Absolute Surrender (39 page)

She broke free of Damon’s hold and hurried after him. “Wait–wait. Where are you going?”

“I think it’s best if I wait in the car for you. Call me when you’re ready to leave.”

The look he shot Damon, before he left the apartment, made Echo feel as if he’d completed the job of slitting her guardian’s throat.

She wheeled around to Damon. “What’s going on? Do you know Aethan?”

He didn’t answer, but his violet eyes narrowed. “What did he mean, ‘call him when you’re ready to leave’?”

The pain in her palm stung like acid had crawled in it. She curled her fingers around the cloth, trying to ease the ache. “Answer me first.”

“Yes, I know him.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the counter. “So explain, Echo, what did he mean?”

Damon knew Aethan? How?

Aethan was an Empyrean and Damon was just...well, Damon. Questions pounded in her, but when she saw the concern on his face, she caved. No matter her anger, Damon was still her family.

“I would have told you about him but everything happened so fast. I’m sorry. I didn’t—” She took a shuddering breath. “Damon, I love him.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “Echo, you barely know him.”

“Don’t tell me how I feel!”

“It’s just infatuation,” he insisted.

“How can you say that?” she snapped, riled at his attempt to dismiss her feelings so lightly. “You–you don’t even know what love is. In all the time I’ve lived with you, I’ve yet to see you in a relationship.”

“This is not about me,” Damon shot back. “It’s about you and him. And that’s asking for trouble. How do you think it will turn out? Their foremost priority is to protect this realm. Where do you fit in all this? I’m surprised he’s with a human, when they’ve always kept their distance before. What’s changed?”

His tone, his expression had a stillness that finally pierced through her chaotic emotions.

Echo searched his face, found nothing there to tell her what was wrong. But her stomach dipped with unease as she answered. “I’m living with him. I moved in about a week ago.”

A heavy sigh left him. “Why, Echo? Why him?”

She opened her mouth to respond but Damon shook his head and turned away. Hands on his hips, he paced around the room then stopped in front of her.

“He’ll hurt you. He won’t stay. He can’t.”

She didn’t think so, not when Aethan made a point of telling her he’d never let her go. “I’m his destined-mate, Damon. But whatever happens in the future, I’ll face it when the time comes.”

He squeezed his eyes shut at her revelation and shook his head. A long sigh left him.

“Why did Aethan hit you—why does he hate you?” she asked, unwrapping the dishtowel from her burning palm. Maybe it needed a Band-Aid or something. She examined the cut, hadn’t realized it was so deep. Blood still oozed out of the wound.

The next moment Damon came over and took her injured hand in his. She looked up, meeting unreadable violet eyes.

“Because of something that happened in the past.”

Before she could continue her questions, he laid a finger on her open wound. A pale blue light streamed out. Warmth surrounded the injury and, before her very eyes, the skin knitted together.

No! Her chest constricted in denial.
Damon, he’s like Aethan—he’s immortal
?

She exhaled harshly, shaking her head. “No!”

“Yes, Echo,” he said quietly, his grip tightening when she would have pulled away. “I am immortal. But I’m not as self-sacrificing as the Guardians are. I like my life the way it is. Centuries ago...” He frowned. “This world was different back then. The humans call it the Dark Ages. It had been dark, all right.
Demoniis
roamed all over Europe, destroying humans and spawning demonic offspring with the females. I could have helped them...” He shrugged, staring at her healed palm. “Many lives were lost, including a Guardian who protected that region. They’ve never forgiven me.”

“You let another warrior die?” She stared at him in shock. “How could you?”

His expression flattened. “I’m not a Guardian. It’s not my fight.”

She snatched her hand away. This wasn’t the man she knew and loved. Aethan put his life on the line every night that he went out. But how could Damon, who she thought of as family, be so callous?

But hearing his cool, detached words, she wondered if she’d ever really known him, except for what he allowed people to see.

“Echo, in some things...we don’t have free will.”

“Free will be damned,” she snapped. “There’s a thing called compassion.”

A sigh left him.

Fisting her healed hand, she stared at him long and hard. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth about you?”

He shrugged. “It didn’t seem important at the time. You were a child, had nightmares, and hated anything to do with the supernatural. It surprised me when I found that I didn’t want you to hate me, too. So I chose not to.”

How could she believe him when he’d kept so much from her? She opened her psychic sight and searched for his aura but, like all the times before, it remained hidden.

“Why can’t I see your aura?”

He sighed again, as if he didn’t want to do this. Too bad, because she wanted to know who the hell she’d been living with all these years.

“It’s there,” he said. “Look closely.”

She turned disillusioned eyes to him, forced her anger down, and opened her mind once again. It was almost transparent, like Blaéz’s. Her breathing hitched. “What are you, Damon?”

“Someone who cared enough to adopt you.”

Damn him for that cheap shot. “Was that even real? The adoption?”

“Yes.”

“Why? You couldn’t be bothered to save a Guardian but you saved me?” she asked him dully.

He shoved his hands into his pockets, a gesture she’d rarely seen him do, as if to contain his restlessness.

“Nothing is what it seems, Echo. Some just ask for trouble, with others, it finds them.”

“If I was trouble, then why did you kill that
demonii
in the basement and take me?”

“Not trouble, Echo. You were all that was right in my life.” His steady gaze held hers. “I was in the area. I heard a scream, one I couldn’t ignore.”

She shook her head. “But I didn’t yell. I couldn’t. I was paralyzed by fear.”

“I felt you on a psychic plane. That’s why I couldn’t ignore you. I traced the scream to the basement. Just in time, too. When I saw what that bastard would do to you, I killed him.” His gaze softened. “You were so traumatized. I looked into your eyes and felt something I never felt before.”

“What? Pity?”

“No. Concern.”

A small part of her wanted to hold onto the only family she’d ever known, to forgive him. “I guess I should thank you.” Her words came out harsher than she’d meant them to.

“You already did.” Violet eyes held hers. For a fleeting second she saw something move in them. Tenderness? She couldn’t be sure because it disappeared.

“You kept me a little human.” He traced a finger down her cheek, the usual easy-going smile no longer evident. “Be happy.”

He shimmered and dematerialized right in front of her, shocking her again.

How had she missed the signs? She looked at her healed hands and remembered. After she started living with Damon, if she got hurt, her injuries would mysteriously mend in a few days. He’d said it was because she was a fast healer.

Another memory filtered through. When he first brought her to his home, he had no idea what to do with her. Her mind had been so fractured from her ordeal, she barely hung onto reality, but she remembered the warmth surrounding her, unbelievable warmth that pulled her back to life again. Damon had set her in front of the fireplace and wrapped her in a blanket when she couldn’t stop shivering.

Then he made her cocoa—no, he’d phoned someone to find out how to make cocoa because he didn’t know how. He always made her that chocolaty drink when nightmares troubled her. If things got too bad for even cocoa to fix, then he took her to Gran and Kira. She sniffed as tears fell and her anger faded.

He’d been patient, waited for her to trust him enough to open up. Years later she’d told him about her past. And he was there, when the latest nightmares started.

No, nothing else mattered, she realized then. He’d been the only one to take her in when no one else wanted her. The secrets were no longer important. He was her family.

She pulled out her cell and dashed at her tears as she called his number. She wanted to tell him she was sorry. It went to straight to voicemail. Her stomach dipped at the horrid feeling taking over and more tears sprang to her eyes.

Damon had said goodbye.

***

Halfway to the castle, Aethan reached for her hand and saw the wound on her palm had healed. He wasn’t surprised. He stroked his thumb over the new scar. The tears that ravaged her face gnawed at him. He didn’t like to see her this way, and more, he wanted her to talk to him.

Night had fallen when he finally drove across the bridge and through the thick fog to reach the gates of the estate. Once he parked the car in the garage, he turned to her unable, to stand the silence. “What happened?”

“Please, Aethan, not now.”

She got out of the vehicle and headed for the door that led to the basement.

His temper, already on a thin leash after that encounter with A’Damiel, fired up. He went after her. “Don’t brush me aside, Echo.”

Echo raised anguished eyes to him. “I know you can’t understand my relationship with him. But he matters to me. I was angry with him for keeping me in the dark about who he was. But how can I hate the one person who cared enough to take me off the street and give me a chance for a different life? The only one who didn’t ask me for anything in return? It took a long time but he earned my affection, my trust.” She swallowed her sob. “Now he’s gone because of my harsh words, and I don’t know if I will ever see him again.”

Her pain hit him hard. He hated to see her so torn apart.

“Do you still want him in your life?” he asked, despising the words.

She stared at him, her mismatched eyes dark with unhappiness. “Will you accept him as someone I care about?”

No
. “Yes.”

She blinked at his answer.

Aethan couldn’t blame her for her suspicion. Hell, he couldn’t believe it himself but, for her, he’d do anything. She came over and pressed her damp face against his chest. Her tears, like the scent of rain, enveloped him. Yes, he would chain the bastard to their side if it made her happy.

***

A’Damiel opened a portal to the Dark Realm and went straight to the lower levels. Once in the strata of Hell, he headed for Andras’s chamber.

The upper levels where the
Otium
demons resided were far better than this shithole. The dank walls of the passageway gleamed wet as the coppery scent of blood hit him. Screams of the damned echoed through the tunnel lit only by veins of amber flickering behind the rocky walls.

He moved swiftly through the cravens until he reached a black granite wall. He flicked his hand and the door to Andras’s chamber opened. It wasn’t the ruined furniture or the sheer evilness that resided in this place that had him clenching his jaw, but the fact that Andras dared to take on the role of the Sins. He punished the so-called damned souls in his abode. In that bloody Wall Of Screams.

The chamber was silent, empty, except for the cries coming from The Black Wall. He stared at the thing in disgust.

‘
Admiring the decor
?’ Belphegore waddled to his side still in his animal form.

The demon had made a good protector for Echo, by taking on her pet’s shape, when A’Damiel had had to leave the mortal realm on business.

“Just say the word and you can
be
Bob,” A’Damiel said.

Quick as a wink, Bel shook free of his fat, gray feline shape. The young demon straightened and raked back tousled, steel-colored hair from his face.