Page 55 of Silver Claw

“We will not kill her,” Ti told me, but she was mostly subdued. As the most sympathetic of all the elders I’d met, she was the one with a heart. And she was not happy—but she would never tell me why. “We simply wish to speak with her in a controlled environment.”

I frowned. “You all are powerful. So powerful. If you want her, why don’t you snuff out her power and bring her in?”

“That is not a battle we want to fight,” Ti told me. “She would die, in the end, and we would likely be…weakened.”

I was amazed, honestly. Those ancient, powerful beings scared of a single woman? But it was understandable. Anika could have weakened them. Maybe she could have sucked out their power and left them empty and dead upon the ground.

Even if she couldn’t, it was not a chance they were willing to take.

And my magic was already gone, so…

“I’ll ask her,” I said. “But I won’t force her to come to you, even if such a thing is possible.”

Ael snorted in disgust. “You are weak.”

I laughed. “Says the wolf who’s afraid to go fetch her himself.”

He only shrugged, but his eyes were full of scorn.

I was abruptly sick of him and his contempt. I was sick of all of them. Before I could tell them to go to hell and storm out, Ti rose to her feet and without a word or another glance at me, she slipped to the back of the stage, into the shadows, and was gone.

The demon elder began to laugh. There was no reason for it that I could see, but that rolling laugh, full of horrible, crunchy things, filled me with mindless terror.

For a second, the thought slid through me that maybe I was so affected by him because I reallywaspart demon. And as a demon elder, he was my master, sort of.

I trembled, my stomach hurt, and I wanted to fall to the floor and cover my head with my arms. Instead, I turned around, intent on getting the hell out of there.

“Let’s go, Joe,” I said as I turned.

But I was speaking to no one, because Joe wasn’t there.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Now it made sense why they’d allowed him inside.

And it made sense why Ti had exited the room.

“Joe,” I screamed, my voice swallowed by the demon elder’s insane laughter. I spun in a circle, frantic. “Joe!”

“Would you rather we took your blade?” Ael roared. “We did not take your vampire solely to force your hand. We took him to also put you back in your place. You have lost your regard. You show us no respect. You have forgotten who we are. Now, we remind you.”

The demon elder stopped laughing abruptly and leaned forward to peer down at me. “Run along, little bug,” he whispered, but his voice filled the room like wind rustling through trees. “Run along.”

The old council members were not human, and they didn’t think like humans. They were powerful and power-hungry, but not the way humans were power-hungry. More like…dragons, shooting fire and guarding treasure.

And some of these dragons had wickedness sewn into their scales. In the council, darkness was greater by far than the light.

Ael was right. I had forgotten who they were, if I’d ever really known in the first place.

They’d taken my Joe.

Visions of Farrow lying on the table filled my mind. I remembered her naked and bloody and hurt, tortured beyond what anyone or anything should have been able to live through. And even though I’d taken her from Lilah and had saved her from the council, I was pretty sure that part of her had died there on that table.

And they had Joe.

The terror twisted into something cold, something hard, because the fear was paralyzing. And I couldn’t fight if I was hobbled by terror. I closed my eyes and drew in a deep, deep breath, and then I exhaled the fear.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in full-fledged psycho mode, and honestly, there was no better feeling than that.