We stepped into the main area together as it filled up with the team rushing in. Rhiot and Trux were a few steps away, and were already gearing up with weapons ready. "What the hell is happening?" Trux's voice boomed through the room.
"We're about to find out." Rhiot slid into a defensive stance beside me even as he said it.
Nobody said anything else. We all moved for the comms panel, running the checklist of protocols. We took our positions, instincts kicking in while we waited for whatever was coming.
A crash against the demon barriers that rattled the entire compound. My entire body jerked in shock at the sudden noise. We traded a look, both of us bracing for the next hit.
Kearan leaned in, voice low but fierce. "Whatever comes through that door, we face it together."
"Always." It was out before I'd thought about it. I'd just thrown out there because I knew it was true. No matter whatconflict came up, my mates would always be there for each other and me when we needed it.
Then the air shifted again as demon barriers took another hit. This was going to suck.
CHAPTER 10
The barrier monitoring station was colder than it should've been. Not the temperature. Something else, the kind of cold that comes from knowing an ancient thing has noticed you exist and is taking its time deciding what to do about it.
The team dove into analyzing what was happening. I followed, scanning the row of monitors that tracked the ward signatures around the compound. Honestly, I had no idea what I was looking at, but maybe I would learn something.
"You're late." Zandia stated. Not a complaint. A statement. She was already at the central array. Waiting.
She didn't turn when we came in. Her attention stayed on the nearest monitor, where a signature pulsed red against the blue grid of the perimeter. Centuries of patience sat in the set of her shoulders, the easy stance of someone who'd never once felt the need to perform for anyone.
Kearan moved past me to the secondary monitors without breaking stride, eyes skimming the data. He didn't ask what we were looking at. He just looked.
Grayson dropped into the nearest chair and started some kind of checklist, telepathy engaged, psychic senses cast out forthe shape of threats I couldn't feel. His eyes unfocused, that stillness taking him while he read layers of the world the rest of us only guessed at.
I stepped closer to Zandia. "How long have you been here?"
"Long enough." Her eyes flicked to me, assessing. "It found you. The way I told you it would."
I knew. Of course, I knew. She'd warned me at the start of all this, plain as anything: if I didn't put the soul ring on after the demonic shock wave, the demon world would feel it, and sooner or later something would come for me. I'd done it anyway, because I refused to use a human soul that way. But knowing a thing is coming and standing in a cold room watching it circle the perimeter are two very different things.
"Demons don't work in isolated incidents, Parker." Zandia turned to face me fully, and the room seemed to compress. "Or rarely. The young ones, the scouts, they form networks. They report to their demon lords. When one of them runs into something it can't categorize, a power signature it's never met, that information travels up to things that you don't want to mess with."
Half of what she said slid right past me. I'd been whatever I was now, witch and cambion both, for about five minutes in the grand scheme, and most days I was keeping up on instinct, on gut, on whatever it was that kept dropping the right answer in my lap a half-second before I needed it. Or sometimes right after I'd fucked something up. Demon networks and reporting structures were not in my wheelhouse.
But I caught the part that mattered. Something old had felt me, and it was coming. But was that something inside of Ro, or was there something more powerful after me?
Kearan's head tilted toward his monitors. He'd found it. "The central signature isn't part of the scout network." Clean, clinical, no room for feeling. "It's separate. Different frequency. Old."
"Ancient," Zandia corrected, and there was something under the word I didn't have language for, not quite concern, something older than that. "I see you." That last sentence seemed to be directed at the demon attacking us.
I went to the monitor Kearan was studying. The red signature pulsed in a rhythm that felt deliberate. It wasn't searching in a frantic way. It was circling, assessing, and testing the perimeter, looking for breaching points.
"How old are we talking?" Grayson's voice came out of his focused stillness, eyes still unfocused. "And can it get through the wards?"
Zandia let the question sit. "It remembers the world before your species learned to build cities. It felt her signature the moment she was born, and it's been lying in wait ever since. Now it's getting its chance to catch you Parker, and precisely testing the perimeter. Your power doesn't stand a chance right now."
My stomach dropped, even though it had no business dropping. I'd been told. I'd known it in the abstract, which is the cheap kind of knowing, the kind that costs you nothing until the thing you were warned about shows up.
Kearan tapped the edge of the monitor, three precise taps that cut through my spiral. "The ring." Not a question. "Put it back on."
Zandia nodded once. "The soul ring will reorient your demon power. Right now your signature broadcasts openly, advertising you to anything old enough to recognize it. The ring closes the circuit. It turns the power inward instead of out. It shuts the signal off."
The ring… I'd refused to put it on after the mating bond surge that tore it from my hand and sent my demon abilities spiraling into nothing. The gold band that held a human soul, a trade I'd never agreed to and had never made peace with… I'd slipped iton a necklace and wore it around my neck, not wanting to lose it but refusing to wear it again.
"How long do we have?" I kept my voice level, or close to it. Faking competence was about ninety percent of my job lately.