Page 153 of Blood and Ruin: The Complete Series

“We hit a dead end.” Kai drags his hand down his face. “The vampire hadn’t a clue what we were talking about.”

“He thought we were part of an undercover rival crew hunting for intel to carry back,” Kai says.

Axel huffs. “The idiot wasted our time.”

Rion gives him a bland look. “But you made sure he knew that.”

Axel shrugs his shoulders. “Turns out, vamps are highly flammable. Who’d have thought?” He smirks, a glint of mischief in his eyes. The same fucking glint I recognize from my own face when I went off to cause a bit of mayhem. A low chuckle works its way up my chest.

Rion sighs. “We’ve been trying to chase the information back to the lead we thought we had but ended up nowhere.”

My amusement dries up, realizing we’re nowhere closer to where we were yesterday or the day before that. We’re going in circles each time, getting further from where we needed to be.

“Find anything on that slime ball, Garath?” Kai asks us, a glint of wrath in his eyes.

Luka gives me a look before answering him. “He’s dead.”

“Fucking great.” Axel turns and kicks one of the lounge chairs over. It fixes itself immediately as he huffs to the side. Kai’s eyes narrow on us. “Is there something else?”

How the fuck does he do that? Always knows when we have more shit to tell him. It annoys the hell out of me.

Luka tilts his head at me. “We ran into a… complication.”

“What kind of complication?” Kai raises a brow.

“The ugly kind that was a mix between a minotaur and a demon,” I mumble, but with their shifter hearing, they hear me.

“What?” The guys look between me and Luka, probably wondering if this was some sort of prank. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“A… demon appeared when we were looking into that lead.”

“How did it just appear? From where?” Axel asks, looking confused as hell.

“Literally fucking nowhere,” I tell them.

“We’ll look into it once we find Kiarra,” Kai says.

I give Luka a look, telling him that he’s the one who can tell them. This will be his shit show about to go down.

“We contacted Cillian.”

The guys get near whiplash from how quick they turn to look at us.

Axel loses his temper, a look of shock and disgust across his face. “Why the fuck would you contact that dick?”

Luka keeps a stoic face, but I see the slight tremor in his hands as he fists them. “We needed information on the demon, fast. He’s the best option to finding out more about it, and that’s all that should matter.”

“The fuck it should,” Axel grinds out. “We can deal with this ourselves.”

“We still haven’t found Kiarra,” he tells them. That shuts everyone up pretty quickly.

We already know we’re running out of time. The clock is ticking over our heads like a timed bomb.

“He’ll be here and gone before you know it,” Luka says.

“He shouldn’t be going anywhere near either of you, and I’m not making any promises that I won’t end up killing the fucker.” Axel growls.

“Well, try to contain yourself. At least until he leaves,” Luka tells him.

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