While Orderly A nursed his privates, Orderly B managed to wrestle Claire face first onto a long, hard exam table and force her arm out. Panic edged into her throat as the doctor came toward her with a wicked-looking syringe.

"No, don't do this. You do this and you leave me defenseless against them. Please!"

"Now, don't be silly, Claire. This serum is to protect you against the demons and the vampires."

Vampires? What was a vampire?

The needle bit into Claire's arm. Her eyelids instantly began to feel heavy and her knees weak. "No. This is… this is… wrong."

As her mind fumbled against the haze settling over it, she lost control and tapped her magick. The action was pure instinct, born of perfect terror, the kind not even the Atrika could incite and accentuated by the alien drugs coursing through her bloodstream. It was the one thing she'd sworn not to do until she knew more about what Rue had infused her with.

Power exploded through her, bowing her spine and cracking her head backward to make contact with the orderly's, who released her and yelped in pain. The thread she'd pulled felt violent, alien… just like this world she'd been thrust into. It burned through her, searing the seat of her magick.

During the half-second she had before the pain and drugs plunged her into unconsciousness, she reached out to any air witch she could.

Please, hear me…

She sent her plea only a moment before the thick, cloying darkness closed over her.

CHAPTER THREE

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Adam's copper blade connected with Thomas's in the newly built sparring chamber on the Coven grounds. Sweat trickled down his bare chest, pooled in his belly button. He turned, met Thomas's blade once more. The impact reverberated up his arm and through his chest and back.

Whoosh. Clang.

It had been a year since they'd gone up against an Atrika demon who'd been trapped on Earth, away from his native Eudae. The demon had killed six witches trying to open a doorway before Thomas Monahan, head witch of the Coven, and Isabelle, sister to one of the slain, had offed him.

In the process, Isabelle and Thomas had been pulled through to Eudae. Adam had been there to see it happen, but incapable of stopping it. While Isabelle had been sent home, the demons had kept Thomas for a while. They'd cut his long hair, a source of strength for the earth witch. They'd tried to break him.

Whoosh. Clang.

The force of Thomas's hit crashed down his arm and rattled his teeth. "Fuck, Thomas!"

Yeah, they hadn't broken him.

Since that ordeal, the Coven witches had never stopped training with the copper weapons they'd used against the Atrika. The vicious demon breed were allergic to the metal, although they sometimes developed a defense against it, something that Micah, the Coven archivist and all-around geek, was trying to investigate. But for now it was the only weapon the witches knew of.