Damnation's Door: A Cursed Book (18 page)

“I made a huge mistake. When those people rushed us, I knew we wouldn’t escape. I didn’t know what else to do, so I… I let him in Con. I thought about what Lucifer would do, and that’s what I did.”

Even though I was virtually comatose, the ramifications of that slammed into me like a truck. Sending out that kind of energy, killing that many people, was a gateway for Lucifer. Finding Dro would be easy for him now.

But worse than that, was knowing she’d assumed there was no other choice. She hadn’t thought about giving Max a little more time, or having Sephiel cut a path through the crowd to get us to safety. She hadn’t even considered my warnings or tried using her fading angel powers.

She went straight for the kill, like a lion going for a gazelle’s throat.

Over forty people were dead because my sister wasn’t able to resist the devil on her shoulder.

That was the thought that gave my body strength. That was the reason my hand twitched, why my elbow bent, and why my shoulder swung just enough to take my hand from Dro’s.

I wished I would wake up. I didn’t hate Dro for what she’d done, but we needed to talk about it face to face. I tried to focus some of that strength back into my body so I could sit up, but it refused to co-operate. I couldn’t even get my jaw moving so I could tell her to stay.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered again with cracks in her voice. It wouldn’t be long before she broke completely.

“I want this to be over. I’m tired of these powers controlling me, tired of the pain they bring you and everyone else. I’m tired of being a burden. But I can’t even blame Lucifer for this, because it’s my fault. I was conscious of everything I was doing, and I didn’t try to stop it. I can’t fight this anymore, Connie. I couldn’t even save you.”

The paralysis clouding my mind weighed on me like cement, pinning me to the couch and forcing me to listen to my sister cry. I tried to move my hanging arm, to touch her hand and let her know that I was still here, that I always would be. We’d find a way to deal with this, and eventually move past it. We’d find a way to beat Lucifer. We’d overcome this like we did everything else.

But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t see. I might as well have been a corpse in a casket at a funeral viewing.

It was too long before Dro stopped crying. She breathed heavily, gasping until air flowed steadily into her. I heard her rise from the chair beside me.

“I’m so sorry, Constance. I don’t know if you can forgive me for this, and if you don’t… then I’ll understand.”

Light footsteps padded toward the door. It creaked open, then clicked shut, and I was left in silence.

I felt nothing but heartache until sleep took me over, and I dreamed of Lucifer.

There wasn’t much to the dream. There was no blood or fire or torture or death. It was just me standing on the hilltop by the Heaven Gate. I looked down to see two figures standing in front of the blazing forest. The flames stretched across the entire horizon while smoke poisoned the sky. But all I could focus on was the two people in front of it, standing hand in hand.

Lucifer and Dro.

Lucifer spoke four words to me before everything went black again. Four simple words that pierced my soul sharper than any blade.

You have lost her.

Chapter 15

My next dream was a million times better than the previous one.

I was lying on comfortable couch, relieved of pain, a warm blanket and a strong arm resting over my chest. I turned my head and saw Warrick sleeping heavily beside me. I smiled and touched his hand as it rested on my shoulder. I clasped it and rolled onto my side, watching him sleep peacefully. I reached over and moved some of his hair away from his eyebrows. It was getting long.

Warrick stirred at my touch, shifting his face against the couch and sighing once before opening his eyes. They began to widen when he saw that I was awake. It made me smile.

“Hey–”

The word was barely past my lips before Warrick leaned in and kissed me.

I breathed out against him, letting his kiss blot out the rest of the world as his strong arms circled me. Warrick pressed me to his chest and deepened the kiss. I inhaled the scent of pine needles and manliness, and felt his heart beating against my chest.

He finally pulled away to breathe, though I nearly tugged him back. One of Warrick’s hands smoothed down the side of my face. He looked lost and worried.

“Are you okay?”

“Much better now,” I replied with a smirk.

Warrick’s expression never changed.

“When we found you…” he trailed off. His hand moved through my hair. “We didn’t know what to do. We thought we were going to lose you.”

I snuggled closer to him, resting my head on his shoulder. “Why do you keep saying ‘we’? You’re the only person here.”

His hand paused. “What are you talking about?”

“This dream,” I clarified. “You’re the only one in it.”

Warrick pushed back so he could look in my eyes. “You’re not dreaming, Constance.”

I stopped smiling. I should have known that. Warrick had felt too warm and too real to be a dream, and it was wonderful to be back in reality with him.

Except… I was back in reality. That meant bloodthirsty demons and vengeful angels. That meant a sadistic bounty hunter and a murderous ex-boyfriend.

That meant a dangerous sister I was likely going to end up dying for.

That meant three innocent people dead at my hand.

I pushed away from Warrick and sat up on the couch. He sat up slowly and watched me carefully.

“What’s wrong?”

I couldn’t stop the memories from flooding back into my mind. Being attacked by Mateo and Drake. The unbearable pain of the fragment. I slapped my hand to my stomach, then pulled up my shirt. There was an angry red line across my abdomen. My pulse quickened.

“Where is it?” I whispered shakily. “Is it still in me?”

Warrick took my hand away from my stomach. I hated that it was trembling. His free hand cupped my chin and lifted my head so I could meet his eyes.

“No, Constance. They took it out, remember?”

Warrick was being honest, but my brain refused to believe him. I pulled away from his hands and pulled my shirt up again. I felt the red, rigid line. It was still tender, but the only lump I felt was from the scarring tissue. There was no hard fragment embedded under my skin. Nothing to manipulate my mind and make me do unspeakable things.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I didn’t look at Warrick.

“Tell me what happened,” I said. “Tell me every fucking thing.”

He watched me for another moment, then drew his legs up onto the cushions and rested his forearms on his knees.

“We went to the last house we stayed in. We weren’t there for more than five minutes before Max had a vision. He saw you being attacked, and said we had to go back. The
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wasn’t working properly, and Sephiel said it wasn’t charged enough, but Dro refused to take no for an answer. We got it working and went back to the street the demons attacked us.” He looked uncomfortable, and angry. “That was when we heard the riot. We followed the noise, and found you.”

I tightened my arms around my legs. It all flashed back to me. The adrenaline rush from the madness, the pleasure I felt knowing that I had something they all wanted, and they couldn’t take it from me. Feeling the knives in my hands and the warm blood on my face, and wondering where I could find my next victim.

“The rest you know,” he said. “But you’ve been asleep for a couple days. The fragment took a lot out of you, and Maria’s allowed us to stay here.”

I looked at Warrick. “What’s happened?”

He sighed. “No one’s seen or heard anything of Carver, Elle, or Jackson, but Michael and his archangels are moving through the city. Sephiel’s seen them on scouting missions. He says they’re looking for any place populated with demons or corrupted, and trying to find the fragments.”

I shivered just from hearing the stupid word. Warrick shifted closer to me.

“They can’t touch the fragment,” I said. “I don’t know what kind of damage it could do if they just put their hands on it, and if it gets inside them…”

I couldn’t imagine what sort of slaughter an angel was capable of if a piece of the Hell Key as placed inside them. I didn’t want to.

“How did it get inside you?” Warrick asked carefully. I could tell from his voice that he didn’t want to prod me, but the truth was going to come out sooner or later. If he knew now, at least he’d be prepared.

“Drake and Mateo found me. They have the fragments.”

Warrick went completely still. “They did this to you?” His whisper was laced with fury.

“They put the fragment in me, but they didn’t force me to go berserk. I did that on my own. I killed three innocent people.”

Saying it made it true, and I needed it to be. It felt like a kick in the stomach, but I deserved to feel the guilt and the pain. Those people had their minds twisted by the demonic presence corroding the city, but I was the one who held the knife. I’d been possessed before, and while it had been agonizing, I’d at least had the strength to fight back. I might not have been able to beat that demon, but my will had been there.

The will had been there this time, but it had made me do terrible things. My hands had never been clean, never would be clean, but I had a line that I built when I started with the Blood Thorns. No pets, children, pregnant women, and no innocents. The rules wouldn’t save my soul, but they’d been enough for me to sleep at night.

Now someone’s father was dead. A mother was never going to see her son again. I stabbed without remorse or regret. I’d sent a teenage girl into a crowd to be torn apart by savages. And I’d smiled through the whole fucking thing.

I didn’t know I was shaking until Warrick put his arm around my shoulder and drew me closer.

“Constance, listen to me. The fragment took you over. That’s what it does. Nobody could resist it. What happened wasn’t your fault–”

I pushed him away roughly. “Don’t give me that shit,” I snapped. “This wasn’t like when I was possessed and knew something else was controlling me. I knew what I was doing, and I didn’t care!”

“Because the fragment was screwing with your head–”

“Is that supposed to make it better?!” I was shouting now. “I killed those people, started that damn riot, and provoked Dro to–”

I stopped when I realized that was something else I was going to have to live with. I drew the crowd to me, welcomed them, and let them surround me. That was when Dro gave up on control and killed them. If I’d resisted, if I’d tried, I would have been able to save even some of them. Even one…

“Every time you resisted, the fragment started to kill you,” Warrick said softly. I wasn’t sure if I’d spoken my last thoughts aloud, or if he’d simply become too good at reading me. Warrick was the only man I knew who could look both angry and depressed at the same time.

“I would rather have you alive and feeling guilty than not having you alive at all.”

“That’s sweet,” I said bitterly. “Tell that to the families of the three people I butchered.”

The shock on his face was so vivid that I couldn’t look at him any longer. I turned my head away so he wouldn’t see the tears growing in my eyes. Warrick had seen me break down before, and I didn’t want him to see it again.

But I couldn’t hold it in.

The fear and guilt, the things Dro had said to me, the dream of Lucifer, knowing Mateo and Drake had violated me in the worst possible way… It was too much to bear. I was a ship being dashed on the rocks, breaking apart and taking on too much water. I cursed the tears that slid down my cheeks when I blinked.

Warrick stared at me for a long time, still wearing his angry/sad expression. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw his arm lift and move toward my back. I started edging away.

“Don’t,” I warned.

Warrick didn’t listen. He slowly circled his arms around my body. I pressed my hands against his chest, trying to shove him back. Either his arms were made of iron, or I wasn’t as strong as I should have been.

“Stop it,” I tried again, my voice faltering the closer I got to him.

Finally, he cupped the back of my neck and dipped my head to his chest.

“That’s enough.”

If he’d shouted at me, sounded aggressive, or started a fight, I wouldn’t have listened. I would have bolted from the bed and sulked on my own. But right now I knew I was safe, that someone cared about me despite all the horrible things I had just done.

He kissed the top of my head, then left his lips there and sighed.

“I love you,” he whispered.

My heart skipped a beat, and I lifted my head to look into Warrick’s eyes. They were bright and sparkling, green stars in the dark room. It had been so long since someone had said those words to me that I nearly forgot what they meant. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so Warrick continued.

“I loved you from the moment I met you.”

My pulse was still racing, and it was hard for me to think of a reply. All I came up with was, “I was possessed when you met me.”

Warrick chuckled, a deep warm sound that relaxed my muscles and filled my chest with something other than pain.

“I meant when I met the real you. All attitude and sarcasm, refusing to let anyone stand in your way and running over them when they did. Never giving up and willing to take on the world alone. Fighting for us and trying to convince us you weren’t a good person.”

“I’m not,” I muttered.

Warrick’s hand stroked my hair. “Yes, you are.” His eyes were filled with trust, admiration, and love. Everything I didn’t deserve, he was willingly giving to me.

“You’re just a darker kind of good.”

I let myself fall under his spell. I let myself believe that everything would be all right. I was here with Warrick, and the world was locked behind the back room’s door.

I kissed Warrick a little harder than I intended, but he responded eagerly. I opened his mouth with mine to taste him, desperate to keep him close. I’d pushed him away before, and now I wondered what could have possibly made me do so.

You love him, and that means you’re going to lose him. Just like you lost Dro.

I faltered during the kiss, and Warrick noticed. Before he could ask what was wrong, I grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him on top of me. By the time he steadied himself, I was kissing him again. I threaded my fingers through his shaggy hair, pulling his head closer to mine. It was an effort for him to pull his head back so he could breathe.