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A CURSED GRIGORI DEMON WITH NOTHING TO LOSE

Leviathan, a ruthless Grigori demon from the Second Fall, will stop at nothing to remove a curse placed on him over two hundred years ago. He loathes witches, spells and covens with a wicked ferocity, yet he’s forced to hunt them in search of the descendant who can finally release him of the curse her ancestor plagued him with.

A HUMAN THRUST INTO THE UNTHINKABLE

A registered nurse who thought she’d seen it all, Athena Smith was not prepared to be immersed in the dark world of immortals—especially into the arms of a demented demon who despised witches and considered her to be the vilest of them all. Forced to pretend she can remove a curse she knows nothing about, Athena lies to stay alive until she can escape her captor’s torment.

A PROTECTIVE COVEN READY TO FORSAKE IT ALL FOR ONE OF THEIR OWN

Though hate fuels his determination, Leviathan can’t deny the passion that sparks between him and his sworn enemy. Knowing she’s cast some form of love spell on him, he still can’t resist her. Just as they succumb to temptations better left alone, two snarky witches demand he release their thirteenth member—or the curse he was given over two hundred years ago will pale in comparison to what they’ll do to him.

Chapter One

Athena Smith, intentionally named after a divine goddess, lived a life most would pity. Just out of college, she worked a minimum fifty hours per week at the hospital as a registered nurse, had no personal life to speak of, and had been living up to what her high school classmates had pegged her with their senior year: Most likely to be found with a book in her hand.

But the book… Holy shit.

Doing her best to push all negative, disbelieving thoughts aside, she focused on the altar she’d created from a massive tree stump. If anyone she knew saw her out here, going full witch under the brilliant light of the Harvest Moon, she wouldn’t be working fifty hours a week at the local hospital, taking vitals and administering medication for very long. She’d be shitcanned.

At least you wouldn’t be burned at the stake like your great-great-great aunt Gertrude.

The very thought made her shudder. Of course, before she’d read her mother’s book, she’d heard of the Salem Witch Trials. Who hadn’t? But for those trials to become so personal…

For the past three months she’d been learning her genealogy from her mother’s Book of Shadows. The book had not only clued her in to her family’s tragic past, it had also reached inside her and tugged on her heartstrings. Reading the stories had produced so much empathy, she’d been brought to tears more than once. The Salem Witch Trials were only the tip of the iceberg for people like her. Hell, according to her mother, God rest her soul, there was a whole immortal world out there, witches being the least of all the crazy shit Athena had been reading about.

If that book of her mother’s was true—and that was a big if.

You must believe. It’s not the intention that gives a spell power, it’s the energy and belief behind the intention. Whatever you truly believe becomes your reality.

Or so she’d read.

Written by her mother’s own hand, the now-cherished book had become a balm to Athena since her mother’s death a little less than a year ago. She’d found the book in her mother’s basement three months ago and rarely missed a night of reading. Even though she’d originally been concerned that her mother might have had mental issues, Athena hadn’t gone over twenty-four hours without researching the pages as though she were impersonating a scholar reading the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls. Unfortunately, it had become very clear early on that her mother wasn’t trying to be the next Stephen King. She wasn’t writing fiction, as Athena had first believed.

She’d been documenting.

Documenting events. Different types of immortals. Jotting down favorite family spells while writing down her family’s history—all for her daughter to understand after her death, so when the time came, she’d be ready.

The late September wind kicked up, sending brown, brittle leaves skittering across the park’s ground, causing a chill to settle against Athena’s bare skin. According to the book, the virginal white sundress she wore was imperative for the casting of the spell. The dress had been packed with all the other weird shit needed for this ceremony.

A ceremony only she could perform because she was the last of her bloodline on her mother’s side. Her family genealogy ended with her. And, according to her mother’s Book of Shadows, that meant she was actively being hunted—by a Grigori demon, no less. A demon her great-great-great-however-many-great grandmother had cursed. He was known as the Scarred Demon, because he couldn’t regenerate fast enough to keep wounds from scarring his skin.

And though her mother hadn’t wanted her to know about the demon hunting their bloodline while she was alive, she’d insisted her daughter know at the time of her death. Because Athena had to protect herself since her mother was no longer able to perform the yearly binding spell.

Or was it a protective spell?

Shit, she thought she was done studying after taking that shitty NCLEX. But no. She had to study a book her perfectly sane mother had written about demons, witches, and vampires so she could protect herself.

Athena stood up from the altar, needing to stretch her legs before she got down to business. The jittery feeling she’d had for the past several hours wouldn’t go away.

What the hell was she doing out in the woods at quarter ‘till midnight? This not only felt ridiculous, it was ridiculous.

“You stupid bitch,” she said out loud, wanting to break the eerie silence that surrounded her. Because who the fuck wanted to be in the middle of the woods at this time of night? “Are you really about to hatch some spell that’ll keep a demon from finding you?”

No. She wasn’t. This was stupid. It was absolutely stupid. So why had her mother insisted—in her will no less—that her daughter do this?

After the initial reading of the will, Athena had selfishly put all her mother’s wishes aside. Until last July. There had been a horrible thunderstorm with winds that took out the power at her mom’s house, where Athena had stayed since her mother’s death. After an hour of doing a whole lot of nothing, she’d gone to the basement to find the book her mother had referenced in her will.

Athena had been torn ever since.

Perform a spell to bind a demon? What the actual fuck?

Your mother wasn’t stupid. She was level-headed and smart. “Just do the spell and go back home,” she snapped at herself. “Otherwise you’re going to panic that you didn’t perform the spell and you’ll be looking over your shoulder for some raggedy-ass demon to do God-knows-what to you. Just do the stupid spell.”

She had a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and a PhD in talking shit to herself. Who needed a best friend when your inner bitch kept you in line and handed out good, practical advice littered with profanity?

She sat back down and lit the candle with the black lighter that came with the kit her mother had provided. The wind snatched the flame instantly, extinguishing it within the span of a second. She tried again with the same outcome. How could she keep the candle lit with the wind blowing twenty miles per hour? She glanced down at the Book of Shadows, to the page that contained the binding spell. Okay, so it wasn’t a protection spell, since the spell was clearly labeled Raven’s Yearly Binding Spell at the top of the page.

She drug her manicured nail down the brown parchment paper until she came to the part of the ritual she was at.

Blah, blah, blah… Light the candle and take one strand of hair from the bundle. Burn the hair.

She picked up the bundle of black hair, secured with a bit of leather. This is nasty. Whose hair was this? Was she supposed to believe this hair belonged to the demon who was supposedly hunting her?

Keep calm and get your witch on. Just do what the book says.

She looked back down to the book—to the brown parchment paper that wasn’t blowing in the wind—and frowned. Why weren’t the pages moving? She pinched the edge of the page and moved it. The paper was regular parchment paper, and it wasn’t weighed down in any way. The wind hitting the back of her hand wasn’t moving the top of the flimsy page at all…

The strangest feeling skittered through her. A foreboding. A warning.

Jesus H, just do the spell and get the fuck out of here.

She meticulously removed a strand of hair from the leather tie and used the lighter to burn it instead of trying to light the candle. She singed the tip of her thumb and index finger in the process, letting out a string of curse words. What happened when the hair ran out, anyway? Was her great-great grandkid going to be screwed?

She loved her mother and missed her more than anything, but this… She’d do anything to talk to her mother about this book. Her mom hadn’t been mental, and yet, with every page Athena had read it had become crystal clear that her mother believed in everything she’d written. And she’d absolutely demanded in her will that her daughter read it from beginning to end.

God she missed her mom, but still.

Athena picked up the book again, something she’d grown quite used to doing over the past few months, and placed it on her lap. The pages were so intricately decorated Athena had been afraid to bring it into the elements—the same elements that seemed not to effect the pages at all. Her mother had used a form of calligraphy to pen all her words. Each and every page was stunning. Next to the words were runes, vines, and colorful artwork Athena couldn’t place. The amount of time her mother must have invested in this book… It was nearly five hundred pages long. And the genealogy had interested Athena to no end. In the book, the familial lines were focused on the females, and much less the males, which was why she was considered to be the last of her bloodline even though her father didn’t have a date of death next to his name.

Which meant her father was still alive.

The most disturbing part of the whole book wasn’t the spells to ward off demons or the ritualistic worship of the goddesses and horned god. No, the most disturbing part was at the end of the genealogy page, where two other names jotted down from her parents—directly next to hers. Though the names Isis Raven and Vesta Raven were beside her name as though they were sisters, Athena knew—without a shred of doubt—that her mother had only one child: Her.

If her mother had been documenting, and not writing fiction like Athena had first believed, then who were those women? Certainly not her sisters, and yet their genealogy line came directly from Athena’s parents—Daphne Raven and Evander. Why her father had no last name she didn’t know, and the book didn’t explain it. The book definitely failed to explain who Isis and Vesta were. Because they sure as hell weren’t her sisters. Their date of death was the same. And that date was nearly a year and a half before Athena had been born, and the day of their death corresponded with Isis’s birthday.

It was the one thing Athena hadn’t figured out. And Google hadn’t helped a damn bit. She’d typed in their names and the dates of their birth. Nothing. Their date of death didn’t bring up an obituary.

But they weren’t the only odd characters in this family saga.

In the witch section, where her mother had included biographies of certain witches of importance, there was one witch that, born the same day and year as Athena, was prophesied to have powers that would release the fae—a group of immortals who had been imprisoned over two hundred years ago by the Alliance. All her mother had written down for a name had been Raven the Awakened.

Athena had been absolutely enthralled when she’d read about that particular witch. Raven wasn’t on her family’s genealogy line, and despite that, her mother had written pages and pages about her, unlike all her other ancestors.

Even weirder, Athena’s last name wasn’t Smith in this book. It was Raven. Her mother’s last name was Raven also. There had been no maiden name from her mother’s side. Everyone was a Raven, all the way up to her great-great-great aunt Gertrude and beyond—which meant this Raven must be related to her in some way. And though the book said Athena was the last Raven, none of the pages that spoke about Raven the Awakened mentioned her dying. Which meant she could be alive.

The witch named Raven was… She was the kind of woman every woman wanted to be. She was beautiful. She had power. Influence. She had a purpose in life, and the entire immortal world knew who she was. She had to be confident and badass, though her mother’s writing didn’t delve into Raven’s personality. Her mom had only written down Raven’s contribution to the immortal world and the powers she had.

It would have saved space in the book if her mother had listed the powers Raven didn’t possess.

In the past few weeks, since Athena been reading about Raven, she’d often asked herself, What would Raven the Awakened do? Because the powers and knowledge the witch was foretold to have were, according to Athena’s mother, unmatched. And if not bound by magick, Raven actually glowed. Her skin would shine as though a light had been placed inside of her. That was to show others just how powerful she was. Another version in the book indicated Raven glowed because she was to be a beacon of light to the fae.

Her mother, if anything, was poetic.

And descriptive. Raven might be a beacon of light and hope, but she was also terrifying—no one an immortal would want to fuck with.

The image her mother had created had been both creepy and striking at the same time. Raven’s nails were jet black and her hair was red as a siren’s—another creature Athena had read about. The color of Raven’s eyes were prophesied to be so green they put the needles of a pine tree to shame—her mother’s exact words.

Part of Athena wished this were all true, and not just an exquisite tribute to her mother’s extraordinary imagination.

But reality was stoic and reliable.

This was her mother’s colorful world. Some women crocheted or knitted… Her mom wrote a Book of Shadows. And maybe she’d written this book to help her daughter heal after her death, which her mother had known was coming.

Whether the book was true or not didn’t matter. Raven would have known what to do to cast this spell. Athena… Not so much. She just didn’t believe in all this nonsense. It was a great book, and the characters were colorful and fantastic. A Grigori demon from the Second Fall who was forced to protect mankind to gain his redemption? Awesome. And fae people? Sprites and pixies? Sexy sirens?

She wasn’t so sure about the vampires. They seemed a little evil.

She liked the witches the best of all. Mostly because of Raven, who was badass. She was top tier when it came to that faction of immortals.

And the Alliance? A group of immortals from every faction—from demons to vampires to werewolves—who worked together to police their own kind in an attempt to keep their world hidden from the human population?

How had her mother come up with all that?

Yes, it would be amazing if all this were true. But it simply wasn’t. And the one question that begged to be answered was why—knowing this was pure bullshit—she’d dragged her ass to the middle of the forest garbed in a little white dress on this chilly September night to perform a spell?

Glancing at her watch, she was surprised to see it was a few minutes before midnight. She could have sworn… Well, shit. All of this was supposed to be done before midnight to keep the binding spell secure.

A pinch of trepidation traveled through her body as she glanced at the unused altar of the tree stump. Ninety-nine percent of her believed all this to be bullshit, but that one precent was messing with her common sense. She reached for the lighter once again. Maybe she should—

The peaceful silence of the forest erupted. The crackling sound of rustling leaves had her jumping to her bare feet, her head whipping around toward the sound. Something was running through the brush toward her and her altar. Nothing and no one should be out here at this time of night. She’d gone so far into the park she was nowhere near a trail.

Clasping the demon’s hair in one hand, the heavy Book of Shadows in the other, every last immortal in the book became real in the moonlit backdrop of the forest. In a single heartbeat all the immortals she’d been reading about were as tangible as the light of the moon that touched the tips of the towering pines surrounding her. It wouldn’t surprise her one bit to see Raven or a towering male from the Alliance emerge from the shadows.

Whatever ran at her had enough weight to crush leaves, and yet the noise was more like a crackling fire than the heavy footfalls of a human. Like whatever was running across the ground had no mass to it at all.

Maybe it was a racoon. A squirrel. Something normal and not at all contained in the pages of her mother’s book.

Skittish animals tend to run from humans, you dumb bitch.

Her heartbeat began to match the rhythm of the noise until she thought it would beat a path straight through her ribcage. The darkness just beyond the trees could hide anything, and she was out here all alone.

Just as she was about to turn and make a run for it, a small dog came bolting out of the brush, its tiny legs a blur as it barreled toward her, barking and wagging its little tail. It circled her, then started sniffing the altar and her jacket lying on the ground.

A fucking dog.

She’d been stroking out because of a Yorkshire Terrier.

That did it. She’d finally crossed the line, straight into padded-cell territory.

Heavier footfalls accompanied the Terrier’s bark, and soon a man with a dangling leash in his hand came from the direction the dog had come from. Probably late twenties, early thirties, he was breathing hard from the exertion of running after his mutt. He slowed to a stop when he saw her standing there, as if he’d seen a ghost. He glanced at the altar she’d sanctioned out of a stump, the ancient-looking book in her hand, and all the little ritualistic shit she’d had to stage, then brought his gaze back to her.

She literally wanted to die on the spot.

They stared at each other for a few seconds before he asked, “You cursing an ex?”

Her humiliation was complete. It was one thing to read the book and fantasize about what it would be like if it were all true. It was quite another to get a slap of the real world while performing a spell that would bind a demon. “Something like that.”

He laughed and bent down to attach the leash to the dog’s collar. When he stood, he gave her a long, mocking look. “You’re not going to sacrifice yourself as a virgin or anything, are you? I’d feel bad if I saw that on the news tomorrow morning.”

His laugh irritated her to no end. The fact that she’d been caught doing something so absolutely, fucking ridiculous—and yes, she was a virgin, which was another sore spot—sparked her temper. “You know, there are leash laws in this park.”

The weak comeback settled between them, as ineffectual as the spell she’d been trying to cast.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She watched him walk away, and once he was out of sight, she started gathering all the trinkets and packing them up into the large tote. Her hands shook as she stuffed the book inside the tote, careful not to damage it, even in her mortification. Although she didn’t believe anything her mom had written as solid fact, her mother had created that beautiful book, and Athena was going to cherish each and every story written so patiently on the pages, fact or fiction.

She shimmied into her black jacket, which was thin and did little to hide the craziness that was a little white cotton dress in September, then she shoved her feet into her canvas slip-on sneakers.

Lastly, she picked up that rat’s tale of black hair and held it up. The light of the moon grabbed certain strands and made the bundle appear ethereal. “I guess that binding spell isn’t working anymore, because I’m through with this shit.”

She tossed the hair into the tote and started walking toward her car, her temper keeping her warm despite the cold temps and the little dress that had about as much material as a pillowcase. The ends of the white cotton caught the breeze and swirled around her thighs.

As she started the long trek back to her car she began to feel…strange. Dizzy, but strong. Her extremities began to tingle and her body heated up, as though she’d just crawled into a hot bath. The feeling wasn’t altogether unpleasant—yet it was terrifying. Was she stroking out? Having a hot flash?

At twenty-three?

Just as she started to question if she’d left her sanity back at the altar, the path in front of her began to glow. A soft white light at first, and then the light radiated out like a beacon, illuminating not only the few feet of path in front of her, but the trees along the path as well. It was like she’d slowly flipped the switch for high beams while driving down a tree-lined dirt road.

She stopped, her breath hitching. Where was the light coming from? She tightened her grip on the fabric strap of her tote, trying to calm the shaking of her hands, and glanced behind her. The path was glowing in that direction as well. So bright just in front and behind of her, and then fading as the path led away.

She slowly turned back around and told herself not to freak the fuck out. Taking a few deep breaths, she looked down at her ankles. Her legs.

Something is not right. Calm down. Calm the fuck down.

She slowly raised her tingling, hot hands, one grasping the heavy tote, until they were eye level.

Then she stopped breathing altogether. Stopped thinking. Stopped berating herself for feeling so ridiculous.

Because the path wasn’t glowing. She was.

_______

Walking past the witch’s apothecary on the lower east side of Manhattan, Leviathan kept pace beside Daemon as they made their way to Williamsburg Bridge. Most people crawling the dirty pavement this late at night didn’t make eye contact, kept their heads down, and went about their business. Mainly because they didn’t want to be bothered, and ninety percent of the time they were breaking the law.

He and Daemon were no different.

The scent of herbs and sage and all things witchy wafted out from the apothecary. Even though the massive oak door was closed, and the windows shut tight against the September air, he could smell the filth that escaped from within. While most immortals were forced to live in fear of being discovered by humans, witches made money off their powers. They flaunted what they were and sold their talents to the highest bidder. Some of them even had their own television shows and spoke to the dead in front of the masses. Humans were going so far as to impersonate them. Almost all of them read tarot cards and at the very least sold sage, candles and crystals.

He despised every last damned one of them. As far as he was concerned, they should have been locked up with the fae.

Witches were the worst type of hypocrites. The Pharisees of their kind. They pretended to love all things and each other, care for and respected nature, and wished harm on no one. Yet the witches he’d known personally would just as soon curse your ass into oblivion rather than cleanse your house with sage. Their Wiccan Rede, as they liked to call it, an ethical code they swore upon—If it harm none, do what you will—was bullshit. Any witch would tell you that if you cursed another, that curse could come back on you. Not that they followed their own advice.

They were full of shit. He was a walking fucking testament, an absolute billboard that proved otherwise.

Fae, vodou priestesses, witches, sprites and sirens… They came from the same mold yet were different in their own ways. Fae were little demons with immortal power. When they casted a spell they needed nothing and no one to back it up. Not the energy of the earth, not blood, not the head of a chicken in a cauldron. They just fucked your world with little to no empathy and did it with unfathomable power.

Witches were the Sour Patch Kids of their kind—only they weren’t sour right off the bat. They seemed sweet and benevolent—until they weren’t.

At least vodou priestesses were open with their black magick. They’d curse your ass if you looked at them wrong—but they owned their attitudes. They were proud and arrogant and didn’t give a shit what you thought of them. Vodou priestesses were the OG witches that had come up with the phrase fuck around and find out.

Most didn’t fuck around with vodou anything, much less the men and women who practiced it.

Still, he’d take a vodou practitioner over a witch any day of the week and twice on Sunday. At least they were honest with their—

Leviathan sucked in a breath and abruptly stopped in front of the apothecary. He ran a scarred hand along the runes that covered his arm. The rune tattoo traveled from the back of his hand all the way to his neck and snaked across his body to wrap around his torso. There were forms of witches and monks and religious symbols intertwined with the runes. He’d worn the damn thing like a cloak for nearly two hundred years and it had never burned since the night the witch had cursed him.

The markings burned like the fires of Hell.

He stared at the blackness of the runes, and though nothing looked out of place, the obsidian ink of the curse felt different.

Daemon stopped next to him. “What is it?”

Fuck if he knew. The runes had wound across his skin the second Artemis had cursed him, and they’d been there ever since. They’d never burned, itched or felt different than the rest of his skin since that night. Whatever magick that kept the runes on his skin also kept him from using his demonic powers, but they’d never physically burned or scalded him before. “I don’t know.”

“Do you feel your powers coming back?”

He concentrated on the emptiness that had claimed him years ago. Since the night the last of the fae had been imprisoned. It was still there. “No.” But something was missing. He couldn’t figure out what, but something was…absent. As though a binding had been released.

But the runes still covered his skin. The curse was in place.

“I told Raith we’d meet up with him by midnight. He’s probably waiting for us.”

To mark his words, the bells from the Catholic church just down the road finished ringing in the midnight hour. The burning intensified, but Levi said nothing as he started walking with Daemon again. His tolerance for pain was as strong as his dislike for witches. The tolerance had built over the past two hundred years, hand-in-hand with the hate he harbored for their kind.

A group of young, human women came tumbling out of one of the local bars, giggling and holding their purses close to their bodies. They took one look at him and stopped laughing. They stumbled into one another, trying to stay out of his path. They looked from him to Daemon, and Levi could see the second they went from alarmed to…admiring.

At six-foot-four, Daemon caught the eye of most humans. Men glanced at him, stayed the fuck out of his way, and quickly shifted their gaze. Women rarely averted their gaze, and Levi couldn’t recall a time any female had walked away from Daemon out of fear.

Levi was another story altogether.

He’d once garnered as much female attention as Daemon and the others, until the witch had cursed him. The burning runes on his arm were a stark reminder of what he’d lost. There were nights he’d forget what he looked like, only to be reminded by a child’s innocent, penetrating stare. Hundreds of years of fighting had left its mark on his skin. He was the only demon alive who’d had his demonic powers removed. He couldn’t teleport. Couldn’t mind-read. Couldn’t regenerate. When he was cut by a blade he scarred just like a human. But he did eventually recover. He still had all his hair, all his teeth, and wrinkles had yet to mar his skin.

Just the scars from fighting other immortals.

And he’d fought without his powers for nearly two hundred years. He’d lost count of his scars and where he’d gotten them from.

But that was neither here nor there. Why he still thought about something as insignificant as his appearance was beyond him. He had a job to do, and it wasn’t to place in a fucking beauty contest. He was an assassin, and he took that job seriously.

There was one rule all immortals were forced to live by: Don’t bring attention to your immortality or the immortal world. Doing so brought the assassins of the Alliance to your doorstep.

And he was more than happy to knock.

He hissed, putting a hand against the runes on his arm again. The girls tripped over themselves to go around him. One let out a gasp. He paid her little mind. This time the burning of the runes stung like a scorpion’s venom, and it was followed by a ringing in his ears so loud and painful he could hardly think past it.

What the hell was happening?

Daemon stopped by his side and put a hand on his shoulder. If he said anything, Levi couldn’t hear it.

He searched past the pain. Something was… He cocked his head and kept his gaze lowered as he tried to sort it out. The runes burned like hell. His ears rang louder than the damn bells of the church. He made fists by his sides. Energy enveloped him, skittering over his flesh and weaving its way into the center of his being.

Feminine energy.

The shock of the sensation nearly took him to his knees. The sensual, malevolent touch made him sick to his stomach. Metaphysical spells were faster than the speed of light, and always found their intended recipients, and he’d been the receiver before, so he knew exactly what it felt like. He’d been irrevocably changed the night he’d been cursed, and though the magick had a familiar, ancestral taste to it, the intention was not the same. He was not being harmed. No one was putting a curse on him.

This was deliverance.

 “I feel her,” he growled, loathing the sensation that overtook his body, yet welcoming the liberation. If this meant what he thought it did, he’d snatch her ass by the end of the night.

“Who?”

Who specifically, he didn’t know. But he knew the family name. Knew their energy like the back of his hand—because the runes of the family itself was burned into them. “A Raven.”

“The witch?”

“One of them,” he said, his head snapping up. In fact, some said there was only one Raven left. Was she near? Had she been one of those women that had stumbled out of the bar?

Levi looked back in the direction they had fled, glancing to the faces roaming the streets of New York at this hour. Junkies, immortals, homeless. He searched for her energy. He didn’t feel the energy as though she were close. None of the women were her. It was almost as though he could…

He could finally locate her, after decades of nothing. Like GPS, his body suddenly reverberated with her whereabouts. Whatever binding spell her family had been using had been destroyed.

This had happened once before, and he hadn’t gone straight to the energy, though others had. “She’s in upstate New York.” Not far from where they were.

“How do you know?”

The ringing in his ears was diminishing. “I can feel her.”

Daemon stood in front of him. “Does it feel like it did before?”

Yes, though there was something different about the energy this time. The feeling was more of a beacon. It was much more powerful.

Was this the Raven? It had to be. “Teleport me there. I think it’s Raven the Awakened.”

The name got Daemon’s attention. That name would get every immortal’s attention who served in the Alliance—just like it had before. “Where exactly?”

Shit was about to hit the fan. Raven the Awakened would be able to remove his curse, but she was also foretold by several oracles to be the harbinger of the release of the fae, which would prove disastrous if allowed to happen. Like opening the gates of Hell and releasing all souls, demons, and hellhounds within, releasing the fae would cause an immortal war that would involve every faction of immortal, from witches to werewolves. If this was the energy of Raven the Awakened, the heads of the immortal factions would be forced to answer the beacon, and they’d be drawn to her energy immediately. Like he was.

All would want her dead. Even Daemon and the others back at the compound. The Alliance wouldn’t stop until she was dead.

But he needed her alive. The demons and vampires could eviscerate her for all he cared—after she removed her ancestor’s curse. Because only a Raven could remove it. “North.” He closed his eyes and focused. “Black River Wild Forest.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Seconds.”

“We’re grabbing Raith.”

They’d probably need him. Any immortal tuned into the Ravens’—an infamous family of witches who’d gone underground decades ago—ancestral energy would feel this beacon, he was certain of it. All would sense the distinct feminine flare of their specific brand of energy, and they’d be headed into a bloodbath. Demons, vampires and werewolves would all be ready to fight to claim the infamous witch.

And the other factions? The witches and the sirens? They’d be there to defend her.

Her ancestors had cursed him personally, but they’d gone underground because it was foretold that one of their offspring would free the fae from imprisonment. It was why they’d blocked their energy and why so many immortals were tuned in for it.

Not many immortals wanted the fae released. The fae’s vengeance could be world-ending.

Hundreds ofimmortals had been awaiting this flare of energy, but him most of all.

He knew Daemon was thinking about the last time this had happened. With the two Raven girls. The tragic ending had been ripped from Levi’s hands because he hadn’t been able to get to them before the others…

He looked up. Caught sight of the Harvest Moon. Made sense. Those damn witches did everything by the light of the moon or the aligning of the stars. They ate and drank nature while worshipping goddesses and performing rituals—usually naked.

He grabbed Daemon by the shirt. “We keep her until she removes this curse.”

He expected a fight, but Daemon didn’t argue. “Fine. But then we turn her over to the heads of the Alliance. We have no choice.”

“If she’s a kid we hide her. We find a way.”

Daemon nodded without hesitation.

This energy felt…mature somehow, so Levi wasn’t worried about her age. And if this Raven turned out to be a woman and not a child, the Alliance could have her once he was finished. But before then, he would be the one to claim her, powers or no powers. He deserved this. It was personal to him. Once he’d forced her to remove the curse, the immortals could do what they wanted to her. Until then…

She belonged to him.