The figures that had us surrounded were focused on Shade now, and they rose in the air and dove toward him, flames to a moth. He lashed out with his tail and front feet, and as he connected with one of the spirits, it let out a howl that echoed through the yard and a purple flame washed through it, leaving only a thin flicker of ashes.

The others backed off. As one, they turned toward Roz and me, aiming like swift, ghostly arrows, as they barreled our way.

“Fuck!” I leaped out of the way as one skidded past me. Deciding to give it a chance, I spun in the air and kicked it with the heel of my boot. Though my foot passed through it, there was still a shudder as energy connected with flesh, and for a moment I felt dizzy but managed to land in a crouch. Leaping to my feet, I let my fangs down. So I could actually touch these things, but whether I had any sort of effect, I didn’t know.

Next to me, Roz pulled out a bottle and splashed water on one of the incoming spirits. It hissed and a wisp of flames sizzled. Then it redoubled its efforts against the incubus.

But I didn’t have time to focus on what was going on with anybody else. I was surrounded by a circle of the grasping creatures, and every time their ghostly auras reached out to swipe at me, a jolt shot through my body.

I wasn’t sure if they were doing any damage to me, but next to me, Roz let out a shout. I turned to see him fighting off one of the spirits. It had managed to latch onto him. I couldn’t get a good look, but from what I could see, it looked like its mouth was pressed against his forehead. Roz was screaming in earnest now.

I tried to leap on the spirit’s back and ended up going through it, taking both Roz and myself to the ground. But my attack was enough to startle the ghost, and it dislodged itself from Roz.

“Smoky! Shade! Where the hell are you? We need help!” I didn’t realize I was screaming until Roz winced and covered his ears as he struggled to his feet. I helped him up and tried to push him behind me, but the spirits were still circling us and no matter which way he faced, he’d be at their mercy.

Just then, an icy wind blew through. It froze the ground, frost forming in a lacework beneath our feet. Smoky was causing it—the wind rolled out of his hands, along the ground, as it dropped the temperatures to a bone-chilling degree. The spirits began to back off us as they headed in his direction.

But before they could reach him, Shade’s coiling neck swooped down and the purple flame raced through their midst. Another three of the ghosts went up in flames, their cries piercing the night.

“Mordente! The blades of death, they come for you!” Camille’s voice severed the air, slicing through the chill. She and Morio were on the move, hand in hand, coming our way.

The ghosts halted and turned toward them, and for a brief moment I caught a flicker of their nebulous faces—greed, and hunger. Envy. They spiraled toward the pair, but as Camille and Morio reached out—her left arm and his right—a circle of glowing purple light began to whirl around them, like the blade of a circular saw.

The energy flickered faster and faster. Morio and Camille looked like feral creatures, their eyes gleaming in the night. Camille’s violet eyes were almost silver, and Morio’s were a glowing topaz, and the wind whipped her cape and his kimono into a frenzy. This wind wasn’t coming from Smoky or the air around us, but from the magic itself. The wheel of light began to keen, wailing louder as they pushed it forward.

The spirits paused, as if they were uncertain, and then one tentatively dove forward toward the pair. The moment it came in contact with the whirling blades of energy, it flared, screamed, and was gone.

Camille laughed, wild and throaty, and Morio joined in. They were enjoying the hunt, reveling in the energy that whipped around them. The spirits tried to withdraw, but they wouldn’t allow it. They drove forward faster, herding the ghosts, and then Shade was there to meet the spirits with his flames.

That was when I realized that Shade’s purple flames ran on the same wavelength as Morio and Camille’s magic.

Together they boxed in the spirits between them, and before the ghostly figures could head to the sides in an attempt to get away, they pushed their magic together, taking our enemies from both sides. The carnage was an energetic gorefest. Sparks flew as the spirits exploded, and the screams that filled the air hurt even my ears, they were so sharp and pained and full of fury.

And then, we were standing there, alone, with not a body in sight except for the guards, who were still terribly dead. I stared at them, then glanced back at Camille and Morio, whose eyes were still glimmering even though they’d lowered their ring of energy.

Shade was still in his dragon form and Camille stared up at him, a look of awe on her face. Morio grinned at him and I had this weird feeling that the three of them were in some secret club the rest of us couldn’t access.

A noise through the trees startled me, and I whirled around as Delilah came rushing down the path. She skidded to a halt, staring openmouthed up at Shade. I froze, waiting for her cue.

But instead of panicking, she began to laugh and rushed over to his side. He towered above her, though he was only about two-thirds Smoky’s size. As she walked around him, marveling at his form, my sister—who only a year ago would probably have run shrieking—reached out and began to touch the bones of her lover’s body.

Roz cleared his throat. “You win.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think she’d be so delighted. I give up,” I whispered under my breath. “I have no clue of what to expect next.”

“The unexpected, love. The unexpected.” Roz was shaking his head, leaning against a nearby tree.

I was about to answer him when my phone rang. Yugi was on the line.

“Menolly?”

“Yes. What’s going down? Did you find out anything?”

“Yeah. A Corpse Talker will come to your house. But, and this is the interesting catch, she’ll only allow Shade to bring her through the Ionyc Seas. Not Smoky. If you want her there, you’d better hurry. And Chase said he’s on his way back to your place.”

“Yeah, I doubt that will be a problem. Call you back in a moment.” As I hung up and turned back to the others, it occurred to me that we were in for a long, terrible fight. If Gulakah was truly back in town, and this was an example of what he was bringing with him, I wondered if there was any way we could defeat the next onslaught.

But all I said was, “Shade, get your ass down to the Faerie-Human Crime Scene Investigation’s headquarters now. You need to bring back a Corpse Talker stat. Because I need to head inside in forty-five or fifty minutes. And I want to be here when she talks to the dead.”

The next moment, Shade was back to his usual form, and then gone with barely a word. I looked at Delilah. “So what do you think of your boyfriend now?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Fiancé. And he’s cute. Like a living fossil. I think I should nickname him Spot when he’s in his natural form. In honor of the Munsters’ pet dragon.”

And with that, I dropped to the ground, laughing until my stomach hurt.

Chapter 5

Delilah went back to the house to check on everybody there while the rest of us speculated over what kind of spirits the ghosts could have been.

A sour tang rang through the air—the scent of overturned soil and mold and fungus. I glanced at Morio. His eyes were still glowing, and a sudden hunger ran through me. We’d formed a bond, an unasked-for, unwanted one. He’d been given a transfusion of my blood to save his life. Ever since then, we’d been pulled toward one another, though I was dealing with it a lot more easily than he was. Camille knew about it, and while she wasn’t thrilled, she tried to ignore it.

His gaze latched onto mine and he licked his lips, his long, black nails digging into his hands as he made a fist. I could feel the slow breath as his chest rose and fell, and the sound of his pulsing blood stirred my hunger. I turned, pulling myself away, before I did something we’d all regret.

“I need to feed,” I whispered. “I need to drink deep.” I had bottled blood in the refrigerator, but the thought of it sounded gross. I wanted hot blood, fresh, spurting from the vein onto my tongue. I wanted Roman here with me, but there wasn’t time to call him.

Roz was suddenly beside me, pulling me off to one side. He pressed me against one of the trees. “I know what you need. You can drink from me. I can handle it.”

“I don’t drink from friends.”

“And you don’t want to drink from your sister’s husband, either. Menolly, listen to me.” He forced me to focus on his face. The usually serene good-natured look he wore was replaced by an intensity I couldn’t ignore. “I’m a demon—an incubus. You know I can handle it. You can drink from me and I doubt if you can do anything worse than leave a hickey.”

“But…you know I’m pledged to Nerissa and consort to Roman—” I’d fucked Roz once, but though it had been fun and good, it wasn’t meant to be a long-term thing. I knew it in my heart.

He shook his head. “I’m not asking for sex. I want to help you get out of the bloodlust before that Corpse Talker comes back. Before the sun rises and you go to bed hungry.”

I bit my lip, one of my fangs piercing the skin. A few drops of blood trickled down my chin. A glance over my shoulder told me that the others were busy, wrapped up in speculation about the spirits. I hated being at the mercy of my bloodlust, but it was no different from Camille’s pull to the Hunt and Delilah’s inability to withstand the lure of the moon when it was full.

“What the fuck,” I moaned, suddenly so horny and thirsty that I could have fucked an ogre. Roz bared his neck and I licked my lips, eyeing the beating pulse of his jugular. “I’ll make it feel good…I promise. I won’t drink much.”

“Just fucking do me.” Roz sounded excited, and as I pressed against him, I could feel his erection through the front of his tight black jeans. His long curly brown hair tickled my face as he leaned down for me to get a good angle, but I pushed him back against the tree, hovering at eye level. I could make my victims feel every single pain tenfold, or I could take them to ecstasy. And this…this was not the time for pain. As I lowered my fangs to his creamy skin, they slid in effortlessly, slicing through the flesh with one, seamless, movement.

Roz moaned and I turned on the glamour. Even though he was an incubus, he was geared for sex so my glamour played off his and I suddenly found myself in thrall to him, so hot my pussy was burning up. I wanted Nerissa. I wanted Roman. I wanted both of them. At once.

Roz’s blood tasted sweet and rich and thick in my mouth and it flowed down my throat, making me ache for more. I coaxed it out with my tongue, drop by drop, the crimson nectar pulsing with his life, with his energy. And then, I could feel it—his sensuality rushing over me. I moaned, biting deeper, sucking harder, wrapping my legs around him as I pinned him to the tree. He gasped, his hands cradling my ass, and began to whisper things, dirty things, hot, sexy, wanton things, into my ear.

“Take it in baby, take it in. I want to fuck you, to lay you down and drive my cock deep into your cunt, you delicious, redheaded wench. I want to fuck you till you scream, till you come…” His voice was ragged.

I ground harder against his crotch, reaching down with one hand to unzip him. I wasn’t going to fuck him here, not right now, but I grabbed hold of his cock and fisted my hand around it, holding it tighter than he’d probably ever felt in his life. Even than when we’d fucked the one time before.

He began to pant as I drank deep, spiraling into the energy, catching the pre-cum on my hand to lubricate his penis.

But then, something—I don’t know what it was—perhaps a voice of reason, or maybe just my conscience, whispered, “Stop…you can’t drink him down…he’s your friend.”

I realized Roz was becoming too pale, even in the moonlight splashing between the clouds, so I pulled my fangs out, but the energy was riding us and he kept hold of me, pulling behind the tree so the others couldn’t see us. My mind was warning me—there might still be ghosts lingering, but they didn’t seem to be bothering us if they were, and I was pretty sure that the death magic Camille and Morio had been running had wiped them out, Shade taking out the rest. Rationalizing my desire any way I could, I let Roz take me down to the ground, on a bed of wet and molding leaves.

He slid off his duster, revealing a mesh tank top over rippling abs and gorgeously toned pecs and biceps. The man was gorgeous, like a long-haired Hugh Jackman, and he knew it and used it.

The next moment, my jeans were down around my knees and he was plunging into me, his cock filling me up as he groaned with delight. I rolled him over, riding him like a bucking bronco, pulling up my sweater to cup my breasts as he watched, his eyes growing wider. I leaned forward, rubbing my clit against his cock, feeling so full of his blood that I might burst, and the warmth of it made me feel alive again, like I might have some shred of my mortal self left.

As we rose and fell in the dark night, I looked up and there, I saw my sweet Nerissa coming toward us, her eyes glowing with lust. She licked her lips and I held out my arms to her, beckoning her in. She dropped her robe and, naked, stepped toward us, a dangerous and wild gleam in her eye. I wondered if she was about to shift into her werepuma form when she let out a low laugh and the ground seemed to shake beneath us, everything rippling like rings on a pond.

As she knelt beside me, cocking her head to the side, her shoulder-length blond hair coiled out toward me. And that was when it began to filter through my lust-crazed brain that something was deathly wrong. I did not make a habit of fucking my friends in the woods when we were in danger. Nor did I drink from my friends—I’d broken one of my sacred oaths to myself.