𝔸𝕧𝕒

I slink down behind the bar with my back to the window. My eyes have already absorbed enough nightmare fuel to last me at least five years of therapy.

"I'm very disappointed in you, Kieran," Asmodeus says with a disturbing laugh. "I thought we were friends."

I hear a thud as Kieran lets out a guttural cry that chills me to my core. He screams through a series of coughs, gurgles, and chokes. The noises alone make me gag.

"Do you hear that?" one of Asmodeus's men asks.

Crap.

I cover my mouth with my hand in an attempt to stifle my gagging.

There's silence for a moment as I tightly hold my breath. I don't know if they can hear something as quiet as my breathing from where they are outside, but I don't really want to take that chance.

"I see you called in reinforcements," Asmodeus says with a laugh. "Tsk tsk, what a bad boy. I guess we're out of time then."

Kieran continues to wheeze and moan as I begin to hear a faint sound in the distance. After about thirty seconds, the sound becomes clearer—it's the wailing of police sirens.

I finally let out a breath.

Thank God.

ℤ𝕒𝕟𝕖

I see flashing red and blue lights outside Pike's as I pull into the car park. I pull hard on the parking brake and exit the car in a quick motion.

"Ava?!" I call, my eyes searching the lot for a glimmer of purple hair.

"Excuse me, sir," a police officer says as he approaches me. "This is a crime scene, we need to close off the parking lot. You can't be he-."

I grab his wrist and speak before he attempts to shake me off.

"I'm supposed to be here," I say, eying his coworkers behind him. "Tell your mates I'm authorized to be here."

The policeman nods and shouts, "He's alright."

I open my mouth to call for Ava when I spot her kneeling on the pavement with a blanket around her shoulders and a group of emergency workers surrounding her.

Fuck.

"Ava!" I yell, sprinting towards her. "Baby, are you okay?"

I drop to my knees to meet her on the ground. She's covered in blood.

"I'm okay," she says through tears, pulling me in for a hug.

I feel anger rising in my chest, but something interrupts the feeling.

I don't smell her blood. I don't feel any pain from her. Since I woke up and found her side of the bed empty, all I've felt is fear. Whose fear, I couldn't really say for certain, but I didn't feel anything else.

My eyes travel to the group around her. Four paramedics are tending to a muscly bloke on the ground who is covered head-to-toe in blood. It takes me a moment to recognize the man is Kieran.

His skin is stained crimson, strands of hair are pasted to his forehead, and there's a plastic tube down his throat. As the emergency crew raises him up on a stretcher, his eyes flicker open and he looks at me. He gives me a wink and a half-hearted smile as he's lifted into the ambulance.

"Where are you taking him?" Ava asks. She writes down the address and we agree to follow them to the hospital.

"What the hell, Ava?" I ask. "What happened?? What were you thinking?!?"

"I... we just talked..." she mumbles. "I didn't know. I couldn't..."

I feel instantly guilty as I can hear the remorse in her voice.

"I'm sorry, baby," I say, pulling her into a hug. "I'm sure you were just trying to help."

She follows me to my car and we get in. Her car is still parked out front, but I rather she not drive home tonight.

As we pull out behind the ambulance, I let out a sigh.

"What happened?" I ask more calmly this time.

"I just came to talk," she says softly. "I knew you wouldn't approve but something didn't make sense with Kieran and you refused to hear him out, so I did."

I grip the steering wheel tighter.

"Talking doesn't usually end in bloodshed," I say. "And I'm gonna guess you weren't the one who did all that damage to Kieran."

If a 5'4" human girl got the best of Kieran, I would never let him hear the end of it.

"Asmodeus," she says.

I feel instantly sick at the mention of his name. My body stiffens and my foot reflexively slams on the brake.

"What?" I ask, the car now at a complete stop in the middle of the street.

"He showed up outside. I'm not sure what he did—it was like he was forcing Kieran to hurt himself."

Fuck.

I slowly release the brake and press my foot on the gas pedal.

Dozens of contradictory feelings swirl within my chest. I hate the idea that someone hurt my friend—let alone that someone being Asmodeus. At the same time, I hate Kieran for attacking and threatening Ava. I hate him for bringing her into a dangerous situation. Up till now, I've never simultaneously wanted to protect someone and kill them at the same time.

"Well, the thing about Asmodeus is," I say, "he can control Incubi and Succubi. All the originals can command their own creations. If Asmodeus tells one of his demons to jump, they have no choice but to jump."

"So Kieran and others like him are always under the control of the original demons?" she asks.

"No, Asmodeus can't just control them whenever he wants. His powers only work in close proximity."

"Is he going to be okay?" she asks.

"He'll be fine, love. Demons are next to impossible to kill. You basically have to restrain them until they starve."

"That's lovely," she mumbles.

My chest tightens with each passing minute. I almost don't want to know the rest of the story, but I have to ask.

"Did Asmodeus say anything to you?" I ask. "Did he hurt you?"

"Kieran told me to hide in the bar, so I did. I don't think he knew I was there."

Thank god he kept her safe.

"Do you..." I ask, the words almost catching in my throat. "Do you know why he's here? Does he know I'm here?"

"Yeah, um... sort of. He asked where you were and where I was."

He asked about Ava.

He knows about Ava?

Oh god, I'm going to be sick.

We reach the Emergency section of the hospital and I park the car.

"Kieran didn't attack me in my dream," she says, staring ahead to avoid eye contact with me.

All the anger I felt toward him is back in an instant and my chest burns at the thought of him touching her—hurting her.

"Ava, he told m-"

"No," she cuts me off. "He told me he did do it once, the first time, before you and I were officially a thing. But he didn't know anything about the second one."

"And what, you just so happened to have a dream where Kieran, an Incubus, attacks you in your sleep? And you expect me to believe that's a coincidence?"

"No, Kieran didn't think it was either. He thought it was someone else bu-"

"Someone else?" I snap. "Who else w-"

I stop as a disturbing thought hits me.

Who would want to attack Ava? Who would even know who she was? Who would have the power to...

Fuck.

𝔸𝕧𝕒

Zane managed to charm us back into Kieran's room in the ER. As we walk in, several doctors and nurses are huddled around Kieran.

I expected chaos—flickery fluorescent lighting, machines beeping at high speeds, frantic doctors throwing around words like 'bilateral' and 'pulmonary'. But the reality is something very different.

Three people in scrubs mumble quietly to each other while looking over his chart. Another looks perplexed while fiddling with the buttons on the machine.

"The EMT who brought him in said we were looking at multiple deep lacerations," a woman says as she reads over his chart.

"When he got here we were looking at a Class III hemorrhage. His blood loss was substantial. He absorbed two units of O-neg faster than I've ever seen."

Well, there's the medical terminology I expected.

I see Kieran's eyes open slightly and he lifts his arm to give us a little wave.

"I'm sorry," one of the doctors says as he spots Zane and me. "We can't have vis-"

"You can make an exception for us," he says, his fingertips lightly resting on the back of her hand.

"Okay, well, sit over there please," the woman says, guiding us to a set of chairs.

We sit down and Kieran smiles at us. His teeth are covered in blood, and it's both humorous and unsettling to see him smile through this situation.

I spot the wound on his shoulder and see that it has already healed substantially. When they loaded him into the ambulance, he had torn a major chunk out of his shoulder and all that was left was a gnarled mess of tissue and bone. The once-deep slashes have closed until just minor cuts and scrapes remain.

Zane begins chatting with the doctors and nurses. One by one he charms them until we're alone with Kieran in the room.

"So how you feeling, mate?" Zane asks, anxiously combing a hand through his hair.

Kieran points to his mouth and shrugs.

"Oh right," I say. "His tongue, he um... he doesn't have one."

"Bloody hell," Zane says. "He cut your tongue out?"

Kieran shakes his head.

I don't actually know what happened to Kieran's tongue, just that one minute it was in his mouth and the next minute it wasn't.

"Asmodeus was asking him where you and I were," I explain. "I'm not sure wh-"

"You bit your own tongue off? Intentionally?" Zane interjects.

Kieran nods with a slight smile.

What??

"Oh my god, Kieran! Why would you do that?" I shriek.

"To protect us," Zane says, his eyes falling to the ground. "If Asmodeus compels an Incubus to tell him something—anything—he can't resist. His body would force him to."

"Unless..." I say, slowly putting the pieces together. "He couldn't speak."

Kieran gives us both a thumbs up.

"Thank you, mate," Zane says, the two of them locking eyes for a moment. "For the text. For protecting Ava. For everything."

"The text?" I ask.

"Yeah I was already on my way when I got it," Zane says. "I woke up to this bad feeling you were in trouble, I guess I could feel it through the bond. So when you weren't there next to me, I checked your phone's location. It said 'offline' but showed Pike's as your last known location. I swear when I read the word 'offline' I nearly lost it."

My head sinks with guilt. I should've at least left a note or something.

"This was the text he sent me," Zane continues.

He pulls out his phone and shows me the message.

Kieran: 911 @pikes - Ava here, bring pigs

"Pigs?" I ask.

"Kieran has never been a big fan of coppers, not than any non-humans are. I figured it had to be pretty serious if he wanted to get the police involved."

Kieran reaches for a pen and paper at his bedside. He writes for a moment, then turns the paper toward us.

Does this mean you've changed your mind on castrating me?

"For now, mate," Zane says with a bit of a smile as Kieran writes something else.

Good, because I'm really gonna need my dick now.

We both look to Kieran with confusion. He holds two fingers up in a V-shape and raises them in front of his lips, then sticks out the small stub of his remaining tongue and wags it from side to side.

Oh god.

That's an image I won't be able to get out of my head.