In a wash of moonlight, the overgrown cemetery slumbered, seemingly undisturbed for decades. His gaze traveled over the wrought-iron gate that hung open, no longer bothering to protect the bodies that had long ago turned to dust. Behind the fence, the broken marble statues and crumbling mausoleums peeped through the weeds, as if refusing to concede total defeat.

Just beyond the graveyard loomed the abandoned church, the once grand structure now an empty shell of stone and decaying wood.

He halted the car behind a patch of trees. The entire neighborhood was vacant, but humans were always straying where they didn’t belong. The sight of the expensive car in the middle of nowhere would stir the kind of attention he hoped to avoid.

At his side, Harley shook her head in wry resignation. “It looks like an abandoned set for a Rob Zombie horror flick.”

“Briggs never did have any taste.” Salvatore shook his head in disgust. “He’s the sort who gives werewolves a bad name.”

“I don’t think it’s a matter of taste that gives werewolves a bad name,” Harley said, shoving open her door and climbing out of the car.

With a chuckle, Salvatore joined her at the side of the road.

“True,” he agreed. “Maybe I should hire a good PR firm.”

“Yeah, right.” She rolled her eyes. “You love knowing that the demon world quakes in fear when a werewolf enters their territory.”

Salvatore couldn’t argue. Being the biggest, baddest, predator in the room had its benefits.

“It does tend to avoid confusion,” he said smugly.

“Everyone knows you’re the king, and everyone must bow before you?”

“Something like that.”

“Good God,” she muttered, flicking her gaze over his expensive suit and Italian loafers. Hunting or not, he liked to look good. “You were arrogant before you came into your full powers. Now you’re going to be impossible.”

He bent his head to capture her lips in a swift, possessive kiss.

“Not when I have a beautiful queen who is always eager to keep me humble,” he husked against her mouth.

She reached up to tangle her fingers in his hair and returned his kiss with enough heat to start a nuclear reaction.

“I suppose that’s true enough,” she whispered.

Salvatore briefly considered the logistics of removing her jeans and stretchy shirt to get her naked before reluctantly pulling back.

Dio. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted from their urgent business. Not with his curs missing and Briggs still a threat.

They would have an eternity to enjoy making love beneath the moon.

“Ready?” he demanded, his voice thick with frustration.

She nodded. “I’ll go right, you circle left.”

“Harley…”

Her eyes flashed with warning. “Don’t start.”

He swallowed the lecture that trembled on his lips and instead tugged on the end of her ponytail.

“Be careful.”

She smiled, reaching behind her back to pull out two Glocks loaded with silver bullets.

“Always.”

With a silent grace, she disappeared into the bushes that surrounded the graveyard, and Salvatore turned to head toward the church. Again Salvatore felt that surge of pride.

His mate.

Strong, beautiful, fearless.

Perfect.

Then, with a shake of his head, he concentrated on the scents and sounds that filled the night.

He took a quick pass through the church, then concentrated on the circle of trees that surrounded the yard.

Hundreds of scents clung to the thick bushes, but Salvatore easily shifted through them, dismissing all but those that held the familiar musk of Were and cur.

Finding nothing among the trees, he headed toward the graveyard and the entrance to the caves. More than once he caught the scent of Hess and Briggs, but the trails were too old to have been made after the collapse of the caves.

Cristo, were they trapped in the tunnels?

The thought was enough to make his blood run cold.

The curs had been tortured, mind-raped, and abandoned by Briggs. Being trapped in the caves might be enough to send them over the edge.

The last thing he wanted was to have to put them down like savage dogs.

Ruthlessly, he crushed the thought.

He was going to find his soldiers, and then he was going to kill Briggs.

He wouldn’t accept any other outcome.

Weaving through the long forgotten graves, Salvatore joined Harley as she stood beside a marble mausoleum at the very back of the property. He frowned at her distracted expression.

“Did you find something?”

“I thought I caught Caine’s scent, but it…” She broke off her words with a shake of her head.

“What?”

“It couldn’t have been him.”

“Why not?”

“It was the scent of a pureblood.”

Salvatore lifted his brows, instantly aware of the significance in her words.

Caine had been so confident that he was to become a Were. Could he possibly have seen the future?

Could the vision have been real?

“Merda,” he breathed, dismissing the unpleasant image. The dark lord had massacred anyone claiming to be clairvoyant a millennium ago. There were occasional prophets and those who were sensitive to premonitions, but there weren’t any true seers left in the world. “It can’t be.”

Harley shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Not tonight,” Salvatore readily agreed. “But eventually I intend to track down the cur and repay him for all those years he held you captive.”

“I would say he’s already been punished. He thought he was destined to be a great Messiah, and instead he’s lost everything.”

Salvatore’s lips twisted. Caine had been a willing partner in Briggs’s near destruction of the Weres. Not to mention, he had dared to treat Harley as a pawn in his self-serving games.

“I prefer a more tangible method of punishment,” he growled.

She grimaced, knowing better than to try to change his mind. There were some things that couldn’t be compromised.

“Did you find any hint of Briggs?”

“Nothing fresh.” He glanced toward the silent fields beyond the graveyard. “If he came out of the tunnels, then it wasn’t here.”

“There has to be more than one way out. We need to widen our search.”

That had been Salvatore’s thought as well.

“We’ll go together.”

“Giuliani.” She narrowed her eyes. “If you wanted a female who likes being treated as if she needs a big, strong male to protect her, then you shouldn’t have chosen me.”

Salvatore heaved a sigh. Then, bravely ignoring the handguns that could cause a number of nasty injuries, he brushed his thumb along the line of her stubborn jaw.

“There will never be a moment when I won’t need to protect you, cara. I can’t change that.”

She stepped back, her expression grim. “My entire life was controlled by Caine. I won’t be leashed again.”

Her voice was flat, emotionless, but Salvatore knew that she meant every word.

“And I thought battling a demon lord was going to be difficult,” he muttered. “I’ll meet you back here in an hour.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Aware of the urgency that beat through Salvatore’s blood, Harley moved swiftly past the broken fence of the graveyard and into the cornfield beyond. She should be annoyed. It was difficult enough to deal with her own jumbled mess of emotions without adding a direct, wireless connection to Salvatore’s. Tonight, however, her only thought was making sure that the stubborn Were didn’t end up dead.

And that meant finding Briggs before the freak-of-nature could regain his strength.

Crisscrossing the field to make sure she didn’t overlook any hint of Briggs or the curs, Harley was headed toward the adjoining field when a low whistle cut through the air.

Salvatore.

With a smooth turn, she was running toward the narrow dirt road on the far side of the field, crouched low to the ground, her guns held ready. She sensed Salvatore’s flare of fury and she intended to be prepared.

For anything.

Salvatore was in a deep culvert by the road, staring at a heavy rock that had been pushed aside to reveal a large hole in the ground. Obviously an opening to the caves below the surface.

She scrambled down the side of the culvert, catching the unmistakable stench of rotting meat. Briggs had come out of the hole.

“You got him,” she said, her satisfaction cut short at the unmistakable smell of cur blood. “Shit.”

Salvatore’s face was set in bleak lines as he followed the scent down the culvert and then up to the road. Harley stayed close to his side, keeping watch on their surroundings so Salvatore could concentrate on the trail.

Her gaze scanned the seemingly empty fields and clusters of trees that could hide any number of nasty creatures. Her senses told her that there was nothing near, but her finger remained on the trigger.

She’d had a stomach full of unwelcomed surprises over the past few days. She’d be damned if it was happening again.