Page 38

“It has its moments,” Ren said from his position beside and a little behind me.

I snorted. “If your idea of fun is running around a demon-infested forest, hoping they don’t catch you, drain your blood, and serve it up like an aperitif before eating the rest of you for their main course, then sure, this place is like Disney.”

His low laugh, deep and rough, slid over me. I barely stopped myself from stumbling and falling on my ass. I hadn’t heard Ren laugh in a really long time, years, and judging by how fast Magnolia spun our way, neither had she.

“That’s some imagination you got there,” he said.

That low, raspy voice combined with that sexy-as-hell laugh and I was having trouble catching my breath. “A female’s mind is a dangerous place.”

He huffed out a breath, still with humor, just less.

“Hell, yes,” Mags said.

Bram grunted his agreement and Mags poked him in the ribs, getting a sound out of him I’d never heard before, making Mags and I crack up and Ren emit a low chuckle that I felt in the pit of my stomach.

The fact we were in a demon-infested forest no longer mattered. All I wanted to know was how to make Ren laugh again. “So what’s Agatheena like, Mags?” From what I’d been told, she was a recluse and had lived out here for fifty years.

Mags grinned at me over her shoulder. “I could try to describe her, but she truly has to be experienced for yourself.”

“Now I’m truly terrified.”

“Don’t be,” Mags said. “She likes me, so I’m pretty sure she won’t eat you.”

“What?” I stopped short.

Ren ran into me, and his arm automatically hooked around my waist, stopping me from falling on my face. He kind of lifted me, setting me on my feet a few steps ahead, and kept his hand on my lower back for a few very long seconds to make sure I kept moving.

“She’s joking,” Ren said. “Agatheena prefers demon meat.”

“So you do know her?” Mags asked him.

“No, but I’ve met her.”

Mags glanced back at him. “I wondered, with how long you were out here.”

Ren’s eyes went kind of blank, but he smiled. “She snared me in one of her traps. I talked her out of turning me into stew.”

“Holy freaking shit,” I whispered.

Ren’s eyes lit up again, and he huffed out that sound again that wasn’t a laugh, but close.

This news was not great. “So if she’s half demon, and she eats demon, that kind of makes her—”

“A cannibal,” Bram said.

We all went silent, and that’s when I felt the low hum of power. I realized it’d been steadily growing the farther we walked. It was Agatheena, her magic, reaching out to us—

Ren grabbed me suddenly, his solid arm hooking around me again. He pulled me back, stepping in front of me so fast he was a blur. The knife he’d had strapped to his thigh was in his hand a split second later, then it went sailing. A thunk and a shriek followed before a pissed-off, seriously hideous demon burst from the trees, Ren’s knife buried in one of its eye sockets.

“Watch her,” Ren muttered to Bram and Mags, and then he ran at the demon.

In a blur of motion, he took the demon to the ground, pulled the knife from its skull, and with a snarl decapitated it, turning it to ash. He stood, barely puffing, slid the blade back into the sheath strapped to his thigh, and returned to us.

Bram’s head was tilted again, listening for more, and Mags was scanning the trees, a vial in her hand. “Clear?” she asked her mate. Bram nodded.

We started walking again.

“Okay?” Mags asked when she looked back and saw I was close to hyperventilating.