Shadows in the Silence (2 page)

CADAN’S LIPS BRUSHED MY EARS. “STAY CLOSE AND don’t make eye contact,” he whispered just loud enough for me to hear him. “The demonic are competitive, and that one was about to try and take you from me. You’d have to blow your cover to protect yourself.”

I took a deep breath. “Where is this friend of yours?”

“Over there.”

A few tables from where we stood sat a demonic reaper with scruffy, reddish hair that stuck up in thick tufts. His tangerine-orange eyes widened and brightened and then turned into a scowl when he spotted Cadan.

“I thought you said he was a friend?” I asked him, annoyed.

Cadan took my hand and led me directly to the table. “Most of my friends hate me.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

The other vir shot to his feet, nearly knocking his chair over as he scrambled up. “The hell are you doing here?” he spit, and his energy prickled defensively.

“Relax, Ronan,” Cadan said firmly. “I’m just here to talk.”

He gave me a scathing yet hungry look. “With a little meat-bag pet?”

I didn’t turn my eyes away from him or show any fear.

“Sit down, Ronan,” Cadan ordered. “Otherwise I’ll sit you down myself. I need a favor.”

Ronan obeyed, but he wasn’t pleased about it. “Why would I do any favor for you?”

“Not even for an old friend?”

“You’re not my friend!” Ronan snarled, eyes a blaze of vibrant orange. “You took Emelia from me!”

I rolled my eyes at Cadan. “You stole his girlfriend?”

“It’s your fault she’s dead!” Ronan shouted, hands tightening into fists on the table.

“You
killed
his girlfriend?”

“Ellie,” Cadan responded sharply without looking at me.

Ronan ignored me. “I told you I’d rip your face off if I ever saw it again. You and that bitch, Ivar. I’ll kill you both.”

“Ivar’s dead,” Cadan replied, his gaze faltering for a heartbeat, his jaw tightening. “I killed her myself.”

Ronan stared at him, astonished, and then huffed with
indifference. “Well, it’s too late. Emelia’s dead and I blame you.”

Had Ivar killed this demonic vir, Emelia, for the very reason she’d tried to kill me that night she caught me leaving the library—because of Cadan’s fondness?

“I don’t have time for—”

Ronan laughed bitterly, cutting Cadan off. “
You
. It’s always about
you
. What you want, what you don’t have, what you’re willing to take. What you don’t give two shits about once you have it.”

“I couldn’t have done anything to protect her,” Cadan said, his voice flat. “If I could, I would have.”

“Then why now?” Ronan spit. “Why wait eighty years to avenge her? If you loved her, then you’d have killed Ivar decades ago.”

“Emelia would have died anyway. She was human, Ronan.”

The other vir sat heavily back in his chair and crossed his thick arms over his chest. He shook his head and his mouth turned down in disgust. “You’re a cold bastard. Just because she had an expiration date, then it meant nothing for her life to be snuffed out?”

Cadan’s hardness broke then, giving away his emotions through his eyes. He leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “
Please
, Ronan. Tomorrow we can fight this out. Tonight I just need your cooperation. It’s not for me, it’s for her.”

Ronan made an ugly noise and his gaze settled on me. “This little thing? A replacement for Emelia? or have you finally a discovered a taste for human flesh?”

I couldn’t hold my tongue anymore. “You talk about me as if I’m a scrap of food and you only insult Emelia’s memory by doing so. Was she just a ‘meat-bag’ to you too?”

Ronan lunged across the table for me, talons sprouting from his fingertips, vicious fangs springing from his gums. My instinct was to lean away from him and call my swords, but before I did either, Cadan was on his feet, reaching over me, and he grabbed Ronan by the throat and shoved him back down into his seat. Yet again, I’d almost just blown my cover, and Cadan reiterated this fact with a frustrated glare in my direction.

He turned back to Ronan. “I’ll tear your esophagus right out if you make a move for her again. Are we clear?”

“Like
glass
,” Ronan hissed, baring his fangs before they shrunk back into normal-sized teeth.

As Cadan sat down again, I tried not to notice the many pairs of eyes now focused on the three of us. My heart began to thrum harder as my nerves got to me. This plan wasn’t going well. I wanted to just get out, but we needed this information. I had to save Will. I had to see this through.

Ronan studied my face and tilted his head curiously. His shoulders rose and fell as he tried to calm his rage, but the more he stared at me, the more anxious he became. “I think I know what’s going on. I hear all about you, Cadan, and
what you’ve been up to.”

“For the last time, this isn’t about me,” Cadan replied firmly.

“No, it isn’t, is it?” Ronan asked, his lips pulling into an unpleasant grin. “Nobody brings humans in here, and I know you don’t reap any more than I do. I know who
she
is.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cadan said, dismissing Ronan’s accusation. “Where’s virgil?”

Ronan’s eyes went wide and his head fell back as he laughed. “That confirms it! You want to know where a Grigori is? Your pet isn’t who you say she is.”

“She’s human,” Cadan snarled. “Don’t do this. I am begging you. I love her, Ronan.”

Ronan’s dark smile widened. “And you brought her right into the wolves’ den. You must be in love with her if you want her dead.”

Cadan’s body went stone-stiff. “Let’s go,” he said to me in a low, rapid voice. “This was a mistake.”

I started to push my chair back when Ronan spoke again. “I know why you want a Grigori, little lamb. We wolves have big ears. How’s the mighty Hammer? Boiling from the inside out, is he?”

Cadan was already standing as I froze and stared at Ronan.

“Ellie.” Cadan tried to drag me to my feet, but I sat bolted to the chair.

“Your Guardian’s dead,” Ronan taunted. “Just as the
worthless, self-righteous bastard ought to be.”

Cadan swore, but he had no power to stop me as I exploded and the world moved too slowly to keep up with me. My energy detonated and I flipped the table up with my hands. Ronan was on his feet, but I had already leaped airborne, flying over the midair table, my swords shimmering into existence and bursting with angelfire. One blade slashed down Ronan’s chest in a flash of blood and white fire, shredding his shirt and skin. He roared and staggered back, clutching his bleeding chest as I landed.

The club erupted into chaos.

Demonic reapers charged at me from all sides and I unleashed my archangel glory. Cadan took one look at me and ducked for shelter behind the flipped table. Snarling faces and blazing eyes were drowned by the blinding white divine light that was even more deadly than my angelfire. Bodies exploded into flame and ash as my glory swept through the crowd, drenching them in burning light. I lost track of Ronan as I spun and swung my Khopesh swords, the white flames lighting up about a dozen demonic faces—all that was left of the horde after I released my glory. As one blade swept through the neck of a reaper and the second blade buried into the ribcage of another, I had to remind myself that Cadan was out there somewhere, fighting with me. He wasn’t Will, who was immune to my angelfire. My weapons were just as deadly to Cadan as they were to my enemies.

I cut through the wall of reapers, my skin splitting against sharp nails, and my ears filled with animalistic screeches and snarls. Hot blood dappled my face and arms, caked my clothing, smeared through my hair. I split a reaper from navel to neck and caught Cadan’s eye through the flames. He yanked his sword out of a vir’s heart and kicked the body away from him. At his feet was an ever-increasing pile of rubble.

A hand closed around my neck and jerked me around. More hands grabbed my arms, halting my sword strikes, and they yanked the Khopesh swords from my grip. I thrashed against them, but at least three reapers had hold of me—there were just so many bodies, so many that I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think. I could only move and throw myself around. Gabriel was coming, I could feel that part of me swimming to the surface from black depths. I could see the reflection of my face in the glossy black eyes of the demonic reaper choking me. My own eyes were filling with white as I began to lose myself to my power, but I couldn’t let that happen. I tightened my entire body, straining to keep hold of my sanity, to stay here. If I let go, I was sure I could destroy every last one of the reapers in the room—but that included Cadan.

Cadan
.

He was there, appearing out of nowhere, slicing the head off one of the reapers holding my right arm. Now that I was partially free, I locked my gaze with the reaper squeezing my throat. I slammed my hand into the weak point on her arm,
right into her elbow joint. Bone snapped and she released me as she threw her head back and screamed in pain and rage. I smashed my palm into her face, shattering her nose, driving bone and cartilage so deep into her skull that she turned to stone immediately—dead.

I turned to the last reaper holding my other arm and I buried my knee in his gut, making him double over with a grunt. A shadow fell over both of us and I looked up, gasping, with just enough time to dive to the side as Cadan slashed his sword through the reaper’s neck, nearly taking my own off with it. The reaper’s grip went slack and he crumbled to stone in front of me.

Demonic energy exploded in my face, sending me flying across the room like a kicked doll. I landed hard on a table, pain shooting up and down my spine, wood cracking under me. I looked up and stared into the face of the vir as she came down through the air. I rolled off the table and hit the floor just as she hit the table, shattering it beneath her weight. I scrambled toward my swords. She tore at me, claws hooking my clothes as my hands found the silver helves. I bounced to my feet and reeled on her. My sword disappeared into her chest, slipping under her rib cage and shredding her heart. She screamed as her body went up in flames, and another demonic presence flashed behind me. I swung my body around with a cry of desperation, my blade sweeping up toward a bare throat—and I stopped, my sword barely an inch from taking off Cadan’s head as he locked eyes with me.
I gasped and the angelfire went out. I lowered the Khopesh and he swallowed hard with a deep breath.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, embarrassed that I’d nearly just killed him.

“No sweat.” He looked around uncomfortably, but we’d destroyed every demonic vir. The female was the last of them—besides Cadan, at least. I took a moment to realize that I had never expected to find myself fighting alongside a demonic reaper. But he’d had my back, very much like Will had always done.

Then I remembered why we’d come here. “Ronan,” I groaned, and searched the club in a panic.

I spotted him darting for the door at the same time Cadan did, but he was faster than me. He moved with ultra reaper speed, vanishing from sight and reappearing in Ronan’s path. He slammed his palm into Ronan’s chest with a rush of demonic strength and sent him soaring through the air. His body crashed through tables and chairs as he hit the floor. Ronan thrashed and was on his feet in moments, but Cadan grabbed his throat, lifted him off his feet, and smashed his back into the floor, shattering tile.

“Stay!” Cadan roared into the other reaper’s face.

Ronan loosed an angry groan of pain, squeezing his eyes shut, fangs lengthening in agony, and Cadan backed off, letting me approach. Ronan looked up as I shoved my foot into his throat and poised a flaming Khopesh at his face. Slowly, he raised his hands in defeat.

My chest heaved as I caught my breath. “It’s over,” I told him. “You’re the only one left. There’s no one coming to save your ass now.” The club was annihilated. Ash and rock littered the floor as if there’d been a landslide. Tables and chairs were shattered, couches shredded, the floor cracked and uprooted. I looked down at Ronan, who didn’t dare let his gaze wander from mine.

“You…are mighty, Gabriel,” Ronan gasped. “I see why he follows you.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant my Guardian or Cadan. That didn’t matter now. “There doesn’t have to be any more blood on this floor. Will you help me freely, or do I have to force you?”

“Not all of us are warriors for Hell,” the reaper replied carefully. “Some of us just want to live.”

I lifted my chin and looked down my nose at the demonic reaper, tapping into Gabriel’s fierceness, giving Ronan my best scary archangel face. “You seem to have been deceived by my mortal vessel. Because you are a demonic reaper who does not reap, I am willing to demonstrate the mercy of Heaven instead of turning you to fire and ash. If you wish to live, then you will tell me what you know. Where can I find the Grigori angel known as virgil?”

“I’m sorry, Gabriel,” Ronan said, his gaze faltering for an instant. “But I have bad news. virgil is dead. He was killed, along with several other Grigori in the past few weeks, presumably by the beast that Bastian unleashed.”