Chaos Rises: A Veil World Urban Fantasy (19 page)

I wanted to spring off my back foot and launch myself at him, teeth and claws and ice. But I recognized power, and the
coronam
sent out relentless waves of it, muddying my thoughts. What did I want, exactly? This felt right, didn’t it?
Power
.
Yes
. If it wasn’t for my human weakness, I could take it all, couldn’t I? Starting with Allard.

He watched me closely, waiting for my next move. I itched to tackle him, to sink my teeth into him and pin him down. His eyes promised the fight would be glorious. When it happened, one of us would die. It would be worth it.

My ice-hardened voice snapped around the empty basement. “You don’t own me, Clayton Allard.”

“I don’t need to.” He lifted his head an imperceptible amount and smiled. “We want the same things.” He stepped back—once, twice—and turned. I could have sunk my claws into his back. But he strode off, so confident in his prowess, in how his words seduced. Power. More than I could imagine.

By the time I joined him in the foyer, a growl bubbled from me with every breath. It was only his promise of
more
that quelled the burn for revenge.

Vanessa’s arrival froze the trail of my thoughts. She strode into Fairhaven like she belonged and tossed Joseph’s mangled demon carcass at Allard’s feet. All-demon, she was draped in a cloak of fire, her skin glowing ruby-crimson. Two uneven wing-stumps protruded from her back.

A purr of appreciation slipped free. She’d killed Joseph. I liked her.

“I want his place in your court,” she announced.

Lessers scurried about her, crawling along the walls and over the ceiling, but none dared get close.

I cocked my head, eyeing Allard. He’d been close to losing control with me, but he hardly even looked down at what remained of Joseph.

Instead, he smiled. “The seat was always yours, Vanth.”

She dipped her chin in the smallest of acknowledgements. Vanessa fell into step beside me, and we trailed behind Allard. Fire and ice. She slid a heated glance over me, while I returned an icy glare. Her element pushed against mine, and mine ate at hers, gnawing around its edges, picking off her warmth. Her eyes dropped to Allard’s fist. The
coronam
. She’d be feeling its pull too.

We strode through Fairhaven’s dark corridors. Creatures scurried out of sight, shying away from the wave of power the three of us invoked. My ice shifted, sighing and cracking, settling comfortably about me— until we entered a room, and I saw my brother.

He sat in a chair, staring glassy eyed at a chunk of rock on the table in front of him. No restraints, none that I could see, and he wasn’t demon like I was. He just looked like Del in the same clothes he’d worn when we’d run from the
vitiosus
. He hair was mussed, his face pale in the dark, but he wasn’t wounded.

Vanessa entered the room, her fiery light dancing about the walls.

The black room
, I realized, trying to align my thoughts into some order. The room wasn’t like the others, and it wasn’t really black. Mirrors coated every inch of wall-space, the ceiling too. I drifted along the table, scrabbling around my demon thoughts for control, but the elements beat against me the same as the waves had on the beach, again and again, pushing deeper, teasing more threads of power free. The rocks on the table weren’t rocks. I wasn’t sure what they were, but they hummed with energy, more than I’d felt since the veil fell, since the netherworld.

I stumbled against a chair, felt water brush against my ankles: Torrent, raggedy but alive. He didn’t look up, just gazed at the rocks. It was good that he was alive, wasn’t it? I cared—that’s what that slippery human feeling was, wasn’t it?

The prince.

I reached out to steady myself.
Too much power. Can’t think.
And the prince. He was here, not sitting obediently at the table like the others. Chains looped around his arms, drawing him tight against the mirrored wall. His shaven head hung limp, chin against his chest. His skeletal wings were bunched and trapped behind him.

I fell into an empty chair, head spinning. I couldn’t think around or through the beat of power. The elements swelled inside the room, a heady swirl of color, flowing and weaving between us. Ascension. This was Allard’s plan. The court. I closed my eyes. Yes. I wanted this, all of it.
More
.
More power.
My wings started to build, their deceptively delicate ice-feathers sighing together. I couldn’t stop it and didn’t want to.

Yes, I was demon enough. I always had been. The Institute made me a killer. Now Allard would make me court.

All of Allard’s promises… We really did want the same thing…

I wondered why I’d ever doubted him. Our King.

T
he swirl
of elements whipped into a frenzy. Allard—Azazel—in his white-marbled demon skin folded his wings around us, as far as the tips would stretch, and I felt as though I was home. As though I belonged. A deep, soul-bound connection with the others, the elements, and him.

The euphoria cracked.

Del had been holding back. The second he let go, chaos surged in, and the mingling of elements shattered. The storm turned into a sundering of power, and a terrible soul-consuming blackness folded the room in on itself. Chaos. I’d felt it before and knew we were lost. The delight turned to terror, and the madness tore into us. I heard screams straight from nightmares, some my own. My demon was being shredded from the inside out. Chaos would undo us all.

Would that be so bad?
The human in me asked.

Allard’s earth-shattering bellow shifted what remained of reality, and abruptly, everything ended. The noise. The pain. The madness. Gone. Silence. Whiteness. Nothing.
I’m dead.

Cracks snapped, heaviness creaked, and my ice sighed. Ice. All around. Encased in my element, the fear and panic melted away, leaving me rigid and defiant. Protected. I’d turned the world to ice, hadn’t I? Something had happened to trigger this, a shattering that my human mind struggled to piece back together. But I’d survived, and now ice embraced me. I was exactly where I was meant to be.

Cracks zigzagged in front of my eyes, and water trickled inside my sanctuary, shivering its way toward me. Not just water, it carried with it the tickle of a demon’s element.

“Gem!” Torrent’s voice sounded distant, in another room, another world. His element wove deeper, encircling mine, undermining my defenses until more ice cracked and fell away. Torrent’s warm hand touched my face. I shuddered, released my demon form with a gasp, and shrank back into my small human self.

“Gem.” He tugged me onto wobbling legs. “C’mon.”

I blinked into sunlight, somehow numb but at the same time hyper-alert. Something fundamental had shifted. I was me—but not me.

Fairhaven loomed high above, casting its shadow far across the rubble-strewn street. I shook my head, trying to clear the confusion, and staggered after Torrent. A glance back, and my gaze snagged on the vast blown-out hole in the side of the hotel. Sunlight glinted off fragments of glass.

“What…happened?” I stumbled.

Torrent scooped me up before I could fall. “No time. They’re here.”

“What? Who?”

“Institute.”

Fear slammed through my gut. I fell again, taking Torrent with me this time. We fell in a tangle, just in time to see the demon emerge from Fairhaven’s gaping hole. He spread his broken wings wide, stretching their skeletal frame at least fifty feet from tip to tip and lifted his face to the sunlight.

“Are you seeing this?” I whispered. Of course Torrent was seeing this. The whole city could see if they turned their gazes. Air rippled about the demon’s body, contorting light and reality, making the image of him throb with power. He gave his wings a flick and rolled his shoulders, dislodging dust, and tore what remained of the chains from his wrists with a snarl.

What have we done?

He turned his gaze on the city, narrowed his eyes, and laughed. The sound of that laughter rolled over me and fed deep into my soul, where it snagged on a connection that hadn’t existed before.

The Prince of Pride was free.

Torrent tugged on my arm, called my name, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away. Pride turned his clouded gaze on me, and the sense of wrongness pulled tighter still. Then, in a rush of air and smoke and shadow, he was gone.

Torrent finally dragged me to my feet. “Move!” He shoved me forward and snarled in a deep bass growl.

A black van swept around the corner. Followed by another.

Institute. Engines roared behind us.

I ran, veering across a parking lot after Torrent, faster and faster. My heart pumped harder, and my element pulled tight, twitching close to the surface. But it was too close, like I was already demon, like I’d turned, but that couldn’t be. I was still in my vulnerable, pink human skin and clothes. I wasn’t demon, so why did I
feel
demon?

We skidded down into a parking garage where Torrent tried car doors, tugging in the hope they’d open.

If this was happening to me, did my brother feel the same? Were we all connected? “Where’s Del?”

“Don’t know,” Torrent growled, skirting around another car to try the door.

“Allard?”

“The—whatever that was—blew half of Fairhaven to bits and scattered us all.”

It went wrong, horribly wrong. I knew it in my gut the same as I knew my brother was free. I could
feel
him, but not just him, the very real background strum of chaos calling.

A car rumbled down into the garage, rolled past us, and maneuvered to park near the exit ramp. From one stride to the next, Torrent had shrugged off all pretense of being human and flicked his wings wide open with a leathery crack. He yanked the terrified driver out, dropped his demon appearance, and was sliding into the front seat behind the wheel when I opened the door and jumped inside.

“What was that?” I belted up in the passenger seat. I’d barely gotten the door closed before he planted his foot to the floor and lurched out of the parking garage, leaving the terrified owner probably already calling the cops.

“What?” he snarled.

“Going demon on that guy?”

“Do you want to be caught by the Institute? I sure don’t. Again.”

When he looked at me, the ocean swirled in Torrent’s eyes, and power swelled like the incoming tide. I let it go, relieved when he focused on driving and not me. We drove in silence.

Tension rippled off Torrent in waves. He clutched the steering wheel, knuckles bleached white. This wasn’t good. The ascension had gone wrong. It wasn’t meant to be like this. Or was it? I’d welcomed the power, embraced it, let it sweep me up and lead my demon by the hand. And now I was a hair’s breadth away from being demon. She was behind my gaze, inside my thoughts, under my skin, closer than ever before.

We dumped the car outside a McDonalds and walked a few blocks in yet more silence. I watched Torrent carefully. If he was feeling the same things I was, I wasn’t sure how long this silence would last. An invisible thread pulled tight between us, demon or imagined. It hadn’t been there before. Neither had the sensation of being dumped back into a human body that had shrunk around me like a prison. It felt odd, uncomfortable,
wrong
. I wanted to spread my wings wide and call to the ice—no matter the cost.

We marched on into neighborhoods I had no idea existed, where dumpsters overflowed and air conditioning units hummed. The sun was fast disappearing, and the breeze had picked up, bringing with it a cool evening chill. Or it might have been my element.

“Something’s
very
wrong,” Torrent finally said.

We came to a halt outside a closed Starbucks. A few cars rumbled by, and every time I checked over my shoulder, expecting to see the Institute. Across the street a ROOMS VACANT sign blinked over a panel door.

“Yeah, I know.” I flicked a demon tingling from my fingers, but the sensation clung on.

“What the hell happened back there?” He paced. Two steps forward, two steps back again.

He was asking me? “No idea.”

Threading his fingers into his hair, he knotted them there, and said carefully, “I feel like I want to crawl out of my skin.”

“We should get out of sight.” I started across the street, heading for the rooms vacant sign.

“This place?” He gave the flickering sign and black door an unimpressed scowl.

“We need to get off the street.” I pushed inside and had my doubts when the guy behind the desk flicked his gaze between the two of us, clearly making an assumption. I wasn’t sure what we were walking in to, but they had rooms, and we needed one. At least the Institute weren’t likely to come looking here.

“Eight bucks an hour. Cash only,” the guy grunted, watery eyes returning to the TV on his desk.

Torrent tossed the cash onto the desk and received a key in return. An hour would be fine. Any longer and we risked being discovered. Our room smelled like damp and other bodily excretions. I’d slept in more sanitary street corners, but holing up here would give us time to think.

Torrent went straight for the washroom, leaving the door open. He splashed water onto his face, hissed in through his teeth, and clamped his hands along the rim of the sink. He glared at this reflection like it was that guy’s fault. I knew that look, having often sneered at my demon in the mirror.

Not sure where I was supposed to look or what to do with the restless energy snapping beneath my skin, I toured the room, all fifteen steps of it.

“You feel it?” he asked.

I felt a lot of things, had a lot of thoughts too, thoughts that were barbed and dangerous. I chewed on my lip and didn’t answer.

“I went into that room fighting.” He peered closer at his reflection in the dirty mirror. “And then I stopped caring, like I was empty, and the power Allard had would fill me up.” His arms trembled, muscles taunt beneath his shirt. He growled a deeply demon sound. “I wanted it.”

I knew
that
feeling too.

I strayed to the window and parted the stiff drapes. The street outside was quiet. For now. One of us would have to stand watch. If the Institute released my photo to the media, hiding would be a whole lot harder.

Streetlights blinked on, and I wondered where my brother was. Fear licked down my spine, sprinkling a trickle of my element behind it. I watched Torrent’s reflection hover in the filthy windowpane. He dried his hands on a towel, and those green eyes tracked down my back. I felt that a little too keenly.

“At least we’re alive.”

“Maybe it’ll wear off,” he added, clearly talking about whatever was happening to the both of us.

“What were those rocks?” Those rocks were the root of the power. Like the
coronam
, they had flooded the room with enough energy to drive our demons wild.

Torrent lowered himself to the edge of the bed, abruptly stood up again, and started to pace. Fifteen steps one way…fifteen steps back again. “Fragments of the King of Hell’s sanctuary.”

I turned, questions clear on my face. He stopped pacing. The seconds ticked on. LA’s city noises leaked in through the window.

When he looked up, doubt and maybe even a touch of fear touched his eyes. “Allard told me the same forces that shattered the veil destroyed the King of Hell’s sanctuary, which, as far as I can tell, was a stone fortress of some kind. Bits of it were thrown here. The power those fragments threw off attracted demons, who hid the stones away. Allard’s been looking for them. That was his puzzle.”

“Allard told you all that?”

Torrent’s throat moved as he swallowed. He sent me a sideways glare, not the submissive glances of before, but those that challenged, daring me to question him. “It’s the wings,” he said, like that explained everything. “The wings, they’re impressive by demon standards, and I think it’s the…
me
from before.”

“Before?” Oh,
before
. The demon who’d killed hundreds of people and cut a firefighters throat.
That
before. I dipped my fingers into my back pocket. The photo of Torrent was still there, damp, probably torn, but intact. “I thought you didn’t know who you were before.”

“I don’t, but I…” He stalled. “I have these feelings, like knowing”—he touched his chest and closed his fingers into a fist— “burned into my soul. I can’t see them, the memories, but I feel them. Allard knows or maybe suspects what I was. I mean, I came from the netherworld, right? I’m not exactly going to be good, am I?”

I considered the scars on his body, the weight of his power, the spread of his wings. Blood in the gutter. The demon standing proud over his kill. No, whoever he was before, he wasn’t good.

“Like I said.” Torrent shrugged and released his fist from over his heart. “I give Allard what he wants.”

But was it more than submitting to a higher demon, I realized as Torrent started his fifteen-step pacing again. Did he
feel
for Allard? There were other ways to feel. You could hate and admire, love and despise. When it came to Torrent, Allard clearly had a weakness. Vanessa too. Torrent was right. He might not recall who he was, but the two higher demons clearly did.

We were hunted, both of us, running a maze with no end in sight. But running blindly through a maze was a mistake. We couldn’t run from this. From them.

“Are
you
good?” he asked. I hadn’t realized he’d stopped again. His sudden gaze and the question I’d never been able to answer brought all my thoughts to an abrupt halt. I blinked, all at once afraid to answer.

“I saw you charged up. All that ice and the light…”

My heart sank while my demon gave a little contented purr. I knew what he saw: a beast aglow, made of dazzling light and jagged edges, the kind that might have once been worshiped as something heavenly. There was nothing good in my demon. I could have killed all the Institute soldiers outside of the precinct. I’d wanted to. Worse than that, I lusted after death in ways that weren’t ever good or right.

“Now the Institute know I’m here.” I blatantly ignored his question and what it meant. “They won’t stop looking for me or my brother. They can’t afford to.”

Del… I could still taste his chaos, his devouring black. Any longer in that maelstrom and he’d have shredded all our souls. Now he was out, and if he was experiencing the same reckless demon urges I was, he wouldn’t hold back for long.

“I have to stop my brother,” I whispered.

“I thought we were saving him?”

It’s the same.

“We need a plan.” Torrent came around the bed and sank onto the edge. His knee jumped. “And we need to know what Allard did to us.” His glittering demon eyes caught mine. “Before we do anything else.”

That was easier said than done. I was having a hard time separating my exhausted human thoughts from my amped-up demon needs. Half of me wanted to lie down, pull the filthy sheets over my head, and hide. The demon though, she wanted to head out onto the street, spread her wings, and summon all the ice. More ice than ever. Not since the Fall had I felt such power slumbering so close or its siren call as intoxicating.