“Get behind the van!” I shouted, remembering too late the kind of wounds flying debris could cause. The gas in the kitchen ignited before he could move, and I dived for him, shielding him with my body until the noise of falling rubble hitting the pavement finished.

“My God,” Cyrus whispered, climbing to his feet when I finally let him up.

My gaze fixed on the burning building, I nodded. “I didn’t expect it to go up so fast.”

We stood side by side, watching the fire. I tried not to think about the girl we’d left in the basement. When I looked at Cyrus, I knew that was all he thought of, and my chest ached with my guilt.

“Do you know where my father is?” Cyrus asked quietly, tears filling his eyes.

I didn’t know if lying or telling the truth would be the best way to persuade him to leave with me, but dishonesty felt cheap after the postmortem ritual we’d just shared. “No. I know he’s planning something, and I know I needed to find you.”

He cocked his head, a bit of familiar Cyrus mannerism peeking through. “Really? How did you know?”

“The Oracle.” I didn’t bother to explain. In his vampire life, Cyrus had known the goings-on of nearly every vampire faction. I had no doubt he’d know who the Oracle was. “She told me your father is trying to become a god. But she didn’t tell me what all that entails. She did say I needed to seek you out. That you would be in the land of the dead, with the toothsome ones.”

Despite our grim circumstances, he chuckled. “Still speaks like Nostradamus. I never really cared for her, but she was on the mark with that prophecy.”

“Cyrus, what is your father doing?” He had to know. The Oracle wouldn’t have sent me all this way for nothing.

“I don’t know.” He looked back to the church. “But I’ll do what I can to help you find out.”

I blinked and turned to him. “You will?”

It seemed as if he’d never blink as he watched the flames leaping into the night sky. “If my father hadn’t decided to raise me from the dead…I blame him for her death,” he stated.

But I blamed myself. Because it was my fault. I could barely breathe with the knowledge of it.

The feeling of a piece falling into place nagged at me again, and I remembered my earlier observation, that the pain I felt from Nathan through the blood tie was the same as I felt over the girl’s death.

And that’s when I knew. Standing in the desert, watching the flames from the burning church blending in with the new day lightening the horizon, I realized the only demon possessing Nathan was his own.

I just didn’t know how to save him from it.