Page 95 of The Fate of Black Hearts

“You’re no use to me dead, at least not yet. They’ll come for you. Then we can get to my interests. After all this, if you’re still alive, I may have use for you for a few nights.”

“I would rather face the strikes of a thousand vipers than lay with you.” She spat into the air.

He’d already left.

For a moment, frustrated at her inability to get free, self-pity swamped her. Her getting caught wasn’t part of her plan. But there was a plan. It had to work. If she failed, she’d lived a good life. She’d loved hard and was proud of all she’d done. No regrets.

Except Dom. She regretted how she handled their relationship.

Her final duty was to survive whatever this might be. She must protect the Madonna at all costs. And protect her sons’ secret angels from being known by this creature. This demon only thought they colluded, not that they were chosen by God to be his warriors.

The only control she had here was self-control, which she would never relinquish for a creature like this. As long as she was the master of her own thoughts and feelings, she wasn’t helpless. It was a small freedom, but one she would be grateful to keep.

She slowed her breathing and concentrated on the flow of air through her nostrils and throat. She felt the filling of her lungs. When appropriately calm, she smiled.

A boom like that of a gunshot woke her from dozing. Below her, she heard voices. Footsteps ascended stairs. Metal tinkled like keys jingling together. Or knives? The footsteps got closer…closer…

Ian had returned. This time, he wore full black tactical clothing. His gaze roamed her body in a way that made her feel vulnerable, as if she were a toy for his pleasure.

He reached out and traced a finger up her side, over her breast to her face. She swung her face around and sank her teeth into his forearm when it neared her face. Blood gushed into her mouth. She choked on it but didn’t release her bite. She could feel muscles of his forearm flexing.

He didn’t react. Didn’t pull away his arm.

At last, she released him, drew back her head, and spit his blood in his face.

Still, there was no anger or pain in his expression. If anything, he looked…aroused.

What the hell was he?

He leaned in with his hands on both her arms, pinning them to her side. A fire of curiosity was all his gaze communicated. No words. He wanted to test her next move.

She swung her free legs up to kick him in the balls. Before she could land the blow, he released her. He slapped her across the face. Hard.

Her head snapped to one side. Light flashed through her eyes, and her teeth knocked together. When her vision cleared, she glared but made no move to attack again. She understood she was at his mercy for the moment, but there was something going on outside. Something that meant all of this was about to end, one way or another.

Chapter Thirty-One

“Dom,so good of you to find me,” the creature known as Leviathan said.

Dom had never been so close to a demon this powerful in the past. The effect of his voice was visceral. It grated at the same time as it mesmerized. In his accent and diction, which was no longer masked as “Ian,” Leviathan projected a power far beyond that of previous demons Dom had met. Yet, this was still just another demon. This was an evil he needed to cast from this world and back to the underworld where it belonged.

“Do I call you Ian? Or do you prefer Leviathan?”

It disappeared.

No sign of Evie outside the abandoned church. He sensed her nearby.

He traced her to a dimly lit room on a second floor. She’d been secured to a chair and seemed relatively unharmed. A check for auras detected the Lanzo boys arriving. He needed to trust the technology Flynn had attached to his inner shirt, which was some sort of tracking device, and the earpiece that allowed Efrem to hear everything.

The demon manifested a dark blade out of thin air and pressed it to Evie’s throat. “I always liked the name ‘Prince of Darkness’.”

“Bit of a mouthful.” Dom made no quickmovements. His job wasn’t to eliminate this creature. He needed to distract it until the minion demons outside were eliminated by the Lanzo brothers. “What happened to my brother? Did he conjure you?”

“That neurotic prick wouldn’t have had the balls.”

Weight lifted off him. At least his brother hadn’t crossed the line into darkness. He may have gotten killed by it, though. He forced emotion out of his voice to ask, “Is he dead?”

The demon took on a strange expression, but didn’t answer.