The bastard stretched and arched his back at an odd angle like he was boneless and fucking elastic, avoiding the orb—but barely. Jonas tossed an orb of his own. Knox returned the favor. And on and on it went.

Snowflakes and tree bark flew in the air each time a ball of hellfire missed its target. A couple had hit Knox, but they weren’t powerful enough to really hurt him. Jonas, on the other hand, was weakening. Several patches of flesh were blackening and peeling from his body. The scents of blood and burning flesh pleased his demon immensely and—

Knox was standing in his Underground office. Another illusion, he knew. Recalling that pain had snapped him out of the last one, he dug his fingertips into a wound on his arm. The world around him shifted back to normal … just in time for him to see a long beam of fire soaring his way, aiming for his head.

Ducking, he let out a stream of hellfire from his palm as if it were a flamethrower. Jonas’s eyes widened—no doubt because the stream had the head of a snake. It slithered toward him fast, hissing loudly. Jonas tossed several balls of hellfire at it, but they had no effect.

“You motherfucking bitch!”

The pain in his mate’s voice snatched his attention. He looked and saw her foot was caught in a fissure in the ground and she was struggling to wrench it free. He used psychic hands to pull her to safety and—

Knox staggered as blazing pain lanced through his shoulder and skidded down his arm. Jonas, the bastard, had buried a fire beam in his shoulder. Grinding his teeth, Knox slowly pulled out the beam, hissing as it scraped against bone.

He slammed his gaze on Jonas, only then noticing that the bastard’s attention had moved to Harper. That was when Jonas slung a ball of hellfire at her. Wicked fast, Knox threw one of his own—the orb crashed into Jonas’s, knocking it off-course. The motherfucker had tried to hurt Harper. Now, his demon was no longer amused. No, it was pissed. And it wanted to have some fun of its own.

*

Icy psychic hands roughly snatched Harper’s hips and dragged her out of harm’s way. But it was only mere seconds later that the tentacle came at her again. Dizzy and uncoordinated, Harper couldn’t move fast enough to dodge the fucker. It wrapped around her yet again, squeezing hard this time—hard enough to cut off her breathing. And Harper decided she was done playing. She grabbed the tentacle, releasing the protective power tingling her fingertips—a power that rushed through Alethea all the way to her soul.

Alethea screamed, and the tentacles shrunk away, dumping Harper on the ground. Lifting her head and spitting out snow, Harper watched as a shaking Alethea dropped to her knees and then slumped to the ground, sobbing her little black heart out. Relishing the sight, Harper’s demon bared its teeth in a bloodthirsty smile.

“Bitch.” Splaying her fingers in the snow beneath her, Harper pushed to her feet and began tugging out more barbs—

“No! No! Stay the fuck away!”

Jonas’s panicked words made Harper’s attention snap to him. Blinking rapidly to clear her fuzzy vision, she saw that Knox was … well, no longer Knox. In his place was a figure of raging flames. The archdemon was having its fun. And—like the fire-snake on the ground—it was stalking Jonas. Unsurprisingly, the Prime’s eyes were wide with shock and horror. There was no mistaking what Knox was. Not now. And Jonas knew he didn’t have even the slightest chance of winning a battle against an archdemon. He was fucked.

Breathing hard, Harper watched in grim satisfaction as Jonas backed away, hurling orbs of hellfire that had no effect whatsoever on the archdemon. The dumb bastard then tripped over his sister, who was too caught up in her own pain to even notice. On his ass, he scooted backwards, only stopping when he felt the heat of the tri-colored flames behind him.

“Alethea, get up, run!” warned Jonas. The fucker really did love his sister. But not enough to try dragging her to safety. No, he left her curled up like a fetus.

The archdemon stiffly halted in front of him. It was impossible to know what it was thinking. It had no facial features—not even eyes—though she knew it saw everything.

Staring up at it, Jonas shook his head. “Don’t you—” His back bowed as he was wrenched from the floor by an unseen force and then slammed back on the ground hard enough to send a tremor through the earth. Then he was writhing. Thrashing. Face scrunched up in a terrible agony.

Crack.

A rib? His spine? She wasn’t quite sure. It was doing something to his insides. Something that caused another sickening crack. And another. And another. Yep, probably his ribs.

His back arched again, and he coughed up blood. It splattered on his chest and dripped down his chin. Not a pretty sight. Then his hands slapped on his head and he fisted his hair as he roared in pain. A roar that rose in volume when his leg snapped at an unnatural angle. She winced, but she felt no sympathy for him.

He gurgled, eyes bulging, and his hands flew to his neck in a panic. The archdemon was choking him. And as Jonas’s face turned crimson red and his eyes started to become bloodshot, she realized that—oh, fuck—it was going to kill him. Not part of the agenda.

Staggering toward the figure of flames, she said, “No. Drop him.”

The archdemon’s head slowly turned to face her, but he didn’t release Jonas. Unable to sense its frame of mind, she touched its psyche. Rage. Well, that wasn’t exactly surprising. “You can’t kill him.”

It just stared at her.

Her demon rolled its eyes and forced its way to the surface. “We want them to suffer,” it reminded the entity. “There are far worse things than death.”

Still, the archdemon didn’t do anything. And now Jonas was turning blue.

Knowing that her demon wouldn’t do much to calm the entity, Harper resurfaced. “Asher’s waiting for us. We need to get to our boy.”

A flaming hand reached out and feathered its inferno-hot fingers down her wounded cheek. That gentleness said a lot. It was pissed that she was hurt, but it wasn’t intoxicated on power or out of control—it could never have touched her like that if it was.

That was good. She could work with “pissed”. Drunk on power? That was a whole other story.

“I’m okay,” she told it. “I’ll feel a fuck of a lot better when I know these two motherfuckers are shackled in the Chamber that Knox told me about. You remember your playroom, right?”

The crazy fucker still didn’t respond.

“They need to suffer big time for what they would have done to Asher. So, let’s make sure they do. Yeah?”

The archdemon’s head stiffly turned back to face Jonas. And then the Prime sagged, hacking and heaving in air. The “snake” slithered around him, keeping him trapped.

The fire then began to peel away from Knox’s head, gradually lowering, but his eyes were black. The demon hadn’t retreated yet. It prowled toward her, face blank, taking stock of her wounds. “She will pay dearly for each bit of pain she inflicted on you,” it promised in a chilling, disembodied voice.

“Damn fucking straight she will.” Harper would see to that herself.

The demon stroked its fingertips down her throat. “I don’t like the smell of your blood. She will—”

Something snapped tight around her ankle and yanked, making her hit the ground hard. Tentacle. Then she was skidding along the earth toward Alethea, who was still curled up on the floor but had managed to—

The archdemon pyroported to Alethea, long flames flickering from its fingertips, and sliced out its hand. The flames cut right through the tentacle, hacking it clean off … which meant half her arm went along with it. The bitch screamed. Really, it was a scream like nothing Harper had ever heard before in her life. An ear-ringing, bloodcurdling, stomach-churning sound that echoed all around them. And fuck if Harper gave a shit.