“How in the hel did you even get past the Guards in your Mario Brothers pajamas?”

He glanced down at them, shrugging. “I have my ways.”

“Your ways?” I didn’t have time for this. Stepping away from him, I pointed in the direction of the bridge. “You need to get back there, where it’s safe.”

He folded his arms across his chest stubbornly. “Not without you.”

“Oh, for the love of the gods!” My temper snapped. “I don’t need this right now. You don’t understand.”

“Don’t start with the ‘I don’t understand’ crap. This isn’t about understanding anything! This is about you getting yourself kil ed! This is suicide, Alex. This isn’t brave. It isn’t smart. This isn’t about duty or some misguided guilt you—”

His eyes widened again as something landed a couple of feet behind me. I whirled around, and at the same time, Caleb grabbed the dagger from my pants as I pul ed the gun.

It was her.

She stood there, in the center of the al ey. It was her…

except it wasn’t. It had her long, dark hair that fel in soft waves, framing her pale, ghastly white face—those high cheekbones and familiar lips. But darkness existed where her eyes should have been. Inky veins covered her cheeks, and if she smiled, there’d be a row of nasty, sharp teeth in her mouth.

It was my mother… as a daimon.

The shock of seeing her—seeing her beautiful, loving face twisted into such a grotesque mask—caused my arm to waver, my finger to twitch over the trigger. It was her…

but it wasn’t.

I knew from where she stood, there was no way she could defend herself against a gunshot to the chest. I had the upper hand with my gun fil ed with titanium bul ets—a ful clip of them, actual y. I could light her up right here and al of this would be over.

She hadn’t moved, not an inch.

And now she looked like Mom. The elemental magic cloaked the daimon in her, and she stared at me with those bright, emerald-colored eyes. Her face was stil pale, but no longer riddled with thick veins. She looked like she had the night before she’d turned—smiling at me, holding my gaze with hers.

“Lexie,” she murmured, but I heard her loud and clear. It was her voice. Just hearing it did wonderful and awful things to me.

She was beautiful, stunning, and very much alive—

daimon or not.

“Alex! Do it! Do—!” Caleb cried out.

A quick glance behind me confirmed Mom wasn’t alone.

Another dark-haired daimon now had a hand around Caleb’s throat. He didn’t move to kil him or to tag him. He simply held him.

“Lexie, look at me.”

Unable to deny the sound of her voice, I turned back to her. She stood closer—close enough a bul et would leave one hel of a hole in her chest. And close enough I caught the scent of vanil a—her favorite perfume.

My gaze flickered over her face, each line of it familiar and beautiful to me. As I stared into her eyes, I remembered the strangest things. Memories of our summers together, the day she’d taken me to the zoo and told me my father’s name, the look on her face when she’d told me we needed to leave the Covenant, and the way she’d looked sprawled across the floor in her tiny bedroom.

I faltered. I couldn’t catch my breath as I stared into those eyes. This was my mother— my mother! She had raised me, treated me like I was most precious thing in the world.

And I had been her everything—her reason for living. I couldn’t move.

Do it! She’s not your mother anymore! My arm trembled.

Do it! Do it!

A scream of frustration tore through me and my arm dropped to my side. Seconds, only seconds had passed and yet, it felt like an eternity. I couldn’t do it.

Her lips curved into a smug smile. Caleb gave a yelp from behind me, and then pain exploded alongside my temple. I slipped into the sweet darkness of oblivion.

***

I woke up to a splitting headache and a dry, bitter taste in the back of my mouth. It took me a few minutes to remember what’d happened. A mixture of horror and disappointment jerked me upright, on alert despite the throbbing ache radiating down the side of my face. I touched my head gingerly, feeling a knot the size of an egg.

Woozy, I looked around the lavishly furnished room. The cedar log wal s, the large bed covered in satin sheets, the plasma television, the handcrafted furniture, al of it appeared familiar to me. It was one of the bedrooms in the cabin we used to visit, the one I’d slept in a half a dozen times. A pot of purple hibiscus flowers sat beside the bed

—Mom’s favorite. She had a thing for purple flowers.

Shock and dismay set in. I remembered this room. Oh, gods. This wasn’t good. Nope.

I was in freaking Gatlinburg, Tennessee—more than five hours away from the Covenant. Five hours. Worse yet, I didn’t see Caleb. Creeping over to the door, I paused and listened. Not a sound. I glanced at the glass doors leading out to the deck, but there was no way I could leave. I had to find Caleb… if he was stil alive.

I clamped down on that thought. He had to be alive.

There could be no other way.

Of course, my gun was gone and Caleb had taken my dagger. There was nothing in this room I could use as a weapon. If I started breaking stuff apart, it would draw attention, and it wasn’t like any of this stuff could be converted into a weapon. Anything that might’ve been made of titanium had been stripped away.

I tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. I inched the door open and looked around. The sun rose outside, pushing the shadows out of the living area and kitchen. A large round table sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by six matching chairs. Two of the chairs had been pul ed back, as if they’d been occupied. Several empty beer bottles rested on the carved oak surface. Daimons drank beer? I had no clue. There were two large couches, nice ones covered in luxurious brown fabric.

Across the room, the television was on, but muted—one of those big thin-screen ones, mounted on the wal . I went to the table and picked up a beer bottle. It wouldn’t kil a daimon, but at least it was a weapon.

A muffled scream drew my attention to one of the back rooms. If I remembered right, there were two more bedrooms, another living area, and a game room. Al of the doors were closed. I crept closer, freezing as the sound came again from the master bedroom.

I clenched the bottle in my hand and murmured a soft prayer. I wasn’t sure what god I was praying to, but I real y hoped one of them answered. Then I kicked the door. The hinges creaked and gave way as the wood around the knob splintered. The door swung open.

My breath caught in my throat at the nightmare unfolding before me. Caleb was pinned to the bed. A blond daimon was on him, his rough hands covering his mouth and holding him down while he tagged his arm. The sounds the daimon made as he drained Caleb’s blood to get at the aether horrified me.

At the sound of my rage-fueled screams, the daimon lifted his head. His empty stare bored straight through me. I launched myself away from the door, bottle raised high in the air. It wouldn’t kil him, but I was going to make it hurt.

Except it never happened.

So caught up on what the daimon was doing to Caleb, I didn’t check the room. Stupid. But dammit, these were the kind of things I’d missed out on when I’d left the Covenant. I just knew to act and fight. Not to think.

Someone snatched me from behind. My arm twisted back until I dropped the bottle to the floor. The two chairs pushed back from the table flashed before me. Should’ve seen this one coming. Struggling proved useless from this position, but I stil kicked out and tried to wrench my body away. It only succeeded in causing the daimon to tighten his grip until it became painful.

“Now. Now. Daniel isn’t going to kil your friend.” The voice came from behind my ear. “Not yet.”

Daniel smiled, flashing a row of bloodstained teeth. In a blink he stood in front of me, tilting his head to the side. The glamour took over, revealing the pure-blood characteristics.

He would’ve been beautiful if it weren’t for the rivulets of blood dripping down his chin.

Caleb’s body jerked every few seconds. Aftershocks of the tag—I would know. His bare arms revealed not one but two daimon tags. Furious, I screamed at the daimon in front of me. “I’m going to kil you!”

Daniel laughed and wiped the back of his hand over his chin. “And I’m going to love tasting you.” He sniffed me

— literally sniffed me. “I can almost taste you now.”

I kicked out, catching him in the chest. He staggered a couple of feet back, hitting the bed. Caleb groaned and tried to sit up. Daniel coldcocked Caleb. I cried out, struggling like a rabid animal, but the daimon knocked me to the floor.

And then I was flying up, but no one was touching me. I hit the wal so hard the plaster cracked, along with what felt like every bone in my body. There I stayed, pinned with my feet dangling several feet off the floor. The daimon control ed the air element—something else I hadn’t learned how to defend myself against.

“You need to learn to play nice. Both of you.” The other daimon held his hand up. He had a Southern accent—

smooth and deep. He stepped up to where I hung, leaned in and patted the top of my foot. It was the daimon from the al ey, the dark-haired one who’d been with Mom. “We do get hungry, you know? And with you here… wel , it gnaws out our insides. It’s like a fire inside of us.”

I tried to pul away from the wal , but I didn’t move. “Stay away from him!”

He ignored me, walking over to Caleb’s motionless frame. “We aren’t new daimons by any means, but you…

make it hard to resist the lure of the aether. Just a hit. That’s al we want.” He ran his fingertips down Caleb’s face. “But we can’t. Not ‘til Rachel e returns.”

“Don’t touch him.” I barely recognized my own, low voice.

He glanced back at me and waved his hand as if it were an after-thought. I hit the floor feet first, and then fel to my knees. I ignored the way my stomach muscles pul ed and pushed to my feet. Without thinking about anything other than getting him away from Caleb, I rushed him. The dark-haired daimon shook his head and simply threw his arm up.

My body slammed into the wal , knocking several framed paintings to the floor. This— this was nothing like training.

And this time I didn’t get up.

Clearly annoyed, he pushed away from Caleb. He advanced on me, and I screamed, swinging on him. He caught my arm and then my other, hauling me to my feet.

With both arms rendered useless, I had only my legs.

Aiden had always praised my kicks, and with that thought in mind, I pushed my upper back against the wal . Using the daimon’s arms and the wal for support, I pul ed my legs up to my chest and kicked out.

I caught him right in the chest, and by the startled look on his face he hadn’t expected it. He fel back several feet, and I hit the floor once again.

Daniel shot away from the bed and dug his hands into my hair, wrenching my neck back. For a moment, a sick sense of déjà vu hit me, but there was no Aiden to save me now—