“Drake and I cannot leave because Bael has summoned demons,” Kostya said, tossing aside a couple of tables and chairs that blocked the door to the back section. Jovana, her white suit stained black, coughed hoarsely as she crawled forward. At least I thought she was coughing until Kostya got her to her feet, and it turned out that she was swearing.

At me.

“Gods and goddesses all unite to smite the person responsible for this atrocity!” She panted a little, shook off Kostya’s hold on her arm, and limped over to where Aisling and I stood. “You did this!” She shook her finger at me. “You have tried to destroy the club ever since you stepped foot inside it. I will have no more of it, do you hear me? I banish you from the premises! No more will you ever darken the doorway! No more will you—Are those more demons?”

She stopped haranguing me to shoot a glare into the smoke. A man-shaped form came through it, followed by six others, varying in sizes and shapes, and even colors, but all of them appeared to be human.

“Oh joy. Bael summoned some friends,” Aisling said wearily, leaving a sooty mark when she rubbed her hand over her face.

“Can he do that?” Jovana asked, furiously punching the air toward the demons. “He is no longer in power!”

“No, but evidently there’s still enough demon lord power in him to summon any demons who are not attached to another demon lord. Lovely. Now I have to banish them, too. Sweetie, I’m going to need help on this—”

“You will not banish anyone. It is too dangerous,” Drake said, moving in front of her in a protective gesture.

“Well, then, how are we going to get rid of them?”

Kostya snatched up the nearest table, ripped off one of the legs, and passed the table on to his brother, who repeated the action.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Aisling said.

“Man alive, dragon-on-demon action,” Jim said, sitting next to Aisling. “This should be good. Not as much fun as seeing the red dragons jump Kostya while we were in Sweden, because that was just awesome, but I do love me a good fight where demons are beaten to a pulp.”

“You are a demon,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, but Ash here says I’m the good kind.” He grinned at me. “Don’t be jealous, babe. I said that I liked the fight with you and Slick more.”

I rolled my eyes and dismissed him from my thoughts, returning to what was most important at that moment.

“Kostya, you can’t possibly be serious about this.” I tugged on the back of his shirt. Drake and Kostya had taken up a protective stance in front of us, the latter’s table leg held firmly in his right hand. “Even I, with the tiny bit of knowledge that I have about the Otherworld, know you’re not going to be able to beat up a demon with a piece of wood.”

“Destroy them!” Jovana screeched, pointing dramatically at the seven demons, who had now formed a line. They glanced behind them and, at some unseen command, leaped forward.

A sudden spurt of fear made it feel as if my heart had been jerked into my throat. “Kostya!” I yelled, running after him.

“Guard Aisling!” he called back to me.

I skidded to a halt, a horrible vision rising in my mind of him lying dead on the floor while the building burned around him and the demons carried away Aisling and Jim. Panic gave me strength, sending me leaping onto the top of one of the remaining tables in a position where I could keep Aisling safe and yet monitor the situation with Kostya.

The demons, with harsh cries that made my skin crawl, divided themselves between Drake and Kostya, the latter of whom shifted into dragon form. Fire blasted the demons, but it evidently did them little harm, because it didn’t stop their attack at all.

Drake’s makeshift wooden sword whirled and danced in the smoky air, the thumps and cries of pain from the demons indicating that he was well versed in hand-to-hand combat. I stopped watching him, trying to pick out Kostya’s dark form in the dim light, covered as he was with four demons. They snarled and spat invectives, and twice I heard Kostya grunt in pain.

I did an impotent dance on the table, wanting badly to go help Kostya but knowing that Aisling’s state meant she needed extra protection. I did what I could by hurling balls of Kostya’s dragon fire at the demons, but they paid absolutely no attention to it.

Behind me, Jovana alternated between shouting orders to Guillaume, who had staggered out from the back room, and hurling abuse at me and the demons. But she kept out of the range of both the battle and me, so I paid her little mind.

It wasn’t until Bael himself strode forward that life seemed to sputter to a halt. He stood watching Kostya—now down to just two demons on him, the other two having disappeared into the floor—when he said something I couldn’t hear, and suddenly a big-ass sword manifested itself in his hand.

“Thank you,” he said, completely unexpectedly. His gaze was firmly fixed on me, making me feel like I was a bug pinned to a board. “You have fulfilled my expectations quite well. I will be forever grateful to you for freeing me.”

He smiled and lifted the sword, obviously intent on killing the man I loved beyond all else.

I tried to yell a warning to Kostya, but my mouth was choked with fear and smoke and the horrible knowledge that whatever happened was due to my own ignorance. Once again the ring grew hot and heavy on my hand, and I fisted my fingers, pulling my hands in to my chest for a second before throwing them outward in a desperate attempt to fling away all of the badness.

The air in the club seemed to suck in to one tiny little point in the center of the building, then, with a noise that I will not soon forget, shot outward, destroying all in its path.

As I fell, I said a little prayer to whatever deity would listen to me for Kostya’s death to be swift and painless.

Eighteen

It wasn’t the shouts and cries that reached me first. It wasn’t the sirens, or the rumble of the crowd, or even Kostya saying my name.

It was the sound of his heart beating beneath my ear, strong and true, in a rhythm that seemed to exactly match my own. I turned my face toward the sound, joy at the knowledge that whatever else, we were together. Kostya’s delicious scent sank into my bones, making me feel both oddly safe and incredibly aroused.

“You’re not dead,” a rough, cracked voice said. It occurred to me that it was me who spoke, and I put my hand up to my mouth to see if I still possessed such a thing.