Drowning In The Dark: #4 The Veil Series (6 page)

T
he meeting
with Adam went surprisingly well. Nobody got hurt. No blood was spilled. I agreed to have PC34 in my veins as long as he gave me the antidote when I left the Institute facility. And if they didn’t adhere to our deal, I had my own back-up antidote. I would be free to roam their base, but the location would remain confidential. I had to go in blindfolded. It was all very secretive. They’d already been burned once. And although I wasn’t responsible, I hadn’t exactly helped the situation. I might even have fanned the flames a little. Adam might be many things, but stupid, unfortunately, wasn’t one of them.

I would be taken to their facility that afternoon. After signing a few waivers—saying should any harm come to me on their premises, they weren’t responsible—I had a few hours to kill. Jenna told me where to find Ryder.

His back alley house was sandwiched between lock-up units. The first time I’d visited him, Nica, Stefan’s sister, had been with me. Ryder had tried to threaten me. I’d burned his hand. Thus had begun a somewhat awkward working relationship and what I’d considered a lasting friendship. Ryder had taught me about all things enforcer. I’d excelled at the Institute’s ridiculous tests and would have graduated with my own enforcer tattoo had Adam not been a lying bastard. He’d just wanted me close enough to observe. I was his Subject Beta, the second in a total of four half bloods bought or raised by the Boston Institute. Adam had tried to barter with demons for me when I was an infant, but the deal had gone south, and I’d wound up staying in the netherworld, where I’d been raised by demons until Akil saved me. Subject Alpha was Stefan. Gamma and Delta, I hadn’t met, but hopefully that would change once I got inside their facility.

Ryder answered the door, chewing on a toothpick, took one look at me, plucked the toothpick free, and said, “Fuck off. You’re the last person I wanna see.”

I rammed my foot in the door just as he tensed to slam it. “Hey, your girlfriend sent me, okay. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.”

That stalled him. “Huh?”

“Jenna.”

“Shit, me and her, we ain’t… She’s the fuck-bunny for a demon. Why would I get involved with her?”

Even for Ryder, his words were harsh. I raised an eyebrow. “You going to let me in?”

“You need an invite now? Are you that far gone?”

“You’re an asshole. Stop pushing me away.”

“Fuck you.” He turned and marched down the dingy hallway. I followed. His house was a peculiar combination of narrow halls and rooms packed to the walls with books and magazines on rifles, shotguns, autos and semi autos… Anything weapon related, Ryder knew it. But his filing skills left a lot to be desired. He lived like he dressed: as if he didn’t give a damn. The truth was, he cared about the important things and nothing else.

“She’s worried about you,” I called, losing ground as he flung open a door and descended into the basement.

I hammered down the stairs after him and emerged in an underground shooting range. Naked fluorescent bulbs buzzed on and flooded the range in light. He’d taught me how to shoot here. It looked as though I was about to get a lesson in anger management by semi-auto.

The gun he scooped up was Stefan’s old Desert Eagle, a huge, shiny piece of American badassery complete with .50cal rounds. I’d used that very gun to shoot at hellhounds eyeing me up for snack time. I’d missed for the most part. Stefan had emptied the clip into Akil’s back. And Ryder had threatened Stefan several times with it. Stefan’s Desert Eagle was the only weapon that sprinkled shivers down my spine. On the grip, the entwined scorpion insignia of the Institute declared its purpose: demon-killing weapon. And if Ryder chambered etched-rounds, it could kill a prince, or at least a prince’s vessel. Ryder didn’t know it. He knew etched rounds were effective, but had no idea he’d almost killed Akil. It was only after my intervention that Akil had bounced back.

I hugged my arms crossed as I watched Ryder check the magazine, ram it home, and then check the chamber. Ryder was a lot like that gun, a steely, no-nonsense demon-killer. He’d screwed up once: he should have killed Stefan. He’d vowed never to make that mistake again, and not long after, he’d killed Dawn, put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. Every night, I replayed the scene in my dreams. Ryder standing tall over a tiny nine-year-old girl. Arm outstretched, aim true. Not even a quiver. And she’d thanked him. Goddamnit. Dawn had been braver than all of us in the end.

I flicked my gaze down the range. Unshed tears blurred my vision. “You did the right thing,” I said quietly. I gave Dawn hope, but it was a false hope, which I had no right to dish out. I thought I could save her, the way Akil had saved me once, but it was a lie. I only had to look at Stefan, look at what I was turning into. Dawn hadn’t stood a chance. I’d been wrong, but that didn’t mean I was happy about it.

Ryder took aim at the target several hundred meters down the range, stole a breath, and pinched the trigger back. The gun blast boomed. I closed my eyes and relived the shot that killed Dawn.

“I don’t need or want your forgiveness. I know I did the right thing. She was a level-red threat. I eliminated a Class A demon—did my fuckin’ job. So keep your goddamn forgiveness to yourself.”

Considering Jenna had said he was quiet, I figured I was getting the uncensored Ryder. I pinched my lips together, biting back a few choice words, before settling on, “I’m sorry about the whiskey.”

He aimed again and fired. “Was a waste of damn good whiskey.”

The words ‘you deserved it’ were on my lips, but I somehow managed to keep them to myself. Apparently, I did have some self-restraint left. “Ryder… Is everything okay? I mean, besides the obvious?”

“Everything’s peachy, Muse. Demons are spilling through the veil quicker than we can deport their asses back to hell. Hellhounds are roaming Boston. People are dying, and we don’t have the numbers to protect them. And you… you’re…” He lowered the gun to his side and glanced across at me.

I smiled as gently as I could. “I’m still me.”

For a moment, his eyes saddened, and he aged years in seconds. Beneath the haggard lines, a brutal honesty bled through his expression, and damn, he looked exhausted. Then it was gone, and I was staring at hard-as-nails Ryder as he glared back at me, daring me to ask him what I’d just seen. “For how long, Muse?”

Yeah, he had me there. Hours. Days. No more than that. If I got through the week without turning demon, it’d be a miracle. PC34 would buy me a few days, but once the antidote washed the drug from my veins, my time was up.

“You heard from Stefan?”

I stilled and bit my lip, suddenly finding the floor fascinating.

“That bad, huh?”

“He’s…”

“Forget it. I don’t wanna know. I’ve got enough shit to deal with. Just go, Muse. You got no business being here. We don’t need to work together any more. If anything, I should lock you up. I don’t wanna have to shoot a friend the way I did that little girl.”

“It won’t come to that.”

He didn’t look convinced. “Get outtah here, and don’t come sniffing around if Jenna asks again. My problems ain’t nothing you can fix.”

Tucking my hands into my pocket, I nodded. “I’m going to the Institute facility later, to see Akil, with P-C-Thirty-Four in my veins again. When I come out and I get my demon back… I’m... Well, if it comes to it, I’ll go back to the netherworld. If I’m going to go nuclear, I’ll do it there and take every fuckin’ demon with me. I’ll make you proud.” I favored him with my best Ryder wink, turned on my heel, and left with the weight of his gaze on me until I climbed the basement stairs.

A
fter an hour’s
journey in the back of a blacked-out van, I was escorted onto the grounds of the Institute’s secret facility, which resembled a country club until I got a look at the inside. A single-story compound capped a vast underground complex. The elevator taking me and my escort of armed guards below ground took an age to descend fifteen levels into the bowels of the facility.

Once we’d arrived, I was signed in, searched—again—and jabbed with a jet injector. Five minutes turned into what felt like an hour as I gritted my teeth and fought against the pain of having half of my thoughts and half my soul ripped out. At least I didn’t pass out this time. Striding beside my personal guard, I swallowed back bubbling panic. Without my demon, I felt naked and vulnerable. A chasm had opened up inside. It took all my effort to plaster an expression of indifference on my face. It was that or drop to my knees and sob. I did learn that PC34 had no effect on a soul-lock.
He/it
was still there, a clenching tightness in my chest, a stagnant pool of darkness at the back of my thoughts. If anything, without my demon, the doors were open…
Come on in, Damien. Pull up a chair. Make yourself at home. While the resident demon is away, you can play
. All I could do was hope my parasite couldn’t do anything without my say-so because, if I was wrong and
he
was aware he now had free reign, I was in trouble, and so was the entire secret facility that’d just let a class A demon into their midst without knowing she was soul-locked. They didn’t have that check box on their waiver forms.

Adam took over from my armed escorts. He didn’t bother with small talk. We’d moved beyond idle chitchat when he’d first locked me up and drugged me. As we walked, I staved off an itching panic by absorbing all the information I could from my surroundings. I knew the Institute was generously funded, but this place had to be a multi-billion-dollar operation. You don’t get a swanky underground lair from Kickstarter. Only big corporation money could buy all the gleaming tech and qualified staff. As we followed shiny white hallways and my boots tapped out a beat in the sterile quiet, I wondered if Akil had known about the scale of this operation. If he was faking it, as I believed he was, then what possible reason could he have for wanting to get inside? Unless he meant to destroy it? He’d told me his attack on the Boston hub had merely been for their own good, to disturb the nest so they could rally their forces. It didn’t make sense for him to continue his assault, unless he’d lied. He did have a tendency to bend the truth around his whims, but I liked to think I wasn’t as easily fooled as I used to be. When he’d revealed why he’d sent Dawn in, why he’d set the Institute up, it had felt like the truth.

Stefan had said the princes hated Akil. Although, given that the princes seemed to despise one another, their hatred wasn’t a surprise. They distrusted him and knew they’d underestimated him. So whatever Akil was scheming, he was on his own. That wasn’t a particularly comforting thought. Alone, he’d managed to reduce the Institute’s topside operation to rubble, and he’d used a little girl to do it. He’d also told me he’d been manipulating the Court for years. Whatever his reason for getting inside the Institute’s underground base, I had to convince him to drop it. Now was not the time to play demon games.

My boots squeaked on the linoleum. Somewhere, a door hissed shut. Occasionally, I caught snippets of conversations. The white, the quiet, the pine-scented smell of cleaning fluids, Akil being here—it was all just plain wrong. What was I going to find? Considering how I’d last seen him, kneeling in the alley, his eyes scolding me with disgust, I would need to steel myself for what would no doubt be a verbal lashing.

We arrived at an antechamber. No windows. White walls and ceilings. Electronic keypads. Inside, a rotund, cocoa-skinned woman greeted me with a firm handshake. Dressed like a glamorous schoolteacher with complimenting neutral colors and a silk scarf slung loosely around her neck, she exuded a distinctly authoritative vibe, not unlike Adam’s. She was shorter than Adam, more my height in flats. Her dark hair had been curled into a bun. Not a single strand flicked free. She wore a trouser suit and not the cheap sort, if the flattering fall was anything to go by. Behind her, two white-coated lab assistants waited like sentries either side of a steel door, clipboards clasped in front of them instead of the assault rifles favored by their topside counterparts. Welcome to the Institute 2.0.

“Muse, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. My name is Sabine Sturgill. I’m the East Coast VP.” She had a practiced, steely handshake further hardened by her rigid gaze. Here was a woman not to be underestimated. “Adam has kept me well informed of your progress.”

My progress? Oh, how I wanted to leap right on that one, but airing my grievances was not why I was there. I had a job to do, and my own personal baggage could wait—at least for five minutes. “He’s never mentioned you.” I smiled.

“Well, no. We tend to keep the higher echelons out of general conversation.”

Anyone who used the world echelon in conversation had better have the balls to back it up. Considering Adam’s quiet presence behind me, I could assume Sabine did.

“I hear you saved Adam’s life a few weeks ago…”

My sweet little non-assuming smile stayed. I blinked a few times too many. “Yes.” Not by choice, more by accident. “I have my uses.”

Her teal eyes sparkled. “Of course you do. Which is why you’re here. I’m assuming you’re ready to see him? You don’t need to freshen up first?”

My eyebrows lifted. Was I going to have to dance to this nice tune the whole time I was here?
Just let me see Akil already.
“No, I’m fine. The sooner I see him, the quicker we can start getting answers. I don’t think we have the time to get comfortable. Do we?”

“No. You’re right about that. I would like to talk with you some more about what you know. It’s quite evident we’re dealing with an unprecedented number of incursions, and I understand you have certain…connections?”

“Once I’ve seen Akil.”
See my nice smile? I can do congenial. Just not for much longer.

Adam loomed to my right. I’d almost forgotten him; such was Sabine’s presence. “Muse, I’ve already warned you… Should anything happen, it will take seconds for my people to reach you. As you know, a Prince of Hell can do a great deal of damage in seconds.”

You have no idea
. “Is there anything specific you’d like me to ask him?”

“Not yet. I want to see how he reacts to you first. We’ll go from there.”

I was really going to do this. They turned around, and the assistants opened the door into a narrow, empty chamber. Along the left wall, a waist-high stretch of glass afforded a view of an adjacent room, and with each step, more of the room slowly revealed itself. Steel chains sheathed in clear plastic trailed from the back wall and pooled around the hunched form of a man. He’d turned away from the glass, so all I saw was the refined musculature of his back and shoulders. Sweat glistened on his bronze skin. A flood of bright light washed over him, presenting him in startling clarity. Before I realized I’d moved, I stopped at the glass, hand reaching. “Can he see us?” I whispered.

“We aren’t sure,” Sabine replied. “It’s one-way glass, but he appears to be able to see through it on occasion.”

I gulped audibly, and forgot about maintaining my composure. Distantly, I registered my rapid breath and pounding heartbeat, but all of it faded to nothingness at the sight of Akil. The sense of wrongness I’d experienced since seeing him fall in the alley amplified tenfold. My thoughts drew comparisons with caged animals in a zoo. A panther perhaps, pacing back and forth behind its bars, its eyes dull, claws blunt, mind gone. Akil could not be the man beyond the glass in that bland, sterile room. He was fire. He was chaos, bright, infallible, impervious. How was this possible?

Adam was saying something, but his words drowned beneath the gut-churning horror. I had to get Akil out. He’d saved me. He’d found me in the netherworld and taught me what I needed to know to find my own way in the dark. He’d saved me in so many ways and so many times that I’d lost count. I couldn’t let this happen.

Akil lifted his head. The corded muscles in his back flexed as he shifted position, and then he turned. Amber-fringed eyes locked on me. His lip curled up, baring blunt human teeth. He saw me, all right, and there could be no doubt what thoughts fuelled the rage in his gaze.

He launched himself with lightning reflexes at the glass, but the shackles around his wrists locked taut before he could throw his weight against it. That didn’t stop me from jerking back. He strained on those chains, pulling forward, arms yanked back, body trembling, and his face twisted into a hideous visage of fury.

I hadn’t believed until that moment that Adam’s warnings were true. I didn’t allow myself to think the impossible. I was wrong. The Institute truly had captured Akil. And he would kill me the first chance he got.