“Yes, of course,” Dread agreed. “I just wasn’t expecting it to be tonight.”
Vex was going to kill them all—Glory’s entire inner circle, including Lash—tonight. Then there would be no one to stop him from carrying out his Revelation.
Vex dismissed Dread with a slight lift of his hand, and the prophet fell back a step, the obedient lieutenant. “I’m taking care of you, Allay,” Vex assured me. “I’ll always take care of you. Just keep eating up and get that aura nice and strong. If you cooperate, we can talk about letting you out.”
I felt as if I were in kindergarten again. I wanted to shout, “Never!” at him. But that wouldn’t help Theo. I had to try to get him out of here. “I won’t cooperate unless you let Theo go. Now.”
“You need sustenance.” Vex grimaced, shaking his head as he surveyed Theo’s wounds and ordered Dread, “No need for all that mess. She’ll feed without you hurting him.”
Grudgingly Dread agreed. I rolled my eyes—as if I were going to buy that. Vex even smiled at me as he left the room. He was trying to break me down so that I would trust him. But I knew he was the one responsible for Theo’s wounds.
Dread looked awfully bitter after Vex left.
From behind me, Theo said, “I guess the kid’s running the show. Isn’t it always that way?”
I actually smiled. He couldn’t have poked Dread in the eye harder.
Dread came over to glare down at Theo. “His time will come. Sooner than he thinks.”
“That sounds like a threat.” My glance went to the cameras. “I don’t think Vex will like that.”
Dread frowned, shaking his head at himself. “I’ll have to wipe the tapes,” he muttered.
It was too bad Vex wasn’t watching from Dread’s loft. His aura was descending, moving away from us. It felt as if he were leaving the building again. It probably took a lot of work to launch a strike force against a bunch of demons.
“Clearly you’re not needed for the plan tonight,” I pointed out. “He probably put Goad in charge instead of you.”
“Maybe I can use this . . . ,” Dread murmured. He wasn’t looking at us; he was staring through the cage, lost in thought. His deadly tone would have frightened me more, but what he was considering didn’t involve me.
He was thinking about the strike against Glory and Lash. What had Savor said just before I was kidnapped? They had expected me to run to Glory. Yet I was sure that Glory was the last person Vex wanted me to see. So why did Dread let me leave, hoping I’d go to Glory?
Dread tried to set up Vex. Using me.
It almost took my breath away. “You wanted me to tell Glory that Vex is ready to launch the Revelation.” Dread’s surprised look was all the confirmation I needed. “You want Glory to take on Vex. You’re ready to break with him, aren’t you? But you can’t do it by yourself. You can’t try to kill him—what if he beats you? But if you get Glory mad enough at him, she’ll do the dirty work for you.”
Dread actually smiled. “As a matter of fact, she will. Since you didn’t do what you were supposed to, I’ll find some other way. I can warn Glory about this preemptive strike. She doesn’t even have to know it’s me tipping her off.” He looked regretful. “Though it’s too bad . . . I’d love to see Lash get what she deserves.”
His matter-of-factness chilled me to the heart. I stepped sideways to block his view of Theo, as I gripped the iron bar. The edges had been worn off over years of use. Dread must have put hundreds of people in this cage—and demons, too, no doubt. No wonder Vex had been so quick to suspect him of killing demons in his own line.
Dread suddenly grabbed on to my hand, pressing my fingers into the bar. The colored swirl around our hands rippled. “Too bad you weren’t more useful, Allay. I’m afraid you aren’t worth keeping around anymore.”
He squeezed tighter, making me gasp at the burst of pain in my fingers. “Vex isn’t going to like it if you hurt his patron saint,” I pointed out.
“After tonight, Vex won’t be around to care.”
A bone snapped in my finger, firing off like a tiny shot. “You’re hurting me!”
Theo moved so fast that I almost didn’t see him as he reached through the bars to slam down on Dread’s arm with a closed fist. Dread let go of me, rubbing his arm.
I pushed back against Theo with all of my strength, backing us both away from Dread. Theo was radiating intense hatred for the man. He was supporting me, despite the insanity of the past few days, despite the incomprehensible things he had just heard. There was no hesitation, no doubt in his feelings for me.
It was one of the sweetest moments of my life.
But the scraped flesh of his cheek and the livid bruises across his torso reminded me; I had sentenced him to death by bringing him here. “I’m sorry.”
His arms tightened around me as he murmured, “So am I.”
“Enough of that.” Dread drew himself up, walking back to the door that led to his loft. But instead of leaving, he stopped by a small black fixture in the wall. He slid open a panel and spun the lock.
The safe door opened and Dread pulled out a gun. It had a long nozzle, as if there were a silencer on the end.
“No!” I choked out.
Theo thrust me away, leaving himself exposed, as I cried, “Don’t, Theo!”
Dread took aim and the soft
whoot!
of the gun was my only warning. The high-pitched whistle was followed by an explosion that made my ears ring. Theo’s hands jerked away as he lurched back against the bars.
Dread had shot him point-blank in the head.
16
I caught Theo as he started to slide down the bars, keeping him from keeling over. His eyes were partly open, but already clouding. His heart fluttered against my hand, trying to keep pace with the blood leaking out of the back of his blown-out skull.
He collapsed onto me, his head falling on my shoulder, spilling a thin stream of hot blood down my chest. The sharp tang of blood and gunpowder bit my throat. “Theo,” I cried, choking.
I reached for that last spark of life inside of him, hoping to sustain him for a few moments more. But he died as I held him. His aura flickered out as if it had been doused with water.
Everything else vanished, and there was only this horror. I had been telling myself that Theo wouldn’t make it out of this alive, trying to face up to what I had done to him. Now he was dead—gone. And it was my fault, from beginning to end.
I couldn’t face it.
I held on to Theo, too shocked to cry, too ripped open to do anything but gasp every breath as if I were drowning. For a moment I thought I was also dying, that my essence was draining away at the same moment as his.
“Allay!” Dread shouted, running around to our side of the cage. He must have thought I was dying, too, or he wouldn’t have been so unguarded.
Ignoring Dread, I cradled Theo, closing his eyes with my shaking, blood-smeared hand. What would his family think when he never returned? Would his body be found somewhere, a victim of unknown violence? I hoped they didn’t have to wait day after day, never getting word that he had died. His father must have been good for him to be so kind and true himself, despite how terrible he thought himself.
Dread grasped at my shoulder, making me lurch away, obeying a deeper instinct. The need in him to consume another demon was very strong. I finally saw what he wanted from me—he was going to steal my essence. With the scrape of the bolt, Dread unlocked the cage door with the iron key. It swung open with a squeak.
I scrabbled back, still holding on to Theo, crouching in the center of the cage.
Dread stepped into the cage, standing in front of the small door. I carefully eased Theo down, and stood up to face him.
It was much more frightening with Dread inside the cage. Suddenly the iron bars were too constraining. All I could do was prepare to protect myself the best I could, as the last spark of humanity I’d had left in the world lay dead at my feet.
Dread gave me one of his rare smiles. “Vex won’t even know you’re gone. He’s too busy dealing with Glory to come back tonight. Glory will take care of him for me.”
Dread took one careful step forward, keeping me from stepping out of his line. Then he took another, backing me against the bars. It was difficult to defend myself in such close quarters.
I parried Dread’s first attempts to grab me, tripping over Theo’s sprawled legs. Dread moved as if he were the one who invented Aikido and knew exactly what I would do to respond to him. Though I tried to deflect him, he had the advantage with cramped space. Once he got close, I tried to spin out from under him. But he rolled with me, pressing me into the bars to stop me.
His hand went around my throat, grabbing my wrist while pinning my other arm between us, pressing his body hard against mine. I struggled like a pinned butterfly, but I didn’t have a fraction of his strength. Dread was bursting with power.
His thumb pressed into my throat, making it hard to breathe. “Your fear is so sweet. I knew it would be. Go ahead, fight me. I like it that way. . . .”
I wanted to gag. He was getting off on it, feeding on my terror. He pressed his groin into mine so I could feel the enormous rod of his erection. That made me struggle even more.
“I could rape you as I kill you,” he murmured. “I used to make Lash watch me. . . .”
Despite my frantic attempts to shield myself, Dread reached right in and slurped up the pitiful remnants of my energy like a starving vampire bat. His hips bumped into me in a lewd imitation of sex. Wildly I wrenched my wrist free and scratched at his hand, trying to grab on to some leverage point to make him let go of my throat. But I was so weak, I could barely struggle anymore.
He was draining me.
Dimly, I realized this was the end. A wave of acceptance passed through me, and I relaxed. Dread grimaced as if my reaction were distasteful. I was glad. At least I had soured the milk for him.
My skin felt as if it were drying up from inside as I began to shrivel. Then Dread reached for my essence, to pull it into himself. I wanted to scream, the pain was so intense, but I couldn’t. My inner flame wavered, flickering inside as it began to tilt toward him, ripping from its mooring in my soul.
Suddenly Theo rose up behind him. It seemed like a death vision, one last wild hope. Then Theo put his arm around Dread’s neck and squeezed.
Dread let out a yelp in surprise, letting go of my throat. But Theo pushed Dread into me, pressing me back against the bars even harder. Even with Dread’s hand no longer around my neck, I still wasn’t able to breathe. I could barely see.
It couldn’t be Theo. But his furrowed brow with rivulets of drying blood down his face left no doubt. He was alive.
How? How did he survive a bullet to the head?
I couldn’t think without air to breathe.
Theo was incredibly strong, holding Dread as easily as he had held me. And something else was happening. Energy was flowing into me—Dread’s energy.
Theo was absorbing Dread’s energy and somehow forcing it to flow into me. A realization crashed into me like the proverbial brick.
Theo is a demon.
But that was impossible—Theo’s flesh burned as hot as a human’s. He ate; he perspired; he had all those precious human flaws that my body now lacked. His energy felt distinctly like a human’s, not a demon’s. But nothing else could explain his resurrection.
Dread bucked underneath Theo in shock, smashing me into the bars. As his outrage continued to pour out, I absorbed as much as I could. My skin felt as if it were plumping back up under the onslaught, not as wrinkled and drawn. But I was light- headed from lack of oxygen, ready to pass out.
Finally, Theo rolled Dread off me, slamming him against the cage. He kept his legs locked around Dread’s, shoving his face against the bars. Dread was as highly charged as a demon could get, but he had dropped his shields to absorb my essence, so it took only minutes for his energy to drain into Theo. Theo took him right down to the point where his flesh started to shrivel and his arms and legs began to curl inward. When Dread could hardly move, and there was only a drop or two of energy left inside of him, Theo finally let him go. Dread lolled on the floor, looking like a much smaller, older man.
It was so sudden, I couldn’t seem to catch up.
Theo finally turned to me. I was staring at him in horror, my hands still at my throat. “Finish him, Allay. It will only take a second, and then you’ll be renewed.”
My voice cracked.
“Who are you?”
He breathed a heavy sigh. “I’m a demon.”
Silence spun between us, delicate as glass and hard as diamond. I could only stare at him, blinking. “
How
can you be a demon? You don’t feel anything like a demon.”
“I’ve fortified my shields. It’s not something modern demons have mastered. I don’t think Vex and Glory even know it can be done. I learned so I could kill Bedlam, the demon who birthed them. I was his progenitor. I’ve been watching their lines ever since, destroying the worst of their offspring. Demons can be the source of remarkable advances, but we’re our own worst enemies, as you’ve discovered.”
I couldn’t believe it, even though I had watched him consume Dread. “Prove it.”
Theo hesitated. “I haven’t let down my shields in . . . centuries.”
I was shaking my head, unable to accept it. He
felt
human.
“All right,” he agreed. “If that’s what it takes for you to trust me.”
It was dazzling; one second Theo was standing within arm’s reach, his expression so earnest and familiar, his naked body so battered. The next, he was nearly obscured by a rainbow glow around him. His signature suddenly thrummed through my body, as if I were speeding down a tunnel with the wind whistling around me. It was thrilling, heady, and scary, and about to go out of control at any second.
