DARK SOULS (Dark Souls Series) (22 page)

It wasn’t until we had made our way to the parking lot, with me consciously trying to look more human with my movements than not, that a thought finally occurred to me. During my fight with the giant octopus-glob, I was too distracted by its grossness to consider something so vitally important and I wanted to slap myself in the forehead for being so, so stupid.

I’d been so absorbed in Gwyn and her strange reactions that I hadn’t even realized the one piece of information that had been staring me in the face the entire time. Her behavior immediately became ominous as I began to absorb the consequences of my sudden, frightening realization.

I had fought the demon in its pure, true form.

There was no human host.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I kept glancing at Gwyn’s profile in suspicion.

How the hell was Gwyn grappling with a demon in its true form? Here I thought I had a ton of questions when I was talking to Derek. Now, it felt like millions.

She drove us over the Williamsburg Bridge, not even bothering to look at me as we drove back into the city
.
The car was silent, without even music playing as we both sat dripping in our seats, our hair sticking to our faces, hers with clear goo, mine with black. The smell of licorice was nauseating, and Gwyn cracked our windows open in an attempt to clear our stuffy confines.

She parked a few streets away from their apartment, not bothered by the fact that we had to walk a block or two covered in slime. Gwyn didn’t spare a glance at the West Village crowd as she turned onto 7
^th
Avenue South and ate up more sidewalk with her trademark knee-high boots.

God, she was fast.  

“There’s a mud wrestling bar around here?” I heard someone ask as I followed behind Gwyn. “I wanna participate!”

“Looks like you rolled in diarrhea,” someone else said to me as they passed by. I kept my eyes cast down. “You shoulda chosen the clear lube like that girl.”

I picked up my pace to keep up with Gwyn as she dove between crowds, people happily ducking out of the way to let her pass by. Probably out of fear, because even though I could only see the back of her, I sensed the scowl on her features.

She turned left again and I followed, using only human speed as I weaved around the crowds with her and ignoring all the comments and looks of surprise as we walked by. I was thankful when we finally reached her brownstone, taking the steps two at a time as I followed her inside.

After she unlocked the main door, we walked up one flight before reaching their two-story apartment, the key slipping in her slimy grip only once before she inserted it and let us in.

I felt him before I even saw him, that familiar wave of electricity flowing through my body. Asher was seated at the circular wooden table centered in the main room, hunched over and nursing a steaming mug. His eyes were cast downwards and focused on the dark liquid in his cup, as if he were trying to read shapes in the dancing, curling steam.

As soon as we shut the door, his eyes shot up, and they were scathing.

“You really screwed up this time, Gwyn,” he said as he started to rise.

Gwyn shrugged, but she remained tense, her eyes skittering around the sparsely furnished room, unsettled and highly strung. “You weren’t giving me the credit I deserved,” she finally said.

“You brought her into this?”

It was the first time I heard him yell, his fury snapping forward like loose electrical wires, and it was painful. I flinched as my charged connection with him reacted.

His eyes centered on me, taking in my disheveled state as he pointed at my torso. “Is that what I think it is?”

 My nose had been immersed in the smell of licorice for the past twenty minutes, and I was starting to get nauseous because of it. Asher’s cold gaze only added to that sickening feeling and I froze, my body tight as I forced myself to stare back. “Goop from a monster, yes,” I said, my voice cracking with every word I forced out.

He was
terrifying
when he was angry.

“I didn’t bring
her anywhere. She walked into it,” Gwyn said.

“Oh, she just happened to be walking around the most deserted parts of Brooklyn and she just tripped over you? Where were you? Why the hell did you block me?” Asher said. His eyes moved away from me and bored into Gwyn. “Because don’t tell me you did this in the city. If you were that stupid—why do you refuse to listen? Is she hurt? Did she almost die because of you?” He stepped closer, his voice rising. I pressed against the white wall behind me, thankful his temper wasn’t directed at me, but holy hell, it
hurt.

“No! Look at her, she’s fine,” Gwyn said, barely sparing me a glance before continuing, “Of course it wasn’t in the city! God Ash, you think I’m so stupid, all the time. For once, I wanted to show you that I don’t always have to be the one in the background. I’m just as strong as you.” This time, it was she who stepped closer to him, facing him down. “Just as clever. You had no idea. The boy who knows everything had no idea what I was doing—for once. For once I got to think for myself.”

Asher had become so stiff with anger that waves of it were coming off him, and I had to force myself not to turn and run far, far away from that predatory gaze.

“And that, right there,” he said, his voice deadly quiet, “is why I always put you in the background.”

“How dare—”

“Keep this up, you’re going to die, and take us all with you.” He paused for only a second before his voice rose up again, this time cracking underneath the strain. “I can’t protect you when you do this!”

“I actually go there to think,” I offered up in a small attempt to both defend Gwyn and remind them I was still here. I didn’t really like the girl, but I wasn’t going to watch her get in trouble because of a misconception. “I wasn’t lured anywhere,” I added, trying not to cower in fear. The room had become thick with tension, and those stone eyes of theirs were just as scary when they were directed at each other and not at me.

Asher glanced at me, his eyes turning tender as he took me in and assessed the damage. “You’re not hurt,” he said to me, not as a question, but more as a reassurance to himself.

I shook my head slowly, my eyes never leaving his.

“Good.” He turned back to Gwyn, his eyes soft now, and hurt. “Don’t make me have to live with your death, Gwyn.”

Gwyn trembled, but only I caught it with my heightened senses. The energy around her wavered like a cloud, but only slightly. “I just wanted to prove to you that I could do it. That I don’t need you constantly in front of me, blocking me.”

Her voice was no longer as strong, her stature no longer as confident. She had deflated under his words. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

His eyes flattened. “Right. Because it never occurred to you that I’m your brother and it would kill me if something happened to you.”

Anger forgotten, he finally looked back at me, the electric charge rushing through me like a flowing river as he calmed down. “You sure you’re okay?” He looked like he wanted to step in front of me and pat me down, searching for injuries. In that instant, I just wanted him to cup my face, to feel his hands on me, to feel those lips touch my own. I would be safe then, wouldn’t I? Safe with him, just like before, when he held me tight.

My body jerked, only slightly, but enough to remind me that she was in there, glowering.
He is not safe.
 

His face became worried at my continued silence. In his mind, I must have just faced a monster of my nightmares, never before encountering a creature of such supernatural, disgusting deadliness that I should be hysterical right now.  

They know more about you than you think
, she whispered in my head.

Yes
, I acknowledged.
Yes, they definitely do.
 

“Emily,” he said, his voice warm as he said my name.

Gwyn stared at him hard, flicking her gaze at me before zeroing back on him. “I blacked out, Ash. She says she…wounded it.”

Her voice had changed when she said those words. Hardened. I finally remembered what she had been saying when I was curled up in the bed upstairs so many nights ago, weak and afraid.

We don’t even know what she
is…

“Not many people would have done that.” He cocked his head slightly. “That was pretty brave.”

I decided to nod in agreement, unsure of how to react under Asher’s very sexy but very alert scrutiny. “Yes. I was walking. I like to walk a little in the evening before work, and she was on the ground screaming. I just reacted.”  

I wanted to melt under the softness of his gaze, but I couldn’t ignore the steel underneath. He was watching. He was considering. I had to be careful.

“Like I said, I just reacted. She was in trouble.” I paused and took a deep breath, taking the next step. “What the hell is going on?”

I couldn’t help but think that we were regarding each other like two panthers in the jungle; a sleek, quiet observance of each other, both ready to leap if the other even slightly twitched.

Watch him
, she whispered.

Gwyn was certainly watching me, her mind whirring like a machine as she glanced back and forth between Asher and I, all of us standing in a triangle in the middle of the room.

Asher finally spoke. “I’m sorry you were put into that position, that you had to see that. It must’ve been…yeah, I’m sure you have questions.”

I wasn’t sure if he was patronizing me or if he actually meant it. With Asher, it was impossible to tell what he was feeling by the tone of his voice. One minute he was cold as ice, and the next, I was melting under the heat of him. It was all so carefully controlled.

“It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” I said. “I hope to never come across one of those again.”

“Do you understand what that was?” Asher asked me, his gaze seeming to bore deep into my soul. The dark flame twisted and curled, her heat unfurling gently at my center.

“I understand that something’s going on this city.” I paused, remembering. “Was that what you meant at the park? When you said this city was trouble?”

“Oh, you two had a little pow-wow in the park, did you?” Gwyn asked. She raised a brow at Asher.

“Yes,” Asher said as he continued to look at me. Gwyn crossed her arms over her chest, miffed at being ignored.

“There are more,” I said, my gaze never leaving Asher’s.

“Yes.”

“Am I in danger?” I couldn’t help but ask. I wanted so badly to tell Asher what I knew, to compare our facts, to ask him what I was, but my throat was unable to work. I scowled, thinking it was
her
preventing me from speaking, but no, it was my own instincts warning me against such a snap decision.

Asher’ s mouth tightened, his only tell of emotion. “It’s seen you. You hurt it. It’ll come after you.”

I finally broke my gaze from Asher’s, looking down.
No, it won’t come after me. I killed it
, I wanted to say, but again, stopped myself.

“What are they?” I asked instead, even though I knew the answer.

“Monsters,” Asher said, his voice flat.

“But...where do they come from? And what do they want?” I made my voice rise higher, as if in panic, trying desperately to be the scared, innocent girl that they expected. Or at least I
hoped
they expected. Gwyn wouldn’t stop staring at me. It was throwing me off, unnerving me. My instincts were screaming at me to leave this apartment, but with answers so close, how could I?

“They came to take over, of course,” Gwyn said, her voice patronizing. “And we came here to stop them.”

I couldn’t help my eyes from flickering, and shot my gaze back downward in an attempt to prevent them from seeing the flaring gold in my eyes.
I want to stop them.

“It didn’t look like Gwyn was stopping anything,” I said instead.

My tactic worked. “I had it under control,” Gwyn said. “You shouldn’t have even been there. You shouldn’t even
know
these things.”

“But I do,” I said, looking back up at her, even dared to step closer to her. “I was in the right place at the right time, and I saved your life. What exactly can you do about that now?”

“That’s easy,” Gwyn said softly as she leaned back against the table. Her eyes never left mine when she continued, “We’re going to kill you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

At Gwyn’s threat, the dark flame roared to life inside me and I battled desperately to temper it.

“Humans can’t know what’s happening. It’s our job to maintain the balance,” Gwyn continued, as if she hadn’t just threatened my life.  “And now here you are, with your questions and your panic. If it were up to me, I would have killed you the second you came within my radar. There is something about you,
Emily
, that’s upsetting the balance.”

I was fuming because of her words, but outwardly didn’t show any emotion. I had to call upon whatever acting talent I possessed in order to look panicked when I cried, “But I didn’t do anything to you! I don’t even know what’s happening!”

I couldn’t help but feel the truth in those words. “You two have come into
my
home, where
I
live, and act like you own it. I saw a—monster—with my own eyes, and you’re telling me that there are more of them, that this whole city is in danger. And you’re focusing your attention on
me
? Something tells me your thoughts are better directed at something more pressing.”

“Oh calm down, girl,” Gwyn said, as if scolding a small child. “I said if it were me I would do those things, but unfortunately, it’s not up to me. Asher here is refusing to allow anything to happen to you.”

I blinked, pushing down my fury and the sharp panic at the thought that Gwyn could be catching on to me. “Is that true?” I said softly to Asher.

“Yes.” His jaw clenched, either in anger at Gwyn’s outburst or at the fact that Gwyn had just spewed forth information that I wasn’t supposed to know, I wasn’t sure. All that I did know was that Asher was protecting me.  My stomach flipped.