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I press my palm against his chest again. That ancient power is still there beneath his hellfire, buried deep and pulling at what Malgrave left behind.

Malgrave isn’t the end of this.

He isn’t even close.

He answers to something older. Something powerful enough to use a Hellwarden as nothing more than a fucking errand boy.

And suddenly the heat makes sense.

The way Sentinel’s Grace burned the second it touched me makes sense.

Even the terror rolling through Carnage’s hellhound makes sense.

My blood runs cold despite the heat still trapped beneath my skin.

Because there aren’t many things a creature from Hell would fear.

But there is one they all answer to.

Chapter Twenty

CARNAGE

The chapel doors are still swinging shut when Raze reaches the head of the table and plants both palms against the wood.

Chairs scrape back around me as the brothers crowd into their usual places, and whatever bullshit normally follows us into Church left somewhere outside those doors. Scar takes the seat beside Raze, with Wreck folding his long, gaunt frame into the next one, his nostrils flaring once before his eyes move around the table. There’s enough fear in here to keep the bastard interested, and for once nobody gives him shit for enjoying it.

Across from them, Thorn settles his bark-covered hands against the table, the thorns along his forearms shifting slightly as his fingers tighten against the wood, little leaves curling and uncurling like even his body can’t quite settle after what we just learned. Coil makes it as far as the wall before apparently deciding chairs are optional, his shoulder hitting the timber as his tongue flicks out once, then again.

Around us, the last chairs scrape into place, and the room settles, but none of the tension comes with it. Malgrave might be gone, but the bastard left one hell of a mess behind.

Raze waits until the doors finally stop moving, then his palms flatten harder against the table. “Someone better start explaining what the fuck just happened.”

Echo stands at the head of the table across from Raze, her arms folded tight across her stomach. Every few seconds, her eyes drop to her hands, turning them over like she expects to find something there that wasn’t there five minutes ago.

I fucking hate seeing her look at herself like that.

Sentinel takes the chair beside her, his burned hand held palm-up against his thigh. The mark is still there, red and angry where touching Echo made his Grace recoil, and every time I look at it, my hellhound pushes harder beneath my skin.

I stay standing behind Echo’s shoulder because I can’t trust myself to sit still. My hellhound is pacing behind my ribs, a low, rolling growl with nowhere to go since I lost the ability to let it out through my throat.

Echo drags in a breath and holds it for a second, her arms still wrapped around herself, as she looks around the table. “When Malgrave touched Carnage, I felt him doing something to the binding.”

Raze leans forward, settling against the table. “He’s holding Carnage’s voice?”

“That’s what we thought it was.” Echo glances at me, and the second her eyes hit mine, I’m right back there with Malgrave’s hand around my throat and that fucking pull digging through my chest. “Except a binding should hold something in place. Whatever Malgrave did today wasn’t holding anything… he was extracting it.”

My fingers tighten against my thighs.

Extracting. I fucking knew it. Felt it the second that bastard got his hands on me again, but hearing Echo say it in front of the entire club makes the truth land differently. Malgrave didn’t take my voice because I broke some ancient supernatural law. He didn’t lock it away until a bunch of assholes in robes decided whether I deserved to have it back.

He took it because somebody wanted it.

“You’re sure?” Raze asks.

Echo nods. “I felt the pull every time Malgrave pushed his power into him. It kept dragging at the same place inside Carnage, and when I touched him, I followed it.”

Sentinel shifts beside her. “Which was fucking reckless.”