Darkest Before Dawn (6 page)

I
shouldn’t have taken
Dawn to the mall. I doubted my decision the entire way there, while checking the skies for hunters and the rear view mirrors for Institute cars. Yes, it was idiotic, but I understood what it was like to be caged. Returning to Blackstone roused memories of my rebirth as a gangly teenage girl. Akil had opened my eyes to the world. I wanted to do the same for Dawn, even if that meant putting her in danger. Freedom is only mourned by those who no longer have it. Those who’ve never known it don’t have that luxury. She didn’t know what she was missing, but I did, and I wasn’t keeping it from her for another second.

These were the first days of the rest of her life. Later, I would teach her how to draw from the veil in order to protect herself. She didn’t yet have the maturity to handle that much power, but I could show her what it meant to be a half blood. I would teach her how to look out for herself, and maybe, if we were lucky, we’d have some fun.

Salem was a sprawling town with suburban-style residential areas. Dominated by Canobie Lake, it also boasted one of the largest malls in New Hampshire, and that’s where we were headed. Parking up at Rockingham Park Mall, I stashed my gun in the glove box, noticing Ryder’s phone inside. A text message blinked onscreen. From Stefan.

Answer your phone

As Dawn’s wide eyes drank in the sight of the mall, I checked the calls list and found four missed calls from Stefan and one voicemail. I sat back in the driver’s seat and humphed a disgruntled noise. Stefan had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with me, and the cellphone was Ryder’s. I shouldn’t even be poking around his messages... Although he had given me the phone, so technically it wasn’t snooping. Right?

I tucked the phone into my pocket and gave Dawn a bright smile. “C’mon, let’s shop.”

W
e didn’t have
much cash. Ryder had given me enough to survive for a few days, but I was fast eating through that. Once it was gone, bankcards were out of the question. I’d worry about it then. Right now, I had to teach a little girl about retail therapy. Hell knew she could do with the distraction. My first stop had been a new set of clothes for me: jeans and a lightweight V-neck white wool sweater. I’d hastily changed into both, stuffing my blood-splattered clothes back into the bag. I’d also grabbed a charger for Ryder’s cell. The pre-weekend crowd had swelled, and I didn’t fancy explaining to security why I looked like I’d been in a fight with a mincer. After securing Dawn a Hello Kitty dress more befitting a nine-year-old girl, complete with shoes that fit, we roamed the mall. For fifteen minutes, Dawn stuck to my side, wide eyes darting back and forth, absorbing the crisp white lines, glistening floors, and shining glass. When we arrived at the central staircase, her mouth fell open. Sunlight streamed in through the domed glass ceiling. Her eyes traced the graceful fall of the stairs until the steps flared at our feet like the train of a wedding dress.

“It’s a palace.” Without taking her eyes off the stairs, she reached up and took my hand. I closed my fingers around hers and felt the feather light touch of a smile lighten my lips. I’d done the right thing in bringing her here. Never mind the risk, it was worth it just to see the wonderment on her face. She said little as we walked, but her eyes glistened like jewels when we passed stores and joined streams of people.

Grande latte in one hand, half a dozen bags in the other, I waited in line to pay for the Krispy Kreme donuts I’d just spent the last five minutes convincing Dawn to try. She still stayed close, but occasionally, she’d break away and dash over to something that had caught her eye.

The tills chimed, and the chatter of the crowd ebbed and flowed around me. My thoughts wandered. Now that Dawn and I could relax, I needed a plan. The Institute suspected I was up to something, but they didn’t know about Dawn. That was good. If she stayed at Blackstone, she’d be safe enough. I couldn’t stay with her though. I might be able to wring another weeks’ vacation out of Adam, citing post-traumatic stress from the garden incident. He’d buy it with suspicion, but he didn’t have a choice. That gave me two weeks to figure out why the demons wanted Dawn and how I was going to shake them off our tails. The hunters had been the first wave, but the two demons that attacked me in traffic were smarter. They’d deliberately targeted me. Whoever wanted her had upped their game.

What was so important about Dawn? Half bloods were generally considered worthless abominations. Those not killed at birth were sold to demons further down the pecking order as playthings, curiosities. Only a handful of demons knew the truth about half bloods. Akil was one. A shard of pain twisted in my chest. Damien had been another, but he’d only figured it out with help. Carol-Anne may have known, but she was dead, so I could scratch her off the list of suspects.

The line to pay inched forward. I shuffled my bags around and took a generous sip of latte.

Stefan knew about half bloods, and of course the Institute were the foremost authority on half bloods this side of the veil. They’d studied Stefan like a lab-rat until he’d been old enough and strong enough to tell them where to shove their experiments. But the Institute didn’t employ demons, and neither did Stefan.

The only place I could think I might discover something was Carol-Anne’s club, The Voodoo Lounge. The club sat at the heart of Boston’s demon population. She must have had acquaintances that could tell me something about Dawn or about why Carol-Anne had visited Akil. I’d met her demon doctor, Jerry a few months before when he’d tried to help me with some control issues. He’d seemed like a fairly reasonable guy, and with Carol-Anne gone, there would be a demon reshuffle in the hierarchy of that neighborhood.

I stepped up to the cashier’s desk, digging my hand into my pocket for the cash to pay. A creeping sense of discomfort peeled across my skin, raising the fine hairs on my arms and sprinkling shivers down the nape of my neck. I froze and slowly turned my head. The line behind me consisted of bored shoppers. Someone rattled off a one sided conversation into a phone. A woman had hold of her two toddlers and was laying down the parental law. A man slouched near the back of the line, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and peeking ahead, eager to get his shopping done.

I scanned further back, along the streams of shoppers flowing back and forth through the store.

“Ma’am?”

“Yeah.” I dug out the cash and handed it over. What the shoppers behind me couldn’t see was how I eased an elemental touch outward, reaching my senses beyond the apparent in search of the demon that had tripped my internal alarms.

Dawn twitched and swung her head around. I shook my head as she looked as though she might ask me why I’d flicked the demon switch.

Donuts paid for, I scooped up the bag and coffee and ushered Dawn from the store into the mall fairway. I kept walking, eyes scanning the crowd. The demon was here somewhere, and it was powerful. Shivers swept through me, adrenalin aiding my fight or flight response. I could feel its gaze on me, sense its penetrative touch, and a sickening deadweight of dread balled in my stomach. I recognized the touch of power. Fear rolled over me and scattered butterflies low in my stomach.

Dawn’s nervous gaze checked mine every few steps. I mustered a smile, but she wasn’t buying it.

I shoved by shoppers and wove between loitering groups, trying not to break into a run. A few people muttered in my wake. Hot coffee splashed over my hand, but I barely noticed. My heart thumped in my chest, and my breaths came fast.
Run.
I wanted to. But if the demon I sensed was who I thought it was, then running wasn’t going to do a damned thing to save us.

“Muse?”

“It’s okay. It’s probably nothing.” She would feel the touch too, but she might not recognize it as powerful.

I found the food court and planted Dawn at a MacDonald’s table close to the wall. I dropped into the chair opposite her, leaned back, and scanned the faces around me. Demons stalk. In a crowd like this one, they could be spotted simply by the way they moved. Seventy percent of human communication is non-verbal. We’re constantly in motion. Demons don’t understand the intricacies of being human, mostly because they don’t spend long enough in their human-suits to care.

I watched the crowd for any sign of someone standing perfectly still or a figure walking toward me, chin down, eyes up, but I couldn’t place any demon, and within five minutes, the sickening fear and crawling sensation passed.

I slumped in the chair and closed my eyes. When I reached for my lukewarm coffee, my hand shook.

I’d faced Hellhounds. I’d drained a Prince of Hell of his element. I’d summoned and controlled enough raw elemental energy to level a city. And I regularly tracked demons and bumped them back across the veil, or worse, but very little struck fear into my soul like my brother, Valenti.

“Is it gone?” Dawn asked.

I nodded and eyed her over my coffee. Her flushed cheeks and light fluttering breaths suggested fear, but the look in her eyes didn’t. When she smiled, it wasn’t the nervous flitter of a smile I’d seen from her before, but a pearly-white grin. There was almost a predatory glean to her expression. She blinked and puffed out a sigh. “That was fun.”

Fun? I chuckled. Right. She obviously hadn’t met my brother. “We should get back to Blackstone.”

T
he drive
back to Blackstone was slow going. I threaded my way around various backstreets and roads to nowhere in an attempt to flush out any tails. It wasn’t likely to do me much good. Val didn’t drive. Such mortal means of transportation were beneath him.

How had he found me? It might not be Val, I told myself. Whoever that demon was, he may not even have been there for me. Maybe a demon lived in Salem and fancied a coffee or a new pair of shoes. It could have been a coincidence. Nobody could know I was in Salem. Although if anyone could sense me, it would be Val, as we had the same blood in our veins, courtesy of our father, Asmodeus.

Why would Val be here? Had it been Val? Why didn’t he show himself?
My brother didn’t lurk. He was too proud for that. Had it been Val, he’d have just walked right up to me and said whatever he had to say.
No, it couldn’t be him.

By the time we returned to Blackstone, I’d convinced myself the phantom demon hadn’t been my brother. That didn’t stop me from checking the tree line around the driveway and house as I emptied the groceries from the car.

At least inside we were relatively safe. Val couldn’t enter the home without an invitation, and even if he got inside, the hidden marks on the walls would prevent him from calling his power. On those terms, I could rest easy.

Dawn broke into a huge grin at the sight of the donuts. She plucked a pink ring donut free and took a generous bite. Her expression exploded with a sugar rush of glee.

“Good, huh? I told you.” Shrugging off my jacket, I placed Ryder’s cell on the countertop. The lure of the voicemail message called to me. I tapped my nails on the counter and chewed my lip.

Dawn sat at the breakfast table, chewing loudly, licking sugar from her fingers. “Can I have another donut?” she mumbled through a mouthful.

“Sure.”

“They are amazing. I’ve never eaten anything like this. Why are they round?” She continued in a breathless rush of words. “How are they made? They taste like chaos, don’t they? What’s the hole in the middle for?”

I fell quiet and let her talk. My gaze settled on Ryder’s cell. The last conversation I’d had with Stefan replayed in my mind. How had it come to that? Did he hate me? The parasite around my heart twisted. I winced.

Dawn lifted her gaze. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah...” I sighed. “I was thinking about a friend. He’s a half blood like us. He taught me what we really are.”

“Is he good?”

“Yes.” My smile fractured and crumbled away. “I think so.”

“Like Akil?”

“Oh, Akil isn’t good.” I poured some orange juice into a glass. “Y’know, you’re right to be wary of Akil. He’s a very complicated demon. He tried to hurt me once, but my friend, Stefan, saved me. Stefan... sacrificed a lot for me.”

“What happened?”

“He trapped Akil on the other side of the veil. Neither of them could get back.” I ran my fingers down the outside of the glass of juice and gathered up beads of condensation. “Time works differently there.” Dawn nodded. She understood. “Six months passed, but for him it was more like years, and... he’d changed.”

“I don’t like it there.”

“No, the netherworld is a harsh place to survive in, especially for us.” Stefan had spent the equivalent of two years fighting to survive. When he’d stepped through the veil, his control over his demon had been faultless. When he came back, his demon controlled him, and I suspected he liked it. There’s a certain freedom that comes when you release the demon. Reason, apprehension, doubts, they all fade away to nothing. It’s addictive, that freedom, and it’s dangerous. “As half bloods, we are responsible for a great deal of power. If we don’t control it, it controls us.”

Dawn plucked a donut free of the box and held it up, but her gaze wandered, and her eyes glazed over. “My owner wanted me to release my demon. She said the princes would be pleased.”

A jolt of alarm shot through me. “The princes?”
Plural? More than one?
What I knew of them told me they never worked together. Ever.

Dawn nodded and took a bite out of the donut, muffling her next words. “She said I had to keep up with the others. If I was good, I could play with others like me.”

“Others? Other half bloods?”

“I wasn’t good.” Dawn’s gaze dropped. “I’ve never met the others—only you, Muse.” She chomped the remainder of her donut and then with a grin asked if she could play with Missus Floppy.

I watched her run from the kitchen, in a hurry to get to her bunny. More half bloods. More princes. “Akil, you son-of-a-bitch, what the hell have you gotten me into?” In the absence of Akil’s answers, there was only one other person who could help with a half-blood problem, but Stefan had made it clear what he thought of me.

I scooped up Ryder’s cell from the countertop. I had to listen to it. Ryder had given me the phone. Maybe Stefan had been trying to contact me? I dialed the voicemail. “
Ryder, hey man, where are you? The workshop is empty. Muse was there...”
Stefan paused. Was that a growl? When he continued, his voice had gained a jagged edge.
“I thought it would be easier. You were right. I can’t do this. I need... Just call me.”

I replayed the message. Definitely a growl. He still had the demon brogue, a deeply gruff accent from his time in the netherworld. It hadn’t been so apparent when I’d seen him at the workshop. He’d deliberately hidden it from me.

I lowered the cell and glared at it before scrolling through Ryder’s contacts, breezing past Ryder’s Spare—which I assumed would be the cell Ryder had on him—and hovered my thumb over Stefan’s number. I suspected I knew how this call was going to go. It would be awkward, stilted, and painful. He’d tell me to get lost. He clearly didn’t want anything to do with me. But I couldn’t give up on him. We needed to talk. There was a time I’d have told him anything, and although it had been brief, our time together had meant something. He’d said the same, right before accusing me of plotting with Akil. Surely, if I could just get him to listen... If we could get past all the horror, which had somehow drowned us both…

My thumb twitched over the call button. He’d cleaned out the workshop. He’d told me not to contact him.
I’m sorry we met
. I clenched my jaw and ground my teeth. He believed I was his enemy.

I jabbed Stefan’s number. The cell rang twice.

“Ryder, get your ass back here—”

“Stefan.”

A brittle silence snapped down the line. For a second, I thought he’d hung up.

“Muse.” He said my name slowly, as though savoring it. I heard humor in his voice and something else, something rich and heady like hunger. I shivered and heard his audible intake of breath. “Why do you have Ryder’s cell?” The hunger had gone. His voice was flat. Cold. Controlled.

“We need to talk.”

“I’ve said everything I need to say.”

“Then shut up, and let me talk.” I tapped my nails on the counter. “I just—”

“Where’s Ryder?”

“At the Institute probably.”

Stefan muttered a curse. “Why do you have his cell?”

“He helped me ditch the Institute.”

“Why do you need to ditch them?”

“Can we talk?”

“What are we doing now?”

“This isn’t talking,” I grumbled. “It’s an interrogation.”

“What do you think is going to happen, Muse? That you’re going to explain what you did and everything will go back to the way it was before?” The demon slur crept into his words, deepening his voice with a touch of power. “Nothing you can say will change the past. If you need someone to talk to, why don’t you run back to Akil? I’m sure he’ll welcome you with open arms.”

“Stefan.” I swallowed back the urge to scream at him. “I get that you’re grieving, okay. But this isn’t my fault.”

He barked a laugh. “You’re joking, right?”

I curled my fingers into my palm and clenched my hand into a fist. “What happened to us? I thought...” I drew in a deep breath. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Then we’re even. Get over it. Don’t call me again.”

“Stefan, wait. Can we meet? Please.”

He fell quiet. I listened hard. Had he hung up?

“You know where I am. You’ve always known.” He ended the call.

I threw the phone onto the counter and planted my hands either side of it. Goosebumps sprinkled up my arms. A trickle of power bloomed inside me, responding to the sudden chill in the air.

Of course I knew where he was. I’d always suspected he’d be at the lake house, tucked away in the White Mountains a few hours drive north of Boston. I should have gone to him. I told myself I’d give him time. It had been two months. But time wasn’t going to change anything. I knew that now. The longer this went on, the further apart we’d drift.

I straightened and glanced down the hall. Dawn was chatting to her bunny somewhere. I could hear her delicate, one-sided conversation.

I didn’t want her to see how jaded Stefan was. She needed time away from demons to start building a life. I wasn’t even sure Stefan would help her. For me, he wouldn’t. Ryder would turn her over to the Institute. He’d made that clear. Akil had abandoned her with me. I was her only chance at freedom, and I would have to help her alone. I needed more information. Carol-Anne was the key. Someone at her club must know about Dawn. Tomorrow, I was going back to Boston.