Well, shit.
She tensed as Gavril’s heavy footsteps headed her way, his boots scuffing the hardwood floor. Her heart kicked into high gear, but she kept her expression blank as she awkwardly sat up and drew her knees up to her chest.
Thea trailed after him but didn’t move to his side when he halted in front of the crate. She stopped a few feet behind him. Khloé’s demon sent her a haughty sniff. It intended to make that bitch pay in blood. A fine plan.
Gavril stared at Khloé curiously. “You don’t look afraid, which means you’re thinking someone will come to help you.” He sighed. “Think again. No one knows where you are, and they have no way of finding out. So, don’t make a fuss or start screaming. I don’t like that shit. You’ll be out of here in …” He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes. Sit tight until then.”
Khloé narrowed her eyes. “And where exactly will I be going?”
“To a person who offered me enough money to retrieve you. Apparently, he wants to kill and then resurrect you or something.”
Her demon’s lips pulled back in disgust. “Enoch.”
“Yes.” Gavril’s brows dipped. “Strange fellow. He heard that I had what you might call a terse conversation with Keenan at the bowling alley; he thought that the sentinel and I were enemies, and that I might like to partake in the downfall of Keenan’s woman.
“Really, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to you. But no one is going to assume I’ve been part of this plan; they’ll assume that Enoch’s involved. They’ll probably reason that he’s working with Thea and that she used Lane to distract Keenan just so that she could take you to Enoch. That means they’ll concentrate on finding him after you’re dead—they won’t think to look at me for this.”
Wrong, because she’d telepathically filled Ciaran in on what was happening, but there was no need for Gavril to know that, was there?
“Are the rumors true?” he asked. “Can young Asher truly call on the flames of hell?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s your cousin, and you don’t know?”
“Do you honestly think that Harper and Knox will divulge things about their son that could get him hurt?” Khloé shook her head. “No, they keep their secrets. That protects the rest of the family, too—we can’t be tortured into sharing info we don’t have.”
“Does Knox have the gift?”
“I don’t know.”
“What breed of demon is he?”
“I don’t know.”
A muscle in his cheek ticked. “What do you know?”
Her demon, its ego balking at being huddled in a freaking crate, pushed to the surface and glared at him. “What I know … is that you are going to die tonight,” it told him.
There was a moment of pure silence. And then he bust a gut laughing. “You think so? Sorry to burst your bubble, but that won’t happen.”
“You cannot keep an imp anywhere they do not want to be,” the entity warned him. Then it pulled back, allowing Khloé to have control again.
“You don’t have a prayer of escaping that crate,” said Gavril. “Now why don’t you sit nice and quiet like a good little girl? This will all be over soon.” He turned, dismissing her—which chafed her pride but was a good thing, because she didn’t want him to watch her closely—and headed to his sentinels.
Thea didn’t follow him. She glared at Khloé, balling her hands up into fists.
Khloé leaned against the back of the crate, feigning nonchalance. “So, you made a deal with that asshole.”
Thea stepped closer. “I originally wasn’t going to live up to my end of the bargain, you know,” she said, her voice too low for her words to carry to the others. “I never intended to sic Lane on Knox. I genuinely went to the Prime for sanctuary. I hoped to get back together with Keenan and start afresh with him.”
Such pain and indignation flashed across the woman’s face that Khloé tensed, expecting an attack. But the attack didn’t come.
Thea flexed her fingers. “He made it clear that you’re who he wants, though. If you really are his mate—and everyone I’ve spoken to seems convinced that it’s true—you’ll join his lair, and I’d have had a front seat to the Keenan-and-Khloé show. I can’t watch that. I can’t watch while he builds a life with someone else. I don’t have that in me.”
“Oh, I see. Well, that totally justifies you using your own son as a weapon.”
Thea flinched. “I had no choice.”
“Sure you did. And you made the wrong one. Now he’s suffering for it. Look at him. He’s not even conscious.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“That’s so not the point. You not only made him use his gift on someone, you made him use it on another child. Trust me, he won’t forget that. He’ll always carry the guilt of it.” Not that Khloé was all that convinced that Lane’s attempt to drain Asher of power had worked, but still. “And if you think Gavril will really stick to his end of the bargain and let you and Lane walk off into the sunset, you’re thick as pig shit.”