“You don’t want to f**k with me,” he told them.
Two men ran away. Seline guessed they weren’t in the f**king mood. Four more guards opened fire. Bullets slammed into Sam’s chest. Seline screamed.
“Warned you,” Sam said, and more fire burst free from his hands, flaring higher and greedily chasing Rogziel’s team.
Tomas swore. “You’re killin’ her!” He ran away from them and hurried down the snaking hallway. “Sierra!”
Seline jumped forward and delivered a hard right hook to the nearest guard. She snatched away his weapon and swiveled in time to slam it against the head of the idiot who’d been grabbing for her.
But then, Sam laughed. That laughter was rather eerie. Too cold and dark. The hairs on her arms stood up. She risked a glance at him. His gaze was pitch-black. “Playtime’s over,” Sam muttered. He waved his hand. All the guards lifted into the air. The guards rose higher, higher. They were screaming, begging—
Sam dropped them.
They stopped screaming.
Seline’s breath heaved in her chest. Her fingers touched the throat of the man closest to her. Even as she stared at Sam with wide eyes, her trembling fingers searched for a pulse. Searched . . .
“He’s still alive, sweetheart.” Sam seemed to mock her. “For now.”
A light pulse beat beneath her fingertips.
Screams came from deep within the house. Sam caught her hand and pulled her to his side. “Stay with me.”
His eyes were still black. The air crackled with his power. The dark edge she’d always sensed in him had never been closer to the surface. Dangerous. Evil?
Not Sam. She believed in him. “Try to keep me away,” she muttered. “Try.”
His lips crushed down on hers. Wild. Hungry.
Then the rooms swept by in a blur as he took her deeper into the maze of corridors. They followed the screams. Found the bodies. More guards. Some bleeding, some limp.
There was Tomas, just up ahead. He was driving his fist through a metal door and—
And Seline smelled brimstone.
“No, dammit!” Sam’s roar. She knew he’d caught the acidic scent, too. “Tomas, stop!”
Too late.
The door caved in, and the growls spilled into the hallway, growls that were immediately followed by the hulking body of the hellhound as the beast leapt onto Tomas.
Azrael heard the screams from inside the old house. He saw the bodies of the guards outside, littering the ground. Smoke drifted into the air, a lazy beacon that had drawn him in.
The smoke . . . and the blood. Lately, the blood always seemed to draw him.
He’d known Rogziel for many centuries. Known him, watched him, wondered when the bastard would fall.
So he’d known all about this little hideaway.
His brother was inside. Already battling Rogziel? Why? To save the succubus?
Az’s head throbbed as he stared at the flames. He didn’t understand what was happening anymore. Sammael had never cared about saving anyone. Had he?
I ask for nothing. From now on, I take. Sam’s words, when Az had asked him to seek forgiveness. But Sam had refused. He’d fallen instead of repenting.
“An angel dies today.”
Az didn’t turn at Mateo’s words. Yes, he knew Mateo. He’d lived for too long and seen too much not to know about the crossroad spirit.
When folks wanted to cheat death, they went to the crossroads.
Foolish. No one had ever been able to cheat him. He’d been delayed before, but not stopped.
“Did you see that in your mirror?” Az demanded.
“Aren’t you going to help him?” Mateo asked instead. “After all, he is your brother.”
The smoke curled thicker in the air. Now, he could hear the rough sound of . . . growls coming from the house. The growls were too deep for wolves or coyotes, and they were growls that he would have preferred to never hear again. “Someone has let the hounds loose.”
“Sam will trade his life for hers,” Mateo said.
Now that made Az look at him, but Mateo’s stare was on the fire. “Sammael won’t trade his life for anyone’s.” That was a sacrifice his brother would never make.
“He’d die for her.”
Impossible. Sammael couldn’t—
“Even the mighty fall, sooner or later.”
Az remembered screams. Women. Children. He remembered his brother, cutting a path through the dead with eyes gone pitch-black as he killed and killed and killed.
Punishing?
No, Sammael had lost his control. The beast inside his brother was too strong. “He won’t sacrifice for anyone.”
“You’ll see. He’ll burn.” Mateo advanced slowly toward the rising smoke. “An angel dies . . .”
Az stared after him, watching, torn.
His heart raced too fast. His palms were sweating. His muscles locked too tight.
Sammael.
Sacrifice?
He hadn’t understood the emotions he’d seen in his brother’s eyes that long-ago day. But those same emotions—they’d glittered in Sammael’s stare when the succubus vanished earlier.
Sammael had always felt too much, and those emotions had been the problem.
Az’s hands fisted. Now it’s my problem, too.
Because he wasn’t just going to stand back while Rogziel killed his brother.
Az stared at the blaze. Heard the hungry growls, and he whispered, “Come get some, dog . . .”
This hellhound was even bigger than the one before. Bigger, darker, with a mouth at least twice the size of the last beast that had come at them. Just staring at the hound made Seline’s knees shake.
This hound had sunk its teeth into Tomas’s shoulder. Blood spilled beneath him. Tomas tried to grab the hound’s head, and almost lost his fingers.
But Sam was there. She watched as he shoved his foot into the hound’s head, giving a kick that made the beast howl.
Tomas leapt to his feet. “Get the f**k back to hell!” He roared and lifted his hands. Fire blasted out at the hound.
“No!” Seline yelled, but the fire had already reached the hound. It absorbed the flames and its eyes flashed an even brighter red. Then the hound got bigger.
Dammit.
“Help me!” A woman’s scream came from inside the room. Oh, no, that woman—Sierra—had actually been trapped in there with the hound? And the monster hadn’t eaten her?
Tomas’s head jerked at Sierra’s cry, and he rushed forward, right into the path of the hound.
But Sam knocked the beast out of the way. Seline expected the hound to lunge for Sam, but instead, the hound’s head turned, slowly. It licked its lips and focused that fiery stare on Tomas once more.