Released (Eternal Balance) (4 page)

Chapter Four

Sam

Azi hadn’t said anything since we’d gotten back into Kelly’s truck. It didn’t ask how I’d managed to dig us out of our little predicament, or how I’d convinced Kelly to let us keep the truck. The demon had slipped behind the wheel, and we were currently cruising up the Taconic State Parkway. Normally the silence didn’t bother me. The less the demon opened Jax’s mouth, the easier it was for me to pretend things were okay. But about an hour in, I started getting antsy.

“So Heckle mentioned a tracker? What was he talking about?”

Azi took an exit and turned the truck onto a narrow country road. “The Tracker is akin to what humans would consider a bounty hunter. It seeks out items of power and the things associated with them.”

I cringed as loose pebbles assaulted the underside of the truck. Kelley was a pain in my ass, but she meant well—in her own special way. She loved this stupid truck. I’d promised to keep it safe, telling her that I was taking Jax to a rehab facility and would be officially done with him when I returned to Harlow. She wasn’t going to be happy if both things turned out to be lies. “And you think Chase summoned it?”

“If he has half of the Brim Stone in his possession, it would be the logical move. Power attracts. Many will be looking for it. The sooner he obtains the other half, essentially making himself untouchable, the better I imagine.”

“So we need to find the other half before this tracker does.” I nodded as the truck listed to the left. We’d pulled down another road, this one all dirt and barely large enough for a single car. Branches scraped the sides and roof and I said a silent prayer that they weren’t messing up the paint too badly. “How do we do that?”

“We don’t.” When we couldn’t go any farther, the truck came to a stop. It hadn’t been a road, but a driveway that ended at a small log cabin situated at the mouth of a stream. The demon killed the engine and got out of the car. A moment later, it was at my door, yanking me unceremoniously from the passenger seat. “You do.”

“Me?” I repeated, as the demon dragged me toward the cabin. It looked old, and as Azi pulled me up the steps, I worried the tiny porch wouldn’t support our weight. Each movement sent a series of groans and creaks that sounded suspiciously like a warning. “How am I supposed to find it? And where the hell are we anyway?”

I didn’t get a response. Instead, the demon produced a key and unlocked the door, then shoved me across the threshold. I had no idea what I expected to find inside the small house, but it wasn’t neatly stacked cardboard boxes and tons of ancient looking furniture beneath what appeared to be decades of dust.

Azi let go of me and closed the door, and I took another step inside. The boxes went from floor to ceiling and looked to be piled around the edge of the room three deep in some places. Each one had a four-digit number on the front, some barely visible through the thick accumulation of dust. “What is this place?”

Azi thought about it for a moment. “The edge of the world. My world.”

I rolled my eyes. “That tells me nothing.”

The demon sighed. “I suppose it is my home.”

“Home?” I lifted the flap on the nearest box, one numbered 1908. It was full of black and white photographs. “Jax never mentioned this place.”

“He doesn’t know of its existence.”

I let the box close. “I don’t understand. If it’s his house, how would he not know?”

“You misunderstand me. It is mine.” Azi walked past me and traced the top of the box I’d opened. “They are filled with pieces of the past.”

“Pieces of the—” I ran my finger over the front of another box. When I wiped away the dust, I saw the number 1862. “Years… The numbers are years.”

“Of course.” It looked at me as though that should have been the natural conclusion, the expression on Jax’s face all Azi. “Enough about the boxes. We are here to find the Brim Stone.”

I stepped away from the pile and threw up my hands. “Oh, right. I’m supposed to find it.” I spread my arms. “Is the answer in one of these boxes I’m not supposed to be talking about? Am I pulling it out of my ass, or do you have a better plan?”

“Use your energy. The stone is powerful. Pures are attracted to power. Upon death, they gravitate toward it.”

“I’m not dead,”

“But you
are
activated. Your power has been unbound from your soul. It is the same thing.”

I wanted to argue, but I could see it would have been pointless. Jax was stubborn. I’d dealt with it all my life. But Azi? It took the whole thing to new levels. “Well, how exactly do I use my
energy
?”

That question stumped the demon. It cocked Jax’s head to the left then, a moment later, to the right. “Simply do it.”

“I have no idea how to simply
do it
. Ask me to make you an Extra Fuzzy Alien or a killer Sex on the Beach, and I’m golden. Tell me to light up my alleged otherworldly mojo and you’re shit out of luck.”

“Then you must learn. We will remain here until you locate the stone.”

“Better get comfy then. We’re gonna be here a while.”

The demon caught my gaze and, in a way that was all Jax, said, “We don’t have a while.”

…

By the time eight p.m. rolled around I was seriously considering taking a hatchet to Azi—never mind that the demon was residing in Jax’s body. It had been standing over me for the past few hours, tirelessly demanding that I tap into my energy. Forget the fact that I had no clue how to do that, or that the only thing I wanted to
tap into
was a nice big keg.

“You need to focus,” the demon roared. It had taken to pacing from one end of the small living room to the other. “You are wasting time we do not have.”

“You’re the one wasting time. Instead of pounding the pavement hunting this thing down the old fashioned way, you’ve got us holed up here waiting on something that’s never going to happen.”

It stopped pacing and came forward, looming over me. “Perhaps you lack proper motivation.”

“Trust me,” I said, cool as ice, “my motivation is solid.”

“If Zenak gets the other half of the stone, there will be nothing on earth to stand in its way. It will kill me and hell will reign.” Azi leaned in closer and tapped the side of Jax’s head. “It will kill
him
.”

“And your point is…?” Obviously I didn’t mean the careless tone, but the demon never missed an opportunity to remind me that Jax was gone. For good. If that was the case, why would I care? “Not like you’re going to vacate the premises.”

“I still do not see why you complain. He is in here, as I was. You have not lost him. We are the same. Nothing has changed.”

“
Nothing has changed
?” The last thread of my patience broke. I shoved the demon hard and punched my fists against Jax’s chest. In that moment, it didn’t occur to me that I might hurt his body. It didn’t matter that he was buried somewhere inside and might feel the pain. All I saw when I looked at his face was Azi. “You are
not
the same.”

“Enough of this.” Azi shoved me away from Jax and folded his arms. “If you truly love my human—
Jax
—then you will do as I tell you. Now.”

I had two choices. I could walk away and let Azi do what it wished with Jax’s body, though it probably wouldn’t let me out of its sight, or I could try to figure out how to work this mojo. The demon had a point. If Zenak destroyed Azi, then Jax would be killed as well. A lot of people would probably die right along with him. The whole point of me living in this hell was to get him back.

“Fine.” I sighed. “Then give me
something
.”

“Such as?”

“I dunno.” I stomped my foot. “Tell me what a Pure can do.”

I didn’t think the demon would answer me. For what felt like an eternity, it just stood there, staring. It stood still as a statue, the subtle rise and fall of Jax’s shoulders barely visible with each breath. “I cannot answer that. Not the way I imagine you would like.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You are unlike your predecessors. They were nothing in life, and in death were merely powerful sources of transferrable energy. They had no access to it. A Pure wasn’t able to
do
anything. They were simply a means to an end. A device that could be used to complete a massive task or achieve a Herculean goal.”

I let out a growl of frustration. This was getting us nowhere at light speed. I needed a different tact. “Okay. Then what could the lucky bastard that claimed the Pure do?”

The demon frowned and cocked Jax’s head. “Whatever they could do before—only better. More powerfully.”

I stomped my feet again and screamed at the top of my lungs, vaguely happy that the cabin was in the middle of nowhere.

The demon took a seat across from me and gestured to the chair on the other side of the room. As I sat, the expression on Jax’s face changed. His lips weren’t set in such a grim line, and his jaw wasn’t as tense. He looked more like…himself.

“Now that you are activated, I believe you have access to every portion of your brain. Humans are, admittedly, interesting creatures. They have much potential but have only just begun to tap into it.” The demon slid off the couch and settled on a knee in front of me. Moving slowly, it took my hand and turned it over so that my arm was gently twisted, elbow up. “This bruise for example. You can make it disappear.”

“Yeah.” I snorted. “It’s called makeup.”

“You can make it truly disappear.”

“As in, heal it?”

“Yes.”

“I’m starting to think some of the funny fumes Jax and I smoked when we were younger are affecting you. I can’t
heal
myself.” Right? If I could do that, I’d know. I mean, something like that would have been pretty hard to miss considering some of the shit we’d been through lately.

“You can,” the demon insisted. “You have only to focus. Concentrate on the bruise. Visualize the broken blood vessels repairing themselves.”

“Visualize,” I repeated, closing my eyes. I visualized. I concentrated. And after a few minutes, I was focusing so hard that I thought my brain might implode. When I opened my eyes, of course, the damn bruise was still there. “This is impossible.”

Azi mumbled something that didn’t sound like English. It moved in a blur, suddenly standing and dragging me up as well, and it had a blade pressed against the inside of my wrist. “Perhaps you lack the proper motivation.”

Again with the motivation—

I bit back a gasp as Jax’s hand tightened around my arm and the demon jerked the blade across my skin. For a second nothing happened. The cold steel caressed my wrist and left a lingering chill that made the hairs on the back of my neck jump. It itched a second or two—then the blood began to flow, at first appearing as a thin line of red, then thickening and dripping faster.

“What the—are you insane?” I tried to pull free, but the demon’s grip was like iron. I struggled and lashed out, kicking at every part of Jax’s body I could get to. The attacks did nothing.

Azi held my arm at an angle so that the blood ran down my forearm and pooled at my elbow momentarily before hitting the small braided rug at our feet. “Stop the bleeding.”

How long before things got fuzzy? How much blood loss would it take for me to pass out? To
die
? A bubble formed in my chest, making it hard to breathe. No. Azi wouldn’t kill me. The demon wouldn’t let me die. But the determination I saw etched in Jax’s expression, one not his at all, said otherwise.

Fear turned into full-blown panic. There was a right way and a wrong way to slit your wrists. Which gave more bang for the suicidal buck? Sideways? Horizontal—vertical? My mind raced, but I couldn’t focus on a single thought.

He’d made the cut horizontal.

Maybe that was the wrong way.

Maybe I wasn’t in danger.

But there was already so much blood…

I twisted and thrashed, but he wouldn’t let me go.

“There’s only one way out of this,” the demon said.

No choice.

I closed my eyes, gave into Azi’s madness, and tried to focus. I pictured the skin whole and unmarred, the blood gone and the itching sting vanished. Of course, the demon was absolutely insane in thinking I could magically heal myself, because nothing happened. I opened my eyes as the panic reached new heights. “Don’t do this, Azi.” The blood thundered in my ears, and I was starting to get dizzy. “I’m scared—”

“Historically, fear is the ultimate motivator for your kind.” It lifted my arm a little higher and tilted Jax’s head to the left. “You should calm down. I can hear your heartbeat. The more agitated you become, the faster the blood will flow. You will bleed to death much faster that way. Now, heal the wound.”

The wave of terror grew more potent, the air around me turning icy. Calming down was pretty much off the table at this point. I struggled even harder as tears of frustration stung the corners of my eyes. “If you don’t let me bandage this, I’m going to die!”

Thoughtful for a moment, the demon then sighed. “He is very agitated.”

“Jax?” I stopped thrashing and forced myself to take a deep breath, trying to even out my pulse. It’d made a good point. Logic. I could focus on logic. Struggling would only make it worse faster. “Can’t imagine why.”

For the longest moment, it didn’t respond. Finally, it lowered my arm and reached behind us to grab a towel from the couch. Tying it uncomfortably tight, it said, “He fights for control, believing that I will harm you. Contrary to what you believe, I do not do this to cause either of you pain.”

“Well, you’re not doing it for the warm fuzzies either,” I snapped, cradling my arm. “You just slit my fucking wrist!”

“You do not understand the weight of our situation. There are multiple outcomes—only one of which is favorable to us.” The demon sank onto the couch. It leaned forward, balanced both elbows on Jax’s knees, and fixed his eyes on mine. “I will strike a deal with you. Find me the stone, and I will consider releasing the human.”

Even though I should have known better, hope swelled. It was irrational and potent, and I knew I should rein it in before it grew out of control. But I couldn’t. “You’ll give him back control?”