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And the more I think about everything Roxy has told me, the harder it is to believe he did it simply because Carnage broke some supernatural law.

Someone wanted that voice gone.

Maybe they wanted whatever came with it too. The thought turns my stomach, because if Malgrave has spent centuries making deals that always seem to benefit someone else, then there’s a very real chance he was doing the same thing when he put his hand around Carnage’s throat.

Which means Malgrave might not be the one we should fear.

Chapter Ten

CARNAGE

My knuckles crack one by one.

I work them again anyway, pushing each joint until the ache bites hard enough to give me something else to focus on.

It isn’t fucking working.

I’m sitting on the bench alone, the one Sentinel and I have claimed as ours over the years, boots planted wide against the concrete, forearms braced on my knees while the last traces of Holy Grace still crawl beneath my skin. Now and then, something sparks deep in my chest where his Heaven collided with my Hell, a strange pulse my hellhound immediately pushes against before settling again.

The garage is mostly empty at this hour because everyone else is eating breakfast. Tools are scattered across the workbench, half-finished bikes sitting under the overhead lights, everything exactly where it should be.

Except me.

I should be out with the rest of the brothers.

Instead, my hands keep flexing between my knees, my hellhound prowls beneath my skin, and every time I close my eyes, I see the ground tearing open in that clearing.

Then Echo.

Silver hair, pale green eyes, and her hands against my chest while whatever she carried slid through me and somehow made something inside me answer when I’m supposed to have nothing left.

My fingers stop.

Fuck.

So much for blaming the rift for why I’m avoiding breakfast.

The door creaks, and I don’t need to look up to know who it is. My hellhound already knows, because that thread between us pulls gently tight the second he steps through, warm and steady in a way nothing else in my life manages to be anymore.

Sentinel drops onto the bench beside me without a word, wings tucked in tight behind his shoulder blades, dirt from the clearing still smudged along his jaw. Feathery bastard never remembers to clean up after himself.

“Kids are gone,” he says finally, his voice low, like the words themselves deserve some kind of reverence. “The Seelie Queen came through about an hour ago. Portal opened up in the safehouse yard, and she just…” he shakes his head, and something in his expression cracks open into the kind of relief that doesn’t come easy for men like us, “… took every one of them. The one with a family is already home. The rest, she’s placing herself. Said something about owing this club a debt she intends to pay properly.”

That gets under my skin. I think of the kid with the antlers, the one who wrapped his whole fist around his own horn like it was the only thing tethering him to the earth, and something loosens that’s been wound tight since the moment I dragged him out of that cage. Raze made damn sure the assholes I took out at the scene were the only ones we needed to worry about. From everything he’s uncovered, they were operating on their own, with no evidence of a larger trafficking network or anyone else we need to hunt down.

I lift both hands and sign at him, quick and rough, the motions I’ve cobbled together over the last few days out of desperation, stubbornness, and the refusal to let silence actually own me.

Sentinel watches my hands like he’s reading scripture off them, mouth twitching at the corner. “He says…” he starts, doing a piss-poor job of hiding how much he’s enjoying this, “… that he hopes the little demon-spawned brat with the antlers ends up somewhere with a big damn yard, because the kid deserves room to run after everything he’s been through.”

I flip him off before he even finishes the sentence, because that is not remotely what I signed, and he knows it.

Halo-polished, feather-brained menace.

“What?” He spreads his hands, all wounded innocence, wings flaring half an inch behind him like even his feathers think he’s funny. “I’m translating in spirit, not verbatim… sue me.”

I shove him hard enough that he rocks sideways on the bench, and he shoves back twice as hard, grinning like the smug son of a bitch he has always been.

“You hit like a chihuahua with a grudge,” he chimes.