“Why would I believe you now? After everything you’ve done?”

“Because in my own way, as much as I could, I have been trying to thwart him and he has found out. It is why I asked you to protect my child. I am only good to him as long I carry my baby, for he seeks to kill my child, to use my baby’s blood to help him free himself.” Her hand slid around her belly again, cupping it protectively.

Liam slid his chair backward, his breathing evening out, and a surge of pride whipped through me. Gods, he was a man to be proud of. The fact that he’d held himself together, when she sat within inches of him, was beyond what anyone else could have handled. “Who are you talking about?”

If I’d thought I’d understood Milly and her treachery, if I’d thought I could pinpoint where she’d gone bad, where Giselle and I had fallen down, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Of all the things I expected her to say, it was not his name. The world spun out from under me as the name she spoke rocked it.

Not Faris, as I’d thought she’d spit out. Not even Berget, as I was thinking perhaps it could be.

“Orion.”

Chapter 10

YOU DO NOT remember meeting him, do you?” She turned in her seat, and crossed her legs.

“I’ve never met Orion; I’d think I’d damn well remember that.” I glared at her, how stupid did she think I was?

“The day you fell down the stairs … .”

“What of it?” I vaguely recalled what she spoke of. I’d fallen down the stairs not too long after Giselle had taken me on as a ward, and when I’d come to, I’d been in the hospital, Giselle at my bedside with a new wayward soul in tow—Milly.

“You never fell down the stairs. Orion had me erase the memory of how you met me—and of meeting him, of meeting a semblance of him anyway. He can’t take form here yet, he is still trapped, thank the gods. But yours and Giselle’s memories—both—he had me take.” The tears flowed freely down her face. “He will kill me no matter what I do now, so I feel no obligation to keep his secrets anymore. And you need to know what you’re up against. I can help you, if you’ll let me. The plans he has woven are thick; he has help in more places than even I realized. But I swear I will do all I can to help you stop him.”

I shared a look with Liam, tried to discern his thoughts. But his eyes were unreadable, hooded and yet, still burning with intensity.

“So because you aligned yourself to a demon, and now find yourself on the outs with him, we are supposed to feel sorry for you?” Liam’s question was ground out between his teeth.

“No, I never aligned with him. My father sold me to him when I was but a young girl, not long before I met Rylee and Giselle.”

I was having a hard time swallowing this new side of her, as much as a part of me wanted to believe she had never turned on us—or at least that there had been more reason than her own selfish whims—there had been too many lies. Too much death. At any point, she could have told me, and I would have fought to the death to free her. But she hadn’t.

I stood, indecision rippling through me, forcing the words out. “We have to go.”

“Wait, take this.” Milly held out a small, brown canvas bag. I took it, carefully, and peered in. A shimmering red and black stone the size of a golf ball lay in the bottom of the bag. Spikes erupted out of every piece of it, like a porcupine on steroids, some straight, some twisted like corkscrews. The main stems were black, the tips red, as if dipped in blood.

“What do I want with this?”

Her lips trembled. “It’s a demon stone; Orion uses it to compel me. Destroy it, if you can.”

Her eyes never left my face, and I gave her a slow nod. That much I could do for her and not feel as if she were manipulating me.

I backed away from her for two steps before turning to leave. Liam went first, every line of his body taut with pent up anger. The humans moved out of his way, sliding away from him, their eyes following him as one would a stalking beast. Smart humans.

“They will use the foal as a sacrifice to raise Orion. That is their plan. You can stop them. The full moon is the catalyst. Tonight, you have until tonight.”

Milly’s words stilled my feet as nothing else could.

She went on. “You have time yet, but not much. I tell you this because as long as he is trapped within the deep veils, he can only harm me. But if he is brought through physically to the point of crossing fully into our world, he will be able to harm my child. To spill my baby’s blood and seal his own life here.”

“You can’t believe her, Rylee.” Liam grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the coffee shop, the whispers and stares of the humans following us. I let him drag me. I wasn’t sure I could have left of my own volition, not with her words ringing in my ears. The thing was, I still wanted to believe her. Her green eyes met mine, pled with me as Liam shoved the swinging door open and pulled me through after him. What she was saying aligned with what Doran had already told me. Only now she gave me the details. Orion was the demon, not some nameless demon like the Hoarfrost, but Orion.

The demon included in the prophecies that had me fighting him to the death over the potential end of the world.

Even more than before, we had to move our asses. If Milly was right, Calliope had very little time. If she was right, a demon that I was destined to meet on a battleground somewhere at a future date was about to be pulled through the veils and into our world. Just peachy.

We all but ran back to the courtyard. We were early, but there was nowhere else to wait for Dox and the triplets. Nowhere else to go. Damn it all to hell and back! I paced beside the truck, my mind racing.

Hours, it would be hours before Dox and the triplets were back, depending on their sexy romp with Sas, no doubt, and whether or not they were having a good time.

Liam grabbed my arms and stared into my eyes. The man knew me too well, read my mind before I’d really even formed the thoughts myself. “We can’t go without them, Rylee. It would be suicide; we barely managed the ogres that came after the triplets and us. And that was with help.”

I stared up into his gold eyes. “If Milly is right, then we’re dooming the world to a demon prophesied to take it over. There isn’t enough time. We can’t wait for them to finish their sex antics.” I didn’t jerk out of his arms, didn’t shove him away. I laid my fingers on his forearms. “You know I’m right, or you wouldn’t be trying to convince me otherwise.”

He let go of me. “You don’t know that. We don’t know if she was telling the truth or not.”

I bowed my head, feeling the weight of everything I’d learned in London, of the prophecies and the secrets. Maybe this was what they had been pointing to, that I had to stop Orion from using the foal to come through the veils. Shit balls. I Tracked Calliope, just as a spike of fear sliced through her and into me. Intense and teeth rattling, I clenched my hands tight, digging my fingernails into his forearms. Whether or not Milly was right, and my gut said she was for once telling the truth, it was time to finish this salvage.

“I’m going. Are you coming with me?” I lifted my head to see Liam shake his head, his eyes full of worry. A flicker of what he could do danced through his eyes. We both knew he could pin me down, hold me to prevent me from moving, and I wouldn’t try and kill him. He could stop me if he really wanted to.

“This is a bad idea.”

“You got a better one?” I pulled the truck keys out of my pocket and headed toward Dox’s baby.

“We wait for Dox and the triplets. That’s a better idea.” He still got into the truck, slid into the backseat with only the muttering to show he wasn’t behind this idea a hundred percent.

Calliope’s fear spiked again, and I backed the truck out of the parking lot, following the threads of the foal’s life. Leaving without Dox and the triplets wasn’t really a choice. Calliope was in trouble, and a demon summoning was no small thing to ignore when you knew when the deadline was. Mere hours were all we had.

Fuck, why did it have to be this that Milly told the truth about?

“Maybe she believes it, Rylee. Maybe this is a plan that Orion has put into place and he’s using her and she doesn’t know it.” Liam’s voice rolled over me, his words settling in my gut. He might be right, but Calliope needed us and that superseded anything else.

“You handled that very well, seeing her.” I peered in the rearview mirror at him, traced the lines of his body with my eyes.

He snorted. “I couldn’t kill her in the middle of a coffee shop, surrounded by humans. Even I know that much. Even my wolf knows that much.”

That was where he was wrong, but I wasn’t going to correct him. He could have killed her, and while it would have put us on the run, the humans would have chalked it up to a psycho going on a spree. Hell, I could have run her through and if I’d timed it right, no one would have seen her body slumping until after we were gone. We could have called Agent Valley and had him clean up our mess.

So why hadn’t I? Why hadn’t either of us taken that chance? I told myself it was because of the baby; I couldn’t hurt an unborn child. But in my heart, I knew that wasn’t the only reason.

Liam scooted forward and put his chin on the back of my seat.

“What’s the plan, Tracker? And yes, I’m going to keep after you about this. You do have to have one this time. We can’t go in blindly, this is dangerous enough as it is.”

I took the next right hand turn, felt Calliope’s threads settle a little, the fear easing off before thrumming back through me at high speed. “Same as always, which is a type of plan.”

“Crash the party and hope we get out alive?”

I eyed him up in the rearview mirror as he curled back into his seat and tucked both hands behind his head, his eyes thoughtful.

“There is no way to know how bad it’s going to be. Even Dox didn’t know, so there is really no way to plan this.”