Page 158 of Blood and Ruin: The Complete Series

Jax sneers at Cillian before rolling the cloth-wrapped body part onto the table, revealing the contents as it slaps along the table to where Cillian is.

Cillian narrows his eyes on Jax as he stares him down before looking down at the chunk of seared meat. His face turns white.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmurs, staring in shock at the remains.

“What is it?” I grit out, having no patience for this.

Cillian releases a harsh sigh, losing any of the confidence he had moments ago. “It’s worse than I thought. This isn’t any ordinary demon.” “Then what is it?” I ask.

“It’s old and dark,” he warns.

“Yeah, no shit. Are you going to tell us something we can work with or just repeat yourself?” Jax spits out.

Cillian snarls at Jax, making me want to rip the fucker’s lips off his mouth. “I’m not the one looking for help now, am I?”

“Fuck you.” Jax steps closer to Cillian, his build slightly taller than the bulky wolf. Jax stares down at him, his whole body as stiff as a board and seconds away from snapping and shifting.

“Jax…” Luka looks at his twin. “We need his help… This isn’t the time for this.”

Jax tries to calm himself, but he’s foaming at the mouth to take a swing at him.

Cillian see this and smirks, his smug attitude returned. “Yeah, listen to your brother, Jax.”

Jax moves before I can get to him, but Axel is there, yanking him back.

“What do you know?” I demand.

We need to move this along before I end up needing to call the wolves and inform them that they no longer had a maven.

I wanted to gut the fucker here and now and be done with it.

Cillian glances at me. He must see something in my expression that tells him to move on with it because he loses the cocky attitude, looking down at the beast’s arm. “You got Luna back, so after this, we’re even.”

Far from it. He’d pay for what he’s done, but he’ll never see us coming when we do. For now, though, he gets to live another day.

“What I know is, I don’t want to be anywhere near that thing or anything like it.” Cillian scrubs a hand down his face, tilting his head towards the arm.

“It’s from the Underworld, but not just the Underworld, the deepest part of it. The Pits.”

“What the fuck are the pits?” Axel looks at him like he’s lost a few screws.

“It’s not somewhere you ever want to be,” he tells us.

“Stop speaking in riddles and just tell us what it is and where it came from?” Jax says, losing any little patience he has left. Not that he had much to begin with.

Cillian is about to pick a fight again when I speak over him. “Just tell us what you know so you can get the hell out of here. What’s The Pits?”

I know of the Underworld. I know of the demons and creatures that called it home, more than I want to, but even I have never heard of such a place.

“A place so dark, they say it was the birthplace of evil itself,” Rion says. Cillian nods his head.

An icy chill sweeps through the room, and everyone gets quiet.

“It must have passed through onto this plane, but the guardians usually have it heavily guarded. Very strange indeed.” Cillian glances back at the beast's arm.

“The guardians?” I ask, this was the first time I’ve heard of them.

Cillian shakes his head. “Those who guard it. If these creatures have made it past them and onto this plane, it means trouble. The kind that only brings about death and destruction.”

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