“Stop!” Miranda shrieked.

Josiah’s face reddened, sweat streaking his temples. He cocked the gun and pulled the trigger. The gunshot echoed off the high stone ceiling, followed by Miranda’s anguished screams—almost as if she cared about her torturer. Sobbing, Miranda ran from the room, slamming through the oak door.

Rosalind glanced away, unwilling to look at the carnage. When she forced herself to glance back, she shuddered at the sight of Josiah’s crumpled body and the gore pooling across the floor in a crimson puddle.

Caine glanced at her, and concern glinted in his eyes as she struggled to stand. He stepped over Josiah’s corpse. Something moved in the shadows behind him, and her gaze darted to Randolph. She’d forgotten about him. There was something in his hand—

“Caine!” She shouted.

Randolph hurled a stake right for Caine’s chest. Rosalind’s hand flew to her mouth, and her world stopped as she watched Caine’s tall frame crash to the floor by Josiah’s. Caine’s silver aura snapped into his body.

“Caine!” With pain fragmenting her leg, she tried to hobble to him, but Randolph blocked her path.

Stepping over Josiah’s corpse, the Brotherhood’s leader aimed a flamethrower right at Rosalind’s gasoline-soaked clothes. “Your demon lover murdered one of my finest Guardians. It’s okay. Josiah wasn’t a true believer. He didn’t belong with us. But I did want to watch you burn—not for my own pleasure, of course. But because it is Blodrial’s will.”

Fear tightened around Rosalind’s heart like a honeysuckle vine, crushing the life out of her. With the flamethrower pointed right at her chest, Randolph was about to set her ablaze. She’d felt the flames before—when Cleo had taken over her body—but this time, her skin would blister for real.

Cleo. The mage was her one hope.

Rosalind pulled off her ring and hurled it at Randolph. The moment it was off her finger, Cleo’s aura exploded from her body, and Rosalind’s mouth began to form ancient, Angelic words.

Randolph’s eyes bulged, and his flamethrower clanked against the marble floor.

He held up his hands, screaming in Latin, “Exorcizamus te, omnis immunde spiritus, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii.” His words seemed to shield him from the tendrils of Cleo’s vernal magic that curled around him. His body glowed with a golden light, and he backed over Josiah’s body, chanting. “In nomini et virtute Domini nostri Blodrial!”

Cleo’s temper flared. She would protect this body from the evil ones. Cleo chanted in Angelic, and her magic lashed out at him. She wanted to hurt him, to force his guts out of his throat, but those words he spoke shielded him.

They made Rosalind’s body shake, as though he was forcing the aura out of her. Hot agony coursed through her. Still, he continued to retreat, his face reddening with the effort, and Cleo felt a thrill of raw power as he scuttled from the room like a bug.

When the door slammed shut with finality, Cleo turned her attention to the beautiful incubus on the ground, his breathing labored. Richard was in there somewhere, but the incubus’s body was dying.