In his mind’s eye, Claudio’s classically sculpted face began to morph, the beautiful blond hair turning yellow and then blood red. Father’s designer-gold eyes merged into a cyclopean sphere that flattened, split into three, and the wide lips stretched into a quetzal’s serrated jaws.

“Yeah, figures,” Dek whispered dryly. “If ever there was a quetzal in human form, it would be my father.” The man who’d snapped his fingers, and with a word, sent one of the most coveted women alive to his son’s bed. And, despite all that Klea Morena had been, she’d nevertheless had to comply. Because it was Claudio Taglioni’s command.

Dek’s gut burned with the injustice of it.

“Hate. Feel it.”

At the words, a burning, loathing fire burst through Dek’s chest. As it did he reached out, grabbed his despicable wretch of a father by the throat. He chortled with glee, fingers tightening on the man’s skin. Claudio’s throat collapsed under Dek’s iron grip as he crushed the windpipe and larynx. His father’s golden eyes began to bulge from their sockets, the man’s tongue protruding beyond his teeth as Dek made him suffer for every indignity he’d ever inflicted.

Through gritted teeth, he told his panicked father, “Whatever it takes to rid the world of you, you foul bit of human trash!”

“Dek! Damn it! Wake up.”

The words battered their way through the burning hatred. Claudio’s purpling face widened, became one with Demon’s, frantic and desperate as Dek choked the very life from it.

He felt his body shake, his head jerking back and forth. That implacable voice demanded, “Dek! Wake the fuck up! It’s Talina.”

He blinked, saw the quetzal image fade into Talina’s. Could see the similarity, the differences. “What the . . . ?”

“Who’s Klea?”

Dek shook the fragments of images, clinging like cobwebs, from his mind; his body was still riding the adrenaline high of choking his father to death. Burning in hatred and rage. God, he wanted to kill. To burn his father’s bones on a pyre of . . .

“Hey! Where are you?”

Dek, fought, managed to clear his head. His hands were knotted so tight the joints ached. Looked around in disbelief as he whispered, “I was in my bedroom. In Taglioni Tower. In Transluna. But I’m . . . in a clearing? What the hell happened? How did you get here? Where are we? What happened to my father? What’s happening to me?” He made a face. “And worse, what is that horrible smell?”

Talina hunched over him, her rifle slung across her back. Beyond was Donovan’s turquoise sky, dotted with clouds. He could hear the chime. Hard rock ate into his back. Rock? Where the hell was he, anyway?