“You can’t believe her, Rylee.” Liam grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the coffee shop, the whispers and stares of the humans following us. I let him drag me. I wasn’t sure I could have left of my own volition, not with her words ringing in my ears. The thing was, I still wanted to believe her. Her green eyes met mine, pled with me as Liam shoved the swinging door open and pulled me through after him. What she was saying aligned with what Doran had already told me. Only now she gave me the details. Orion was the demon, not some nameless demon like the Hoarfrost, but Orion.
The demon included in the prophecies that had me fighting him to the death over the potential end of the world.
Even more than before, we had to move our asses. If Milly was right, Calliope had very little time. If she was right, a demon that I was destined to meet on a battleground somewhere at a future date was about to be pulled through the veils and into our world. Just peachy.
We all but ran back to the courtyard. We were early, but there was nowhere else to wait for Dox and the triplets. Nowhere else to go. Damn it all to hell and back! I paced beside the truck, my mind racing.
Hours, it would be hours before Dox and the triplets were back, depending on their sexy romp with Sas, no doubt, and whether or not they were having a good time.
Liam grabbed my arms and stared into my eyes. The man knew me too well, read my mind before I’d really even formed the thoughts myself. “We can’t go without them, Rylee. It would be suicide; we barely managed the ogres that came after the triplets and us. And that was with help.”
I stared up into his gold eyes. “If Milly is right, then we’re dooming the world to a demon prophesied to take it over. There isn’t enough time. We can’t wait for them to finish their sex antics.” I didn’t jerk out of his arms, didn’t shove him away. I laid my fingers on his forearms. “You know I’m right, or you wouldn’t be trying to convince me otherwise.”
He let go of me. “You don’t know that. We don’t know if she was telling the truth or not.”
I bowed my head, feeling the weight of everything I’d learned in London, of the prophecies and the secrets. Maybe this was what they had been pointing to, that I had to stop Orion from using the foal to come through the veils. Shit balls. I Tracked Calliope, just as a spike of fear sliced through her and into me. Intense and teeth rattling, I clenched my hands tight, digging my fingernails into his forearms. Whether or not Milly was right, and my gut said she was for once telling the truth, it was time to finish this salvage.
“I’m going. Are you coming with me?” I lifted my head to see Liam shake his head, his eyes full of worry. A flicker of what he could do danced through his eyes. We both knew he could pin me down, hold me to prevent me from moving, and I wouldn’t try and kill him. He could stop me if he really wanted to.
“This is a bad idea.”
“You got a better one?” I pulled the truck keys out of my pocket and headed toward Dox’s baby.
“We wait for Dox and the triplets. That’s a better idea.” He still got into the truck, slid into the backseat with only the muttering to show he wasn’t behind this idea a hundred percent.
Calliope’s fear spiked again, and I backed the truck out of the parking lot, following the threads of the foal’s life. Leaving without Dox and the triplets wasn’t really a choice. Calliope was in trouble, and a demon summoning was no small thing to ignore when you knew when the deadline was. Mere hours were all we had.
Fuck, why did it have to be this that Milly told the truth about?
“Maybe she believes it, Rylee. Maybe this is a plan that Orion has put into place and he’s using her and she doesn’t know it.” Liam’s voice rolled over me, his words settling in my gut. He might be right, but Calliope needed us and that superseded anything else.
“You handled that very well, seeing her.” I peered in the rearview mirror at him, traced the lines of his body with my eyes.
He snorted. “I couldn’t kill her in the middle of a coffee shop, surrounded by humans. Even I know that much. Even my wolf knows that much.”
That was where he was wrong, but I wasn’t going to correct him. He could have killed her, and while it would have put us on the run, the humans would have chalked it up to a psycho going on a spree. Hell, I could have run her through and if I’d timed it right, no one would have seen her body slumping until after we were gone. We could have called Agent Valley and had him clean up our mess.
So why hadn’t I? Why hadn’t either of us taken that chance? I told myself it was because of the baby; I couldn’t hurt an unborn child. But in my heart, I knew that wasn’t the only reason.