Devil May Care (13 page)

Akil pulled away first, a knowing smile sitting easily on his lips. “I can help you.”

“How?” I breathed, lightheaded. “I can feel him now. It’s awful. It’s like something’s eating me from inside. Akil, I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t let him do this to me. You have to believe me. I just...” Memories of Damien’s violation blurred in my eyes. “I was trying to stop him. I reached into him. It was all I could think of to do, but he caught me and pulled me under.” Anger, fear, disgust; the words used to describe the maelstrom of emotion spinning inside of me came easily, but they meant nothing.

Akil took my hands and nestled them against his chest. “I know you. There’s no way in this world or the other that you’d have let him inside, which means his control is tenuous. An infusion, or a soul-lock, it’s... a permanent connection, a spiritual agreement between two demons. To force it upon you weakens the bond considerably. But—” He leaned in, lips so close I could nip at them. I bit my lip and drew blood. He pulled back, just out of reach, and searched my face. His cinnamon and cloves scent filled my head. A warming sensation came over me as though I could curl up beside him, warm and comfortable. But not safe. Never safe.

“But,” he sighed, “I need you to help me.”

“Yes,” I breathed; thoughts broken and body numb.
Just take me away. Make it all end. I want to go home.

“I must return to Boston, but I’m prevented from doing so by Stefan.” I instantly pulled back. He tightened his grip on my hands. “When he brought me across the veil, he bled us both, tying us together. I can’t go back, and neither can he unless we go together. Once through, the blood-bond is broken.”

I licked my lips and shrank back. “I’ve seen him. He’s lost.”

“I know.” A glimmer of recognition briefly touched his eyes. “He’s dangerous and exponentially powerful. But you and me, Muse, together we can subdue him. Once we get him through the veil, I can release you from your bond with Damien.”

I frowned. “Why not release me now?” The sooner I had the touch of Damien out of me, the sooner I could concentrate on healing the ragged mess he’d left behind.

He arched an eyebrow. “I need leverage, Muse. Otherwise, there’s nothing to stop you reneging on our deal.” Blunt, but true. Any trust we’d once shared was long gone, burned to ash along with my misplaced love for him.

“Damien will follow us back to Boston. He’s already killed people there. He has a taste for it now.”

Akil planted a finger on my lips. Sizzling heat pooled beneath his fingertip. A nervous purr rumbled from the back of my throat. His eyes widened a fraction. “Once the infusion is undone, we will kill him. He’s nothing compared to you. He knows it. It’s why he bound you to him. He believes he’s trapped you.”

I wondered why Akil had never done the same. He’d had me wrapped around his finger for years. He could have infused me, and I’d never have known what it meant. What did it say about him, that he hadn’t?
No. Don’t go there. Don’t start thinking he’s not as bad as he could be. Don’t go there again.

“Wait. You want me to break you out of the netherworld?” Something was very wrong with this picture. “All of this is happening because of you. Once I get you out, there’s nothing to stop you from turning on me again. You’re stuck here now because you tried to kill me. I told Stefan to trap you. You wouldn’t have stopped. You killed Sam. Do you remember? I know what you think of me, all of me. You look at me now, and you see demon, but what about when we’re out, and I’m human again? That hasn’t changed. Have you? Or are you still a selfish, murdering bastard?”

He took a few moments to let my words sink in. Probably trying to come up with some bullshit about how he’d changed. When he met my gaze again, he said clearly, “I don’t have it in me to be sorry for my actions. An apology would be meaningless, but I regret the outcome. I regret how I hurt you. That was never my intention. I only ever wanted the best for you.”

The best for my demon, he meant. He regretted being trapped on this side of the veil, but he was right, he didn’t have it in him to be sorry for his actions. He was not human. His words were about as close to an apology as I was ever going to get. They sounded like the truth, but Akil had a way of bending the truth just short of a lie.

I shook my head and chewed on my lip. “I can’t trust you again.” Akil had issues with my human half: deep, terrifying, murderous issues.

“Then don’t trust me. I’m not asking for trust. We both want the same thing: to get Stefan back to Boston and Damien’s claws out of you.”

I wasn’t going to be able to get Stefan back on my own. The blood sacrifice had sealed them both on this side of the veil. Whatever happened, Akil was a part of the solution. “Okay.” I watched his eyes brighten. “But if you cross me again Akil, so help me, I’ll find a way to kill you this time.”

His eyes lit up at the prospect, as though he’d accepted a challenge I didn’t even know I’d issued. “I’d expect nothing less.” Only demons can get a cheap thrill from a death threat.

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you. You can distract my demon all you want with all that power and promise you exude, but my human half doesn’t forgive and forget as easily.”

He held out a hand. “I’m not looking for forgiveness.”

I studied his outstretched hand. Agreeing to work with Akil was like dancing with the devil. One wrong step, and I’d be half-blood mincemeat. I’d only been on the earth a few decades. He was an eternal being crafted from the soul of fire, pure elemental chaos. He could dress himself in a man-suit, walk like one, talk like one, but the thing inside him was all needs and wants. I’d forgotten that before. It wouldn’t happen again.

A searing gust of wind blasted us. I flinched and flung my wing up, shielding my face. Akil staggered back. Something lashed out at him. He raised his arm to bat it aside. A rattling length of chain coiled around his wrist. Damien’s element snagged a hook into my chest. I heard growls and the snapping of teeth and realized it came from me. My chest swelled, bone and flesh wrenched sideways as the metaphysical hook dug deeper.

The howling gale tore at my wing membrane. I peered through ragged tears at Akil. He leaned back, dragging the fist-sized links of chain with him, and began to change. His human mask peeled apart. The suit, shirt, and flesh unraveled. Mammon, the Prince of Greed, emerged. He curled vast coal-black wings around him. Embers danced through the veins of his wing membranes like crimson fireworks lighting up a night sky.

Damien had said Mammon was a Prince no more, but the demon revealing himself before my eyes might as well have been. His huge bulk towered over me. Power throbbed through every muscular inch of him. Sparks danced in rivulets beneath his skin. He hunkered down, broad shoulders heaved forward against the wind, and then he flung his wings open and launched himself skyward. The chain snapped. Twisted links pummeled the ground around me. Mammon was gone, but it wasn’t over.

The wind dropped as suddenly as it had arrived. I swung my gaze across the square at the approaching hordes of demons and found Damien. He reserved a snarl entirely for me, and despite the roaring cries from the demon-crowd, a thunderous rage rumbled up from my depths. He knew I’d lied. Either that, or he was just pissed I’d been talking with Akil. Either way, I was going to pay.

I sought a way out, but the once-quiet square had flooded with demons. Their malevolent stares slid over me, each one of them eagerly anticipating the battle to come. Lightning fractured the sky. A second later, thunder shook the ground. Where the hell was Mammon?

The demons formed a ring around Damien and me. Their caterwauling grated across my skin and dug claws into my skull. Gleeful baying stoked the fire in my belly, rousing my power. I cast a mental net outward and pulled every molecule of heat toward me. The demons jostled at the edges of my vision, sensing the energy. I marked a few fire demons in the crowd and plotted them on a mental map in case I needed to tap them for power.

Damien stalked forward. His scars rippled beneath the torchlight. “Obey me, half-blood whore.”

The flaming torches behind the throngs of demons flared higher, stoked by my summons. Chaos energies swelled. I could have flung insults back at him, but words were redundant. He would see the fire in my eyes and the twisted sneer on my lips. The rippling crowd bayed, hooted, and jeered. I could taste their lust for chaos as it spiraled in the air. My fingers tingled with the need to wrap them around Damien’s neck. The demon part of me embraced what would surely result in reckless devastation. I wanted it. Madness crooned in my ear.

Damien’s laughter rumbled like the thunder above. He threw his arms out and summoned his element in one huge intake of breath. The gale lashed my back, toppling me forward and snuffing out my flame. In horror, I looked at my arms. Delicate veins of fire sputtered. He was stealing the air my fire needed to breathe.

A jet of heat, flame, and molten energy rolled over Damien. I snapped my head up. Mammon funneled a blast of heat through his arms. His wings blazed brightly as he beat the air. I had a moment to think—yay! —when my lungs tried to leap out of my throat. No air! I gasped and slumped forward. Mammon’s flames spluttered. He tried to maintain his height above us, but he was failing.

Damien stood tall and proud, wings flung back, chest thrust out. A leering smile slashed across his face. His sharp teeth glinted. Coils of dust-filled air twisted around him. “Your fire is nothing without the air it breathes.”

Mammon stumbled to the ground and staggered back against the fountain. Chips of mortar crumbled beneath his claws. Could he lose against Damien? No, but he couldn’t kill him either. Not while Damien’s soul-lock poisoned me. Akil’s black fathomless eyes locked on mine for a heartbeat too long, and then he summoned an ethereal broadsword into his hand. I’d seen the sword twice before: a weapon crafted of elemental energy. It could only be wielded by the Princes. From the way the crowd of demons cowered like scolded dogs, I wondered if Akil had just revealed something they hadn’t expected.

Blue flame licked up the intangible blade. Mammon thrust the weapon toward Damien, but my owner spun a length of chain in the air, looping it around the blade and yanking it up so that he and Mammon collided in a clash of quivering muscle and thrashing wings. Mammon had the strength, the blade, the prestige, but Damien had help.

Just as I found I could breathe again, the demons—what felt like all of them—barreled into me. My back cracked against the fountain. Something vital inside my chest snapped. Intense pain rushed up my right side. My vision pulsed black for a moment. I yelped like a wounded animal, kicked out, and flung a thrashing demon back. He flailed his arms, about to fall, when his two leathery murder-in-their-eyes demon buddies righted him. They rushed me as one. A wave of rage broke over me. I roared. The sound of my own fury terrified me. It was alive, crawling into my bones and peering through my eyes. The fragments of my humanity were swept aside. I became wholly demon.

A fist cracked across my face. I ducked a second blow and snapped my teeth at the demon. He rammed a fist under my chin. My head jerked back. He fell on me; teeth and claws, biting, tearing. His jaws clamped around my neck. Another demon gripped the rise of my wing. Another clawed at my arm. Others fell on me. I kicked, thrashed, and snarled. More came. I caught glimpses of teeth, of red cat-like eyes, and felt trails of spittle and splatters of blood hiss against my flesh. They tore into me.

A superheated tsunami of energy clamored up from the depths of my soul. An elemental geyser rumbled through my core. Power bubbled and broiled, lashed and spat, as it wove its way through every cell in my body and tore through my pitiful attempt at control. The volcanic blast of energy crashed over my mortal restraints and detonated a shockwave so intense it vaporized the demons on top of me, and it didn’t stop there. I bucked, and the energy spilled forth, devouring all it encountered. It chewed up the earth, the fountain, the demon bodies and their elements, and churned the remains into a pyroclastic storm front.

When I finally came back to myself, body aching, bruised, and bloody, I sat at the epicenter of a bomb blast. Some of the nearby buildings had been reduced to rubble. Smoke drifted lazily from the debris. An inch thick layer of dust coated everything like dirty snow. The fountain was gone, as were the demons. All of them. Mammon? Damien?

An erotic lick of energy rode up the length of my spine. I gasped. Pleasure ebbed and flowed, arching me over, rolling me toward the edge of ecstasy and back again. I trembled, but not from fear. I liked it. The power. The loss of control. The result. I’d killed them. Blasted them to smithereens. Liquid laughter spilled from me. I looked up to see the veil torn. Crimson lights shivered and rippled around a wound in the very fabric of reality. I’d pulled the energy from the human world, but I had no memory of drawing from the veil.

I severed the link and rubbed ash from my eyes. The veil twitched and snapped closed, the lick of power dying with it. I’d lost control in a big way. I smiled and then cursed. “No, goddammit… I’m not my demon.”

I coughed, throat hoarse and lips cracked. The dust tasted metallic. Or was that blood in my mouth? I tried to sit up and swallowed a ragged cry as pain lanced up my right side.

When I saw Mammon wading through the ash to reach me, I almost didn’t believe it. He’d gained a tear in his wing, and a gray dusting of ash clung to his side where I assumed he’d been wounded, but otherwise he looked unharmed… and aroused. His onyx-black lips pulled back over fanged teeth in a leering grin. His midnight eyes had widened, and I could quite clearly see how his formidable body trembled. Holy hell, I’d made the Prince of Greed tremble.

He knelt beside me. Ash swirled around us like smoke. “Are you hurt?” His guttural voice resounded inside my skull, harsh and unforgiving.

I blinked, my eyes gritty. “I did this.” A question? A statement? I wasn’t sure.

He lifted his head and looked at the devastation. When he met my gaze again, I saw a glint of admiration there, and something more: unfiltered, raw need.