Riven (5 page)

I backed into the wall, dropped to the floor and pressed my palms tight over my ears. Ursula twisted the the clockwork, counted to three and tossed the grenade through the small window on the door, running for me. She had just reached my feet when the explosion rocked the hall. Chunks of destroyed concrete and torn metal flung around the room, dust spiraling like a inside-born storm from the bowels of the Dust Bowl.

Ursula wasted no time, rising to her feet and making for the gap in the wall the explosion had created. “I’m sorry for what I did to-” She paused, turning back for a split second. In that last look, I read more in her stare than I ever had. It spoke of fear, the kind that submerged you under ice water and told you to breathe. The words that tumbled off her lips seemed choked as she grabbed at the fabric near the base of her throat. “Tell Ari we’re even.”

CHAPTER TWO

BODY CRUMBLING

For what felt like forever, I stared at the gaping hole in my cell wall.

Like the beginning of a dramatic melody, my heartbeat picked up speed, turning from the soft pitter-patter to helicopter blades smashing against my ribcage. Sounds of explosions and screams, distant but strong, floated through the air in the mess of dust that lingered. Screams, both male and female, filled the silence between explosions, a mystical symphony of death and ferocious fight.

What did she mean, that her and Ari were even? How could she possibly know Ari, given her stance with the Queen? My head swirled, adrenaline rushing hard enough to make me lightheaded. Back pressed against a wall, I slid down, hugging my knees to my chest in a weak, minimal attempt to find comfort in this freaking mess.

Another explosion, this one much farther, gently upset the mess of rubble scattered to the floor. I wondered just how many grenades Ursula had stashed in her outfit. More importantly, I wondered if the Queen would kill her when she found out who she really was.

Something smacked against the outside of my cell, scraping rock making me flinch. For a moment, I figured it was probably a dead bird, until I heard the beeping. Fear and fire coiled in my stomach, flames instinctively sparking on my skin. I was a lighter, primed for igniting.

The left wall of the cell shattered, rubble flinging in every direction. Dust exploded into the room and clouded my view, but that didn't stop me from calling fire to my fingers, lighting up the room in a beaten blue hue.

"Easy Essallie," came a soft, gentle voice. A hand flung out from the cloud of dust, grabbing my wrist with strong, calloused fingers. Through the dust came the glimmer of something white, burning and pure.

I paused, the intensity of my fire dimming to a low glow. I knew those hands, remembered them well. It seemed forever ago those hands had guided me across an open floor, dancing while I lingered under the guise of Lilix.

"Ari," my voice broke, and I coughed. Speaking was like scraping an open wound against sandpaper, and adding vinegar for extra effect. "How did you find me?"

He stared at me. "You're kidding, right? This place doesn't exactly need directions."

Swallowing, I tried to make my voice less like the remnants of a rocky road. "You can't stay here, go before they grab you, too!"

"New living quarters, eh?" He ignored my plea, giving one of the rocks strewn across the ground a good kick. "Funny, I didn't take you for the swamp-cave type."

"They're probably already on their way. You need to leave now, before they hold you, too. Go!"

"Oh, thanks for the warning," he muttered sarcastically, "Always the martyr."

The dust began to clear, drawn out by the whistling and whipping winds outside the gaping hole in the wall. His platinum blonde hair came into view first, like a beacon of light against the dark backdrop. By the time the rest of him registered in my sight, I realized he looked almost exactly as he had the night he vanished from the party. Eyes still as blue as an open summer sky, skin fair with undertones of peach. His body was wrapped in a tight, long sleeved black shirt, matching black pants blending him perfectly with the pitch black sky.

"Are you seriously staring at me while I'm trying to break you free?" Ari gaped at me in disbelief. Shaking his head, he latched onto my wrist and brought me into his chest. Heat blew off of him in waves, a perpetual sun for my cold and hopeless heart. He raised a hand and muttered something, white fire lancing from his hand in the form of a spear. It sliced through the wall, melting the rock into burning pools of black.

“Ari,” I started to say. “Ursula said-”

A high, glass-shattering scream sounded from below. I felt the color drain from my face as I recognized the tone.

“We need to go to her,” I said. “Ursula, she-”

“No, we need to leave.” Ari held onto me tighter, no doubt afraid I’d make a run for it. “That was the plan.”

Pulling me along, we started down the hallway at a jog, Ari dragging me as I tried to jerk free. “Screw the plan,” I yelled sharply. “I can’t let her just die!”

Spinning me around, he locked his hands around my upper arms, forcing me to meet his hard stare. “Listen to me, I appreciate you’re trying out the whole hero thing, but now is not the time. I came here to save you, not burn to death with you, and like it or not, we need to get through this together. Now work with me, dammit.”

He had barely finished speaking when a pair of Vens, dressed to the nines in their iconic black, split from the shadows of the hallway. Red daggers flashed in their hands, the shine of the metal instantly making me wary. They both leapt for Ari, moving faster than I could keep track.

“Ari!” I screamed, yanking myself from his grasp and flinging out a hand. Blue fire spiraled up my arm before it fired into the hallway, setting the walls and floor ablaze.

But Ari was already gone. He moved faster than both Vens, winding between them with a dancer kind of grace, fire twining off his hands like a personal light show. Bolts of white shocked the hallway to life, and like flies attracted to the light, each Vens fell crippled to the ground, shrieking and writhing in pain before fire consumed them whole.

“Move,” he commanded, grabbing my wrist once more and pulling me along. I didn't dare look back over my shoulder, partly because I was afraid I'd see the aftermath of our fires racing to catch up to us, partly because I was afraid I'd come face-to-face with one of those red daggers. Instinct told me I didn't want to be on the receiving end of one of those blades.

We turned down another set of hallways before the sounds of voices and feet caught up to us. Ari looked over his shoulder and met my eyes for one split second, a finger pressed gently against his lips. Locking an arm around my waist, we ducked into the nearest room and sealed the door shut.

The room was dark, a never-ending pit of emptiness. Only a flicker of blue and red, glowing halfway into the room, gave a hint of light to combat the dark.

I instantly knew where we were. And how we had to get out, fast. "Ari, we shouldn't be in here."

Against the dark, I could barely make out his silhouette. His hands were moving fast, quick dashes of white lingering on the door in front of us as he drew several different symbols into the heavy wood. "What's the matter, Essie darling? Two weeks and suddenly you’re afraid of the dark?"

"It's not the dark that you should be afraid of."
It’s what hides inside it.
I stepped further into the room, a sense of familiarity washing over me in cold shocks. The dull glow of three blue orbs came closer to view, red spiraling within to create a blast of brilliant violet. Underneath one of them, my name had been scrawled in a precise script, red printed on gold. "Ari, I... I think these belong to us."

"What?" Ari's voice barely reached me, his tone colored with nervous confusion. I barely paid attention to him, concentrating more on the growing glow of the orbs. Still perched on their center pedestals, I was no longer curious as to what they were for, but what they could do if placed in the wrong hands. Hands like the Queen.

I stopped before the furthest orb, unable to make out the name written on the golden plaque. Barely any blue swirled within, black smoke filling the once illuminated globe. The second was just as dark, but the third was easy to read, bright and burning like a thousand suns. A name I knew and recognized well, delicately written in script, stood out against the gold;
Ari
.

Footsteps sounded behind me, and I heard his breath catch as he read his name from over my shoulder. "What is that?" Ari whispered fearfully, inching closer until he stood by my side. Using one of his hands, he brought his brilliant white fire to a glorious blaze, illuminating the whole room in a dull, milky glow. “Do you... do you hear that?”

I shook my head, confused. “Hear what?”

He leaned closer to the orb, reaching a hand forward as if to touch it. “It’s whispering... I can hear my Father... and Bethanie...”

I grabbed his hands before he grasped it, enveloping my fingers around his. "I don’t think you should touch it,” I said, shaking my head again. “I’ve seen these before, when the Queen captured me. She brought me in here, and my guess is she showed me these for a reason. It could be a trap." My breath caught in my throat, the memory of burning black bands awakening a stinging sensation deep within my wrists. "I don't know what they do, but Kayden said-"

Kayden
.

"Where is he?" I whipped around to face Ari, the pounding in my head matching the frantic pounding in my chest. Fear flushed a river of cold, destructive rush of ice through my veins. "Where is Kayden?"

Ari’s fire flickered, and that was all it took for me to know. "I don't know, sucking your brother dry with a straw? How am I supposed to know where your leech of a demon is?"

Anger bled red into my sight. “You don’t get to be like this. Where is he?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, quieter than before. The look he gave me bordered on pitying. “The plan wasn’t to save him.”

A surge of energy unlike anything I had felt in weeks pushed through my veins, a fire igniting off my skin in a violent burst of blue and black. He didn't know where Kayden was, didn't know that the last time I had seen him, he had been in tow with a familiar succubus and her slimy seduction self. How had I not thought to ask her where he was before she left? He had to be here, trapped somewhere inside this castle.

"We have to find him," I said, brushing past him and making for the door. Adrenaline mixed with something equally dangerous ran rampant inside of me, a swirling cocktail ready for the smallest provocation. Torture me, fine, but torture him? The Queen had just signed her own death warrant, twice over. I'd give her a burning hotter than the sun. "He's here, I know it. How fast can we comb the place?"

“Are you mad?” Ari nearly shouted, taking a step toward me. "You're talking about covering countless rooms, not including the hidden ones, and for what? For a thing that put you in this mess to begin with?"

“
A thing?
Shut up! Demon or not, he is not a thing, he’s a part of this, and we need him.” The scream had left my lips before I could even think of taking it back. "He didn't put me in this mess, I let myself get here. He reminded me of who I really was, who I really am."

"And who," Ari half-mocked, rolling his eyes as he stared at the ceiling. "are you really?"

Fire rushed over my arms, ensnaring me like a pet snake curling round its master in a grip of death. It emblazoned over my shoulders, chest and back, until all that remained was a sliver of my neck and head. Voices whispered within my head, some taunting, others challenging, but the only voice I heard was my own, clear as a bell. "A weapon of my choice."

I surged for the door, a palm raised up toward the wood. Ari rushed in front of me, his chest pressed against my palm. Not for the first time, I could feel the rapid dance of his heart against his ribs. I briefly wondered if he thought I had gone mad, maybe even as mad as the infamous Hatter.

"Essallie, listen to yourself. You're trying to track down a demon. We're Nephilim, not demon hunters," he sighed, speaking to me as if I was a child who didn't understand the difference between apples and oranges. "Kayden wouldn't want you to waste your time, your life, just to find him."

"He's wrong."

I froze, the sound of a whisper barely tickling my ears. Looking to my left, there she stood. My ethereal carbon copy, Ebony, her eyes burning with a vicious desire of blood so heavy, I could almost taste the metallic sensation on my tongue. Her waist-length hair rested over her shoulders as she stood straight and demure, hands folded neatly in front of her, poised like a deadly serpent aiming to kill.

Now I was positive I had gone mad.

"Find him, Essallie. Find Kayden,”
she repeated, disappearing into thin air.

I wasn’t sure if what I had seen was real or product of captivity, but either way, the voice was right; I had to find Kayden. "That's where you're wrong," I countered back at Ari, unable to keep my grin in check. "You're right about one thing, we
are
Nephilim. But half-angels and demon hunters go hand in hand, Ari. We are the reason they cower at night, the reason they don't actively devour the human race. It's in our blood to hunt them, track them like a human tracking wild animals."