Knox noticed, of course. In years of fighting demons, he’s had a lot of hands around his throat. He knows the difference between a grip that means to kill and a grip that means something else. Dimitri’s fingers had been firm but careful. Holding, not crushing. A boundary, not a weapon. Knox doesn’t know what to do with that information except carry it in silence and try not to let it change anything.
It’s already changing things.
He watches Dimitri’s back as they walk. The broad shoulders, the burned skin visible through the charred remains of his shirt, the way he moves as if the pain hasn’t touched him even though Knox can feel through the bond that it absolutely has. Dimitri walks the way storms move through cities, with the expectation that everything in his path will get out of the way. And Knoxfollows in his wake, because they have to stay together, because the bond demands it, because there is no version of this that ends well and Knox is walking toward the disaster anyway.
***
They reach the Sable. Knox barely has time to breathe.
Dimitri descends the stairs in three strides and hits the club floor. The door swings open, the bass-heavy music swallows them, and Dimitri doesn’t slow down. He cuts through the crowd in a straight line toward the back, and the crowd parts for him, not casually, not politely, but with the urgent instinctive scramble of creatures who can feel what’s coming.
Knox feels it too. Through the bond, something is building in Dimitri, something vast and dark and pressurized that makes the air around him heavy and the shadows at his feet stretch and thicken. The patrons of the Sable sense it. They pull back from tables, press against walls, clear a wide berth around the burned smoking demon stalking through their midst. A vampire near the bar bares his fangs and then immediately thinks better of it. The goblins on their stools don’t even look up. They just quietly relocate to the far end of the bar.
Ruby is at her table. Same chair, same red dress, same lazy posture. Her succubi are arrayed around her, cards in hand, and she looks up with a languid smile as Dimitri approaches.
The table goes first.
Dimitri grabs the edge and flips it. Cards and glasses and velvet scatter across the floor, Ruby’s chair tips backward, and before she can catch herself Dimitri has her by the throat. Not the careful, measured grip he used on Knox. This is something else entirely. His burned fingers close around her neck and he lifts her out of the ruined chair and the darkness that pours off him fills the corner of the club.
Knox’s breath catches.
He can feel it now. The full scope of what Dimitri is. Not the sharp-tongued, wicked-grinned demon who bickered with him in a warehouse and looked at him with heat across the living room. Something older. Something deeper. A power that rolls off Dimitri in waves, ancient and enormous, pressing against the walls of the club. It saturates the bond, flooding Knox’s chest with a dark electric pressure that makes his teeth ache and his rings hum against his blistered fingers.
Dimitri was right. He is much stronger than anything Knox has ever faced.
The realization settles into Knox with a cold, quiet clarity. Outside the apothecary, with his hand on Knox’s throat and his threats in Knox’s ear, Dimitri could have killed him. Could have snapped his neck with a thought. It would have banished Dimitri from this realm, demons can’t survive the death of their physical host without being pulled back across the veil, but it wouldn’t have killed him. Only holy fire can do that. And it would have severed the soulbind. Dimitri would have been free.
He chose not to.
Knox files that beside the careful hand on his throat and tries not to think about what it means.
Ruby is gasping. Her succubi have scattered, pressed against the walls, eyes wide, their glamour flickering. None of them move to help her. None of them even try. Whatever Dimitri is, whatever power he carries, it has every creature in this room frozen in place.
“You knew,” Dimitri says. His voice is quiet. The same quiet from outside the apothecary. The quiet that precedes annihilation. “You sent me to a holy witch.”
Ruby’s hands claw at his wrist. Her dark eyes are bulging, her red lips parted around strangled breaths, and she shakes her head frantically.
“Didn’t—know—” she manages.
“Liar.”
“I swear—Dimitri—I swear I didn’t know she was holy—she’s always been—I’ve sent people to her for years—she’s never—” Ruby’s voice breaks into a wheeze as Dimitri’s grip tightens. “I didn’t know.”
“Give me one reason not to kill you.”
Ruby’s eyes dart past Dimitri, landing on Knox. Something shifts in her expression. Calculation, even through the terror, even with a demon’s hand crushing her windpipe.
“I can help you,” she gasps. “I can—the bond—I can sever it myself.”
Dimitri’s grip loosens a fraction. “How?”
“Give me the Templar.”
The words hang in the air. The club is silent. The music still plays, but no one speaks, no one moves, no one breathes.
“What do you mean,” Dimitri says slowly, “give you the Templar.”
Ruby’s tongue darts across her lips. Her gaze flickers to Knox, and this time her expression isn’t calculating. It’s hungry. “My daughters. They’re very interested in your friend. They felt it the moment he walked in last night, that light, that energy. They’ve never tasted anything quite so…” She trails off, her dark eyes fixed on Knox with a naked appetite that makes his skin crawl. “Let them have him. They’ll drain him dry and the bond will break and you’ll walk free. I’ll make sure of it.”
