The whip wrapped around the bird’s feet, jerking them together, making it screech, but didn’t slow it down. Nope, it started to pull me up, off the wicked slide. It snapped its beak at me, eyes glittering with hate I could only define as bottomless.

“Rylee, let go!” Erik yelled.

“No, I can do this!” The big ass bird wasn’t going to get the better of me. Power was there if I reached for it. I didn’t need words.

Easy. Right.

I thought of the whip as a conduit, a way to transfer power Erik said was in me. The power to stop a demon.

Sweat popped out on my forehead as I sought a part of me I didn’t know existed. A part of my father, the past, the power left to me to stop Orion.

Heart, it had to do with my heart.

Just like that, the whip went stiff in my hand, gave a jerk and the bird exploded above me, black feathers drifting down for a split second and then I was sliding on my back again, breathing hard. Struggling to realize I’d done that.

All along I’d had a power in me that could stop demons. I’d just not known it.

I let out a whoop and reached behind my head, let my whip trail behind me. Alex yipped a couple of times.

“Good job, Ryleeeeeeeeee!” He grinned back at me, tongue flipping around, spit flying every which way, even hitting me in the face. I didn’t care. I’d killed a demon without my sword. Pretty damn cool.

Pretty fucking damn cool.

Pacing did him no good.

Yet there was nothing else but to move. Liam fought not to let out a long, steady growl. Rylee and Alex had been gone for over two hours. Two hours and every little piece of him felt each minute had been a year. Ten years.

“Do you not trust her to accomplish the task she faces?” Thomas asked.

Liam glanced at the necromancer sitting in a chair salvaged from the wreckage, his fingers steepled under his chin.

“I trust her. I don’t trust demons.”

Frank and Megan sat at Thomas’s feet and they shared a glance, but it was Megan who stood and drew close to his side.

“Umm. Can I talk to you?”

What the hell could a teenage girl he didn’t know want to talk to him about?

“Alone.” She bobbed her head to one side, toward the tree line.

What the hell, it wasn’t like he had anything else to do. He didn’t answer her, just started to walk. Megan jogged to catch up, her bright red hair bouncing like crazy.

At the tree line he stopped. “What?”

Her eyes flicked back to Thomas, once, just once. “He’s strong, but I don’t think he intends to open the gate, or door, or whatever that was in the same place again.”

If she had thrown a cup full of ice and water in his face he couldn’t have felt the chill rush through his body and faster. “How do you know that?” Calm, keep calm. Ask questions, throttle Thomas only if he had to.

Megan licked her lips, then tucked her hair behind her ears. “When he touched our shoulders, we saw what he planned, how he opened the door thingy. But I knew Thomas didn’t want to re-open the doorway when he said he did. And if he did, he would open it somewhere else.”

“Why, why would he do that?”

Megan stepped closer. “He’s working for someone else. Someone who wants her dead.”

This was going down hill fast, faster than he thought possible. “Then why would he ask for new apprentices? Why not just kill us with the zombies out right?”

She shrugged. “Maybe greed. Why kill you if he could get something out of you in the first place?”

Liam leaned close and drew in a deep breath. There was no deception in her, no sour scent of lies, just a heavy perfume that seemed like something every teenage girl wore. Megan frowned up at him. “Why are you smelling me?”

“To see if you’re lying.”

Her jaw dropped open, and her eyes went wide with something akin to wonder, which Liam was not really happy with. She grabbed his arm with her tiny hand. “Frank wasn’t kidding, you really are a werewolf. That’s awesome!”

He had to get her back on track. “Listen to me, does Thomas know what you saw?”

She shook her head slowly. “No, I don’t think so.”

Liam started back toward Frank and Thomas. “I believe you, but unless you or Frank can open the veil to where Rylee went, I need Thomas. And trust me, he will do what I want.”

His eyes narrowed as he strode toward the old man. Yes, Thomas would fulfill his end of the bargain, or Liam would make sure it was the last day he spent on this earth with his body still intact.

The bottom of the slide wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. Nope, it was a big old pond filled with water, a thick coating of some sort of oil on top. Erik hit first, displacing the oil, then Alex, then me.

My body sluiced under the surface and I closed my eyes, held my breath and wondered how much shit I would have clinging to me when I stood. There was nothing to stand on, no bottom to the pond that I felt. Breaking the surface I wiped my face, the oily substance sliding off.

I swam for the edge where Erik and Alex were pulling themselves out. “Demons are disgusting. Do I even want to know what this is?”

“It isn’t that bad. Left over food grease if I remember correctly.”

I grimaced. He reached down and pulled me out. Where we stood was a wide-open field of dead grass, acres and acres of dead grass and not much else. Like the demons decided to build their own terrarium inside the building.

“Alex, how’s the bracelet?”

He shook his whole body, sending a spray of water and food grease into the air. “Warmer.”

“Warmer than before?”

“Yuppy doody.”

Erik glanced down. “Timer from a necromancer?”

“Yes.” I nodded, Tracking Pamela. “And we’re running out of said time. We have to hurry.”

Pamela was close, real close. I almost called out to her. Of course, I should have known it wouldn’t be as easy as fending off a single, large demon bird.

From the field of dead grass, the ground humped upward.

“Erik?”

“This one best we run from. Drovers are not easy to kill, though it can be done. It would take more time than we have.”

Drovers. I tucked the name into the back of my head. “Run it is then.” I turned and bolted along the edge of the pond toward where the slide hung. There was a door behind the slide, the only one available. It would have to do.