The demon stared at Harper, unblinking. Then it ceremoniously dumped Alethea on the floor, but not before doing something to her mind that made her pass out.
Harper let out a long breath. “Can we get back to Asher now? Speaking of Asher … it would have been nice if you’d shared that he’s an Anubis.”
“If you had known the truth from the moment of his birth, you might have feared him. His demon would have sensed that fear and withdrawn from you. You needed to first see that he was primarily a child. A boy who also happened to be an Anubis.”
While she got the entity’s point … “I would never have seen him as anything other than my son.” But she couldn’t really expect the demon to understand that—not when it couldn’t experience love, let alone imagine the strength of parental love.
“His demon would never harm you,” it assured her.
“Just as mine would never harm him.”
The demon stroked its thumb along her jaw, and then it retreated. Knox gently pulled her to him and kissed her forehead. “The sight of you injured is pissing me off,” he said, tone soft with menace.
She leaned into him. “I’ll heal. First, we have to check on Asher, decide whether to let Drew live, and transfer Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum to the Chamber.”
“Yes, we do.” And Knox was looking forward to the latter. With a single thought, he made the flames of hell ease away. He’d stopped them from spreading beyond the circle, so their surroundings were still intact. Davis was standing with Noelle, who was holding Asher, while the sentinels guarded them.
Asher grinned at them, flashing his dimples and waving a hand that was holding Hound. “Ma!”
Crossing straight to him, Harper smiled and pulled him into her arms. “Hey, baby boy.” He frowned at the sight of her injuries, but she distracted him by blowing raspberries on his palm.
Levi frowned. “What’s with the snow?”
“We heard some kind of storm,” began Tanner, back in his human form and wearing clothes that Knox knew he’d handed to Davis before he shifted shape. “But we couldn’t see a thing because the flames were too high. Speaking of flames … ” Tanner gestured to the ones that were keeping Drew captive.
Knox turned to Harper. “Baby, any chance you can rein them back in?” They were called by Harper, so they wouldn’t answer to him. She took a deep calming breath, and the flames eased. Clarke had shifted back into his human form and was sitting on the ground, pale and sweating.
“Levi, keep an eye on Jonas and Alethea, would you?” Knox moved to stand in front of Clarke. The hellcat didn’t stand—possibly because he was naked, or possibly because he was too drained from fighting off the incorporeal. Maybe it was a little of both. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain why you were working with Alethea and Jonas.”
Clarke’s jaw hardened. “It wasn’t like that.” His gaze slid to Harper. “It wasn’t.”
“Then tell me what it was like,” she said.
“I can’t. I want to, but I can’t. That fucking practitioner put me under some kind of compulsion that binds me from being able to tell anyone anything about him, Alethea, or Jonas.”
Harper looked at Knox. “Is that true?”
“Let’s find out.” Knox plunged himself into Clarke’s mind. It took him only moments to confirm that … “He’s telling the truth. I’m going to break the compulsion, Clarke. It’s going to hurt.” To the hellcat’s credit, he bore the mental pain in silence. When it was over, he shuddered.
“Now tell us what you know,” said Harper.
The hellcat looked up at her. “I never worked with them, I swear. But I knew I’d fucked up and I needed to somehow make up for it. Not just because you didn’t deserve what I’d done, but because I’d hurt my sister and left her torn. So, when I was approached by a human without a scent who told me they could help me get revenge on Knox, I figured it was the incorporeal and I went along with it. The incorporeal led me to Charles, who insisted on the compulsion. I hadn’t expected that, and I really hadn’t expected to learn that Alethea was alive. I pretended to side with them.”
“Why did they want you?” Harper asked.
“They somehow knew about my ability to detect what breed of demon a person is,” replied Drew. “They thought I’d know what Thorne was. I lied and said he was a phoenix. Harper, I never intended to let them hurt you or your son. I figured I could help you somehow, and maybe redeem myself in the eyes of my sister.”
“When did you go to the house where she’d been staying?”
“A few days ago. Alethea and the practitioner took me there. She wanted me to see the cage; wanted me to know her plans to put you in a cage like that. I think she was testing me to see if it would piss me off—she didn’t quite trust that I’d let her kill you, even though I’d made out like I was more upset that you and I would never run Jolene’s lair together than I was by you being with someone else.
“I wanted to go to another practitioner and have them undo the compulsion, but Jonas had taken my cell phone, and they watched me too carefully. I can hear thoughts directed at me, but I can’t talk to someone telepathically. I had no way of asking for help or giving anyone a heads-up. I could only go along with their plan and hope I could step in to help you, which I did. I wasn’t working with them, Harper. I swear to fucking God, I wasn’t.”
Knox tutted at him. “You’re telling the truth, but not the entire truth. You’d wanted to redeem yourself, yes, but you’d also wanted to be Harper’s hero; the one who saved the fucking day. That’s why you didn’t contact someone the moment the incorporeal approached you.” Knowing that Knox had not only tortured him but robbed him of his memories had left Drew feeling weak and somewhat unmanned. This had been his attempt to prove to himself and others that he wasn’t weak.
“If I’d thought they’d insist on a binding spell, I would have done,” Drew insisted.
“Maybe, maybe not. I still very much doubt that Jolene will be happy with you. You broke her trust by staying instead of leaving for Cuba. But that’s between you and her. Before I take you to her, I need to remove some of your memories.” Clarke could not be allowed to remember that Asher was an Anubis or that Knox was an archdemon.
The hellcat ground his teeth. “Take the fucking memories. I owe it to Harper and Devon to fix my fuck-up.”
“You need to take some memories from us, too,” Davis guessed.
Knox looked at him. “I wish I didn’t.”
“Protecting Asher is important,” said Noelle. “We would never betray you by sharing the knowledge, but that doesn’t mean someone couldn’t somehow access our memories. If we don’t have the information, we can’t be used against you.”
“Thank you for understanding,” Harper said. “Now let’s get this done so we can get those two assholes to the Chamber.”
Nodding, Knox turned to Clarke. “You first.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Two weeks later
Walking into the living room, Harper came to an abrupt halt. “What the fuck happened here?”
The four sentinels, looking varying degrees of frazzled, all sighed in relief as she entered. Cushions, books, DVDs, and Harper’s knick-knacks were scattered around the room all over the hardwood floor. The lampshade was burned to a cinder, which explained the smell of smoke. Most notably, a ball of hellfire was hovering in midair.
Amidst all the chaos, Asher was sitting on the rug surrounded by his toys, Levi’s cell phone, Tanner’s car keys, Keenan’s wallet, and Larkin’s purse. He was also safely within his shield, humming.