Page 97 of Caretaker

Silverlight’s power was warm through my body as she sought to save me. I must continue the fight. I couldn’t lie down and die already.

Hell no.

My men raced toward me, pale, horrified blurs, but the demon swept them away almost casually, sending them tumbling through the air with a wave of heat.

Shane could not withstand such abuse.

He wasn’t like the others, and he was injured.

Leo was the first on his feet, and he ran once more to join me. “He took us off guard,” he said, as though he had to explain to me why the demon had been able to scatter them so quickly. “It won’t happen again.”

He lifted his hands, clenched his fists, and they began to glow.

“No.” I tried to breathe through the pain, but my back was on fire, and I thought my lungs had collapsed. There was no air. Only pain. “Clayton will be hit.”

Clayton was in line with the demon, directly behind him, and I’d seen what Leo’s power could do.

“Get out of the way,” Leo roared, not understanding that Clayton was unable to move. He hadn’t yet learned of Miriam’s hold—he just wanted Clayton to move so he could attack the demon.

But then Rhys sprinted through the field, darker than the night, and his body broke apart and shifted into a hundred lethal blades that flowed like black water.

The demon roared and stumbled back as those blades entered his body—and then Rhys Graver was inside the demon, ripping, slashing, weakening.

I lifted my arms and pain screamed through me as the blades seemed to sink deeper into my flesh. I knew Silverlight was the only thing keeping me alive.

And she turned her attention once more to the demon. He was vulnerable with the shifter inside him, but he was also protected.

We couldn’t destroy him without also destroying Rhys.

The demon and Rhys fought, and it looked like the demon fought himself. He roared and stumbled and stomped, slapping his own body with fiery hands, trying to reach the pain inside.

Then he began to flicker and the blood drained from my face as I realized what he was trying to do. Running away seemed to be his number one plan of action when things got sticky. He was going home, and if Rhys didn’t extract himself, the demon would take him along for the ride.

“Rhys,” I screamed. “Get out!”

Maybe he heard me, or maybe he just knew what was about to happen. The blades flew out the same way they’d gone in—by ripping through the demon’s flesh.

“No,” Miriam yelled, charging toward the demon. “Take the incubus from my man!”

My body was expelling her blades with agonizing slowness—it was as though my flesh was heaving, trying to vomit the switchblades up, but Miriam had buried the blades in deep, and they were stubborn as hell.

Angus shook his head, leaned over to haul Shane to his feet, and the two of them jogged toward me.

Angus shifted as he ran and when he reached my side, he was his bull. His horns were no longer white—scarlet covered the tips and stopped halfway down the curved appendages, but it wasn’t his blood. I wasn’t sure why the color had changed.

If we made it through the night, I’d ask him.

Shane was hurting, but he wouldn’t let a little thing like pain stop him. “Wonder if silver will hurt a demon,” he said. And before any of us could answer him, he lifted his shotgun and squeezed the trigger.

The demon stumbled back a couple of steps but otherwise seemed not to notice the silver shot.

“Do it,” Miriam screamed. She ran toward the huge demon, unafraid. “He’s behind you.”

I took a couple of steps forward but Angus put his big body in front of me and shoved me back toward Leo. I stumbled into the giant, trying to find my balance, my strength.

Silverlight was screaming, her light bright enough to spotlight the entire field, nearly, and I could feel her indecision. She needed me to fling her at the demon, but she did not want to go. I had no idea why, and then suddenly, I did. If she left me with the knives inside me, I would die.

I rushed the demon, swung Silverlight in a circle over my head, and sent her light into the demon. Not her, but her light.