea was working with someone.”

  “She never mentioned anyone else.” Sherryl’s brow puckered as something seemed to occur to her. “Though she did once say that she had it ‘on good authority’ that the Wallis imps would target her.”

  Harper narrowed her eyes. “What else did she ask you to do?” When the familiar hesitated, Harper twisted the stick that was still stuck in her shoulder. Sherryl cried out through her teeth. “What else did she ask you to do?” Harper demanded.

  Sherryl’s pained gaze cut to Knox. “She wanted to know what you are. She thought the imps might know; that you might have told them.”

  “So you asked Ciaran,” prompted Harper.

  Sherryl nodded. “He said that my guess was as good as his. I knew he was telling the truth. I can smell lies. They have a distinct scent. Like smoke.” She swallowed. “I got the feeling he wouldn’t have told me, even if he did know.”

  She was right to have that “feeling”. Harper knew her cousin wouldn’t have told an outsider jack shit. “What else did Alethea ask of you?”

  “She wanted to know about your kid. Said if I heard anything at all about him, I should tell her. But no one ever spoke of him in front of me. I asked Ciaran about him, said I’d love to meet him, but Ciaran blew me off without even being rude. He’s good at that.”

  Evasiveness was a trait that every imp possessed, so Harper didn’t see why the familiar would be so surprised. “Just what info did you pass to Alethea?”

  “I didn’t know anything to pass on.”

  “But she kept in touch with you. She wouldn’t have done that unless you were being useful. So, what did you tell her?”

  “I kept her updated on the imps’ movements. And, okay, I lied to her a few times.”

  “And just what lies did you tell her?” asked Knox, voice a lethal purr.

  Sweat beading on her forehead, Sherryl flexed her bony fingers. “I told her I’d met your kid and that he didn’t seem powerful. I said he didn’t use any abilities in front of me.”

  “And?” Knox pushed.

  “And I told her I overheard imps say you were a hybrid, but that I didn’t know what breeds your parents were.”

  Knox arched a disbelieving brow. “She bought that I was a hybrid?”

  “No, she thought you’d lied to the imps about what you were. That pissed her off. When I asked why she cared so much about what breed you were, she said that she suspected you were the fourth Horseman and that you would come for her; she wanted to be prepared. I said I didn’t think you were the Horseman; that if you wanted to overtake the Primes, you could do it easily and you wouldn’t need any help. She seemed to think about that for a minute, but then she said she’d heard from a ‘reliable source’ that you could be him.”

  Knox exchanged a brief look with Harper. Either Alethea had been feeding Sherryl excuses or the Horseman had worked to convince Alethea that she’d soon be a target. It could even have been a bit of both. “I’m guessing you asked who that source was.” He would have done, in her position. “What did she tell you?”

  “Only that it was
someone whose word she trusted.”

  Trusted? Knox’s brows knitted. Alethea had never been the trusting type. “When was the last time you heard from her?”

  “I contacted her telepathically a few days before the imps’ tea party to tell her about it,” said Sherryl. “She thanked me for the info, asked how I was doing, and how things were going with Ciaran. You know, girl stuff.”

  Keeping up the best friend act while also checking that Sherryl and Ciaran were still an item, Knox thought. “Did she ever talk to you about her own boyfriend?”

  “She said she didn’t have one. But one time, when I went to her home, she acted weird and wouldn’t let me inside—told me she was tired. I saw a man’s long, navy blue cashmere coat hanging on her hallway coatrack. Cirque du Soleil tickets were sticking out of the pocket—they only caught my attention because my friend is going to the show and she’d showed me her own tickets. And I smelled tobacco coming from inside.”

  Knox licked over his front teeth, trying to remember if he’d ever seen Jonas, Thatcher, or Dario either smoking or wearing a cashmere coat. “When exactly was this?”

  “I don’t know. A month before she moved out, maybe.”

  “Does Thatcher know you were passing on info to Alethea?”

  “If he does, I didn’t tell him.” Sherryl’s eyes filled with yet more tears. “When I saw the clip on YouTube, I was hoping to God that it wasn’t real. But when I tried to contact her telepathically, there was nothing. And I knew she was really dead.”

  “I wouldn’t grieve too hard,” said Harper, yanking the stick out of the familiar’s shoulder. “She used you. But, if it’s any consolation, you’ll be joining her soon enough.”

  “What?” Sherryl sounded genuinely baffled.

  Harper leaned forward. “Your self-centered actions made my family vulnerable. They led to an attack on my son and the attempting kidnapping of my cousin. Don’t play dumb. Heidi is Ciaran’s little sister. You would have heard that someone attempted to snatch her and—since it’s highly likely that you passed on info about how Heidi often went to the playground after school—it must have clicked in your head that Alethea had something to do with it.”

  Sherryl shook her head madly. “I went to her home and asked her! She promised it was just a coincidence!”

  “And you can smell lies, so you would have known if she was telling the truth. She wasn’t, was she?”

  Sherryl looked away.

  “Yeah, you knew she was involved. But you hadn’t cared. It didn’t matter to you that a little girl was almost kidnapped. Didn’t matter that what lay in store for her wouldn’t have been good. Hell, you even risked it happening again when you did nothing. You could have told Ciaran. Jolene. Me. Any number of people. Instead, you kept on feeding her info, didn’t you?”

  “I fed her lies, sure. That’s all.”

  Harper shook her head. “I don’t believe that. You told her about the tea party.”

  “It didn’t seem like a big deal. No one would attempt an attack in a house full of people—especially when those people are Wallis imps.”

  “Someone did. And that someone was sent by Alethea’s reliable source. But they wouldn’t have known to go there if it hadn’t been for you,” Harper spat, pointing the blazing stick at her. “In fact, if you’d just come to us months ago with what you knew, this all could have been avoided. But you didn’t. I doubt you ever even considered it. My son was attacked, Sherryl, and you profited from it.” Her demon shot to the surface and hissed. “Anyone who was even the slightest bit involved in what happened to the child will pay in blood, including you,” it told her.

  Hate gathered behind Sherryl’s eyes until they practically shone with it. “And I should be afraid of a sphinx that doesn’t even have fucking wings? I should care about the fate of a kid that’s probably just as much of a freak as its mother? You should have been the one who died in that video. Or better still, your brat should have been the one crying and screaming while his flesh blistered and melted. At least I have the comfort of knowing all three of you will be dead soon. The Horseman, whoever the fuck he is, will come for you.”

  The demon’s smile was rather serene. “I know,” it said. “And he’ll die too.” With that, the demon jammed the flaming stick into the bitch’s eye.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Knox stared down at the charred, bloodied, battered body in front of him. Sherryl Malloy had taken a long time to die. Both Harper and her demon had put the familiar through a shitload of well-deserved pain—a pain that might have ended sooner if Malloy hadn’t screamed her hope that Asher died a dreadful, agonizing death at the hands of the Horseman. Maybe she’d thought that such words would drive Harper into delivering a killing blow. They hadn’t. His mate had remained completely controlled.

  Harper had warned him that she could be scary. Warned him time and time again that a sphinx in ‘berserker mode’ was a dangerous creature. But he hadn’t been able to imagine his mate ever truly losing her shit in a spectacular fashion. Now he understood that a sphinx’s version of ‘berserker mode’ didn’t involve an explosion of rage. No, their rage remained relatively contained, but they showed no mercy whatsofuckingever.

  Harper had been almost robotic in the way she’d systematically subjected Malloy to several rounds of excruciating torture. A lesser man might have been freaked out by it. Her demon had surfaced occasionally to join in on the fun, but Harper had taken the lead. Sensing that she’d needed it, Knox had stood back and left her to it.

  He knew her actions were driven by not only anger but her fear of what could have happened to Asher and Heidi. The fact that they were safe and unharmed just wasn’t the point. Not when their fates were intended to be utterly horrific.

  In order to ensure Asher’s safety and survival, Knox and Harper needed to send a clear message that anyone who had even the tiniest role in a plan to target Asher would suffer inconceivable agony.

  No one who looked at what was left of Sherryl Malloy could miss that message.

  His demon was proud of its mate. Approved that she’d showed no mercy. While Knox also approved, he was concerned that Harper’s conscience would feel the strain of it later. She wouldn’t regret what she’d done, but she’d be upset that she didn’t regret it. Might even be a little disturbed to learn just how far she’d go to protect and avenge their son.

  Keenan and Tanner had entered the boathouse moments ago, curious about what was taking so long. They’d been taken aback by the gruesome sight they found, but not horrified—they’d seen Knox dole out much worse torture. Hearing that it was Harper who was responsible, however, had been a huge shock to them. Not a bad shock, though. No, like Knox, they approved of their Prime’s actions even as they knew Harper’s soft heart would pay a price for it later.

  “Conference call’s scheduled to start in thirty seconds. You both ready?” Larkin asked from behind him.

  Turning to face the sentinel, expression blank, Harper lifted her chin slightly. “Ready.” She hadn’t said much since Sherryl took—well, croaked—her last breath.

  Knox moved closer to his mate’s side so that their bodies brushed, giving her space yet also letting her know he was there. “Let’s get this done,” he said.

  The harpy pressed a few buttons on the laptop. “And we’re live.” She turned it to face them. The wide screen was a grid of faces as the other Primes stared back at them. Only Jonas, who hadn’t accepted his invite to the video conference, was missing. As Harper had telepathed Jolene with a heads-up about the situation, the female imp was the only one who wasn’t completely clueless as to why Knox had arranged the video conference.

  If he and Harper weren’t blocking their view of Sherryl, they would have no doubt all jerked back in horror. Yeah, the view was that bad.

  “I know many of you are exceptionally busy,” said Knox, not bothering with any preliminaries, “so I appreciate you all cutting your activities short to take this call.”

  “Is this abou
t the Horseman?” Raul instantly asked. “Have you discovered his identity?”

  “No,” said Knox, “but we’re getting closer and closer to finding him. It’s only a matter of time before we do.” He truly believed that.

  “Then what is the big emergency?” asked Malden.

  Knox looked at Thatcher, face hardening. “I believe we have something that belongs to you. Or someone. Sherryl Malloy is one of your demons, correct?”

  “Yes,” Thatcher confirmed, thick brows drawing together. “Why is she with you?”

  Knox kept his eyes on Thatcher to monitor his reaction closely as he and Harper parted, revealing Malloy. The Prime recoiled in horror, eyes wide. There were gasps, curses, and horrified mutters from the other Primes. Only Jolene, expression grim, stayed silent.

  Face reddening and contorting with fury, Thatcher demanded, “What happened? What did you do to her, Thorne?”

  “He didn’t do it,” said Harper, voice hard. “I did. She was passing on information to Alethea—information that led to the attempted kidnapping of my niece and to the incorporeal’s attack on my son.”

  The Primes fell silent, all looking varying degrees of shocked. Harper suspected they were more shocked to hear that she’d killed Malloy than they were to hear why Harper had killed her. After all, the Primes had always insisted on viewing Harper as someone who was playing out of her league; a fluffy bunny trying to hang with feral wolves. That was their mistake.

  Thatcher’s lips parted in surprise. “You’re certain?”

  A flash of anger sailed through Harper. “Do you think I’d do that for shits and fucking giggles?” She had no regrets about what she’d done, but she hadn’t enjoyed it. Her demon, on the other hand, had been on cloud goddamn nine.

  Incredulous, Thatcher shook his head. “It makes no sense that Sherryl would have placed your family in danger. She was dating your cousin.” Watching as Harper slowly lifted a brow, realization seemed to dawn on Thatcher. He sighed. “She was using him to get information.” His eyes flicked to Knox. “I suppose the reason you didn’t call me until now is that you suspect me of being the Horseman. I would have taken care of her punishment.”