Ian yanked the hood off him and began to undo his chains.

“Get ready. It’s time to reclaim our mates,” Ian said with vicious satisfaction.

With an equally ruthless grin, I gunned the throttle on the speedboat and headed straight toward Wraith’s vessel. He continued to try to clear the dangerous pieces of wreckage from his boat, cursing at the damage the nearby explosion had done. We were a hundred yards away before Wraith seemed to realize that we weren’t slowing down.

Through the hazy layer of ghosts still twining all over me, making my whole body feel electrified, I saw realization dawn on Wraith’s face.

“Stop them! Kill them!” he screamed at Mencheres. Then he abandoned his attempts at clean-up and swung the boat around, gunning his engine.

It sputtered, sounding like something was caught in the jets or they’d been damaged from the explosion. Our craft also began to shake, but Fabian and Elisabeth had brought a lot of their kind with them. More ghosts appeared, gloving the craft with their bodies and acting as a supernatural buffer against Mencheres’s power.

The former pharaoh’s abilities were staggering, but they didn’t work on anything from the grave. Silly me had needed a demon to remind me of that. Balchezek and others might mock me for my affinity for ghosts, but with their bodies acting as a force field to deflect Mencheres’s formidable power, it was good to have friends in dead places.

Ian got the last of the chains off Bones and threw them aside. “When you hit the water, swallow enough to rupture your stomach, and then keep swallowing,” I said urgently, glancing at him. “All that salt water will make it easier to purge the bitch out of you.”

Bones reached out and pulled me to him for a fierce kiss. Ghosts still swirled arous рnd and through us, but it was the touch of his hands—the first I’d felt of them in weeks—that made my body vibrate.

Balchezek shoved himself between us, muttering, “No time.” I glanced at how close we were to Wraith’s boat. He was right.

“We’re coming for you, motherfucker!” I shouted at the demon inhabiting my husband and friends. Our speedboat struck Wraith’s craft before my words had died away.

The impact catapulted us out of the boat. Bones sank immediately beneath the waves, but Ian flew straight up, taking Balchezek with him. I had a different agenda. I dove through the raining pieces of two decimated boats, ghosts still clinging to me, to snatch a blond vampire up before she hit the water.

“Mencheres!” I roared, holding a struggling Kira in my grip. “Pull yourself on top of that demon inside you or I swear I’ll kill her!”

So saying, I rammed a silver knife into Kira’s chest, careful to be close to her heart without actually piercing it. Kira stilled as though she’d been flash-frozen, emitting a hoarse noise of pain that I more sensed than heard above the hissing and sputtering from the two sinking crafts.

A black head breached the waves, bright green gaze leveled on me with a look that was truly frightening.

“If you let that bitch even splash me with your power, she dies,” I warned him again, staring right back at Mencheres.

Come on, I silently urged. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Wraith scrabble onto an overturned piece of hull, but he didn’t try to interfere. Not with his body, anyway. I could almost feel the demonic energy roiling off him toward Mencheres. The demon didn’t want to lose his most powerful puppet.

Another vampire vaulted out of the water at me, but before Spade reached me, Ian caught him in a midair tackle that tumbled them both out of my range of vision.

“Watch the water!” Balchezek snapped, not being shielded from its damaging effects because he was a corporeal demon. Not wearing someone else’s body like Wraith.

I didn’t dare turn my attention from Mencheres. Currents of energy crackled around him, and if not for the thick blanket of ghosts cocooning me, I knew I’d be missing my head.

I yanked the knife a little higher, causing Kira to cry out again, and something snapped in Mencheres’s expression. For a split-second, I thought that not even the myriad of ghosts could save me, but then I felt him drawing in those deadly currents of energy instead of snappinidaрg them outward at me. Wraith let out a howl that sounded pained.

“Cat.” Mencheres’s voice was ragged. “It is I. Let her go.”

“Prove it. Force Spade and Annette underwater and make them drink salt water until it’s flooding them,” I said.

“No!” Wraith shouted, surging toward me.

A wall of power swatted him back into the upturned remains of the hull hard enough to crack its surface—and Wraith’s skull. Blood poured out onto the white underside before disappearing into the ocean. Wraith groaned in a higher-pitched, feminine voice.

Then I heard a splash. Heard Ian’s muttered, “Drink up, mates,” and guessed that Spade and Annette had just been shoved underwater. All these were promising signs, but I still kept that knife jammed into Kira’s chest. The demon had to be fighting Mencheres tooth and nail, and nothing would motivate the vampire to keep control like fear for his lover’s life.

Of course, when this was all over, Mencheres might still kill me for stabbing Kira.

“Bring me to him . . . carefully!” Balchezek snapped.