EMILI
The crash of a wave against metal was the first thing I registered. Then the movement—violent and uneven—shaking me from side to side as if I were inside a washing machine. Salt water splashed my face and the roar of an engine thundered in my ears.
A boat. I was on a boat.
I didn’t open my eyes. Instinct—the one I had sharpened over years of surviving dangerous men—screamed at me not to move. Not to breathe differently. To stay dead to whoever had me.
I took inventory of my body without moving. My ribs, wrecked. My wrists, raw. My side where the demon had torn into me, burning. But my left arm…
Nothing. No pain.
That made no sense. The demon’s claw had sliced across my arm from side to side. I remembered blood soaking my sleeve, the searing cut. But now, as I slightly tensed th
