Drowning In The Dark: #4 The Veil Series (19 page)

The smell of charred earth tickled my nose. I sneezed and felt someone place a coat over my quivering body. Stefan knelt beside me, his slanted smile the best thing I’d ever seen. Behind him, a small contingent of lesser demons crowded: the ones I’d charged with his safety.

“Hello,” I croaked.

“Welcome back. These guys won’t stop following me. You know anything about that?”

“Maybe.”

He cast his gaze to his right, and I followed it to where a sea of molten lava cracked and throbbed as it cooled. Mega-demons liquid remains. If he was a prince, maybe he’d come back from that. But not yet. “It’s not over,” Stefan said.

Beyond, where the netherworld yawned wide, came another wave of demons. “How many?”

“Looks like all of them.”

I wasn’t sure I had anything left to give. “Help me up.” Taking his hand, I leaned into him and shivered at the sight of battlefield. Dead demons. Dead people, the air stank of death, charred flesh, and the horrible netherworld burned-rubber smell that coated my throat. My ears rang, and my head throbbed. “Where’s Ryder? Is he okay?”

“He’s here. The idiot came around in the car and refused to let me take him to a hospital. Then the veil fell…and I lost myself for a while.” He met my weary eyes.

And Stefan came back for me.
“Thanks.” That one little word didn’t do the depth of my feelings justice.
Thanks
didn’t cut it, but at that moment, it was all I could offer.

Stefan cocked his head and looked at me, into me. I might have thought it a predatory expression on his face if not for the slight widening of his eyes. “Don’t thank me. I came back as pure demon, looking for you. When the veil fell, I lost my mind. But when I found you on that street, draped in fire, I couldn’t lose you. You’re all I have left.” He smiled down at me with more in the hard lines of his face than any words could convey. “And you owe me a date.”

I blinked, words failing me. A demon brushed by, then another, bounding toward the gaping maw of the netherworld. Others galloped past us. Were they retreating? Some fought on the hardened lava field, attacking their own kind, and then I saw the reason why. On the edge of the lava field where the netherworld met Boston, stood a man. Even with his back to me, I’d recognize the proud figure he cut: Akil, arms outstretched. The demons closed ranks around him, hundreds of them, spilling in from all directions to bolster his line of defense. Beside him, stood a second man, bigger, broader, built like a wrestler, but not human. What had once been a second skin of tattoos danced around him like a shroud of moths. Those marks pulsed in time with the throb of power emanating from the netherworld. I’d felt that power before. From Dawn. Raw chaos. But from him, it was smooth, calm, like a cooling salve. Jerry turned and scanned the battlefield until he found Stefan and me. He offered up a salute, and then his human-guise burst apart. Muscles bulged, a double pair of demon wings spread far and wide, beating up a storm of dust, and a scaled tail lashed at the opposing demons, knocking them aside like bowling pins. He was beastlike. Primal. Devastating. Those elements were all I could see of him before the swell of his power demanded I look away from the King of Hell.

Stefan had pulled me close. His grip around my waist tightened. “I need to be there.”

“Go.” I nodded when he checked my expression. “I’ll be fine in a minute. Go. They need you. We need you.”

He pulled me against him, slanting his mouth over mine, drawing me into a desperate kiss. Already weakened, my legs buckled, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the very real taste of him, the feel of his body against mine, his arms around me. I didn’t want it to end. I clutched at his shirt and kissed him back, harder, hungrier, relishing the tingle of power and his clean, crisp scent. Like all good things, the embrace ended too soon. He swept my hair back, his gaze soft, lips softer. “Thank you,” he breathed, “for reminding me who I am.”

I bit into my quivering lip, afraid I might burst into tears. I couldn’t break down. Not yet. There would be time and space for tears later. He clasped his hands over mine and eased them open, peeling my fingers apart, forcing me to let him go. His eyes said it would be okay, but as I watched him turn and walk away, a bitter wind tore across the ruined park, carrying with it the cries from countless demons, and a sense that worse was yet to come. I pulled his coat tighter around me, gathering it in my hands as I had his shirt, and breathed in the leathery smell.

A punch from behind knocked the breath from my lungs. I arched away, or tried to, but my body seemed inexplicably snagged. A silent cry whooshed from my throat. My brother hooked his arm around my throat and dragged me back against his chest. “I have wanted to sink my blade through your flesh since I first laid eyes on you.” He hissed the words into my hair, so damn close it felt grossly intimate. I clutched at the cool slim thing protruding from my chest and looked down. Bright red blood dripped from the point of his sword. Obscenely calm thoughts said,
Oh, he stabbed me. That’s not right.
I saw Akil and Jerry, too far away to call out to. Stefan was a blur, slaying demons in his path as he made for the front line. He wouldn’t hear me even if I could cry out.

“Sweet sister.” Val shifted, just a little, but the pressure on the rapier burned through my body. “If you reinforce a belief often enough, it becomes reality. Do you believe you are destruction made of flesh, half-blood whore? Do you consider yourself my equal?”

“No.” I spluttered blood. The touch of his lips curled against my neck. He could tear my throat out if he wished or reduce me to a quivering lust-crazed wraith. “We are not equal.”

“No, we are not. I am immortal. I have lived a thousand of your finite lives, killed countless of your kind. Killed half bloods as babes when I foresaw undesirable futures in their innocent eyes. The elements breathe through my divine flesh. Your feeble human mind cannot begin to comprehend what it means to be demon. The Mother of Destruction would not die by the point of my sword. Perhaps, you are not the glorious creature I foresaw. Perhaps, you are the nothing I will make of you when I shred your mind.”

“Have you finished—” I coughed. Blood spluttered from my lips. “—stroking your ego?” More dribbled down my chin. “We are not equal because I am better.” My voice threated to abandon me, but not yet. “I am human and stronger than you will ever be because of it.” I tugged on his fiery soul, having latched onto it while he wallowed in self-admiration. He really was made of the elements. One in particular. I wrenched the fire out of him with one vicious, metaphysical swipe. He stumbled us both forward. In one step, I was demon. I turned, let out an inhuman cry, and diverted all nearby lesser demons to my cause. They came because they knew me, feared me. As Val spluttered and wheezed—wings down, sword arm limp at his side—the lessers pounced and buried his beautiful body beneath a heaving mound of demon flesh.
You will die under tooth and claw, brother-mine. I will see to it they shred your body and mind until nothing remains, nothing but your ragged, immortal soul.
I fed on his heat, like I had on Akil’s all those months ago. It wouldn’t kill Val, but it’d screw him up for a few hours, days if I was lucky.

I wobbled and reached out to grab a scorched tree trunk. Coughing up blood was never a good sign. As demon, I healed most wounds, but internal damage wasn’t as easy to dismiss. I needed time to rest and recuperate. The tree held me up as the world began to tip and skew. If I went down here, surrounded by demons, they’d probably eat me.

Val spread his wings. One moment, I was trying to stay upright, and the next he filled my blurred vision, glowing white hot, framed by wings as black and beautiful as perfect darkness. “You’re like the villain who doesn’t know when to quit with the evil comebacks.” I had all his fire, but there was no use using it against him. He was weak, his wings sagged, and his color had paled to a deathly gray, but he still had goddamn immortality on his side.

“To live, you must forfeit your freedom and your foolish love. You are incapable of losing either. Therefore, you will die, as you should have perished by my hand as a newborn abomination.” His wings loomed, large and surreal. I almost welcomed their embrace. So tired, so wrung out, I wasn’t even sure I had it in me to stand on my own two feet, but I shoved off from the tree anyway. I wasn’t going down without a fight.

“Bring it, brother-mine.” I swayed, and it took me a few seconds to realize he wasn’t moving. Blinking, refocusing, I saw why. Writhing tendrils of liquid chaos energy wove around him, knotting around the milky whiteness of his limbs, holding him rigid. He didn’t see me. Head thrown back, eyes wide, and hair failing, he was beyond seeing. Chaos had him in her grasp and was plucking him apart one piece of flesh at a time. Lashings of dark hooked into his skin and tore him to pieces. His wings dissolved, picked apart by ravenous eels of power. I blinked again and watched my brother cease to exist. Gone. Body and immortal soul, undone in a matter of seconds—an immortal chaos demon turned into memories.

There was only one being I knew who could pick apart an immortal. She stood in front of an armored personnel carrier, a little colt-like thing, all spindly arms and legs inside a monstrous heaving cloud of undiluted chaos. Our gazes met, and pure chaos tried to flood my mind. She might have succeeded had Adam not touched her lightly on the shoulder. The dark peeled apart, and Dawn stood looking at me. Tight ringlets framed her innocent oval face. A pink and white Hello Kitty dress hung from skinny shoulders. She blinked at me, gaze flat, peering right through me. What did she see?

The pair of them strode over, weaving around fallen demon and human bodies.

My demon slunk off, leaving me propped against the tree, sick and shivering.

“Are you hurt?” Adam’s flat tone relayed just how much he didn’t care about my answer.

“Pretty much.” I wiped blood from my lips and grimaced at the splash of scarlet on the back of my pale hand.

Adam reached for me. I instinctively recoiled and then froze as he pinched the collar of Stefan’s coat and rubbed it almost lovingly between his finger and thumb. “Where is he?” His puppy-dog eyes almost gave the impression he cared for his son.

“At the front line, trying to do what’s right. Not that you’d know what that was.” I dropped my gaze to Dawn. She watched the battle or at least stared in that general direction. “Hey, remember me?” She didn’t reply. Her distant glassy gaze wavered. What the hell had Adam done to her? I lifted my gaze and set it squarely on him. “They call me destruction, but they call you monster.”

Adam ignored me and searched the chaos for Stefan. From our position at the back, all we could see was the panoramic view of the netherworld where Boston had been less than an hour before. I should have been at the front. Wasn’t that what the Mother of Destruction was about? So much for
becoming what I was meant to be
. “I really need to sit down.” I dropped to my ass among the tree roots. “Just a little rest, and I’ll be okay.”

Adam whispered something to Dawn. Crouched down at her eye-level, he gripped her shoulders and muttered. I might have understood had I not been fighting to stay conscious. I caught Stefan’s name and Akil’s. “What are you d-doing?” I slurred. Tears swam in my raw eyes.

He straightened and marshaled Dawn in front of him, his big hands locked on her boney shoulders. “It ends here. All of it. There will be no demons left this side of the veil. None.”

Dawn stared through me. She’d do it. She’d kill them all. “Wait, no… Adam, please…” I reached for Dawn, but she was too far away. “You can’t kill them. Not Stefan, please. Not Akil. They don’t deserve to die.” I blinked, trying to battle the fog of unconsciousness. Adam had gone. I swung my head around and saw him guiding Dawn through the body-strewn battlefield, her little hand clasped in his. Dammit. She’d tear them apart as she had Val. Adam had his perfect weapon right there. Nothing would stop him, not with Dawn by his side. All demons would die. Even the good ones.

Maybe I could find my feet, somehow stumble across the cooled lava field, around the bodies and craters, and get to Stefan before Adam. I hauled my sorry ass onto leaden legs, teeth gritted against the pain radiating from my middle. I dared not look down at the wound. Somehow, seeing the blood would make it all the more real. Clasping Stefan’s coat close, I sucked in a deep, smoke-filled breath and fell into Coleman’s arms.

“Easy, I got you,” he muttered, scooping an arm around my waist and supporting me as we hobbled in the wrong direction.

“Wait. Akil… I need to get to the front…”

“Muse, you’ve lost a lot of blood. You’re in no state to go marching off to save a demon who’s immortal, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“I’m sure he can look after himself.”

Not if he didn’t know she was there. Who would Adam go for first, his own son, or Akil? Maybe he wouldn’t kill them. Maybe he’d concentrate his efforts on helping them, using them, until he saw his chance. That sounded like an Adam thing to do. It would give me time.

I
might have blacked
out because the walk from the burned tree to the militia camp was a blank. I woke to a pair of soft brown eyes scowling at me. Ryder looked about as beaten up as I felt. “Hey, aren’t you meant to be wounded?” I grumbled.