“Can I return at first light?” Nicholette asked, her hand trembling under Aisling’s.

“Yes. Do you have something that belongs to Nicholas? Or something he’s given you?”

Nicholette pulled her hand out from underneath Aisling’s and unclasped a necklace. An entwined couple hung at the end of a thin chain, their sexual joining captured in jasper. “Nicholas wears an identical amulet. Our mother had them made for us. They were crafted from the same piece of stone since he and I are twins. I think this will be better than anything else I can give you.”

Aisling took the necklace. And minutes later, her guests departed, hurrying to stay ahead of the darkness.

ZURAEL didn’t like the jealousy burning in his veins. It was unfamiliar, uncomfortable, unwelcome. He’d known almost from the first that Aziel was more than he appeared, but witnessing the silent communication between Aisling and the ferret, how easily she let herself be guided by a creature whose true nature she didn’t understand, had left him edgy, unsettled-feeling challenged-as if his possession of her was an illusion. He wanted to argue against Aisling searching for Nicholas-not because he hadn’t been touched by Nicholette’s distress, but because he knew it was a trap of some kind, and he couldn’t protect Aisling in the spiritlands.

He studied the ferret sitting at Aisling’s feet in the kitchen and waiting for her to finish preparing the meal. In his mind’s eye he was once again in the House of the Spider, sitting before Malahel’s altar and seeing the stones he’d cast.

Had one of them represented Aziel? Or did Aziel serve a greater power?

Zurael’s attention shifted to Aisling. The fire burning through him intensified, jealousy yielding to something more primal and threatening to burn out of control.

Images of tethering her to the bed, of having her helpless, her world reduced to him and the pleasure he gave her, tempted him to abandon the course of action he’d set for himself. He closed the distance between them without intending to, pressed his hardened cock to the curve of her buttocks, only to be assaulted by different images, recaptured moments of taking her anally.

“You’re trusting him with your life,” Zurael said, his mouth finding the satin skin of her neck as his hands stroked up her sides then around to claim her breasts.

“I always have,” Aisling said, but the huskiness of her voice and the way she softened against him kept the words from inflaming him further.

Zurael closed his eyes and fought the need pulsing through him. They didn’t have time, not if he intended to make the most of the night by searching The Barrens, as he’d told her he intended to do after they’d left The Mission. Still, he hesitated over leaving her body unprotected while her spirit traveled in astral form.

He’d seen the protective sigils carved into the wood around her windows and doors, but they hadn’t kept him out, wouldn’t have protected her from death the first time he entered her home if killing her had remained his purpose. Few of the Djinn dabbled in spell craft, fewer still-if any-understood or used most of the magic wielded by human sorcerers and witches.

“I can search tomorrow night,” he said.

“You might have to do that as well. Finding the Fellowship’s compound is important. I’ll be okay by myself tonight.”

It was a show of weakness, an admission of the power she held over him, but Zurael couldn’t force himself away from Aisling. He stroked her, placed kisses along her neck, held her against him while she prepared their meal, and only reluctantly released her so they could eat.

When the meal was done, he gathered her in his arms again, hungered and burned with the need to carry her into the bedroom and couple with her. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I will be. Promise me the same.”

Zurael laughed. “There’s little I fear in this place.” And for an instant he was trapped in the warmth of her concern, caught in angelite eyes and unfamiliar tenderness. But too soon it faded, replaced by a remembrance of rage and true terror, scenes of the dark priest and his acolytes. “Do not summon me.”

“I won’t,” she whispered, shivering at the promise of death in his eyes, but he didn’t offer comfort. If she summoned him while he was in her world, the angels would hear it and come.

Zurael stepped away from her. With a thought, he let flesh and blood, muscle and bone give up their shape, become the potential for a swirling wind before gathering, re-forming into an owl.

At Aisling’s gasp of surprise and pleasure, Zurael spread his wings so she could further admire him. He allowed her touch and wasn’t any more immune to her as an owl than he’d been in the serpent’s form.

An owl-voiced protest escaped when she stopped stroking him. He watched with approval as she wrapped a burlap sack around her arm before offering him a place to perch.

Sharp talons dug into the material, touched her skin. He used his wings for balance so he wouldn’t pierce her flesh as she lifted and carried him to the back door, offered him the night.

Zurael hesitated for an instant, torn between the urge to remain with her and the need to take flight. Finally, reluctantly, he launched himself from her arm and headed toward The Barrens.

What had taken a good part of their morning now took only a short time. He soon flew over The Mission, its doors locked and most of its windows dark.

There was no sign of human life close to the city, but the streets weren’t empty. A flash of gray marked the presence of a lone werewolf. Larger packs of feral dogs ran boldly through abandoned streets. Somewhere in the distance, a cougar-Were or pure animal-screamed.

Beneath the owl’s wings, bats swooped on insects. Cats hunted for rats in blackened, fallen buildings while others yowled from the hoods of rusted cars, announcing their desire to mate.

The farther into The Barrens he traveled, the more nature dominated. Trees grew among rubble. Vines crawled over objects and sites no longer identifiable.

He looked for light, for fire. Listened for the sound of voices. He abandoned his task only when he required food in order to sustain flight. And in those moments he savored the hunt, the kill, relived the primitive beginnings of the Djinn when this land belonged only to them and they hunted it just as he was hunting it, in whatever form would bring success.

Thick forests of pine, juniper and oak rose and went on for miles. He banked and circled, knew the night wasn’t long enough to search where leaves and darkness created an impenetrable shroud of secrecy.

The passing of time was marked by the way the light changed as stars were added to the sky and the moon traveled across it, by in the rising crescendo of insect song, the howling of wolves and yipping of coyotes.

He flew and perched. Waited and observed. Took flight again and again, until the sound of engines and gunfire exploded into the night, abruptly silencing all other noise and filling the air with the promise of unnatural violence.

The jeeps arrived moments later, four of them racing down parallel streets. Spotlights struck the sides of long-deserted buildings and patches of vegetation. Any movement caused a barrage of bullets, followed by whoops and hollers.

A feral dog lost its nerve and darted from underneath a burned-out car. Its body danced over cracked sidewalk long after it was dead.

“One confirmed kill! You got that?” a man yelled and radios crackled to life, each of them repeating, “One confirmed kill. Got it.”

Hatred and fury roared through Zurael. He only barely suppressed the impulse to become a thing of human nightmare, a demon swooping from the sky to deliver terror-filled death to the guardsmen in the jeeps.

AISLING knelt in the shaman’s workroom, laughing at Aziel’s antics, enjoying the moment even as the time to enter the ghostlands approached. The ferret sat on top of a mound of salt, gleefully digging into the white granules and tossing them onto the floor underneath the table.