Drowning In The Dark: #4 The Veil Series (17 page)

I turned my head away, stepped back, and met his gaze. “Akil, I don’t understand this either, but I do know one thing. Whatever you think you feel for me, whatever I might feel for you, it can never amount to anything. I will never trust you. Do you understand that? What we have, it’s messy and destructive. Maybe it’s demon. It certainly isn’t healthy. In all of those feelings you talk about, you must sense the truth?”

He blinked, and the smile died. “I know the truth better than you, dear Muse. I am inside you.” He settled a warm hand over my chest. “You love him. Stefan.” Fire flared in his eyes.

“Ahkeel…” I rolled his old name on my tongue, tasting the history it carried. “Don’t tell me who I love. I owe you more than I could ever repay. You saved me time and time again. But one day, I will be free.” I hesitated just a little, but I wouldn’t hide from the truth. “To be free, I can’t be with you.”

He pulled his hand back. “Go back to Boston. Face your future. I will be there when you need me.” He turned his back on me and strode to the windows.

I left with the goodbye burning unspoken on my lips.

T
he electric tension
sizzling between Stefan and me on the ride out to Blackstone vanished before we even began the journey back. Quiet hung over us like a thundercloud, but I let it linger, my thoughts bogged down by impending expectations and Akil’s disturbing admission. Whatever happened, whether Val’s half bloods came or not, the princes would, and I needed to get my head in the game. Besides Stefan, I was one of the most potent weapons on this side of the veil. With Akil’s constant touch glowing inside me, I had a chance at wielding the power of two worlds. It terrified me. Ryder would tell me I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t afraid. But it was my humanity I was afraid of. Demons keep it simple. They want; they act. The part of me that was demon had no problem with the nightmare I was walking into. But humanity, by its very nature, throws a wrench in the works. I doubted my abilities, feared my potential, and secretly anticipated the rush. Being human was a half blood’s greatest strength and greatest weakness.

Rain patted the windshield as we returned to the quiet streets of Boston. Dusk was thirty minutes out, but beneath the blanket of clouds, it might as well have been night. The wipers sloshed, and the empty streets glistened beneath streetlights. I shivered, not cold but disturbed.

“Something’s wrong,” Stefan said quietly, leaning forward to peer through the rain-smeared windshield.

I felt it too. The air had thickened, darkened, as though a photographic filter had absorbed what little natural light there was. My skin prickled, human senses spiking.

“Call Ryder.”

Stefan redialed my cellphone. In the heavy quiet, I heard it ring, and stamped on the gas pedal. No way was I losing Ryder. In minutes, we swung into the dead-end street. Outside Ryder’s place stood something both beautiful and terrifying. Gossamer dragonfly wings branched out from behind a willowy phantom. She hovered a few feet above the road, like an apparition, barely there at all. Half a dozen bodies lay still around her. I couldn’t tell if any were Ryder.

Stefan and I climbed from the car. Slippery air slid across my tongue and down my throat, thick and sweet. Netherworld air. I mentally probed for the veil as my feet carried me toward the ghostly demon. The barrier between worlds rippled, tissue paper thin. It would tear at any moment. Like the demon, the veil was hardly there at all.

“Air demon,” Stefan said, voice flat. He pulled the cold from around us. “She’ll try to suffocate your fire.”

Air. Just great. My track record when it came to dealing with air demons included Damien, and he’d regularly wrenched the air from my lungs and doused my flames.

“Leave her to me. Find Ryder.” He flicked his wrist, producing an icy short sword that very quickly doubled in size and sharpened into a razor-edged scimitar.

A ripple of iridescent light cascaded through the air demon, and her amethyst eyes warmed with recognition. A half blood. “Stefan she’s—”

“I know.” He broke off from my side, passing his old workshop. The walls and sidewalk frosted in his wake. “I don’t suppose you wanna talk this through?” He curled humor through his words. “Maybe that half human part of you is curious? You ever tried ice cream?”

Her delicate laughter tinkled like the sound of diamonds poured over glass, feminine, yet sharp, more demon than human. Her eyes glowed. Her skin blurred, shifted, sailed away like fog, and then coalesced into her female form once more.

“You are too late. We have freed him.” Whispers, that’s all she sounded like, whispers against skin, promises forgotten. A slither of fear stoked my doubts, and my fire surged in response. Her face turned to me, and then she was gone. Just like that. Vanished in a blink. I searched the street, the rooflines of the industrial units, the shadows between empty warehouses, but couldn’t see any disturbance in the air.

Stefan whirled, raising the ice blade, slicing it through the cloud of mist that formed behind him. Her laughter echoed. She was intangible, and there was nothing for him to hit. He stumbled back, ice daggers glinting as they sparkled into existence around him, but with no target, they were useless. She hovered, ghostlike, too close in front of him. He reeled, but as her hands thrust out, into him, he snapped to an abrupt halt and choked.

Ryder would have to wait. I snapped my demon to attention, spilling fire through my veins, and sent my element out, coiling it through and around her ghostly form. She sizzled and snapped her head around, angling her wraithlike body toward me. Stefan dropped to his knees, gasping, and she rushed me. Cool, electric air gushed over me, the blast so dry and abrasive that it extinguished my fire as surely as a puff of breath might smother a candle flame. I knew this was coming. Damien had taught me how, without air, my fire was nothing. But what our ghost friend had failed to realize was that I was no newbie half blood, and Akil’s fire in my belly was eternal. I spun, spread my torn wing, and reignited the inferno from inside. This time, I sent it out with hunger behind it. Feed the fire oxygen, and it thrives. I felt the moment the flames blistered her wispy flesh and heard her screams. More solid with every passing second, she reached for the veil, and would have called the netherworld air to her had Stefan not plunged a dagger through her back. She fell into his arms, solid, naked, and bleeding. I got a look at her terrified eyes, and heard old words on her lips.

“I’m sorry.” Stefan lowered her to the ground. Her lovely eyes shone with tears. She was like us: human inside. Had she dreamed of freedom too?

There were no demon doctors here. No EMTs. Jerry was probably still playing poker with Akil. She would die on this drab backstreet, and nobody would mourn her.
Half bloods don’t get happy endings.

Shaking my demon off, I moved up behind Stefan and rested my hand on his shoulder, careful not to snatch it back as the cold crawled up my arm. “Leave her. We don’t have time…” For what, exactly? Goodbyes?

He stood and strode ahead of me. Following, I briefly checked the faces of the other fallen bodies in the street. Militia. No enforcers, at least none I recognized. I couldn’t lose Ryder. He was the only real friend I had. What would I tell Jenna? What about his daughter? His ex-wife? How would I tell them?

“He’ll be okay,” Stefan said, as though reading my thoughts. He jogged ahead and into Ryder’s place. Ryder’s traps had sprung. Lesser demon bodies lay sprawled about the hall. “Ryder?” Stefan called. “Man, you here?”

The door to the basement gun range hung ajar.

“Wait.” I sent out my element. “Val is down there, and he has power.” I lowered my voice. “Not much, but it’s there.” He could have burned the drug from his veins as I’d done. He’d had time. Damn fire elementals.

Stefan hesitated in the doorway. “A trap.”

I nodded. “Yeah, maybe.”

The smart thing to do would be to walk away. But neither of us would. What if Ryder was still alive down there? We couldn’t leave him.

“I’ll go.” I brushed past Stefan, but he caught my arm and pulled me up short. “My brother can’t hurt me. Asmodeus wants me alive.”

“Muse, one touch of his wings…”

“I’ve got this.” He didn’t want me to go. It was in the stubborn line of his lips and his furrowed brow. “It’s time I faced him.”

“There’s no way I’m staying up here. I’ll be right behind you.”

We descended the narrow stairs into the bright, artificial light of Ryder’s gun range. Val stood against the opposite wall, wings spread behind him. Sprawled face down at his feet was Ryder. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but he was bleeding. His shirt clung wet and dark against his back. Rage scalded my flesh. I couldn’t have stopped the change to demon even if I’d wanted to. Black skin smoldering, I gave my wing a flick and stared into my brother’s molten silver eyes. “Hello, brother.” Pure demon, my voice bubbled and snarled.

The corner of his thin lips ticked up a fraction, and he dipped his chin. “He will live unless you defy me.”

“What happened?” I circled around, moving close while giving Stefan access from the stairs. The low ceiling and narrow space barely contained the three of us. Chaos mingled and snapped in the air, stirred up by our crowding elements.

“Revenge blinds humans. He knew it would be unwise to torment me. Still, he persisted. He feels for his mate, the enforcer female. I told him in exquisite detail how I’d entered her, ruined her fragile mind until she lay broken beneath me.”

His words slid off my cool demon thoughts. “You’re weak.”

“My strength returns with each passing moment.” His wings shifted with a sigh of velvet on velvet, and I shivered.

“Your half bloods came.”

He smiled, and I really didn’t like how pleased he appeared to be. “Come back with me. Stand beside our father. Become that which you are destined to be.”

Moving closer to my brother, I inched around the weapons table. “Destruction?” Behind my back, I scooped up the Desert Eagle. The grip smoldered beneath my touch. Val’s eyes stayed trained on mine. “Tell me what you saw in my flesh.”

“Hellfire raining from the skies. Buildings burning. Humans turned to ash, captured in a firestorm of your making.” Val bowed his head as I stopped before him, close enough to stand on my toes and kiss him. “Your fury is a wondrous thing. Alive and hungry. If it were not for Wrath, I am sure you would be eligible for such a title.” Stefan’s presence—cold and immobile—shored me up from behind. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken. It was enough that he was there.

“I need only one title.” I heard Ryder’s ragged breathing. He was alive, but for how much longer? “What’s to stop me from destroying you, my father, and every beast in the netherworld? How do you know that’s not what you’re seeing?”

“The netherworld is your home.”

“No.” I flicked the safety off. “That’s the problem with demons. You believe in only one thing. Yourselves.” I brought the gun around, thrust it up under my brother’s chin, and pulled the trigger. I hadn’t expected it to work. Neither had Val. I knew Ryder had shells etched with anti-elemental symbols, but Val was immortal, the first-born of Asmodeus. I’d expected the bullet to sail through him, but it wasn’t nearly that clean. I fired, the gun kicked back, and Val’s head jerked. Half his beautiful face and skull blasted outward, painting the wall behind with brain matter, blood, and bone. This wasn’t the neat little hole Ryder had shot through my brother’s forehead in Jenna’s apartment. The .50cal round obliterated my brother’s face. His body dropped to his knees then slumped back, a dead weight of flesh and bone.

Stefan shouted at me, barking orders, but the gun blast still rang inside my skull, and the shock of seeing my brother’s face practically tear off in front of me held me dumbstruck. Seconds ticked by, maybe more.

My brother’s element whirled around us, wild and incensed. I saw the gaping hole in his skull reforming. His skin stretched, his face distorting like a rubber mask.

Stefan grabbed me, recoiling as my fiery flesh singed his skin. “Dammit, Muse. He’s immortal! You just pissed him off. The longer you gawk, the less time we have to get outtah here.” He adjusted Ryder’s dead weight in a fireman’s lift over his shoulders. “Get moving. Ryder isn’t getting any lighter.”

We sprinted out of Ryder’s place and back to the car. Stefan shoved Ryder into the backseat, and I chose that moment to look back.

Val didn’t emerge through the door of Ryder’s house like any normal being. Hell, no. A tangible darkness spewed from the windows and doorway and swirled in the street before blasting apart to reveal the moon-pale skin of my brother and his vast midnight wings. His white hair whipped about his face while his skin marbled with white-hot veins of fire.

He thrust out a hand and lashed a tendril of fire around the car at Stefan. Stefan threw up a shield, turning demon, but he stumbled under the surge of heat.

“Hey!” I tossed the gun into the car—it wasn’t going to make any difference—opened my wing, making myself a target, and strode forward. “You want to play, brother?”

Val’s bright white eyes locked on me. He forgot Stefan and yawned wide, revealing a mouthful of curved teeth.

“Get out of here,” I snarled to Stefan. “Go.” His wide crystalline eyes told me he didn’t want to leave. ‘
I can do this… I’ll be okay.’
My attention snapped back to Val. His wings opened like ship’s sails, and he stalked forward. I registered distantly the growl of a car engine, but I trained my sights on my brother. “You think you can take the Mother of Destruction?”

He came closer still, his wings arching either side of me. “I don’t need to take you. I just need to keep you here, sweet sister.” My fire sputtered, fuelling his grin. “Can you not feel it?”

There was something. I’d noticed it as soon as we’d returned to Boston: the sweetness in the air, the heavy draw of it between my lips and across my tongue. I stumbled back, reaching out with my senses, exploring. The veil, wafer thin, and crumbling. Not dissolved, not yet. But close.

“It is too late. This city cannot be saved. The veil will fall in moments.” Val grinned.

“No, there must be a way to stop it.”

“This was always happening. You cannot stop the future.”

Pressure pushed at the back of my skull and fed down my neck. The headache from hell, literally. I tried to shake it off and focused instead on my brother. “I’m going to drain your fire, brother. If it doesn’t kill you, I’ll find another way while you’re spent and out cold at my feet.”

“Do it.” His wings came around like darkness closing in, and I sent out my fire to smother him, sink into his soul, and tear out the throbbing orb of power at his center. A splash of color above me snagged my attention. Val stilled and lifted his gaze. Washes of reds, greens, violets, mingled and spilled over in a waterfall of light. My element swelled, pushing beneath my blackened demon skin and spilling uncontrolled fire over my flesh. The pressure in my skull exploded in a white-hot blast of agony, ripping reality away. Distantly, I watched myself fall to my knees as an entire world’s worth of power poured into me. The veil fell. The netherworld flooded into the Boston backstreet. Lightening scored angry purple skies. The ground, black and burned, surged and heaved beneath my knees. Writhing brambles knotted and lashed around buildings and devoured the industrial units, Stefan’s old workshop, Ryder’s house. The hungry dark consumed it all. Blind to all but the elements, I closed my eyes. I still felt the power snarl and tangle around me, through me—all of the elements, not just fire. Earth, air, water, ice, and chaos. The part of me that was human shrank away from the onslaught, buried beneath the weight of two worlds. I hid inside, fled to the far corners of my mind, and curled myself into a tiny, insignificant thing. I knew the human part of me would not survive. Akil’s voice fluttered to me, a leaf tossed about inside the storm:
You are destruction. Become what you are.
I heard him hiss and felt him leave me, and then there was nothing but the howling storm with me at its center.