Darkest Before Dawn (24 page)

He was too close. All I could think about was the cold burn of desire and the overwhelming need to hold him. “It doesn’t matter,” I said quietly, “because when I believed I was a killer, I didn’t care. I accepted it. I never would have believed I was capable...” My humanity was failing me. Damien’s touch had already poisoned too much. I was drowning in the dark. I just didn’t have the good grace to go under one last time. “Dawn’s dead. I couldn’t save her, just like Ryder said. In the end, she thanked him, right before he killed her.” I searched his gaze for any sign of judgment, but all I saw was hard acceptance. “I know why you left. The same fate awaits me. But I can’t run back to the netherworld. Not now. Not ever. There’s nowhere for me to go, nowhere to run. There’s no way out. I’m trapped against a wall. Ryder should have put a bullet between my eyes. I see it on his face when he looks at me. He knows the truth, Stefan. He’s just waiting for me to fuck up. We don’t get happy endings. I am destruction. Akil’s weapon...” I paused, sucked in a breath, and said, “And I feel... nothing.”

Stefan’s expression finally registered a change and darkened. “Akil’s weapon?” He tried to capture my gaze, but I flicked it away. “What do you me—”

“You’re right.” I ground out the words while biting back a knot of emotion. “This—us was wrong. It was a mistake, just like you said. Every time I’m with you, bad shit happens.” I remembered his words and repeated them back to him, “I’m sorry we met.” The longer he stayed, the more I’d ruin him. I’d drag him down into the darkness inside of me and drown us both. I suddenly knew with absolutely clarity that I could never be a part of Stefan’s life, not if he was going to survive. He sure as hell could beat this madness. He had the tenacity, the instincts, and the passion. But the likes of him weren’t for me, not the Mother of Destruction. I’d ruined everything. I’d promised Dawn freedom and got her killed. Stefan’s sister, sweet Nica, had died because of me. Stefan lost his whole world, because of me. Ryder’d had to execute a young girl because I’d failed to do the right thing. Destruction was my name. Holy hell, the demons knew me better than I did. Maybe Akil was right. I really was the monster he thought me to be. “You need to go.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He turned away and picked up the Operation Tyhon file. “Wanna know why?”

I didn’t imagine the drop in temperature or the trickle of power dancing against my skin. He appeared to be controlled, but the leeching touch of his power said otherwise. If I reached an element touch out to him, I feared what I’d find. My humanity—what was left of it—tingled a warning, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

He flicked open the file, eyes narrowing as he skimmed the contents. “I have debts that need paying. Wrongs to right. My father, for one. The Prince of Greed is another. Your brother. The Institute...”

His words sounded dangerously like revenge woven together with a thread of something I regularly coveted: madness. “The Boston Institute is gone,” I said carefully.

His smile cut deeper. “Not while Adam lives.”

“Stefan, this doesn’t sound like you.” My breath misted in the air. I hugged myself, bracing my hands against my upper arms.

“Doesn’t it?” He lifted his head and pierced me with his ice-born glare. “I thought I’d killed you. When I realized what I’d done...” He dropped the file onto the table, gaze locked on me. “When I watched you die in Ryder’s arms, it destroyed me.”

There was that word again. Just a word. But it spilled fear into my veins and seemed to pull a cold blast of air into the room around me. Shivers quivered through my exhausted body. “But you’re here. I’m here. What you thought you did doesn’t matter. The past is irrelevant.” I inwardly winced, realizing I’d paraphrased Akil’s words.
The past is irrelevant. The Institute is insignificant.
It occurred to me that Akil had taken out the Institute just as half the netherworld demons decided to make Boston their new home. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Was Stefan’s presence here also just bad timing, or was he in some way connected to the change in the netherworld and the influx of demons?

“You told me once we’re the products of our past...” Stefan said with a wistful air of sadness.

I had, when he’d first taken me to the lake house, before he revealed the depth of lies he’d told me to protect his sister, before a lot of things, none of them good. I didn’t know what to say to him. Nothing I could say would change the weight of the past pushing down on us.

He was in front of me so suddenly I gasped and jolted back, shoving against his chest. Instincts demanded I escape, but his hands clamped down on my shoulders, fingers digging in. Pain bloomed in my wounded shoulder muscles. I flinched and tried to pull away. “Stefan, please... you’re hurting me.”

He bowed his head, pulling me tight against him. This wasn’t anything like the warm embrace we’d shared moments before. His body trembled with chilled restraint. A blast of cold stole the breath from my lungs. A dusting of ice tightened my skin.

He brushed his cheek against mine, his demon purring, “I came to warn you. The netherworld is dying. The princes are rallying. You are not prepared.” He sighed and slumped against me as though speaking the words relieved him. “I am the Prince of Wrath. And I’ve never needed your help more than I do right now.”

I gasped and pulled back. His words pierced my soul like splinters of shattered ice, and everything I’d felt for him, every tiny flicker of hope I’d cherished, scattered, chased away by terror. His hands tightened on my shoulders, gaze drilling deep. The demon that was Stefan damned me beneath his glare. The colors of the veil danced in his eyes, but further inside, deeper, I witnessed a soul cowering behind a barricade of ice. Brittle fractals sparked across his cheek, lanced into his hair, and sliced across his lips, cracking, spitting, as it smothered his expression in a mask of lacy frost. The restrained power I’d felt pulsing inside him since his return suddenly broke out and washed over me. I groaned and arched back, torn between fighting him and the terrible urge to answer his power with my own. The flood of ethereal energy slammed my humanity down. My demon roared inside my head, thrashing against her restraints in a bid to devour the source of chaos inside him. I tried to swallow a wail of despair, but it tore from me in an anguished cry.

The Prince of Wrath glared down at me with terrifying certainty. He’d come for vengeance. On his father, on Akil, on anyone who’d ever wronged him. Including me.

I looked up into his diamond-eyes and knew it was too late for Stefan.

I’d already destroyed him.

The reaching tendrils of Aki’s power encircled me before I even knew he was nearby. Ice and fire wove around me. The opposing elements tightened against my skin and vied for supremacy. I heard Stefan’s snarl just as I was wrenched back out of his vice-like grip and pulled into a chasm of darkness. For the briefest of moments, I was nowhere. It was time enough for panic to clench around my heart and my demon-hitch-hiker to spill its poison through my veins. It was only the scent of cinnamon and cloves among the suddenly embracing warmth that prevented me from losing my mind to fear.
Akil.
I stumbled out of the dark and fell into his arms. Or I would have, had I not spun and slapped him so hard his teeth rattled.

I shoved off him and staggered back, trying to get my bearings as the room around us sharpened into focus. The lounge at Blackstone. It had undergone some re-decorating: new leather couches, a new coat of paint so fresh I could still smell it drying. My demon shunted my humanity to one side and snarled at her failed attempts to be free. I threw that snarl at Akil. “Take me back!”

He worked his jaw and fingered the flushed mark on his cheek. “You’re getting stronger.” He spoke with pride in his eyes.

I didn’t have time to deal with his ego. Stefan needed me, and Akil had just stolen me out of his arms. “Take me back right now.”

He arched a dark eyebrow, managing to look both bemused and haughty. “You are capable of many things, but suicide is not one of them.”

I glowered. “Stefan wasn’t going to hurt me.”

He sighed, his shoulders slouched, and his eyes lost some of their luster. He appeared to age a few years in a few seconds. “He killed you once, Muse. In that very apartment. By some miracle, you came back to me. You’re mortal, and I’m not making the same mistake twice.”

I clutched at the cool leather of the couch I’d bumped into, needing something to keep me upright while my legs threatened to give out. My head still wasn’t quite grounded, thanks to the unexpected reality-hop. An ache throbbed behind my eyes, and my parasite’s sickly touch still burned in my veins. It was all I could do not to double over and hurl all over Akil’s polished, marble floor.

I sucked in a deep breath. “I have to go back.”

Akil shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over the opposite couch. He unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled his sleeves up. All the while, his gaze seared me as though we were about to engage in combat. “You don’t seem to understand the danger you’re in. Let me be perfectly honest with you—”

“That’ll be a first.”

He ignored me. “No more half-truths. You
are
a weapon. The princes are aware of this pertinent fact, due to your antics over the past few months. Titles are shifting. Half bloods are rising. An immortal prince dies. Another has his title ripped from him by an upstart half blood ice demon who doesn’t know any better. The netherworld is dying. The veil weakens.” Akil scooped up a TV remote from the coffee table and flicked on the vast ultra-thin TV mounted on the wall. “Lesser demons are bleeding through. And you, my Muse... are the eye of the storm.”

I blinked, wondering if I should be feeling something, but my body was numb and my thoughts hushed. The TV played a newsfeed. I got a glimpse of the reporter, but no sound. Akil had muted the volume. I didn’t need to hear what was being said because the Hellhound sprawled on the road outside a McDonalds restaurant really didn’t need an introduction. There were a number of things very wrong with that picture. People aren’t meant to be able to see Hellhounds. But that fact didn’t appear to have reached the members of the crowd taking pictures with their smartphones. Also, Hellhounds don’t die. From the glassy red-eyes and lack of breathing, that one sure appeared to be dead.

“Oh.”

“Indeed.”

“What’s going on?”

“The princes are coming. I’ve deterred them as long as possible, centuries in your time, longer in theirs. Unfortunately, the netherworld is dying. My home is no longer able to sustain the demons. And as with all immortals, the princes tire of that which they possess and hunger for that which they can acquire.” He sighed. “Chaos is forever hungry.”

This was big. Bigger than me. Bigger than the Institute, than Boston. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“It is. And inevitable.”

I turned away from the TV and found him standing close enough that I had to look up to meet his gaze. “How much of this was your doing?”

“None.” He swept a lock of hair from my face.

Why did I find that hard to believe? “Right. And I’m Mary Poppins. Wait while I get my umbrella, so I can beat you to death with it for never giving me a straight answer to anything. Cut the crap. Give it to me straight. I’ve earned that much from you.”

He smiled. “You have. I told you once of the King and how the Queen killed him. You remember?” I nodded. “Good. The King and Queen—control and chaos—together maintained balance in the netherworld. When the Queen killed her counterpart, chaos reigned, and the beginning of the end of the netherworld was born. Unbeknownst to the remaining princes, the King lived in hiding. He was weak—”

“Okay, I’ve heard enough. Is this the part where you tell me you’re the King? Because really, my head’s already spinning from Stefan’s revelation...”

He fought with a grin. “No. I’m flattered, but no. I’m
just demon
remember.”

“Just demon,” I echoed and didn’t believe it for a second. I’d thought Akil had killed Sam in a jealous rage, but I was wrong. He’d killed an Institute spy to protect me. I’d tried to point fingers at him, accusing him through rose-tinted glasses of being inhuman. Well, he was demon. I was just too much of a dumbass to accept it. And now he was telling me about a King who wasn’t dead but had been weak, hiding on this side of the veil. So pinch me if I didn’t quite believe him. Akil hid the truth in lies.

“Are you quite finished scowling?”

“Not by a long shot.”

“As I was saying, the King was weak. He came here to regain his strength while the princes believed him dead. I know where he is. I helped him, in fact. We will need the King if we’re to protect the human realm from the Princes.”

I think I liked him better when he was wrapping me up in a bubble-wrap of lies. “I’m hearing a lot of plural talk in there.”

“Well, you are the Mother of Destruction. I was hoping you might like to help save your city. But you do get a choice. Where you go, destruction follows. You merely need to choose which realm you reduce to rubble in your wake.”

He made it sound as simple as whether I should have chocolate sprinkles on my cappuccino. “Yay. A win-win situation,” I replied, dryly. This night was just getting better and better. “Okay, say for a second I take your word as the truth—which, by the way, I don’t—why on this earth should I listen to you? You just used a little girl to wipe out the Institute. Convenient timing. From where I’m standing, that sure looks like you’re on the side of the princes. Also, there is the fact you
are
a prince with a reputation for manipulating the truth.”

“Sacrifices must be made. The Institute was ill prepared. They played at being protectors, but it’s not nearly enough.”

“Are you telling me you did it for their own good?”

“Back any creature into a corner, and it will fight. Now the Institute gathers, galvanized. More of their ranks will come to Boston. They ready their soldiers. I disturbed the nest so that they’d wake in time to see the truth and prepare.”

I pinched my lips together, biting back the urge to tell him people had died when he’d decided to rattle the Institute. He would tell me they were collateral damage. “And what do you get out of this? What does the slippery Prince of Greed gain? Because if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you don’t do anything unless it benefits you.”