“After you,” he said, holding open the door.
I grabbed my purse, then moved back out into the cold, ignoring the way I immediately started to shiver.
“What’s this?” I asked when I opened the passenger side door to find a big, fluffy blanket sitting there. Along with one of those squishy animals that doubled as a pillow. This one was a green-eyed black cat.
“Passenger princesses get to drink coffee, control the radio, point out cows, and take naps,” he informed me, waving it off.
Meanwhile, I felt those stupid tears in my eyes again.
What could I say? Things had been really freaking hard lately. Being offered something soft—even just literally—was making me emotional.
I cuddled under the blanket but clutched the cat to my chest for a while.
Until, inevitably, the heat from the vents, the layers of clothes, and the blankets, started to make my eyelids heavy.
I put the cat plush up against the window.
And I think I was out cold five seconds later.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Daemon
It wasn’t that long of a drive to Arick’s place. Though, there was a fucukva lot to see along the way.
Considering I’d just been secluded in my torture prison for a few days, it seemed like the world was literally starting to go to Hell.
Whole streets had burned down. People were camped out in tents, hollow-eyed, not sure how this had happened. And where the hell the government was to help.
Once Nox was peacefully knocked out, I switched the radio to news, wanting to know what—if anything—was being reported on.
It was… not good.
Tsunamis, torrential rains that caused mudslides, earthquakes, lightning storms that took out the power to millions of people.
No wonder there was no one to help the people who lost everything to the fires.
What were the old gods trying to do? Was it simply that they were too self-involved to see the repercussions of their actions?Did they just not care? Were they trying to terrify the masses so they would start to worship them again?
Suddenly, I wanted to get back to the clubhouse, back to the demons. Maybe my brother was back with the professor, the expert in all things old gods. Maybe she could tell us what the hell was going on.
But to go back, I needed to get Nemesis free from her prison.
And, well, I wasn’t going anywhere if Nox wasn’t going with me.
Mine.
No.
Fuck.
What the fuck was up with that?
It wasn’t because she wasmine.She wasn’t. It was because I’d been on the receiving end of the brutal shit those gods liked to do to others. I wasn’t going to take any chance that she was going to fall victim to them.
And with her powers making her so damn weak, the chances of that were getting higher with each passing day.
It felt strange driving up to Arick’s house to find it abandoned. Every single time I’d been there, the driveway had been packed. People would be parked down the streets. You could hear the music pulsing from a block away.