Cain laughed. “He gave up that right a long time ago. What can he do to me that he hasn’t already done? Hasn’t he made me a god as well? I may as well be the god of the earth, too, since I’m the only one who ever goes there, and I’m the only one who seems to give a shit about what happens to it. He’s like a child who has built a city of blocks and gotten bored and walked away.”

“Leave. Now. I can have your access to this area revoked.”

“Sure you can. If you change your mind and are in the mood for a fight, I’ll welcome you and yours into my dimension.”

“If we act, there will be consequences.”

“There always are. But sometimes it’s worth it.” Cain left the angel in the lobby. If they needed the warrior class, he’d come around. The demon was sure of it. He winked at the reception angel on his way out, and a blush crept up her neck.

***

Hadrian found an unlocked window and crawled into Dayne’s cottage. The wards he had weren’t up to snuff to keep a vampire away. Instead, it had drawn him like a beacon. It was only the fact that vamps preferred the city to the forest that kept the sorcerer and his little kitty therian safe.

An orange cat sat on the kitchen counter, green eyes intense, hissing at him, but there was no magic coming off it. Just an average house cat. Hadrian put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh,” he said. The cat glared but let him pass.

He crept down spiral stone stairs that got danker and darker as he went down. When he reached the bottom, he crouched by the door, looking through slats in the weathered wood. There was no need to get involved if Dayne couldn’t do the spell, but from the looks of things, he was doing it.

The sorcerer’s circle was set up, books and tools were out. The cute brunette with the short, choppy haircut stood to the side out of his way. It was anybody’s guess how long Dayne had been chanting, but his energy looked depleted. Good for Hadrian.

As the sorcerer continued to chant, a light emanated from the scroll, lighting up the room like a giant projector onto which images and dialogue appeared—like a movie composed of magic. Greta gasped. Dayne opened his eyes to see the spell had worked and what had instigated the gasp.

Hadrian. Fully implicated, right there on the magic screen with Jack. It was now or never. The vampire ripped the door open and blurred in, grabbing Greta and holding her in front of him as if he were a bank robber. He didn’t have a gun at her throat, but his fangs were out and ready should he need to call them into action.

Dayne appeared disoriented as the spell collapsed around him, but he didn’t harbor any doubts about what he’d seen. “Why have you betrayed us?”

The vampire remained stoic. “Anthony is the betrayer. He’s clamping down on all of us. It won’t be just Cary Town. It’ll be this whole planet by the time he’s finished. I don’t want to live in that world.”

“Jack’s world will be worse.”

Hadrian shrugged. “And we will deal with Jack. I don’t want The Cycler in power either, but he has no organization. The vampires have been increasing in organization for centuries now. Our numbers are strong. Our leader is about to take away all of our freedoms for his own personal reasons.”

“Anthony has to protect his daughter,” the sorcerer said. “And now with the threat from Jack...”

“The two issues are simply convenient. You might not see it, but what I’m doing is better for us all.”

Dayne’s face betrayed his fear for Greta, though he was trying to downplay it. For her part she’d been extremely brave. Not a lot of tears or screaming or thrashing about, just still and quiet as if he might forget she was there and loosen his grip. Unlikely. But nice try. He was surprised she wasn’t fighting him. Therians were stronger than humans.

“Just let Greta go.”

Hadrian gripped her tighter. “I’d erase both of your memories, but I don’t have that ability with a therian. I want you to make a potion that will do that job for me. I’ll check the spell and ingredients to make sure we understand each other. I hate misunderstandings.” He flashed fangs at Dayne, as if he even needed to put a point on the threat.

The sorcerer was so depleted from doing such heavy magic alone that he couldn’t even conjure an energy ball or a fireball, whichever his speed was. Even if he had that ability right now, he wouldn’t use it. The werecat made a great shield.

“Just do it, Dayne. If we’re both dead, we can’t warn Anthony, anyway,” she said.

“The cat makes an excellent point.”

The sorcerer turned to collect the supplies he needed, and Greta shifted. In the change from human size to house-cat size, Hadrian lost his grip on her. She climbed over her pile of clothes and scurried toward the door. He went after her, but a fireball whizzed past his head. It hit the stone wall, fizzling with a hiss and puff of smoke. It had come from Dayne, but it was small and weak and probably the only one he had left.

“You don’t want to waste your magic right now,” Hadrian said, scooping up the cat before she could get out the door. She dug her claws into his arms, hissing and biting. He growled and tossed her across the room. She let out a horrible feline shriek and hit the wall, then stopped moving.

He felt a flicker of guilt for harming her. She was an innocent, not someone meant for his special brand of punishment, but she was also caught in the crossfire of a greater good.

“Greta!”

“She’ll be fine. Make the potion.”

“I don’t know if I have enough energy left. I need to take a rest.”

Hadrian shook his head. “You only need to make enough potion for one. I have to wipe your memory while you’re weak, not after you’ve had a refreshing nap to replenish your shields.”

He picked up the unconscious black cat and sat on the floor with her in his lap. “I could kill her quickly in this form. Don’t test me. Two people failing to show up at Anthony’s next meeting would be a minor curiosity in the face of everything going on. Maybe your magic drew Jack, and he killed you. Who’s to say?”

“I used strong protections. It’s why I’m so depleted.”

“You thought of everything.”

Dayne glared while Hadrian stroked Greta’s back as if she were a normal house cat. Hadrian did it to unnerve him, but the act also allowed him to be assured she was okay. Her breathing seemed normal.

Twenty minutes later the potion was ready, a rolling, bubbling concoction of something dark purple the vampire wouldn’t want to drink on his worst day.

“Let me see the book.”

Dayne brought it over, and Hadrian looked at the spell. It was a spell to take the memory of an hour. The listed ingredients looked about right as far as he could tell sitting across the room. Everything had been in cloudy jars after all—it was like some mad scientist’s basement. The vampire nodded and passed the book to the sorcerer who put it back on the table and chanted the spell over the potion. It was in Latin. Magic users and their dead languages. Hadrian was convinced it was for show to appear more mysterious. Wasn’t that why the priests had used it for so long?

When Dayne brought the potion over, Hadrian took the goblet and held the cat’s mouth open to pour it down her throat.

“She’ll be asleep for awhile. When she wakes, she won’t remember,” Dayne said.

“She’d better not. I’ll stay to be sure. I’ll be putting you to sleep as well. I’ll make sure she wakes before you. If she remembers anything...” It was unnecessary to expand on the threat. He laid the cat on the stone floor and moved toward Dayne. At least with all the magic the sorcerer had done, taking control of his mind would be easy. It was one memory he’d know for sure had been properly erased.

“Look into my eyes.” He placed a hand on Dayne’s shoulder to boost the effects of the thrall.

The sorcerer obeyed, his eyes becoming unfocused as he tried to maintain eye contact with the vampire.

“Good. You came home and attempted to do the spell, but it failed. Some of the magic knocked Greta out, but she’s fine now. You burned the scroll so the magical residue couldn’t attract The Cycler.”

“Right. That’s exactly what I did.”

“Now, sleep for a little while. When you and Greta wake, everything will seem normal.” Hadrian caught the man as he fell and laid him next to the cat. Then he searched until he found matches and burned the scroll, so what had been seen couldn’t be seen again.

He sat on the table and waited. As the potion took effect, the werecat shifted back to human. The vampire admired her sleeping form. He’d love to taste her. A great time to accomplish that feat was while she was unconscious, but he couldn’t justify the act. While he couldn’t get inside her head, it only took one look at her to know she was kind and decent—not someone who needed to be absolved, and not someone who needed to be punished.

After a while, Greta stretched and sat up, wary eyes darting around the room. She looked to Hadrian, then to Dayne, and her own nudity, which she intriguingly sought to cover.

“What’s going on? What have you done?” Her eyes held suspicion and more than a little fear. She scrambled to her clothing and rushed to get dressed.

“You have nothing to fear from me. What do you remember?” Hadrian asked. He was more than a little curious over her modesty. It wasn’t a common trait in therians.

“You could have at least had the decency to turn around,” she said, as she pulled the top over her head.

The vampire had taken in every curve as she’d moved, not missing a second of her in her unclothed form. “I apologize. It was rude. I was caught off guard.”

“What happened? What’s wrong with Dayne?” She moved behind him as if a sleeping sorcerer would have any effect on her safety.

“Again,” Hadrian said, his eyes glowing, “what do you remember?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She appeared genuinely confused.

“Dayne attempted to do a spell to help find The Cycler. The magic failed. I came by to check on things while he was still chanting. You saw me and got spooked and shifted, then sparks from the magic hit you and knocked you out. You must have mild amnesia. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

She still looked suspicious but she was just disoriented and confused enough to buy it. “W-what about Dayne?”

“Magic knocked him out, too. He’ll come around soon. I need to get back. You’ll be okay here?”

Greta nodded. “Yes. I mean, I think so. He’ll wake up soon?”

He smiled. “He’ll be fine. Have a good night, Greta.” He didn’t wait for a reply.

The orange tabby glared at him at the top of the stairs as he brushed past her. He growled, and the cat shot off into the dark to check on her people, not trusting the vampire for a moment. Smart kitty.

Chapter Six

Tam had been in the demon dimension for over a week without contact with the outside world. Her coven must be losing their shit wondering where she was. They didn’t know what she was. No one had except her fellow cyclers and a few vampires over the centuries. And Henry.

She stood outside Cain’s tent draped in one of the dresses from the trunk in her own tent. Two guards stood outside. One arched a brow.

“Shut up before I hex you.” She and the demon leader had been carrying on what amounted to a full-on affair for the past week, but she hadn’t been coming to his tent, and she certainly hadn’t been dressing like his concubine. But she was ready to raise the stakes. The demon would crack soon, she could feel it.

The guard growled, but Tam was unfazed. Demons liked to talk and play at being scary, but even with her books and tools sealed up in the cave, she could still incant, and she still had energy balls to throw. She hadn’t been left helpless. Far from it. It was hard to be too helpless with so much age on her.

“You don’t want to go in there,” the other guard said. “The boss is having it out with one of the demons.”

“Good. Then he’ll be in a killing mood.”

Cain had been tense ever since the human body had been discovered. Every time he went through the human dimension he found out more news on the situation, mainly the constant recounting of the gory way the body had been found. So nothing useful. Just the kind of stuff that inspired morbid fascination and curiosity among her fellow humans.

Tam strode into the tent. Cain stopped yelling at the demon in front of him. It was one Tam didn’t know. For a preternatural faction, the demon numbers weren’t huge, but there were enough of them that the witch stumbled upon a new one on occasion.

Cain glared at her, but when he saw what she was wearing, something in his expression changed. Heat. Desire. That plus all the bottled rage from whatever the demon was in a snit about equaled a possible ticket out of all this.

He turned back to the other demon. “Leave. We will discuss this later.”

“But it’s not fair. That’s not my fault. This past week you’ve been impossible to please. We’ve all been walking on eggshells—”

He couldn’t get another word out because Tam was tired of his whining. She hit the minion with an energy ball. He rounded on her, snarling.

“I believe he told you to leave,” she said.

“See, Cain? This is the problem. This fucking witch who’s got you all turned around.” He rushed Tam at full speed before she could produce another energy ball, but before he could touch her, Cain had grabbed him and flung him away from her. He towered over the demon on the ground.

“The witch is my business. You try to harm her, and I’ll let her seal you in a glass jar. It’s far more cramped than the caves, I assure you. Scram!” The demon pulled himself through the flap of the tent and hobbled away.

Cain advanced on her, fire in his eyes. “What the fuck was that?”