Broken: Hidden Book Two (8 page)

I hadn’t lied. I was starving, and I was weak with it for the first time in forever. I walked slowly into the bathroom, brushed my teeth and splashed water on my face. I looked at myself in the mirror. The impossibility of what had happened was too much to wrap my brain around.

What was even more shocking was that, rather than feeling cheated that I’d been saved by myself once again, I was actually happy to be alive. I thought I was ready to leave. Nain’s death had undone me, taken the will to live from me. I thought I would greet death happily when Eunomia and her sisters finally came for me. Instead, I was thrilled to have another day. It was as if the fire, and whatever had happened between there and here, had cleansed me. Changed me.

So much to do, still.

People to take care of.

Figure out who or what I was.

I dressed. My uniform: jeans, black top, black Chucks. I braided my long hair over one shoulder. Finished, and leaned against the counter, looking at my reflection. I looked nothing like the girl I’d once been, but, somehow, this being with the white glowing eyes and alabaster skin was more me than I’d ever been. I didn’t know what it meant, but I was at home in my body for the first time ever.

My body that fire and explosions, along with gunshots, stab wounds, and vampires could not kill. I remembered my dreams about women with swords of fire and smiled a little to myself. I had a demon to deal with.

♦ ♦ ♦

I finished up and left the bathroom, walked through my room into the loft, where Brennan still stood right outside my door. He held a cup of coffee out to me.

I met his eyes and smiled a little. Sipped the coffee and sighed with contentment as a shiver went up my spine. Brennan laughed.

“Shut up, Bren,” I said, laughing a little.

Shanti walked up to me. Her eyes were red, and she looked exhausted. She wrapped her arms around me, sobbing, and I handed my coffee back to Brennan so I could hug her back.

“It’s okay,” I murmured against her hair as she sobbed. “You really think something like a little explosion is going to kill me?”

She laughed a little, took a deep breath. “I thought you were gone. Don’t do that again!” she said, hugging me harder. I grimaced at the sensation against my skin. Brennan gently pulled Shanti off of me.

“I’ll try not to,” I said, holding her hand. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

She wiped her eyes and nodded. “You. You are so badass it’s not even funny.”

“Yeah? Watch 
My Girl
 with me sometime and see how badass I am,” I said, smiling.

She laughed then. “
Wuthering Heights
 still sucks, by the way,” she said. She started walking toward her room. Relief, happiness from her, embarrassment over crying in front of me.

I smiled again. “Read it anyway, you little brat.”

She stuck her tongue out at me, then headed up the stairs to her room.

I looked at Brennan. Damn, his power was tempting. I tried to force the thought away. “I need to see Branford, now.”

He nodded, and took my hand. I let him. He needed it and, just this once, maybe, I needed it too. We walked to the elevator together, took it down to the underground parking garage.

“You guys have been feeding him, right?”

He nodded. “I was against it. Your imps said you’d want him strong.”

“I love my imps.”

He shook his head. His eyes were on me the entire time, a combination of puzzlement and love coming from him. I met his eyes. “Trying to figure me out?” I asked.

“Every second of my life,” he said, giving me a small smile. I shook my head and opened the grate into the parking garage.

Stone was standing with a shotgun in his hand, eyes on the demon. Branford had dropped his human skin, and stood there in his demon form. Just as ugly as he’d been as a human. Still tall and muscular, skin the dark gray of dirty water. My imps were ringed around him. He was chained to one of the concrete pillars, arms behind his back. He slumped against the pillar. Dozing.

I stalked toward him. “Good evening, Branford,” I said loudly. His head jerked back, and he looked at me.

And I felt it. Fear. So good. I felt it feeding my demon immediately. His fear only grew as I stalked closer. He actually whimpered. And pissed himself.

“Demon’s about to hurt,” Bash said in his gravelly little voice, red eyes glowing in the dim garage.

“About to bleed,” Dahael agreed.

“Branford. I was sure you were potty trained by now,” I murmured. I walked up to him and gripped his jaw, forced him to look at me. He tried to pull away, but there was nowhere for him to go. His terror continued to feed me.

“What’s wrong? Don’t you like being chained?” I asked, tightening my grip on his jaw as he tried to pull away. My fingernails cut into his skin.

“How?” he finally stammered.

I smiled at him. “Do you really think something as insignificant as you can kill me?” I squeezed his throat, just a little, and he panicked.

Damn, it was delectable. I let it wash over me, felt it feed me.

I glanced back at Brennan and Stone. “Unchain him.”

Stone came, took out a key and unlocked the three locks securing the chains. Branford massaged his wrists when the chains dropped.

“I don’t want you to see this,” I said.

Stone nodded. “Welcome back, kiddo,” he said, grinning at me before he walked away. Brennan stayed put.

“You too, Bren.”

“Nope.”

“This is not going to be pretty. I’d prefer you didn’t see me like this.” These words only made the demon more afraid, and I nearly smiled at the taste of his fear.

“Gut him,” Bashiok said.

“Burn him,” Dahael cooed. I felt Branford’s fear spike again, and I could have laughed. Creepy little fuckers, my imps were.

“It better not be pretty. I need this just as much as you do,” he said, meeting my eyes.

“Fine. Just stay back.”

I shook my head and turned back to the demon, who was trying to fight his way out of my grip. I ran my fingers along his neck, then hauled my fist back and punched him in the gut. “Why did you do it?” I asked him.

He lunged for me then, which was exactly what I wanted. I punched him in the stomach again, kneed him in the groin, and he whimpered and bent over in anguish. His pain fed me now, as much as his fear. I felt myself strengthening with it.

“Tell me.” I grabbed his throat again, made him look at me. Looking at me scared him even more. “You lured me there. Tried to make damn sure I died. Why?” I accented the question by bashing his head back into the concrete pillar behind him.

Demonic fear, anger, pain. I felt my power singing through me, exalting in being fed.

We circled each other, and I knew he was looking for a weakness. Good luck with that. “Tell me, and I will end this quickly. I try not to be cruel, but I am more than happy to be, in your case. Please. Make me drag this out,” I said, and I heard the feral snarl in my voice.

He spat at me, tried to grab my arm, and I punched him in the face. His nose shattered under my fist, and his pain washed over me. He lunged for me again, grabbed my hair. I wrenched it free, lunged back, and kicked him hard in the stomach. He fell, clutching his gut.

I stalked back over to him, hauled him up by his throat as if he weighed nothing. “I can do this all night,” I growled up into his face, then I tossed him back into a pillar and hauled him up again. “I can make you feel what I felt. Wanna know what it feels like to have all the bones in your hands break at once?” I broke into his mind, manipulated his thoughts, made him feel what I’d felt in the basement, and he screamed. I shoved him away from me and he fell at my feet, cowering.

“Too easy. I don’t even need to touch you to hurt you,” I snarled. “Any answers yet?” I stalked back and forth, and he watched me warily, but clamped his mouth shut. “All right. How about having your skin burned off your body?”

I forced the thought into his mind, and his screams echoed throughout the garage. Damn, it was good. I let my head fall back as I fed off his terror, let it fill me. After a few minutes, I let up, pulled the thoughts back.

He was terrified now, sweating, trying to get away from me. I picked up a length of extra chain Stone had left on the floor, wrapped it around his neck, pulled it tight, forced him to stand up and look at me.

“Or. I can end this now, quickly.” I felt Eunomia land behind me, near Brennan. Knew he would give in, then.

“Bitch,” he muttered, trembling in fear and rage.

“You tried to blow me up. I’m pretty sure I have the moral high ground here, asshole.”

“What are you?”

I just smiled, pulled the chain again. “Answer me. Why?”

“I’ve been trying to get things going for myself here. Have what Astaroth had. And every goddamn time I grow my organization, you come barging in and destroying it. I figured, the Nain Rouge is gone. Get rid of you, and everything else was easy. It would have been mine.”

“So, greed? You seriously blew me up, kidnapped almost twenty women, set all this shit up, because I was messing up your Don Corleone fantasies?”

“No one can do anything in this dump of a city without you ending up on their ass,” he said.

I leaned in, close enough to kiss him, smiled. “Exactly.” I broke into his mind, saw the hundreds of murders, tortures he’d caused in his long existence, and knew it was my duty to end him, completely. I found his power, tore into it like a wild animal, devoured it as he screamed. Then everything went silent as his life force left him along with the power I’d taken. He fell to my feet, an empty husk.

I turned to Brennan and Eunomia. They were both watching me. Eunomia smiled one of her knowing little smiles, walked over to Branford’s body as she waited for her sisters.

“Better now?” Brennan asked, his voice low and hoarse. I sensed for him. Contentment. Love. Roaring need, desire that made me blush.

“Why aren’t you disgusted? I hurt him, and I liked it. That’s sick.”

“Like you said. You had the moral high ground. And you were still nicer about it than I would have been.”

I studied him. He shook his head and laughed a little.. “I’m not going to be disgusted by you. You have this idea in your head that you’re a monster and I’m an angel or something. Neither is true. We’re all monsters here, Molly. We just also happen to be the good guys.”

I watched him. He must have seen disbelief in my gaze. “If you would have seen me when I caught Branford, you would have no doubt how much of a monster I can be. It took several of your imps, plus Eunomia to pull me off of him. And the only reason I stopped was because I figured that pissing off a Guardian was probably bad luck.”

I had an idea, of course. I knew what it felt like when Brennan used his power in anger. And I’d seen the teeth and claw marks on Branford’s throat and arms.

I nodded, ceded the point. “Well. You can worry about me less now, I think,” I said, watching as Eunomia and her sisters escorted Branford’s soul away. “I’m pretty sure there’s not much that can kill me.”

“Yeah. Pretty sure. Crazy thing is, I’ll still worry about you. It’s what I do.” He shrugged.

I walked past him back toward the elevator, and Brennan reached out and snagged my back pocket with his fingers, pulled me back to him. He stepped closer to me, meeting me halfway. I tensed as he folded me into his arms, gently, mindful of my sensitive skin. My stomach fluttered, and I was uncomfortable, unsure of myself near Brennan. After a moment, I relaxed, put my hands on his hips, leaned into him and rested my forehead against his chest. I breathed him in, and it smelled like home. We stood there for a long time, and I tried to tell myself that it didn’t mean anything.

Chapter Seven

After my Lazarus thing following the fire, Ada and Stone seemed weird around me. Not mean, or unkind. Just nervous.

“They think you’re a god,” Brennan finally explained to me one day a couple of weeks later, when we had a minute between meetings.

“Uh. What?”

“A god. They think you’re a god and they want to show you the proper amount of respect,” he said, plopping down into one of the other chairs in my office.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered.

Brennan laughed. “Language, Molly,” he murmured, smiling and shaking his head. I had decided to try curbing it, mostly for Shanti’s benefit. I wasn’t doing a very good job. Old habits die hard.

“You don’t think I’m a god, do you? Please tell me you don’t,” I said.

He grinned. “Well, I’ve always thought of you as a goddess, but that’s probably not what they’re thinking.”

I flung a pen at him. He ducked it and laughed again. “You haven’t told me about the gateway Eunomia mentioned,” he said after a while.

“Speaking of gods,” I muttered.

“Yeah.”

I took a breath. “So, there’s a gateway between here and the Pit, which is a Nether prison, basically. Baddest of the bad, worst of the worst. All that. And it’s weakening. Something or someone, or several somethings, are trying to get through. Eunomia thinks it’s related to the whole Astaroth mess last year.”

He sat in silence for a few minutes, thinking it over. “No ideas who?”