Only must.
Mate is limp in the mirror. Blood everywhere. Don’t like this.
DON’T LIKE IT AT ALL!
But must wait.
For what?
DON’T KNOW!
ONLY WAIT!
Mate.
I touch her head. It falls backward. All her wounds show in the mirror.
Wounds I made.
Why?
Don’t know.
DON’T KNOW!
“MATE!”
Please come back to me.
I roar and pull her body close.
She smells strange. Like herself but not.
I scent her again. I’ve never smelled something like this.
It’s new.
And so is she.
JADE
The first breathafter you die is a real bitch. Trust me on that.
My lungs burn and ache as they fill. But they do fill, so that’s something.
A loud humming—no, the purr of an engine rattles behind me, and I open my eyes to see why the hell there’s a Mack truck in Vrahs’s office.
But what greets my gaze makes absolutely no sense.
There’s no truck. Just Vrahs’s velvety red chest vibrating with resonance so deep, I mistook it for a diesel engine.
Purring.
And that makes me wonder.
Are cats actually demons?
Next to him, where Thorne and Ryker sat on the floor, are two demons I haven’t met. One with shimmering golden skin and horns like longhorn cattle.
