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  Tyrian went after the demon with a series of swings that sent it tumbling back into the wall. With one final swing, its head was severed from its twitching body. The demon fell limply to the floor like a doll.

  The front door cracked, then splintered open in an explosion of wood. Demons poured in, too many for Chloe to count. They screeched ear-piercing sounds that had her huddling away, covering her ears to block it out. Something heavy and hard slammed into her back. She never saw it coming.

  It wrapped its limbs tightly around her, nearly squeezing the air from her. She ran backwards, rammed her back into the corner of the wall and the arms around her opened as the demon squealed in pain. Spinning around, she was ready to fight for the right to live.

  The demon didn’t fight her though, but grabbed onto her arms and pulled her towards the broken window. Chloe screamed in the demon’s face and wrenched her arm away. She let her fist fly and hit him in the face with everything she had. The demon let go of her as it yowled in pain.

  Chloe turned and found Tyrian making his way towards her, lopping heads, arms, and

  legs off as he came. The room was filling fast with more idummi. The look on his face was one she’d never seen before.

  Two demons broke past him, each latching onto her arms with clawed fingers. Screeches, roars, and cries of pain echoed in the room sounding like some epic-scale battle from a movie.

  Chloe kicked at the demon pulling her as she struggled fiercely to get her arms back.

  Hot burning pain shot up her arms with the exertion. Nothing she did worked. They

  continued to drag her closer and closer to that window, their bony, fleshy wings flapping and slapping against their backs anxiously. Suddenly, another demon came up and snatched one of them off her, tossing the demon into the wall where they began to snap at each other. Chloe had no chance to be relieved, because the action set the other demon’s claws deep into her stomach.

  Chloe stopped breathing as she stared down at the four bleeding lines appearing on her naked stomach. Searing hot pain blasted across her stomach like four hot pokers were pressed up against her. She screamed, flailed, and finally managed to dislodge the other demon from her.

  Agony rippled through her stomach and went deeper and deeper.

  Before panic could set in Tyrian was there and so was Rayn. She didn’t stop to think how the warrior got there, was just relieved when her body began to tingle all over in that increasingly familiar way. Then everything faded around them as the room transitioned to some room she didn’t recognize. But she recognized the stone, gray walls. Castle Death.

  Rayn was speaking quickly, “I’ll get Nanu.”

  “Hurry,” Tyrian said. He urged her onto a white hospital bed; made her lie down and she did because the retching pain in her stomach had tears streaming down her eyes. Intense pain seared into her organs like hot knives covered in boiling acid.

  “What’s happening to me?” she croaked.

  Tyrian’s face was paler than usual, his eyes shielded with impassable ice.

  “Nanu!” he roared.

  “Please tell me.”

  He grabbed her hand and pushed the hair back from her face. The pain was spreading like lava in her body, pressing up to her chest and down to her hips and thighs. “It hurts,” she said and couldn’t stop the sob that came out. “Stop it, please.”

  “I know, sweetheart. Just hold onto my hand.” Chloe squeezed tight to his hand. His hand felt freezing in hers like he’d been holding it in a bucket of ice water. What was wrong with him?

  Did something happen to him, too? Chloe slammed her eyes shut as piercing pain punctured through her legs, down to her feet, then up into her arms and hands.

  “It’s taking me. Don’t let it take me, Tyrian.” Everything around her was turning fuzzy.

  The bright, fluorescent lights on the ceiling were fading, dimming out. Tyrian’s face wobbled before hers. Was it from her tears or was she dying. “I don’t want to die.” Will I see Papa if I die?

  “I would never let anything happen to you, Chloe. Look at me.” Chloe’s eyes fluttered, scrambled wildly around the room searching for him. Then he was right there. If she focused hard enough she could feel his breath against her face, cooling her hot tears. “You know that I do not lie. I would never lie to you. I will not let you die.” Tyrian squeezed her hand as if to prove his point. Then he threw back his head again and roared, “Nanu!”

  Chloe might have winced if she wasn’t dying, because she was. She’d never know where Lily and Willow were. She’d never discover all of Tyrian’s secrets. She’d never have babies and know what it felt like to have a baby suckle her breast.

  The pain inside her morphed, twisted into something worse. She screamed, her body

  shaking violently on the table, her teeth chattering hard. She knew Tyrian was speaking but couldn’t hear the words. The room spun and shook around her, growing fuzzier, blacker. In one last searing wash of pain, she sucked in her last breath of air and everything faded to black.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Nanu came sprinting into the room.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Tyrian growled. Nanu came to a hard stop at the sound of his voice. She’d never heard him yell before.

  “I’m sorry I was in bed.” Quickly, she pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves and grabbed the stethoscope off her desk. “Tell me what happened.” She listened to Chloe’s heart as he answered.

  “Demon attack at the hotel. It clawed her straight across the midriff.” Nanu pulled back the scope and barked orders.

  “Go to the med’s cabinet and grab the two clear bottles that say diazapram and sodium pentobarbital. Now!”

  As Tyrian rushed the cabinet, Nanu swabbed Chloe’s arm with alcohol. Tyrian handed

  her the bottles and she quickly filled a cocktail in a thin needle. As she did, she said in clear, modulated tones, “Listen to me, I need you to go to into the next room to the bathroom. There’s an ice machine behind me. Fill the tub with ice and cold water. We need to lower her body temperature now.”

  Tyrian paused and leveled a hard look on her. “If you let her die...”

  “I know. You’ll kill me. Hurry up and get her in there. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Tyrian filled the bath with cold water and ice and had Chloe floating in it in less than thirty seconds. “What’s wrong with her?”

  God, he felt wired, strung out, and terrified. And why did he even ask what was wrong?

  He knew what was wrong. He’d been fighting demons for most of his life. Now he was just losing his mind.

  “She’s poisoned. Relax, Commander Tyrian. I should be able to drain it from her system before it reaches her brain.”

  Her brain, he thought and froze. “Hurry,” he said gruffly. How much time had already passed since she was poisoned? He tried to think fast, to count the minutes and seconds, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d been fighting a wave of demons, hadn’t even known she was being dragged back. He ran a hard hand over his face. He fucked up and it was his fault.

  Tyrian could only stand back and watch everything happen. Could only watch as his most skilled healer slit open Chloe’s wrists, a vein under her knees, and one in the center of her chest.

  The wounds weren’t terribly deep but they weren’t paper cuts either.

  Fuck. He paced back and forth. The sight of her blood turning the icy water around her red had his heart pounding in his chest, hands pulling at his hair.

  “You must care for her a great deal.” Nanu’s words took a moment to sink in.

  “No. I am her Protector. She is my responsibility.” He couldn’t hold it back anymore.

  The anger and fear inside him finally spilled out and he bit his lip until he tasted blood and drove his fist into the wall. The brief flare of pain didn’t help, but it brought him a little back down to earth. The stone crumbled around his fist.

  Tyrian turned back to watch Nanu work. How she managed to keep her hands from


  shaking was a pure miracle. Though that was a big part of why she worked for him. He had only the best. Nanu wasted no time after the cuts were made. She sprinted back into the lab and came back with a green flask he was familiar with.

  During the Great War when the Atal Warriors were created to battle the demons, many men and women died because of the idummi’ s poisonous claws. Nothing any of the healers did could cure the vicious fluid or stop its destructive path to the brain where it quickly feasted upon the matter and killed the being; no matter if the being was vampire, shapeshifter, or even succubus.

  There was no surviving once it reached there. That is, until hundreds of years after the Great War, when the battles had settled to mere pockets of excursions, and healers worked together to develop an anecdote. They did it, too.

  At first, the concoction didn’t work. They injected it into the blood and still the poison ate its way to the brain and destroyed the unlucky being. It was only after countless more deaths and experimentation that the healers developed a method to cure the idummi poison.

  First, there was time. They had to act quickly because it didn’t take long for the poison to make its way through the body. Second, blood had to be let. The healers referred to the process as “leaching” though they didn’t use leaches anymore. Tyrian didn’t know what the purpose of it was, but knew that it was necessary for the injection that came.

  Nanu stuck a large needle into the green flask and pulled back until fluid nearly filled the entire syringe. Nanu lifted Chloe’s closed eyelids and said, “Shit.” Then she plunged the big needle straight into Chloe’s heart. “Grab me the bucket from the corner over there.”

  Tyrian grabbed it and held it next to the tub, his stomach tightening at what was to come.

  If it hadn’t already killed her, then this was going to be the messy process, the third step in the cure.

  For long, breathless moments, nothing happened. Not a flicker of movement, not even a blink. Seeing the full of life succubus so...dead twisted his heart like a coiling snake. He didn’t have time to breathe as he normally would have done, or to take a moment to block himself off from feeling. Chloe always seemed to find a way to make him feel no matter how hard he fought it. Was this why Francis sent her to him?

  Chloe’s eyes sprung open, their color an eerie pale green. Her body started convulsing, flailing. Water sloshed violently out of the tub.

  “What’s wrong?” Tyrian said.

  Nanu shook her head. “I don’t know. It might have reached her...”

  Tyrian felt his heart stop beating in his chest. Chloe start screaming, a horrendous, gut-piercing sound that he hoped he’d never have to hear again. Then she leaned over the tub and vomited. Relief surged through him with such incredible force, he felt lightheaded. Somehow he still managed to put the bucket under her as hard, wretched heaves came from her.

  The last step of the process. She would live. She would vomit every drop of poison from her body.

  Nanu sighed with relief. “Thank the Gods. We almost lost her.” Tyrian’s veins froze with anger and ice. He stared at Nanu and her eyes widened a fraction.

  “Commander Tyrian, I saved her, not killed her. I am not the one who put her in danger.”

  Tyrian pulled back as her words hit him. Henry came running into the room with Rayn and Draven behind him.

  “What’s happened?” Henry said, his gaze flicking over Nanu.

  Nanu answered, for which Tyrian was grateful because he wasn’t sure he could talk

  without screaming right now. He still couldn’t understand why he was feeling this crazy. What kind of spell was he under?

  “She was poisoned by an idummi. We got it out, though. Barely.” Chloe gave one last long heave, then flopped back into the tub with a splash.

  Tyrian realized her nudity and said, “Everyone out but Nanu.” The men obeyed

  immediately.

  “There’s been news since last night,” Rayn said. The warrior’s short hair was sticking in thick spikes as if he’d run his hand too many times through it.

  “What?” Tyrian said. He tried to control his anger, his fear, and put it into the

  dispassionate place he always did, but it didn’t work. He sounded angry and at the point of breaking, even to his own ears.

  “Telal Demuzi called early this morning. He said he has some interesting news you’ll want to know about. It didn’t sound good. I tried to get him to tell me, but he said he’d only deal with you and not some...servant,” Rayn said with a twitch to his eye.

  Draven clapped him on the back. “Don’t take it seriously. Telal’s just a dick because his entire race and family is forced to live under the rift.”

  Henry turned to him. “Don’t tell me you support freeing the demons to run amuck

  upstairs.”

  Draven shrugged. “Listen, our scientists have proven that only the idummi are the psychopaths. Like Telal, most demons are family-oriented, honorable even. Plus, I may have been young when the Great War started, but some of those rumors floating around might have some merit to them.”

  Tyrian couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you trying to insinuate that the war my father waged and fought was over some simple matter of jealousy?” Tyrian was letting his anger get to him.

  “No, Commander. My apologies,” Draven said, bowing his head.

  “That’s not what it sounded like to me,” Tyrian said. Nanu saved the warrior from any more lashing as she came into the room. She had a small smile on her face that eased Tyrian’s nerves markedly.

  “She’s fine. We got all the poison out. She’s loopy from the drugs and everything that’s happened. I’m going to give her some pain meds to ease her. I suggest you take her to bed, she’ll need plenty of rest after this.” Tyrian went into the bathroom and met Chloe’s foggy eyes.

  Her wrists and knees were wrapped in gauze bandages and another was taped near her

  sternum. The sight shouldn’t have bothered him. He’d seen far worse on, and off, the battlefield.

  Hell, he’d had worse done to him, but none of that mattered.

  Whatever this demon was she’d summoned was powerful. It didn’t just want her dead

  either, but wanted her brought to it. But that only brought even more absurd hypothesis to the table. What on earth would a demon want with a succubus? She had no powers, nothing that could benefit the demon in any way he knew.

  “Tyrian?” she asked, hesitantly. Tyrian grabbed a thick white robe off a hook and

  wrapped it around her before lifting her into his arms.

  “I’m here,” he said, his voice gruff. Her arms came around his neck and he finally felt lighter, his head clearer. Enchantress.

  “I feel like shit,” she said weakly. Tyrian choked on a laugh and she smiled up at him.

  “See, I knew you could laugh. It had to be somewhere in there.” Tyrian cleared his throat and carried her out of the bathroom.

  “What do you want me to tell Telal?” asked Rayn. Tyrian looked down at the frail

  woman in his arms.

  “Tell him I’ll contact him as soon as Chloe’s well.” Tyrian started out of the room but her voice stopped him.

  “Wait, I need Lily. Get my sister for me please? She knows a lot about this demon stuff,”

  Chloe said, her words growing fainter as exhaustion crept over her.

  Tyrian looked back at his men who nodded to say they got it, then took her to his room.

  He didn’t even think about it, but carried her right to the bed he rarely slept in and tucked her in.

  She passed out before he even pulled the covers over her.

  Tyrian watched her for a minute. This feeling he had in his gut. It was one he’d once been familiar with and had strived to never feel again. In just a matter of days, this succubus has managed to unravel years of control that he’d built inside him. He would have to distance himself from her. He couldn’t keep taking her body either, her vein, he almost laughed.
More like letting her take him.

  Every time he was around her, every time she told him something about herself, he felt himself softening. It was a dangerous road he travelled. After the incident at the hotel, she was no longer safe with him.

  And he was no longer safe around her.

  Tyrian left the bedroom and found Lucinda standing nervously at her bedroom door.

  “How is she?” His frimar was lovely. Her voice was soft and gentle; her gowns were simple and lovely. Yet never had he felt a spark of lust for her in all the years she’d been with him.

  “She will fully recover.”

  Lucinda nodded, keeping her head bowed. “It has been many days since you’ve taken

  from me. You will grow weak if you don’t.”

  Tyrian stilled and glanced back at his closed bedroom door. He’d taken Chloe’s neck.

  He’d almost forgotten he’d done it. He’d been so lost last night, that he hadn’t even thought about it, had just pulled her head to the side and taken her.

  He swallowed hard, his cock threatening to swell at the thought. She’d tasted unlike anything he’d ever had. Far from the thick richness of his frimar, she’d been light and sweet like some drink from the gods. He hadn’t wanted to tear himself away, had only forced himself to because of his need to protect her, to see to her pleasure. His heart stuttered in his chest at the revelation.

  Since when was he a man that saw to a woman’s pleasure? This had to stop. Now.

  Lucinda waited for him expectantly. She was the perfect frimar. Quiet, amiable, understanding. She never judged nor asked more from him. She only offered her vein when he needed it.

  Tyrian took a step towards her then stopped. Shaking his head, he said, “I’m fine today.

  Thank you, Lucinda.” He left her standing in the doorway and couldn’t believe what he’d just done.