Desolate (Desolation) (13 page)

“I think so,” I finally said.

James surprised me by pulling me into a hug and holding me tightly. After a moment I wrapped my arms around him and allowed him to ground me in the moment, to push away all the crap, all my doubts and worries, and just breathe.

“Wanna tell me what was going on with you and that . . . kid?” I tensed and held my breath. James responded by rubbing my back in gentle circles, a gesture I’d come to know as his way of saying he was sorry, but that he wanted me to answer anyway.

“Nothing.” Because it was nothing.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, nothing.”

“Didn’t look like nothing to me, Des.”

Everything stopped. I didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. James’ hand stilled on my back. We both waited as if trying to hear the words that weren’t spoken out loud.

“You saw?”

He hugged me tighter. He’d seen.

I sighed and dropped my arms, but James still didn’t let go. “I don’t know what it was. It just happened. I—” I pulled away from him, stepping out of the reach of his arms. “I don’t know. It was nothing. That’s all.”

He watched me, weighing my answer against what, I didn’t know. Some internal James-o-meter of truth or something. He stuck his hands into his pockets and I knew he wouldn’t say anything more about it. Not then, anyway.

“Why don’t you call the fogies and tell them about Miri? They’ll want to know.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and had my phone out before he’d even finished asking. “Okay, be right back.” Even though I had no intention of hurrying at all. James raised his eyebrow but didn’t say a thing. I pushed the button to call the elevator and contemplated taking the stairs instead while I impatiently watched the elevator door.

“Wait.” Miri’s voice cut through the static in my brain and my blood froze in my veins. “You can’t go.” Her voice made my heart lurch and tears inexplicably sprang to my eyes. She sounded so broken, so sad. I turned toward her slowly, afraid to see her, to look into her eyes. Afraid I didn’t have it in me to be what she needed right now.

But it was Miri, and she’d never made me work hard at our friendship. Whenever I didn’t know what to do, she did—she always did. She pushed past the crowd of mourners and when I faced her, she practically fell into my arms. Turns out all I needed to do was hold her.

Hold, hold and hold her. She made it easy to be her friend, even when life was so, so hard.

chapter eighteen

Miri’s dad said goodbye to his daughter with a brief kiss on her cheek—such an inconsequential kiss he didn’t even have to take his phone from his ear.

“Don’t stay out too late,” he said. As if she’d be out partying or something. As if her mother, his wife, hadn’t just died.

Miri leaned into James and squeezed my hand and didn’t say a word to her father.

She came back to our place where I pressed a hot cup of chocolate into her hand before leaving her and James snuggled on the couch. I closed the balcony door behind me and
balled up Aaron’s coat in my arms, using it to pad the railing as I leaned against it. I
avoid
ed
looking at the couple making out in the hot tub in the courtyard. I looked to my right, into the stand of pine, my eyes seeking the darkness. The shadows. And that’s where I saw him.

Eleon stood beneath the boughs of a tall pine, a dark hoodie cloaking him in shadows even more effectively than the tree did. He stood leaning against the trunk, his arms folded on his chest. When my eyes met his, he bowed low, but I saw the smile on his face.

Something inside me stirred. Something ugly and foreign. Something that made my heart race and my lip curl into a smile without my permission. A hiss escaped my lips and became a strangled cry as my right arm burned viciously cold. While I watched, a black tendril raced up my arm. I clamped my other hand tight to my forearm, desperate to stop the blackness from climbing higher. I scratched and clawed at my arm—I had to stop it, force it back.

“No, no, no.” The words repeated with every breath, every inhalation. “No, no, no.”

Then cold, strong hands were on my shoulders, turning me around, sliding down my arms. “Shh, shh,” Eleon said. He pried my fingers from my arm, curling his around it instead. He took a deep breath and I copied him. Our eyes locked and so I was watching him while they shifted from a light, muddy brown to the endless black of a demon. With slow deliberation he sunk to his knees and rested his forehead on my boots.

For a moment I stood frozen, trapped between one life and another. His Shadow spread behind him, blocking the light from the apartment, cutting me off from that life, from Miri and James, from memories of Michael and Lucy, from my life as Desi Black.
I pulled Aaron’s coat from the railing, clutching the fabric in my fist.
As I let my Shadow respond, I felt my human life slip away like stepping out of a dress.

“Desi?” James called from inside the apartment. I could make out the shape of him rising from the couch, walking toward the balcony. My breath hitched—
I should go back.

But then I felt the spear, so near, so tangible. This—the Shadow, the spear, disciples to worship me—this was my heritage, who I’d
always been
.
I let Aaron’s coat fall to the floor.

When Eleon suddenly moved, hopped onto the railing and then dropped—only to soar into the sky—I followed.

There was relief in this. Freedom in being what I should have been all along.

Desolation.

We flew to the cemetery and the woods behind it. I shouldn’t have been surprised. An ancient evil lurked there—probably because of its close proximity to the Door to Hell.

I felt the gentle press against my mind, a request from Eleon, a lesser demon, to speak to me there. I granted him access, but didn’t initiate the conversation.

Do you know the history of these woods?

My silence said enough.

Centuries ago, before Native Americans inhabited this area, a nation of people warred against their neighbors. They were the most cruel race of all mankind. Crueler even than Akaros’ Spartans.

I snorted. I highly doubted any race could be more evil than the Spartans.

Eleon let a vision fill my mind’s eye as we circled the treetops. I saw men raising cudgels with spikes, whips with barbs tied along their lengths, and other deadly weapons, fall first upon men, then women and children down to the smallest of babes. They showed no mercy. They gave no quarter. And when their enemies were dead, they fell on one another until not a single human being remained. As the dust began to cover their bodies, leaves blew upon their still forms and darkness filled the sky as thousands of demons left their bodies, leaving them to rot.

A chill swept down my spine.

That hadn’t been men’s evil only
, I said.

Ah, but they had to first make room for us, didn’t they?
Eleon replied, pride rising in his tone like a flag in the wind.

You were one of them.

This time he answered with a silence of his own. A bulging, boastful silence. I closed my mind to him but followed him down into the trees. A small fire burned in the clearing and a handful of humans sat among the leaves, passing a bottle and a bong between them. I waited for the spark of Asgard to flare in denial of this scene, to urge me to run, to get as far away as possible. I waited, but it didn’t come.

“You comin’?” Eleon held out his hand, and I recognized so much more than a simple invitation. This moment was ripe with choice and the one I made would define me, claim me.

I ignored his hand but stepped past him and into the clearing.

At first the kids were too distracted to notice me, but I embraced the fullness of my dark glory and burned with an upswell of pride in my heritage. I was their princess, their leader. My will was paramount, my words scripture. I stood there, wrapped in my wings like a royal cloak. I felt ten feet tall, and when Eleon stepped in front of the fire and fell to his knees, every one of them followed his example. They fixed their gazes upon me, their eyes aglow with a kind of rapture that made me feel glorious. I spread my wings and when the black tendrils climbed up both my arms until my skin turned as black as coal, I laughed.

My laughter rang through the woods, shaking the trunks of the trees around us; leaves fell and the logs on the fire shifted under the sound of my voice.

chapter nineteen

In the dark woods, I changed. Or, I became who I might have been if I’d never met Miri or Michael. But Michael was gone and Miri had James and even James had become someone new, someone else. Did it really matter what I chose anymore? I searched my heart, the center of my being where I’d hidden the secret of the golden spark my whole lifetime. I searched for it—but it wasn’t there. At least, I couldn’t feel it. And my skin was as black as any First Order demon.

If only Akaros could see me now.

The thought stopped my heart for a moment—did I really mean that? Did I really want Akaros to be proud of me? Then again, I’d killed him, so it didn’t matter one bit what he thought.

I perched atop a boulder, watching Eleon, Taige and the others as they groped at one another and passed their drugs between them. Some of them clung to the sides of the rock, touching me, petting me. At their touch, the burning cold at my wrist raced up my arm and I shuddered with a strange mixture of pleasure and pain. I welcomed the cold and the earth rocked from the force of my Shadow. Trees fell to my left and right. Leaves flew up in a circle around me.

And I laughed.

I lay across Eleon’s lap, watching the flames of the fire dance across Taige’s face. She sat opposite me, her expression a mixture of hate and reverence. She wanted what I could give her, but hated that I’d separated her from Eleon. I really didn’t care.

My phone buzzed in my hip pocket, but I ignored it.

“You’re buzzing,” Eleon said in a low voice.

I ignored him, too.

Eleon slipped his hand into my pocket, pulled out my phone and held it to his ear.

“Desolation’s phone. Go away.” He hung up and tossed the phone to the dirt beside us. It rang again. He snatched it up and shouted, “I said go away—” He held the phone to my ear.

“Desolation,” Knowles said. A shiver ran up my spine that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the dose of reality that hit me as soon as I heard his voice. “You have promises to keep.”

“I’m keeping my promises,” I said, my voice ringing with defiance.

“From where I stand, I can see you’re not keeping the promises I’m talking about.”

I dropped the phone and sat up, looking past the trees to the edge of the woods—to where a dark figure stood. Before my display of power earlier, there would have been trees to hide our little gathering, but I’d knocked so many down, we were practically in plain view.