Devil May Care (15 page)

T
he bristling ice
-teeth at the mouth of the cave were as welcoming as the last time. I could have sent out a little elemental heat and melted the prickly barricade, but decided to try to keep the power to a minimum for now. I stepped awkwardly through the spikes and gingerly lifted my wing out of the way.

Inside the cave, the walls shivered beneath the caress of evening light. The cold crept beneath my skin and gnawed at my bones. I clenched my teeth to stop them from chattering. I couldn’t see Stefan or any sign of habitation. Within a few strides, the light died and the darkness fell in from all sides. Maybe he wasn’t here. But then where else would he go?

“I don’t want to fight you.” My words tumbled over one another in a drawn-out echo, then abruptly fell silent.

I straightened and flinched as my wing brushed against a bitter snag of ice. I lowered my right hand and summoned an orb of fire into my palm. Warm orange light spilled outward, licking over slick surfaces.

He sat in an alcove, head bowed, bright blue eyes drilling into me. His demon skin didn’t glitter as it had before, but he still rippled an incandescent blue. His face, virtually free of ice apart from a dusting around his jaw, was set in anger. His wings had gone, but that only meant he wasn’t fully charged and ready to attack with all of the elemental power at his disposal. I’d seen the wings shatter when Damien had tossed him against the rock face, but Stefan’s wings weren’t tangible like mine. I assumed they could be remolded.

Despite the snarl frozen on his lips, I took the lack of wings and toning down of his ice armor as a good sign. I tried to smile, but couldn’t get it to stick to my lips. “Do you remember me?”

He sprang out of that hollow and had me by the throat so quickly my vision spun. He pinned me back against the cave wall. Ice hissed and sizzled against my back. The urge to pool heat into my limbs nearly broke me, but I gulped it back and snuffed out the orb in my hand.

He leaned in so close I could see the rough shards of ice in the blue of his eyes. “I remember you.” He didn’t sound too happy about it.

I flinched as needles of ice tried to creep their way from his hand into my throat. Already sore from the jaws of the demon who had grabbed me around the neck, I really didn’t need more injuries to add to my collection. “Will you hear me out?”

He stepped back and shoved me toward the cave entrance. “Leave.”

I stumbled and flung my wing out, regaining my balance. “Do you remember the Hellhounds you saved me from?”

A snarl rippled across his lips.

“What about the time you killed a demon who tried to jump my face at Akil’s party? Do you remember that?” An uneasy chill spread through me. Behind him, his crystalline wings began to form; layers of ice stacking over one another, each building on the next until they butted up against the cave ceiling; razor-edged angel’s wings.

“Get out,” he sneered. “I will not warn you again.”

My breath formed clouds of mist as the temperature plummeted. My throat constricted. The air burned cold as I breathed it in. “Do you remember the Institute?” I rasped. He flinched, his memory likely snagging on a fragment of his past. “Our time together there. Just you and me... Stefan... do you remember us?” I did the most ridiculously dangerous thing I could do and shook my demon from my skin. I wouldn’t have long. Human flesh isn’t designed to be exposed to the elements of the netherworld, but all I needed were a few precious seconds for him to see me as he knew me. Not as a fire demon, but as Muse.

My demon skin slipped free and turned to dust at my feet. Vulnerable, pink human flesh prickled in the cold. I tried to appear impressive in all my vulnerable humanity, but the shivering dashed any chance of that. “It’s me,” I stuttered, surprised at the fluidic tone of my voice. “Just Muse.”

His cool gaze clinically assessed my naked body.

He could have killed me. I had nothing, no armor, no power. It would take precious seconds to call it all back to me, and in that time, he could fling a shard of ice at my heart, or my head, and I’d be dead.

His gaze drifted, memories likely bobbing to the surface of his thoughts, and then, when he focused again, he said softly, “Muse.”

“Yes.” I could have laughed, if my core body temperature hadn’t dropped to dangerous levels. “You know me. I’m here to help you. To take you home.” I couldn’t hold out any longer and welcomed the demon back into my flesh. Her warmth drew an audible sigh from my lips.

He frowned and glanced behind me through the mouth of the cave. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for you.” I chanced a step closer and froze as he pinned me rigid with his chilling glare. “Come with me. I can end this. I can get you home.”

“No you can’t.” He shook his head. “There’s only one way.”

I hadn’t expected to break through his armor of ice. The plan was to get him out in the open where Akil and I could overwhelm him, but he’d surprised me by recognizing me, and now I had to tell him the truth. Or lie.

“I found another way.” I tried to keep my expression hopeful. “Please. Come back to Boston with me. To Nica.”

Resignation softened the hardness around his eyes. He relaxed, cool marble-like muscles quivering with the sweet release of tension. His wings sagged, and his shoulders slouched. I stepped forward, thinking he might fall, but he reached for the cave wall and planted a hand there to steady himself. He whispered something so quietly that I moved closer again. His winter aura shivered over me. He brought his head up. Tears glistened in his eyes. I ached to touch him, to hold him, wrap my arms around him and tell him everything would be alright. But it wasn’t over. I had to get him out, and he had to face Akil.

Stefan’s lips quirked into a crooked smile. It warmed those arctic eyes. Relief flooded through me. He was alive in there. Stefan, the man, the mortal man, he still lived inside that icy armor. For six months I’d waited for this moment, fearing all the time that I’d be too late.

“You came for me...” he said.

I reached out a hand but withdrew a little as the heat flared against the bitterly cold air surrounding him. Fire and ice. Two opposing elements. Two ill-defined half-bloods. Energy simmered the air around him, rising off his smooth muscles in a haze. When we’d lain together, PC34 had locked my demon away. I’d been virtually human. Even then, his revering touch had awoken something bigger than the both of us, an elemental promise of danger mingling with delight. Now, with our demons riding high, the lure of chaos strung tight between us. It was forbidden. Fire and Ice. It was wrong, but damn it felt so right.

“Will you come with me?” I asked, between breaths.

He grinned and straightened, taking a breath and inhaling the energy broiling around us. “You took your sweet time, Muse.”

The human part of me did a little mental leap for joy as I recognized the dry humor I’d missed so much. “Let’s go.”

Everything was going well. Stefan was beside me. We were going home. That was until we emerged beyond the cave mouth and found Akil waiting on the plateau.

I drew breath to explain, but it was already too late. Stefan’s element surged outward, spilling over me and flooding the surface of the plateau. The cold sucked the warmth out of my flesh, wrenching a gasp from my lips. Akil’s human form burst apart in an explosion of heat. Mammon stretched his wings, took to the air, and roared.

Stefan’s physical form bristled with ice. His wings jolted outward, bolstering his size. Each filament splayed apart, their tips glinting sharply beneath the writhing light. His bellow shook the ground at our feet. He summoned a carpet of ice from the plateau and heaved it toward Akil. Swords of ice swept upward, waves frozen as they crested, driving Mammon back.

I took one look at Stefan behind his frost armor and knew he wouldn’t listen, no matter what excuses I had. There was murder in his eyes.

Mammon’s vast wings beat the air. Wildfire raced across their membranes and embraced his colossal form. I knew, without doubt, Stefan would try to kill him, and if Stefan drew from the veil, he would likely succeed. I itched to intervene, but the massacre at the fountain stalled the battle urge. What if I lost control again? I’d kill Stefan and wouldn’t even know I’d done it, until it was too late.

They raged at one another in a breathtaking display of fire and ice. Stefan stood behind rapidly melting barriers, launching a barrage of shards at Mammon. He moved with blistering accuracy. Many of the ice daggers simply drowned in Mammon’s retaliating blasts of heat, but Mammon couldn’t target them all. Those that got through peppered holes in Mammon’s wings. He lost height.

I watched helplessly from the sidelines. Pulse racing. Mammon’s draw of power tugged at the element coiled inside me. Stefan’s ice encrusted home didn’t lend itself well to reservoirs of heat. Mammon couldn’t draw from the veil. Only half-bloods have that talent. If he didn’t find a source of heat, he wouldn’t last long.

Stefan, on the other hand, could draw from the wintery mountain slopes. He had already shored up his defenses with enough ice to put up a fight that would deter most demons. This was his battleground, and he had the advantage.

I had hoped Stefan would hold back, knowing he had to return with Akil if he was ever going to escape the netherworld, but he clearly wasn’t thinking ahead. Or maybe, in his mind, that solution wasn’t one he could live with. I had to do something. They needed each other alive.

A bolt of ice slammed into Mammon’s shoulder. He grunted and dropped to the ground in a crouch. He pulled his tattered wings in close. Flames broiled over the surface of his flesh. His outline blurred inside a cocoon of fire. Stefan backed up, but he wasn’t giving in. He opened his arms, palms up and the ice slumbering around us reared up. The ground trembled. The air tightened, thinned, and the cold took a bite out of us. My veil of heat contracted.

The wind picked up. Cold air rushed down from the slopes, carrying with it a blast of snow. The white-out rolled over me. I leaned into the blast. Mammon’s fading orange glow flared ahead, but his fire was dying. His element spat and hissed its displeasure, as did mine. He had more in him, but he continued to hold back. He couldn’t risk hurting Stefan.

I squeezed my eyes closed and bowed my head into the wind. Snow pummeled me from all sides. The wind dashed ice and snow against my skin. The storm roared like a living thing. It howled and groaned, rumbled its fury. I’d known Stefan was a force to be reckoned with, but I’d never witnessed it.

I released the hold on my element, letting it spill over me. Immediately, my skin blazed and rippled with heat, creating a haze through which the snow couldn’t penetrate. I burned like a beacon of light among the impenetrable gray. Mammon’s ethereal reach lashed out of the storm and threaded through me. I steadied myself, pulling back so I didn’t fall to my knees. My summoned heat dragged through my muscles, out of my body, into Mammon.

I turned my head away as a fresh blast of heat gobbled up the storm from the inside. The wind dissipated, leaving only a few lazy flakes twirling through the air. Lifting my gaze, I saw Mammon standing over Stefan. He had summoned the elemental sword and pressed the tip against Stefan’s chest. Stefan lay sprawled on his back, ice armor melting, limp wings pinned beneath him. Their gazes locked, and Mammon lifted the sword.

“Akil!” I sprang off my back foot, heart leaping into my throat.

Mammon slid his black eyes to me. Stefan flung his head back and fixed his arctic eyes on the waves of energy rippling in the sky. The veil tore open like a bolt of lightning searing across the sky, and raw elemental energy gushed through the wound between realms.

I stumbled as my element surged, rearing up, ravenous and wild.

Stefan thrust out his hand. A lance of ice followed the movement and plunged through Mammon’s chest. Mammon jerked back, muscles shivering. Impaled, he looked down, his demon expression difficult to fathom, but the flicker of fear in those dark eyes was undeniable. A funnel of energy spiraled from above, rode over Stefan’s body, and danced down the lance. Ice cracked, jumped, and twisted as it wrapped around Mammon. With a snarl, Mammon swung the sword down and shattered the lance. Free of Stefan’s weapon, Mammon stamped back. The wound in his chest glistened with ice, and as I skidded to a halt beside them, delicate spider webs of ice laced across Mammon’s chest.

Mammon wavered and dropped to a knee, the impact cracking the ice beneath him. He should have been aglow with fire, but instead the embers dancing in his veins gradually fizzled to nothing. The elemental sword fell from his grip and vanished before it hit the ground. The veil still gaped above us. Stefan lay back, breathless and trembling. Propped up on his elbows, he watched Mammon. His smile twisted into a sneer. A thin threadlike string of power lashed between them. Energy danced down the line, feeding the ice spreading across Mammon’s dark flesh.

“Stefan, stop.” I begged, caught between them.

Mammon fell forward onto shivering arms. His wings slumped. Ice groped where his wing-tips rested against the ground. More ice climbed up his legs. It snagged and pulled at him. Nothing of his fire remained. I couldn’t feel the pull of his element, just the cold.

“Stefan.” I stood in Stefan’s line of sight. The thread of power wove through the air beside me. “Stop”. He wasn’t listening. He didn’t even see me. Those eyes gleamed like diamonds, cold, hard...empty. I moved closer, standing over him. The ice would kill Mammon. Without Akil, I couldn’t be free of Damien. Without Akil, Stefan would never be able to return to Boston. “Don’t hurt him, Stefan.” He looked right through me.

I couldn’t return to Boston without Stefan. I’d promised Nica I’d get him home. I owed it to her. I owed Stefan. But this demon wasn’t Stefan. Stefan was better than this, better than me, better than the Institute. I swallowed a brittle knot of grief in my throat and poured all of my fear into one single word. “Please.”

A shadow passed over his face. His bright eyes pinched closed. When he opened them again, the dazzling glow melted away. But it wasn’t relief I saw on Stefan’s face. I couldn’t be sure what it was. Disgust? Horror? He looked at me, saw me, but something I’d said or done had wounded him. More than that, it had crushed him.