Darkest Before Dawn (3 page)

I
left
Dawn in Rosa’s doting hands and rode along with Coleman to Battery Wharf.

Akil owned property all over Boston. I knew of a handful of apartments and townhouses, but I wagered that he had dozens more hidey-holes he hadn’t told me about. He’d spent much of the last eighty years building up a financial portfolio consisting of mostly property, but also shares in several corporations. The Prince of Greed had his finger on Boston’s financial pulse, much to the irritation of the Institute, who had so far failed to catch him embroiled in anything illegal. Luckily for Akil, being a demon wasn’t against the law. Yet. Akil was meticulous when it came to his business persona. So much so that, when I trapped him on the other side of the veil for six months, his businesses continued to operate without the head of the snake. When he got back, he stepped back into his suit —no tie—as though nothing had happened.

But something had happened at Battery Wharf, something he hadn’t planned for. His luxurious penthouse apartment with its floor-to-ceiling windows, marble tiles, granite countertops and hardwood floors, had been scorched by fire. Nothing had actually gone up in flames, from what I could tell, but something had flash-burned through the lounge, dusting the décor with soot. Smokey imprints swirled across an otherwise crisp white ceiling.

Coleman followed me, watching my reaction. He knew I had a ‘relationship’ with Akil, but he didn’t know the details. I’d told Coleman exactly what the Boston PD needed to know. Akil was a Prince of Hell and not to be fucked with unless they wanted to get their fingers burned. Prior to my revelation, they—like everyone else in this city—thought Akil was every bit the charming and successful businessman who happened to have volunteered for the role of demon ambassador. Nothing was ever that simple with Akil.

A few uniformed cops trailed in behind while I wandered. Outside the windows, Boston Harbor glistened in the sunlight. I’d spent many an hour on that terrace, watching the boats below. This apartment was different from the others he owned. Akil only came here when he needed time to think. This was his city bolthole. Modern furniture married with chic accents, creating a timeless quality where old married new, much like its owner.

I scanned the lounge area. Two empty wine glasses stood proudly on the coffee table. On the floor, as though kicked off in a hurry, lay a pair of women’s high-heeled shoes. My sightline followed the discarded shoes to the body sprawled in the doorway to the master bedroom. Thankfully, not Akil’s body. He was immortal, but I’d learned his human vessel wasn’t. When Coleman had mentioned a body, I’d guarded myself against the possibility it could be Akil. When I found myself looking at the slippery gray skin of a female demon laying face down, a relieved sigh slipped from my lips.

I crouched down beside the corpse, noting the fin running down her spine and the four-inch stab wound in her lower back. I tilted my head to get a good look at her face. She had whiskers, like those on a catfish, and her lips pulled back into a cod-like grin. Considering her human vessel had been stunning, her demon was grotesque. I knew her as Carol-Anne. She’d once tried to kill me—what demon hadn’t?

“Your thoughts?” Coleman tucked his hands in his coat pockets. In the bright apartment, his face had the same creamy pallor as the dead demon’s.

I straightened and stepped around her body into the bedroom. “Her name is Carol-Anne. I knew her. She’s the owner of The Voodoo Lounge, a demon club in Charlestown.” The bedroom’s white ceilings, pale blue walls, and mahogany floors gave the impression of understated luxury. The bed sheets were knotted, pillows scattered. I stepped onto a plush white rug and felt it squelch beneath the soles of my boots. Pools of water glistened on the hardwood floors. I touched the bed sheets and rubbed the moisture from my fingertips. “She was a water elemental. Pretty high on the food chain.”

The last time I’d seen her, she’d been on her knees in front of Levi, the Prince of Envy. He’d been sent to collect and escort me to my father, Asmodeus. I’d managed to delay Levi’s plans, but the threat still hung over my head like Damocles’ sword.

“The water damage seeped through to the below apartment. That’s how we got the call. She’s a water elemental, huh. And what element is Akil Vitalis again?”

He already knew the answer, but I played his game. “Fire.”

Coleman scratched his chin. I’d been teaching him the finer points of elemental chaos demons, at least the details I knew, which were woefully lacking since Akil wouldn’t take my calls. “How well do you know her?”

I glanced back at Coleman standing in the doorway. He was tall and wiry thin, trading strength for speed, and coiled as tightly as a spring. He regarded me as though he might have to slap some cuffs on me, and that prospect didn’t please him. Thankfully, as this was an all-demon incident, I outranked him. It didn’t stop his cop instincts throwing up warning flags though.

“Not very. When I went off the rails a few months ago, I went to the Lounge looking for help. She was there. She put me in touch with someone. That’s all I saw of her.”

Coleman dug into his coat pocket and took out a pack of gum. He popped two pieces into his mouth and chewed. A week ago, he’d declared he was giving up coffee. The gum helped. “Why’s she here?”

“I have no idea.” The fact she’d been on Levi’s payroll and now lay face down in Akil’s apartment didn’t bode well. The princes weren’t supposed to meddle in the machinations of their princely brethren. And it looked as though Akil had gone beyond meddling, straight into provocation. Why? Did it have something to do with the half blood girl in my apartment?

“Charlie... C’mon.” He arched an eyebrow, warning me that he’d recognize a lie. “You know Akil...”

I glanced at the bed and wondered why Carol-Anne would have been here, in the bedroom. My mind jumped to all sorts of conclusions, some of them graphic, none appealing. “Maybe they’re an item. Hell, I don’t know.” Thoughts of exactly what Akil and Carol-Anne might have been up to in the bed lodged in my head. I grimaced. Water and fire didn’t mix, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I had fire in my veins and had been briefly involved with Stefan, an ice demon. It should have been wrong—every part of my half-demon nature should have been repelled by Stefan— but damn, it had felt so right. Akil and Carol-Anne? I shivered. Stranger things had happened. Not that I should have cared. Akil could do what he pleased. It was none of my business.

Coleman gave up waiting for me to explain and shook his head, lifting his hands in surrender. “Well, as this is demon, it’s not my problem. I thought I’d do you the favor of giving you first refusal before the Institute comes down on this like the NSA at a hackers’ convention. Have you seen Akil recently?”

My memory flashed on the image of an amber-eyed and disheveled Akil at my door. “Not since the Garden event.” I’d been lied to enough that lying to anyone else grated against my better judgment, but Coleman didn’t need to get involved.

He held my gaze, trying to stare the truth out of me. Cops must have that universal expression stamped into their DNA. He couldn’t be sure I was lying, but it wasn’t his call to make. Adam, however, would grill me until my juices ran clear.

“Thanks for calling me.”

Coleman nodded. “Sure.”

I did my duty and called the Institute while Coleman listened in and then waited for them to swoop down before the press got wind of it and Akil’s sexy-as-sin picture could be plastered all over the tabloids. He wouldn’t like that. His halo would slip in the eyes of the Boston public. Never mind that his tarnished halo hung on devil horns. I needed to speak to him. Leaving bodies in his apartment wasn’t his style, but then neither was saving little half-blood girls. Unless you counted me. Did saving young impressionable girls twice in fifteen years make it a trend if the rescuer is immortal?

I dialed his number on my cell but didn’t get a reply. I called Rosa and checked on Dawn. She was sleeping, and Rosa was happy to watch her for me. Hanging up, I nodded at the Enforcers inviting themselves into Akil’s apartment and readied myself for the interrogation.

A
dam was thorough
. He suspected I was lying and tried to talk me round in circles, but I’d been in the hot seat before and knew how he operated. I argued that the hunters showing up and the dead demon in Akil’s apartment happened to be a coincidence. He knew it was bullshit, of course, but I didn’t falter, and eventually, he released me. I asked him for a week off, citing stress as my motive. He just about choked on his reply, but he couldn’t refuse me, not without risking me quitting on him. Again. For some reason, he didn’t want to get rid of me, and I couldn’t quit, not if I was going to find out the truth about Subject Beta—a.k.a. me.

The fresh bite in the air and bleeding sky told me it was almost dawn when I got home. After apologizing profusely to Rosa, I found Dawn asleep in my bed—a tiny fetal bump beneath the sheets. I collected a spare pillow and quilt and sprawled on the couch, holding out little hope that sleep would come.
It
didn’t allow me to rest. As the quiet of my apartment settled over me and the comforting sounds of Boston faded into the background, the parasitic demon clutching my heart awoke.

He crawled out from my insides like a spider nursing its web. Seeking tendrils of darkness groped through my mind and invaded my thoughts. Alive, Damien had been a wretched, blood-thirsty murderer who derived pleasure from pain. I’d been sold to him, a worthless half blood, a plaything, and he’d used me in every way imaginable and in some ways unimaginable. Akil had saved me the first time, but when Damien returned, he’d found new ways to torture me. He’d tied his very essence to mine, and when I’d killed him, his soul—or whatever the fetid thing inside of his carcass had been—had ported over to me. It struck at my heart, sunk its barbed claws in, and made itself a new home.

Nights were impossible. My dreams, when they came, resembled poisonous recipes of blood, desire, and savagery. They weren’t tangible enough to hold on to when I woke, and for that I was grateful, but their filthy residue lingered during the day, soiling my thoughts, and they were getting worse.

Dawn touched my face, abruptly waking me. I heard the echoes of my scream in my ears and felt wetness on the pillow. As I blinked, a few more tears escaped. Dawn climbed onto the couch and wriggled beneath the quilt beside me. She snuggled close, head tucked beneath my chin. I didn’t try to stop her. After a few minutes, the tremors rippling through me slowed, and the tears dried on my cheeks. A little of my element curled around her, drawing her close. She couldn’t have known about the demonic tumor inside of me, but she didn’t need to. She would have her own horrors stalking her dreams. I closed my eyes and prayed that the pain and horror of Dawn’s past was over, that she’d escaped at a younger age than me. I hoped she would never have to endure half the things I did.

L
eaving
Dawn in my apartment while I went looking for Akil made my gut squirm, but taking her with me would be an equally bad idea. Reminding myself she was safer inside than anywhere else, I left her with the TV and some snacks and locked the door behind me. I hesitated. If I took her with me, I’d at least know she was safe, but if she still had the hunters after her, we’d soon find ourselves fending off a repeat attack, and Adam wouldn’t let it slide again. If the Institute got hold of her, she could kiss any hope of freedom goodbye.

I rented a car with cash, removed the battery from my cell, and tucked my Beretta Pico gun into its holster inside my coat. You can’t be too careful when the Institute has eyes on you. It took all morning driving around Boston to tick off the properties I knew belonged to Akil. Most, he’d rented out. Others were empty. It had been a long shot, but there was one last thing I could do.

Summoning a demon is easy. It’s what you do with them when you have them that’s tricky. A little blood, a focal point, and an invitation extended to their many names is all it takes. It only works for higher demons, and more often than not, they’re mighty pissed at being yanked out of their daily routine. Summoning a prince was tantamount to inviting a great white shark into a cage in your front room and then getting into the cage with it. I tried not to make a habit of summoning demons, mostly because I spent my life running from them. But Akil had gone AWOL, leaving me little choice.

I couldn’t summon Akil in my apartment, not with Dawn there. I wanted frank answers to direct questions and suspected Akil would lie with Dawn hovering around my legs. I also needed some way of tempering his power, just in case he took offense at my summoning him like a pet. There was only one other place I could go where there were protection symbols on the walls and where prying eyes couldn’t penetrate: Stefan’s old workshop.

Stefan had restored cars when he wasn’t stalking misbehaving demons for the Institute. He kept a workshop not far from Ryder’s place. I’d visited both in the last couple of months, but neither Stefan nor Ryder had returned, and the workshop remained untouched with tools strewn around. An old Dodge Charger hunkered in the center, waiting for someone to put it back together again.

I used the key Ryder had given me almost a year ago and opened up the workshop only to find it empty. I hesitated in the doorway. I’d expected to see the chassis of the Dodge in the middle of the floor and the walls plastered with various tools and equipment. But it was all gone. Venturing inside, I checked the office and found it stripped bare. No furniture, just scuffed walls and dust bunnies. I walked through the back door and into the den. I already knew it would be empty, but seeing it naked where before it had been an Aladdin’s cave of weapons seemed so final. Even the symbols that should have been spray painted across the walls had been scrubbed off and painted over. The bare bulbs illuminated an empty windowless room. My heart sank.

He’s not coming back...

I’d always assumed Stefan would return to Boston. He’d been through hell—literally. Trapped beyond the veil with his impeccable control slipping, the death of his sister, and after my so-called betrayal, it was to be expected that he would need time out to regain control of his demon. But he would come back. Now though... He certainly wasn’t coming back to his workshop. The place was cold, all traces of his life gone. Slouching, I puffed out a sigh. I missed him more than he’d ever know.

With heavy steps, I turned and yelped.

Stefan leaned against the doorframe, brittle-blue eyes sparkling. His faded blue jeans sported a few frayed tears that could pass as deliberately fashionable. But knowing him, they were probably the result of a demon getting too close for comfort. His Timberland boots had been scuffed raw. A midnight blue V-neck sweater hugged his athletic physique. His clothes were casual, but his stance was not. He’d crossed his arms over his chest and glared a narrow-eyed stare. The rakish smile I’d come to love was nowhere in sight. Instead, his lips were pursed into a thin line. His platinum blond hair was shorter than I remembered but still long enough to slide my fingers through. A memory of doing just that distracted me. I blinked rapidly before skipping my gaze away.

“What are you doing here?” His cold voice reminded me of how we’d last seen one another. We’d fought. I’d flung fire, and he’d thrown ice-daggers.

“I... er...” I’d come to summon Akil. The truth was a bad idea. He thought I was in cahoots with Akil when nothing could have been further from the truth. I should lie, tell him anything, but the thought of lying to Stefan just felt outright wrong. I’d never lied to him and didn’t want to start now. “I...”

“Never mind,” Stefan bowed his head, releasing me from his penetrating stare. “You should leave. I’ll need your key.”

I looked down at the key in my hand. Just a key, but it felt as though it should mean something more, like I was letting the last piece of him go. “Stefan—”

“Nothing you can say will change anything that happened, so don’t waste your breath.”

My throat tightened. How had things gotten so bad between us? “I was going to say, I’m pleased to see you’re okay...”

He shoved away from the door and, within a few strides, stood in front of me. He plucked the key from my hand and met my eyes. “I’m not okay, Muse.” His hand closed into a fist. “Don’t tell the Institute you’ve seen me.”

“I wouldn’t—”

He turned and strode out the room, leaving me staring at the empty doorway. I shivered as a thread of cold air unraveled around me. I hadn’t seen him for two months, I hadn’t even known if he was alive, and that was our reunion conversation? Like hell, it was.

I jogged after him, anger flaring heat through my veins. “Hey.” He stopped, boots scuffing the dusty floor, but he didn’t turn. My breath misted, a reminder of the volatile nature of his element. It hadn’t always been that way. “I don’t deserve this.” Was that a tremor in my voice? So much for conviction.

His shoulders tensed. I found myself readying for an attack by spilling a little heat into my fingers. The temperature in the workshop plummeted. The air I breathed tingled through my clenched teeth and burned my lungs.

He turned his head, but didn’t look at me. It was more of a cursory acknowledgement. He hesitated, about to speak. Whatever he had on the tip of his tongue, he let it rest there and walked away for the second time.

“Stefan, wait...” I followed and stepped out onto the narrow backstreet, shielding my eyes from the sun’s glare. A late 60’s style Dodge Charger had been parked outside the workshop, leaving just enough room for cars to pass behind it. It had a glossy new coat. “Are you leaving for good?”

He tugged open the driver’s door. I caught a glimpse of black leather seats with red piping before he got inside and slammed the door behind him. I wanted to yank that door open and yell at him to demand he listen to me, just for a few seconds, just long enough to make him understand why I’d done the things I had. But I didn’t move. We would fight. It was clear that nothing I could say would end well.

He turned the engine over, and the throaty V8 grumbled to life. He was leaving. I might never see him again, and yet I didn’t have it in me to stop him. Maybe because he was right. I shouldn’t have brought Akil back. Never mind that I had to to free Stefan. I shouldn’t have pumped Stefan full of a drug that inhibited his demon (also done to protect him). I should have stopped my owner from killing Stefan’s sister (as though I hadn’t tried).

The car growled as he turned it around at the end of the dead-end street then cruised back to where I stood. He opened his door and climbed out enough to peer over the roof at me, expression harsh, eyes cold. “I’m sorry we met, Muse. Don’t come looking for me. It’s not safe.”

I’m sorry we met...
I tried not to reveal the depth his words cut through me and shrugged a regret-laden shoulder. “Fine.” Did he hate me that much? An emotional knot tightened my throat. I clamped my mouth closed, pinching my quivering lip between my teeth.

He waited, perhaps expecting more of a fight. He was right. No words could change the past. He glanced away, looking toward the main street, the exit, his way out. The time for redemption slipped past, and he ducked back inside the car. Had he glanced at me, I might have found the courage to say something to stop him, but he hadn’t glanced back. He didn’t even say goodbye.

He gunned the engine and spun the rear tires on the Dodge before it hooked and lunged away from the workshop, away from me. At the end of the street, the tail lights blinked red, and the engine roared once more before he peeled the car into traffic and disappeared out of sight.

I trembled and blinked back brimming tears. Screw him. I didn’t need him. I didn’t need anyone. It wasn’t as though I cared about him or regularly dreamed about the cooling touch of his element easing through the blazing heat of mine. I certainly didn’t want to remember how it felt to have his protective embrace pulling me close or how my name tumbled breathlessly from his lips when we lost ourselves in one another.

With a snarl, I turned and slammed a fist into the workshop door. Pain lanced up my arm. I hissed and spat my anger until most of it had fizzled away, leaving me nursing bruised knuckles as I trudged back to my car.