Bind the Soul (19 page)

“I don’t know . . . He was trying to stop me.”

“Were you intending to use magic when you attacked?”

She shook her head.

“Did you visualize your attack in terms of a spell?”

Again, she shook her head.

“What did you feel when you cast the magic?”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know. It sort of felt like electricity in my arm. It was hot.”

“And did you feel a distinct pathway of power from the Sahar to your hand? Or inside your head?”

“I—I’m not sure.” She had felt the power in her head, but Samael didn’t need to know that. “It happened so fast.”

His stare analyzed her. She clenched her hands around the edge of her seat.

“I see,” he finally replied. “In that case, we will try again with the aim of recapturing the sensation you experienced yesterday. Come.”

He stood and headed for the door to the sitting room. She followed, nerves twisting her guts into knots.

In the sitting room, a notch of tension released. Ash wasn’t there. Neither was Raum or Eisheth. Instead, four men waited. They were dressed from head to toe in black and wore almost as many weapons as Raum usually did. Gold bands encircled their right biceps. Samael’s elite guards?

Four pairs of red eyes watched her approach. Four reapers like Samael. Definitely bodyguards. Samael wanted people he trusted at his side before he handed her the Sahar again.

Samael settled at the little table. Two guards positioned themselves on either side of him. When she sat, the other two guards moved to stand at her sides. Her hands shook.

Samael once again produced the Sahar and set it on the table between them. Heart pounding, she carefully closed her fingers around it. Like before, it felt cool and mundane in her grip.

“Begin,” Samael ordered.

She closed her eyes and clenched her fist. The Sahar didn’t respond to willpower. It didn’t respond to emotion. She’d tried getting angry to spark a reaction from it with no success. Desperation didn’t stir it. It didn’t respond to anything except, it seemed, one thing.

Violence.

Both times the Stone had reacted, she had been trying to attack someone. She prayed she had it right. If not, her slapdash plan was shot and she might as well offer Samael her throat.

Lowering her head, she tightened her fingers around the Sahar and closed her other hand over her fist. She thought about everything Samael had done to her. To Ash. Even to Raum. She let hatred and rage boil up inside her. She filled her entire body with the sick, rampant need to hurt the Hades bastard who had tortured her and Ash. Bloodthirsty rage clogged her mind.

The Sahar burned like fire against her skin. Her thoughts cracked and twisted with that intangible, alien manifestation of power. She had to be fast, before they realized what she planned. She flung both hands up and caught a glimpse of Samael’s eyes going wide.

She slammed her fists down on the table.

The room exploded.

Force blasted out from her like a detonated bomb. The table and chairs disintegrated. The nearest wall blew outward. The floor shattered. She screamed as she dropped, crashing down on a pile of debris on the level below. Half the room above fell in with a horrendous crash. She curled into a ball, protecting her head as chunks of wood and furniture rained on her.

When rubble finally stopped peppering her, she uncurled and looked around. She’d fallen into a library. Broken wood formed drifts and loose pages from torn books wafted about in a cloud of dust, obscuring the room.

A male voice grunted in pain. Her heart leaped. She couldn’t see the daemon. Whether it was Samael or one of his guards, she didn’t know. She’d hoped to kill them all but they were tougher than she’d anticipated.

Not waiting to find out who had made it through the blast alive, she clambered stiffly to her feet and slip-slid her way over the loose debris toward the door. Bursting out of the library, she ran. The Sahar pulsed in her fist. She panted, thinking calm thoughts. She didn’t want the Stone throwing off any more explosions. The last one had scared the crap out of her.

She whipped around a corner and saw a dozen black-clad guards running toward her from twenty yards away. They shouted for her to freeze when they spotted her. She skidded, her dust-coated bare feet sliding on the tile floor. Clenching her jaw, she cocked her arm and punched the air with the hand holding the white-hot Sahar.

Force boomed out. The walls on either side of the hall buckled. The guards, still halfway down the hall, were blasted backward, crashing violently into the wall at the other end of the corridor. She gaped, backpedalling as the cracked ceiling creaked ominously.

“Holy shit,” she breathed. She looked at the glowing Sahar. “Too much!” she told it angrily, shaking her fist in pointless reprimand.

A loud chatter made her look up. Zwi swooped in out of nowhere and landed neatly on her shoulder. Lilith’s pendant dangled from her mouth.

“You’re amazing, Zwi,” she gushed. She took the necklace and quickly tied it around her wrist. No time to properly clasp it. She sprinted in the opposite direction from where the guards had come. Zwi dug in her claws to hold on.

Piper reached a broad, deserted intersection of hallways. Breathing hard, she stopped. Her heart squeezed as she stared out the nearest window at the dark sky. Freedom, so close.

“Zwi, take me to Ash’s sister. Let’s try to avoid people if we can.”

The dragonet leaped from her shoulder and landed lightly on the floor. With a confident chirp, she took off running. Piper charged after her.

Sorry, Vejovis. She was too selfish to leave Ash and his sister behind. No way could she live with the knowledge of her cowardice—no matter how many lives she might be dooming in the process.

. . .

The draconian compound was a low building on the far edge of Asphodel. Because she’d moved fast, Piper had made it most of the way before signs of pursuit appeared. Someone had sounded the alarm and the guards were organizing a search. Zwi helped her avoid most of them while Piper blasted the rest.

The Sahar burned in her hand. She couldn’t control it. Each time she used it, the resulting attack increased in intensity. She was leaving a trail of destruction that would lead the guards right to her.

The power pulsed through her body and filled her head like a balloon of
otherness
. One side of her mind was the normal her, but the other side was full of hate and rage and a gleeful lust for violence and destruction. That part got stronger every time she used the Sahar.

She stood in the shadow of the compound, hands on her knees as she panted. Six daemons guarded the door. High, solid stone walls surrounded the building. Crisscrossing bars arched over the open, central courtyard like the top half of a birdcage. There had to be some sort of ward or shield over those bars to prevent sneaky dragonets from getting in and out.

Zwi waited beside her, tail lashing back and forth. Piper squinted at the guards, then down at the Sahar. She sighed.

The blast didn’t merely break the door; it shattered a massive hole in the wall. Piper tried not to look at the mangled bodies of the guards as she climbed through the rubble, but her brain automatically tallied the deaths and tacked them onto her conscience to be dealt with later. No doubt someone would have heard the explosion. The damn Sahar just didn’t do subtle. She had ten minutes, tops, to get in and out.

“Lead the way, Zwi,” she called.

The dragonet charged into the simple carpeted hallway. The building reminded Piper of the Consulate: a manor-like house combined with a hotel . . . a hotel with steel-enforced walls and barred windows. The rooms she ran through were empty. She encountered two more guards, but this time she didn’t use the Stone. She yanked the electric rod out of the first one’s hand and used it to down them both. It turned out that stabbing someone in the face with a rod-thing knocked them out on contact. They didn’t even scream.

Zwi led her to a stairway. At the top was another hall lined with doors. Zwi ran past them all. At the end, a heavy steel door was bolted shut. Piper raised her fist to the door. The Sahar flashed with light.

The entire building shook from the explosion. Piper ran through the dust and almost fell through a hole in the floor. Arms windmilling, she leaped across the gap and landed on the bottom step of the stairway beyond the now-melted door. The stairs spiraled upward. Another locked metal door met her at the top. Piper stopped in front of it, breathing hard. If she blasted this door, the stairs would probably collapse under her. She tucked the Sahar against her palm and formed hooked claws with two fingers.

She slashed her hand in the direction of the door handle. White blades cut through the air and ripped cleanly through the steel. Piper shoved the door, and it swung open. She rushed into the room and came up short.

It was a huge bedroom with a bed at one end, a sitting area in the middle, and a desk against the far wall. The whole place was a mess. It reminded her of her own room, with clothes and junk piled everywhere. Feminine clothes.

“Hello?” she called hesitantly.

Zwi chirruped loudly. Another chirrup answered and a small gray dragonet leaped from behind a sofa. Its bright gold eyes were nearly glowing as it squealed in delight. Zwi trilled happily and ran to meet the other dragonet. They tackled each other and rolled across the floor like exuberant puppies.

“
Zwi?
” a voice exclaimed.

Piper looked around. A girl popped up from behind the same sofa, her eyes wide. A hot swoop of jealousy made Piper flinch. The girl was beautiful. Long raven hair fell almost to her waist, thick, straight, and shining. Her large, wide-set eyes were a vivid blue, set in delicate, china-doll features. She was petite and willowy, and her shocked expression was adorable.

Then those eyes snapped to Piper and hardened. Her face went smooth and cold, stiff with suspicion. In half a second, she had gone from a cute adolescent to a composed and confident young adult. The girl had to be close to her own age.

“Who are you?” the daemon girl asked coolly.

“Piper,” she snapped, suddenly impatient. “You’re Ash’s sister, right?”

Her expression flashed back to surprise. “How do you know that?
No one
knows that.”

“Long story,” she said. “You want out of here?”

The girl folded her arms. “No.”

Piper froze in place. She’d never given Ash’s sister much thought, what she would be like, whether she’d take after her brother—or whether she’d be a defeated zombie like Raum.

“You—you don’t want to escape?”

The girl’s face went even colder. “Since you know Ash is my brother, you should know I have no intention of leaving him here to die.”

Piper sagged in relief. “Obviously we’re not leaving him! We’re getting him next, but you need to come too or
he
won’t want to escape.”

The girl narrowed her eyes. “How do you plan to free Ash? Do you even know where he is?”

Piper lifted her hand and let the Sahar, still glowing brightly, dangle from its chain. “Yes, I know. And the Sahar Stone solves the ‘how’ part of the equation.”

The girl stared at the Stone. Then she smiled tightly, hope painfully clear on her face. She sprang over the sofa with unreal grace.

“Zala, quit fooling around. We have work to do.” She turned to Piper. “Do you have anything more to your plan, other than grabbing Ash and running like hell?”

“Um . . . not really. There’s someone waiting to help us at Crow Crossing though.”

The girl frowned. “Okay. Well, you need different clothes. You stand out like a cupid at an incubus orgy.”

Piper looked at her hideous orange uniform.

“Over here. Quickly.” The girl darted to her dresser and pulled a drawer open. She tossed an armful of clothes aside. “My clothes won’t fit you. Unless—” She pulled out black leggings. “These are stretchy. Try them.”

Piper took the tights. Better than orange. She dropped her pants and wrestled the leggings on. The girl passed her a white shirt with off-the-shoulder sleeves that probably hung off her tiny frame.

“Do you have a sports bra or something?” Piper asked.

The girl passed over a black one. Piper turned around and dumped her horrible prison shirt on the floor. She pulled on the bra and heard a seam pop. Wincing, she glanced down. Her boobs looked one deep breath away from popping out. She grimaced and pulled on the shirt.
It
fit, but the off-the-shoulder style failed to hide half the black bra. Whatever.

“Here. These are too big. They might fit you.”

Piper accepted the cut-off jean shorts and yanked them on over the leggings. Thankfully, she got the button done up—barely. She turned around to face the girl, who eyed her critically.

“You’ll do.” She brushed two hands over her fitted black jeans and long-sleeved, see-through black sweater, layered over a lacy red camisole. The red matched the red strip of silk woven around a lock of her long hair. She glanced down. “You need shoes.”