Horrific screeches came from the creature as it fought to disentangle itself from the baubles and gems of the chandeliers while fire roared around it.

I turned back to Shelton. A constant roar of pain ripped from his lungs as he tried vainly to free his father from the deadly mass on his face. Sager's eyes were wide and his face dark red. He grabbed Shelton's hands, and gave him a look full of regret, pleading, and so much more I couldn't identify all within a fleeting moment. He pulled his son's hands free of the blob, and shook his head.

I remembered MacLean's cattle prod, and wished I'd gotten one. My eyes locked on the wires dangling from the ceiling where the chandelier had been. I tugged on them, pulling more slack from the ceiling. "Hold him higher!" I yelled.

Shelton tilted his struggling father's torso higher. Wasting no time, I pressed the bare wires into the squirming white mass suffocating Sager. Nothing happened. My eyes flicked to the other chandelier in the office, and I saw with horror the light was off. I must have short-circuited the outlet. I remembered what Lina had told me about these places using aether—magic—to power the utilities. And magic didn't affect Flarks.

I roared with frustration. "I'm sorry," I said, my deep demonic voice sounding surprisingly sad.

Dark purple mottled Sager's face. His eyes flashed wide. A final spasm clenched his muscles, and he went limp.

Jarrod Sager, the Arcanus Primus and Shelton's father, was dead.

Chapter 39

"No!" Shelton roared, face suffused with absolute fury.

"Oh, is he dead? So sorry," said Bigglesworth, now free of the fire but slightly smaller than he had been before. He cavorted from one foot to the other. "Now it's your turn, boy."

Shelton whirled, grabbed his father's staff in his other hand, and slammed both of them against the floor at the same time, bellowing a word that ignited the ends of both staffs with seething orange light. He offered the Flark a smile that might have terrified any mortal. "Go to hell, you sorry sack of pus." He aimed the staffs at the creature.

"You can't hurt me, mate," Bigglesworth said, leering.

"Wanna bet?" Shelton flicked the aim of the staffs high and low, and shouted a word. Shafts of rippling light plowed into the ceiling and floor. The room exploded and a blast of heat slammed against me. The last thing I saw was a blue-tinged shield spring to life around Shelton before I felt my huge body smash through a window, fly through open air, and after a brief second of terror, smack into the earth outside. One of my horns caught in the dirt and flipped me hard onto my back.

I pushed myself up, shaking my head, and saw Shelton on the ground nearby, unscathed from what I could tell. He still had both staffs in hand, and planted them into the ground. Two roiling suns of death the size of his head formed atop the staffs. He aimed the staffs at the house, roaring, and unleashed them. They dropped off the ends of the staffs, rolling like boulders, and charring everything in their path. Whatever they burned only seemed to fuel them, and each inferno grew larger. They plowed through the house like meteors, rolling through the structure and razing it to the ground.

"Shelton, there might be other people in there!" I said. Even as I shouted, I saw golems leaving the house, their clothes burning from brass bodies.

The house blazed like a funeral pyre, not only for Jarrod Sager, but also—or so I hoped—for Bigglesworth. I watched the house burn in amazed silence, stunned by the raw power exhibited by Shelton. The Arcane dropped to his knees, slumping forward until his forehead met the ground. I rushed to him. He moaned, eyes drooping like a man after a hard night of drinking. I could only imagine the amount of power he'd thrown into those spells of his. He had to be beyond exhausted.

I snapped the two staffs back to compact size, pocketed them, and slung Shelton over my back. My night vision flickered on, and I saw glowing eyes regarding me from the forest. A shudder ran down my spine at the sight, but I had to go back through the nightmare forest to leave this place. The brilliant fire from the house did little to illuminate whatever horrors waited inside that place.

"Murder!" someone shouted, and I turned to see the man and lady of the pond emerge from a pond on this side of the woods.

I looked around, as if they were talking to someone else, saw no one else to blame, and turned back to face them. "It wasn't us!" I shouted, my voice still demonic. "It was Bigglesworth."

"We saw the wizard destroy the house with our own eyes!" the woman said.

"But he tells the truth," the man replied.

"He is Daemos. They can hide the truth," the woman replied.

The man nodded. "Ever are you right, my love. Children, take them."

I looked around desperately, but the forest surrounded the house and its grassy lawn on all sides. Trees uprooted and lumbered toward us from all directions, scantily clad girls dancing by their sides.

I jumped back from one of the dryads as she tried to touch me. If they rooted me to the ground, Shelton and I were done for. "I'll burn you, I said. Just like the house. Stay away!"

"You can't burn all of them," the man said, eyes growing hard.

"We didn't kill Sager! It was a Flark."

The man shook his head. "You are good at forging the truth, Daemos. But there are no more Flarks. They died with their masters when the Grand Nexus was destroyed."

"Their masters? The angels?"

"They all came from that hinterland, demon, but they are all dead."

"I'm not lying," I said, backing away from the closest dryads.

A feminine giggle sounded, and a warm hand touched my arm. My feet planted themselves in the earth and wouldn't move. I turned to see a dryad behind me, a warm smile on her pretty face. Something in me snapped. I bellowed a demonic roar, and tried to lift a leg. Muscles bunched beneath my blue skin. The sound of ripping and tearing roots came from beneath my foot. A clod of earth the size of a small boulder tore free from the ground. I tried to shake it loose, but whatever magic the dryad wielded made it immovable.

The dryad cried out in surprise, and more of them rushed me, hands outstretched.

I roared and tore another chunk of earth free with my other foot. I took a wobbling step atop the thick clot of dirt and roots. It was like walking on platform shoes only a hooker could be proud of. On the upside, the dirt put me about three feet higher off the ground. The other dryads had to leap to reach me. I had another problem. Carrying around so much extra weight sucked my energy dry.

Icy tendrils spread up my leg, creeping into my stomach. The uncontrollable beast inside me raged in syncopation with the vampling curse. I was running out of strength. Running out of sanity. I tried to shake loose the dryad still touching my shoulder, but she was as rooted to me as the ground beneath my feet. She squealed with either delight or terror as I ran.

Just as I teetered on sanity's edge, instinct showed me the way. I needed energy, and what was I surrounded by? Women! I just hoped they were the right kind of women. I flicked into incubus mode. Glorious feminine halos glowed bright above the dryads, like welcoming beacons. Without thought, my essence lashed out in all directions, hooking into their energy, and drawing hard. The dryads sighed, their eyes glowing bright with lust and desire. One of them sprang atop the clod of dirt under my left foot, and ran her fingers up my back. This time, her touch didn't slow me, although it aroused another completely unwelcome awakening in my body. The other dryads tried to repeat the success of the first, hands groping.

That was when the glowing eyes in the forest came.

Although I'd been curious as to what the eyes belonged to, I hadn't actually wanted to find out. Leaves burst into the air as men with bark-like skin roared, and rushed me. And then I realized the men weren't actually coming from the foliage, they were the trees themselves, shifting into humanlike form. They apparently didn't appreciate their women lusting all over me.

Suffused with excess energy, I concentrated, and redirected the flow of my tendrils through the dryads and into the—uh—whatever someone would call a male dryad. The affected dryads turned as one, and flung themselves at the men. The original dryad who'd rooted me to the ground let her hand fall away from my body. The clods of dirt lost cohesion, and I stumbled down piles of earth, nearly face-planting, or worse, horn-planting into the ground.

The area teemed in chaos, some dryads and dude-ads making out, while others chased me as the man and lady of the pond looked on in horror and fury. I didn't waste another minute, and jetted for the exit. As other dryads came at me, I lashed out with my incubus powers and sent them into the arms of the nearest dude-ads. I hoped they didn't have boyfriends, or there was going to be some serious 'splaining to do later from the explosion of infidelity I'd unleashed on them.

"Oh, god, the trees," Shelton said in a drunken voice. "Not again." And then he slumped, unconscious, against my back.

The iron gates were closed when I reached them. I leapt, trying not to imagine my tender bits being impaled upon the pointy top of the gate as I sailed overhead. I landed with a bone-jarring thud, and heard Shelton oof out a breath. As I ran, I saw figures piling over the gates behind me, glowing eyes burning bright.

"Oh, crap, not the friggin trees," I said. I didn't know what to do except keep running all the way back to the mansion. I felt a buzzing in my pocket, and reached my right hand across to my left pocket to pull out my phone. "Hello?"

"Oh, dear, who is this?" asked Bella.

"Justin."

"What's wrong with your voice?"

"I manifested," I said, huffing and puffing as I ran. "Things didn't go well and I'm running like mad with a bunch of dryad men chasing me."

"That's horrible!"

"No duh, Sherlock! Where are you? I need help."

"I'm at the mansion testing the drain rune," she said. "So be careful when you come in. It's in the center of that large dining hall in the west wing."

"Just grab your staff and be ready. I'll lead them inside, and maybe you can block the door." I checked behind me for pursuit, but the winding path behind me revealed nothing. "I'll be there in a couple of minutes."