Devil May Care (11 page)

B
eneath the moonlight
, the naked forest shivered. The trees had been stripped bare. The carpet of needles and dried leaves crunched under foot as I passed beneath clawing branches. The brittle bark on each misshapen tree trunk had been flayed clean on one side. Some ancient trees had toppled, and the fallen giants all faced the same way, like a graveyard of timber. Others had snapped in two. Something catastrophic had blasted through here. I couldn’t sense any residual use of elemental magic. Whatever it was, it had taken place days, if not weeks, before. Battlegrounds like this were not uncommon. Lesser demons weren’t the only ones that squabbled over the scraps of their prey. When the big boys got involved, the landscape often bore the scars.

After leaving Yukki Onna, I followed the edge of the lake, stopping only once to take a drink and wash off the dried blood from my scratches. My mind stilled, my desires sated. For now.

I felt eyes on me, even if I couldn’t see the lesser demons hunched in the dark. If you aren’t the hunter, you’re the hunted. Hopefully the gleam of Kira-Kira in my hand would dissuade the majority of demons from attacking, but my missing wing would mark me as damaged, that, and my distinctly human odor. I’d pulled off some powerful stuff back at the ice-grove, but I had no desire to lose control again. Not so soon. There’s temptation in chaos. If I made a habit of answering its call, I might never return from its alluring embrace. Madness beckoned.

Of course, I could have fled the netherworld and returned to Boston, crossed the veil and given myself time to lick my wounds, also known as hiding. But then what? Damien would find me and continue his crusade. Now that he had a taste for it, he wouldn’t stop with me. No, I couldn’t leave the netherworld. Wherever I was, he’d be with me. I had to get his tainted touch out of me somehow, and then I’d kill him, and this time the twisted bastard would stay dead.

Once I found Stefan, I could figure a way out of this mess. He knew more about demons than I ever would. Stronger, smarter, the half-blood who beat the system: he’d know what to do.

I was close.
Follow the lake to where the trees give way to steep tundra. That is where you’ll find him,
Yukki Onna had told me.
I trudged on. My pace quickened, and my rapid breaths misted in the cool night air. Stefan and I hadn’t parted on the best of terms. He had lied through his teeth, but he’d also saved me from Akil’s murderous intentions.

Stefan taught me how to draw power from beyond the veil, but he’d given me a gift more precious than potential. We’d shared a shower and a bed and each other. Sex, for me, was a muddle of emotion, needs and desires. As a child-demon, I’d understood sex as another way to hurt me. The act of sex was no different from the beatings, the mutilation, or the humiliation. It was life, just like every other wretched means of inflicting pain. After Akil had saved me, our relationship changed as I’d aged and he hadn’t. Once I became a woman, he’d coaxed pleasure out of me where before there had been only pain, but even then, with Akil, it had been about control, his and mine. With Stefan, it hadn’t been that way at all, although I hadn’t realized at the time. I’d thought a great deal about the hours I spent with Stefan and what they meant to me. When we’d lain together, I’d been without my demon but Stefan hadn’t. He’d held back. I knew it in his quivering muscles and fierce winter eyes. But he’d been gentle, so goddamn gentle that I’d growled and demanded more. His touch had been reverent, delicate, sensuous, and outright infuriating. Until it wasn’t. We’d lost each other in those hours and found ourselves again. I’d wrapped myself so tightly in his arms that I didn’t want him to let go. Ever. He’d woken something in me I hadn’t known existed. He taught me I wasn’t a worthless half-blood. Neither was I a frightened woman. He taught me by way of his touch, his snowflake kisses and the warmth of him, that I could be loved. And it was only the beginning. I knew if we came together again when I was whole—demon and woman—the exquisite combination of elements would be divine but dangerous. We’d flirted with something forbidden in those hours. Fire and ice. Wrong, but so right. In the months since, a day hadn’t passed without my thoughts finding Stefan and wondering if he was alive, if he was okay, if I should have been so hard on him, if I’d been wrong to blame him. If I loved him.

I’d forgiven him for his lies, but had he forgiven me?

I paused near the edge of the dead forest and rested my hand against the desiccated bark of tree. A curtain of greens, blues and purples twisted and thrashed silently across the canvas of black sky. It was magnificent, but it wasn’t natural, not even for a world as twisted as this one. I’d seen pictures of a similar phenomenon; the aurora borealis. This was no aurora. It was raw elemental energy: the veil. It pulsated above the ragged landscape, danced like watercolors in the rain, and throbbed like an open wound.

I left the cover of the forest and climbed upward over a rubble-strewn incline toward a vast cliff face. The frozen ground beneath my feet hissed gently against the heat seeping from my flesh. A cool breeze teased around me. Ahead, I made out a barrier of bushes. But as I drew closer, I realized the barrier wasn’t natural at all. It was ice. It towered over my five-foot-nothing and bristled with obscenely sharp spines. I reached out to touch one. It pierced my fingertip before wilting away from my heat.

The ice barrier stretched around the foot of the cliff face. I couldn’t see over it, and there didn’t appear to be a way in. Some of those javelins of ice were as long as I was tall and had been packed so tightly they were virtually impossible to penetrate. I walked along the perimeter, trying to find a spot where I could wriggle through. The shards gleamed and rippled under the moonlight. They creaked and groaned as though complaining.

With a resigned humph, I lifted my hand and focused a surge of heat at one spot on the barrier. Ice-shards wilted and warped. Water trickled over my feet. A small hole opened, just large enough for me to duck through. I straightened on other side of the barrier and gaped. Ice had crystalized over the ground and up the cliff-face. The plateau beneath my feet resembled etched glass. Vast geometric patterns, like those found in magnified images of snowflakes, shimmered just below the surface. The sound of cracking ice snapped through the air like gunfire.

Ice had devoured the rock face. Jagged spikes jutted outward, deterring anything that might attempt to climb down. The defenses, the rock face, the plateau: it was a killing ground. Kira-Kira shivered in my hand and strummed with power. Above, the elemental light show dipped and swayed. Earthen greens mingled with liquid blues. I swallowed. My wing shuddered.

“Stefan...?” In the near silence my small voice carried, but only the cracking of ice responded.

I stepped onto the plateau. A yawning cave drew my eye. Icicles hung from the mouth like fangs. Water dripped from their tips only to refreeze as it hit the ground, forming a lower jaw of teeth. Sword clenched in my hand, I stepped into the darkness inside. “Stefan?” I whispered. A gentle breeze teased across my warm cheek, and my skin prickled. The weight of his power pushed against my back. I turned, and caught a glimpse of moonlight cascading through multifaceted ice wings before a shard of ice tore through my wing membrane.

I pulled my wing against me and crouched low, poised to retaliate. I hissed a warning. The ice demon took a few more strides before stopping to glower at me. I barely recognized him. His distinctively masculine physique bristled with splintered ice. Where his mother shimmered like frosted glass, he glinted sharply in the moonlight. His eyes blazed electric blue. Restrained power swirled in his irises. Pale blue lips, dusted with crushed ice, pulled back in a sneer. His wings arched high behind him. Each frozen feather held a lethal razor’s edge, and as they grated together, they sang like the chiming of distant bells. His beauty terrified me.

“It’s me,” I whispered.

He flicked a hand and flung a wave of ice splinters at me. I ducked low and hissed as they passed too close. He gathered an ice javelin, called it forth out of nothing, and locked those surreal eyes on me.

“Stefan,” I growled. “Stop.”

If he heard me, it didn’t register on his face. A little curl of his lips hinted at a grin, but it was a twisted mockery of the smile I’d dreamed of. He lifted the javelin over his shoulder and launched it at me.

I reared up and blasted heat toward him in time to meet the javelin midway. It splintered into countless pieces that vaporized as they rained over me.

The snarl on his lips rumbled the ice. The ground shifted. I staggered. A shard of ice erupted from the earth beside me, too close for comfort. I jumped back, arms flailing. “Stefan, goddammit... It’s Muse.” With a hasty flap of my wing, I regained my balance and drew more of the heat from outside the ice fortress. A torrent of warmth funneled through my body. With a quick pushing gesture, I summoned a tumbling wave of fire and shoved it toward him.

He dropped to a knee. A shield of ice bloomed in his hand. He braced against the wave. Fire splashed over him. His shield sagged, its edges curling. Water pooled. I was beginning to realize what Yukki Onna had meant when she’d told me to
reach
Stefan. There wasn’t going to be a friendly chat.

He glowered at me over the warped rim of his shield, and with a roar of rage, he swept up a carpet of bristling spikes and flung them at me.

I spilled ravaging heat over my body, cocooning myself in blue flame, and swept my wing around me, crouching as water splashed across my flesh. My fire spluttered, hissed and spat. Sweeping open my wing, I growled back at him with every bit of demon bass-tone I had.

He sprang off his back foot. I locked my stance low to the ground, teeth gritted, wing out-stretched, and braced myself. He slammed into me, driving me back. My feet skidded across melting ice. His arctic embrace sucked the heat from my flesh. Water fizzled between us, steam sputtering, ice cracking, and fire spitting. Our elements butted up against one another, entangled in a deadly battle of opposing forces. I tried to coil my element around him, but the strength of his retort slapped me down. His brittle glare pierced me. Those eyes held no recognition whatsoever. He was gone. He shoved me off the plateau. I tumbled over myself until I landed sprawled on my front, face down in the frozen dirt.

He stood, wings spread, stance rigid, the sky behind him alive in a dramatic display of color. He had more power to call. So did I. I hoped that he wouldn’t go that far. I’d already tasted chaos a few hours before and didn’t want to chance it again so soon. But if he pushed, I’d push back.

I got to my feet and brushed loose gravel from my superheated skin. “You stubborn son of a bitch,” I muttered. Deliberately pooling fire in my gaze, I lifted Kira-Kira. “Recognize this?” My voice echoed across the plateau. “Do you remember your mother?”

He huffed and turned his back on me. Fragments of ice crumbled from his wings and tinkled melodically against the frozen ground.

“Stefan. I’m not going away.” I stomped up onto the plateau. “Don’t walk away from me. You have no idea what I’ve been through. Don’t test me.”

Something in my words clearly struck a nerve. He stopped and glowered over his shoulder. Wicked light danced in his eyes, followed by a throaty laughter that I almost recognized. But it was wrong. He was wrong, twisted somehow. This demon wasn’t the Stefan I’d known. The man I could have loved had gone. The bitter bite of winter in those eyes smothered any trace of humanity.

I flung the sword aside and collected fire into my palms. “I know you’re in there.”

“Bring the fire, half-blood.” He laughed. “You’ll die like the others.”

The threat sent a shiver of trepidation through me. I lifted my hands and summoned it all. There’s heat in everything that holds life: the earth beneath us, the rock face behind him. It was nothing like the reserves in the city—Stefan’s ice had chased away much of it—but enough remained for me to sculpt to my will. I let the fire spin inside of me, around me. I twisted it around me and whipped up a storm of bubbling liquid heat.

Stefan moved closer. His fingers twitched. His wings shivered behind him. His power blazed bright in his eyes and rippled across his blue flesh. Tendrils of energy seeped from inside him and thrashed at the air, licking, tasting, reaching. He looked every part the demon: devastatingly powerful, potentially the most powerful demon on this side of the veil. Besides me.

The twirling maelstrom lifted me off my feet. The crazed, cackling laughter bouncing around us was mine. “Ready to dance?” My voice growled and boomed at the same time. My demon rode high. She breathed it all into her, into me. She consumed every last drop of heat from the land, compressed it into a ball of power at our center and fed the madness.

Stefan dropped his stance. The ground around him rippled. The ice plateau cracked, reshaped, and undulated at his will. Ice funneled up from the earth. Branches of it climbed higher and wove together, creating, shaping, building. Jagged shards snapped and locked into place. Two monstrous humanoid ice beasts with wisps of blue smoke for eyes clawed their way out of the towers of ice.

This was new.

I clasped my hands in front of me and formed a sphere of white-hot heat and launched it through the firestorm. It plunged into the torso of one of the beasts. The hideous avatar shuddered, planted itself onto all fours, and charged. Dropping to my knees, I thrust out both hands and funneled a blast of heat at its face. The absolute force of power melted the creature in an instant, but the momentum it carried continued in a gush of ice-water that drenched over me. I spat out a cry. My fire spluttered and died.

The second beast sensed its moment and thundered forward on four legs of dirty ice. I pointed my hand high and tore a hole in the veil with a slice of my claws. I could smell the human world, hear its glorious thrum of life, taste the sweetness of air.

“Stop!” Stefan hissed.

The creature planted two stocky legs on either side of me. Its stumpy snout snorted blasts of cool air against my reaching hand. In the next moment, its bulk collapsed, dumping rocks and snow on top of me. Briefly, I was entombed. Panic twitched through me, but before it could hold the snow melted and simmered off my skin. Stefan came forward through the rising steam. My gaze pinned on his. I withdrew my hand from the small tear in the veil, allowing the wound to heal and vanish.