Page 40 of Peacemaker

Amias, fast, strong, and full of darkness, slid through the dirt and came up under the demon, something I’d never seen him—or any vampire—do.

Leo roared and the air in front of him visibly moved with his expelled breath, and he lifted his fist, fell to his knee, and waited for his opening to send power at Seamus the demon.

And Rhys…Rhys didn’t try to attack the demon. He threw himself in front of me. My shield.

Everyone did something. Everyone but me.

My scream of frustration, desperation, and rage cut through the night, even as the demon lifted his hands and sent fire to engulf me.

Rhys turned, dived to the ground, and tackled my legs, trying to get me out of the way of the demon’s power.

But the power found me anyway.

I was bathed in fire.

There was agony.

Time paused.

And there was agony.

I heard everything—my men and their terror, their pain. The demon with his hope and his own share of desperation. The swords, clashing, screeching metal, something unthinking but alive, nevertheless. Rushing bodies, feet thumping the earth, the demon’s lapse as he was slammed with the power of my men, my defenders, my protectors.

And I burned.

The flames consumed me. Not my body, exactly, but my mind. Seamus Flynn was an incubus, and his power was a thousand times that of the last incubus who’d gotten inside me and screwed with my mind. That demon had shown me despair, and I’d believed there was no worse feeling than what he’d left me with.

I was wrong.

Seamus created not only crippling despair, but a fear so excessive and cold and inconceivable that there was no word for it. No, fear wasn’t the word, but it was all I had.

His flames were part of him, and as his flames devoured me, tasted me, invaded me, so did he. And then, he traded the fear and despair for lust, and he sucked that lust out of me and into himself.

He fed.

He fed without touching me, but he didn’t have to touch me. His fire touched me.

His power weakened as my people attacked him, but though they hurt the demon, his power was still inside me. Consuming me.

Then Silverlight was in my scorched grip. She was inside me, on me, around me, and she wasn’t the only one.

The King of Everything was there, as well, instructing me.

Use it. It is yours for the taking.

So it was. I absorbed the demon’s burning power. I borrowed it. I became it. And I understood that I would never have been chosen to defend the people and then been given nothing with which to defend them.

A year ago I would have allowed my defeat.

But that was then.

Now I had people to protect. People I loved. People who were everything.

And I was a different person.

I burst from the magical, consuming flames, renewed, high on power, full of energy. And when Blacklight streaked toward Clayton, I drew Silverlight’s razor edge across the skin of my arm, fed her my blood, and bid her to save the man I loved.

I took the flames with me as I turned the demon’s power back on him. His power, mixed with my power, mixed with whatever the King of Everything had left behind when he’d strode inside my mind.

Splashes of power from every supernatural I’d ever touched were in there. I gathered up great handfuls of it, and I flew at the demon and stuffed that power down his gaping maw. I drew back my fists and punched him with it. I clawed him, kicked him, killed him with it.

Or very nearly.

He might have died then, if he—taking his awful sword with him—hadn’t blasted himself out of my world and back into his own.

Maybe he did die. But I doubted it. I believed he would find his way back and heal himself in the space between, much like a shifter limping off to heal itself from bloody wounds.

He would return, and he’d bring Miriam with him.

I hoped he would.

I would destroy them both.