Ties That Bind: A Muse Urban Fantasy (The Veil Series Book 5) (18 page)

I
’d never been particularly inclined
to try sky diving, bungee jumping, or anything involving falling toward the ground at high speed. Had I attempted these things, I might have known what to expect. I was fairly confident I’d have quite the landing anytime now… I still flailed. The air still whooshed around me. Maybe adrenaline slowed my perception. Maybe we’d been higher than I’d thought. Any second now, I’d splatter all over the beach. Any second.

Black feathers swirled in the clouds. The flutter of wings blurred the corners of my vision. I twisted over and around, trying to get a lock on my freefalling companion. Black eyes opened in the rushing gray, eyes that swirled exactly like storm clouds. “Li’el!” I’d never been so happy to see an air demon in my entire life. An outline of feathers and the curve of a muscle here and there hinted at his presence. “Wait, you are saving me, right?”

His presence surged and flowed over me like a cool breeze, sending a deep chill into my bones. With a hiss, the clouds rolled back, far back out to sea, and sunlight poured in. Li’el captured me in his arms. He flung open his wings, and we jolted back, wrenched out of the free fall. Air rippled over his feathers, and I watched, fascinated where his wingtips curled up at their fringes. He’d want something for this. Some...recompense. A deal. No demon went this far without payment in kind. We glided in to land on the beach. I stumbled out of his embrace, breathing fast, heart about to burst from my chest. I was alive. Blue skies, blue seas. Everything looked so damn perfect. I almost didn’t believe it. Glass sparkled in the sand. Goddamn, it felt good to be on solid ground again.

“Where’s Asmodeus?” Li’el stood demon-still and eyed the stretch of beach for any sign of my father. His precise English accent helped ground me in more ways than one.

I squinted into the sun and searched up and down the beach. We were alone. “I don’t know. And don’t care. He’ll be down for the count for a while.” Maybe he’d fallen into the sea. I could hope. Bright sunlight threw Li’el’s formidable form into silhouette. Shielding my eyes, I frowned up at him. “What are you doing here?”

He regarded me with all the detached composure I expected from a demon. “Asmodeus and the Princes converged on Baal’s sanctuary. When he sensed you near, he planned to confront you.”

I blinked up at the Prince of Pride. “You just saved my life.”

He inclined his head. No, bargaining, no counter-offer, no manipulation of tit-for-tat. What the hell was he?

Tires squealed on the road behind the seawall. A door slammed. Li’el and I both turned to find Jenna standing by the wall, a hand shielding her eyes. “Figured you might need back up?”

Typical Institute. Turn up in time to take the credit. “C’mon.” I waved Li’el forward. “We need to get moving.”

“Muse, Asmodeus will recover. And something… Something is happening in the netherworld.”

“
Something,
what?”

“I hear, alarm… Fear. The princes are in distress.”

I grinned and marched toward the seawall. “Good.”

Jenna’s eyes widened as she saw Li’el trailing his downy wings and exposing his Adonis self for the world to see. It took a lot to surprise the steely enforcer training out of her. Watching Li’el throw his leg over the seawall and stride up to her car just about did her in.

“Li’el, this is Jenna,” I said. He cocked his head, probably admiring her anti-elemental tattoos. “Jenna, this is Li’el, the Prince of Pride. Also known as Satan, Lucifer, and Sarcastic Smartass.”

She blinked rapidly. Opened her mouth. Closed it again. “Muse, you keep the oddest company.”

“Tell me about it.”

Jenna and I climbed into Jenna’s Ford Taurus. Li’el eyed the car like he’d rather cut off one of his own wings than get inside. I wasn’t even sure he’d fit.

I raised my brow at Li’el. “Well?”

Jenna leaned forward and whispered under her breath, “He’s naked.”

“Thank you, Queen of the Obvious,” I whispered back.

She blinked again. “He’s
very
naked.”

“Jenna, bigger issues.”

“Bigger?”

Don’t look. Don’t look. Ah, hell.
“Li’el.” I averted my eyes. “Are you coming or not?”

Jenna made a sound, somewhere between a snort and a squeak, and gulped back a laugh.

“I do not climb inside human vehicles.” Li’el ruffled his wings and puffed out his chest.

“Oh, for hell’s sake. You’re scared of cars? Really?”
Prima donna demons.
What next?

A passing car screeched to a halt. The driver immediately climbed out, lifted his cell, and snapped a few pictures. Li’el, in all his Prince of Pride wisdom, flashed a devastating smile and spread his wings. Another incoming car slowed to a halt.

“Hey,” I rolled my eyes and snapped my fingers, distracting Pride. “Focus. We’re going to Baal’s sanctum. Are you with us?”

“I will meet you there.” With that, he clamped his wings closed and dissolved into thin air.

“Wonderful,” I muttered, slamming the car door. “Step on it Jenna.”

“Right, yeah…” She pulled the car away from the curb. We’d arrive at Nahant in a few minutes. “He’s demon, right?” she asked. “I mean, there aren’t angels, just demons. He’s not an angel. Is he?”

He’d saved me without a price. “He’s one hundred percent higher elemental. Demon, angel, those are convenient labels.” I paused.
No. No such thing as angels.
“He’s a trap, like all the others. Don’t let the feathers and the sexy disarm you.” I was hardly in a position to judge. He’d disarmed me the first time I’d seen all of him too. “Jenna, when we get there, I can’t say how long we’ll be in the netherworld, but if we succeed and Jerry restores the veil, the demons are going to be pissed. They won’t let us leave without a fight. We might need some help when we come back through.”

“Okay, want me to call in a team, just in case?”

“Only if you can personally guarantee they won’t shoot Stefan or me.” She pursed her lips. “Yeah, didn’t think so. I’d much rather you had my back than a trigger-happy enforcer with an axe to grind.”

“I should call Ryder. He’ll want to be here. He can bring Coleman and SRT.”

“Do what you gotta do.”

A wash of blinding light blanched everything, including the insides of my eyelids. With a hiss, I flinched away, lurching in the seat. Jenna cursed and slammed on the brakes. For a few seconds, I couldn’t see a thing and blinked into the brightness. Gradually, color bled back into the world. We’d reached the halfway point along the two-mile causeway stretching between the island of Nahant and the mainland. I expected to see houses crowding the peninsula, but Nahant was gone. In its place, a mile wide hole throbbed purple and black against the serene Massachusetts sky.

“Er, Muse, I don’t think that’s normal.”

The netherworld heaved, spewing coils of tangled undergrowth around cars and houses. Lesser demons crawled through broken windows, over roofs. Over a thousand people must have lived on that island. By the looks of the abandoned cars and discarded bikes, they hadn’t escaped in time. Ryder’s discarded Mustang blocked the road ahead. I was out of Jenna’s car before I could think what any of this meant. Chaos tugged on my demon, urging me forward. I glanced at Jenna over the hood of the car. A muscle fluttered in her jaw. Her hand rested on her sidearm. She stared into the nightmare like she might do something stupid. “You can’t go any closer,” I warned.

“There are people…”

“There
were
people. If the demons didn’t get them, the netherworld air would have.” I stepped forward. “Call the Institute. They need to seal off this causeway.” I had to get inside the netherworld. Stefan was in there. Something had caused the veil to tear and spill over here, and my gut told me that something was Dawn.

“What are you going to do?” Jenna asked. “You can’t go in there.”

I rolled my shoulders, freed the demon in me, and flashed her some fang. “Nothing in the netherworld can hurt me. Not anymore.” She looked at me with awe in her eyes, but her hand stayed on her gun.

In a flurry of black feathers and glossy black skin, Li’el
poofed
into existence beside me. Jenna had her gun out, finger on the trigger, before he could say “boo.”

“Holy shit,” she snarled. “Demon, that’s a grand way to get yourself shot.”

Li’el rolled his eyes in a purely human way. “Come, Destruction, Baal’s sanctuary has been breached. The King is missing. We must find him before the princes do.”

My heart sank as my hope we’d restore the veil drifted further out of reach. “Call Ryder. Get him here. Contain the demons. I’ll stop this…”
Or die trying
, I added in my own mind.

Jenna nodded, and after I’d walked a few steps with Li’el, she called, “End it, Muse. End them.” I didn’t need to see the desperation on her face. Her words were weighed down with it. I was the Deathbringer, the Destroyer, the Mother of Destruction. I was made for the end of all things. This was my time.

J
erry’s stones had toppled
, fractured, and broken apart as though split apart from the inside. Any debris larger than a fist bore scorch marks. The waterlogged ground squelched and hissed under my superheated footfalls. Chaos hung ripe and sweet in the air and licked across my skin. The princes had attacked.

“Can you hear them?” I asked Li’el, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet since leaving Jenna. “The other princes?”

He’d drawn his wings in, wrapping them around him like a cloak. “They are scattered. I hear…fragments.”

“What are they saying?”

He cocked his head. “They hunt the half blood made of chaos. She attacked. Ah…” He winced. “It’s fragmented.”

My demon heart spluttered. “Do you know where they are?”

“Mammon’s fortress.”

I faced him, brow raised. “And you didn’t think to tell me this before now?”

“I did not know. It is difficult to ascertain their location when in the human realm, especially when chaos is in flux.”

Ugh, demons. “Take me there.”

Li’el’s churning eyes assessed me. “What do you plan to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe go all destruction on their asses.”

“Muse, you are mortal. You cannot possibly hope to repel the Princes of Hell and subdue the chaos girl alone.”

“I’m not alone. I have you, the all-powerful, deliciously sexy Prince of Pride.” I knew he’d buy it. Pride loved nothing better than to hear how wonderful he was.

With a resigned sigh, he opened his arms. “Very well, but quench your fire.”

It was probably for the best I’d lost my wing all those years ago, because it turned out, I was afraid of heights—or more accurately, afraid of falling. I clung to Li’el’s barely-there body, tucked my wing in, and thought happy thoughts as the wind rushed around us. Things screeched and cawed in the swirling air, unseen behind clouds of chaos energy.

“It will be more difficult to restore the veil with his sanctum destroyed.” Li’el’s voice whisked inside the wind. “Those stones and Baal’s markings contained the energies dispersed in the ritual.”

Wonderful.

Because nothing was ever easy in the netherworld.

The clouds thinned as we approached Mammon’s fortress. Hewn from a mountainside, the fortress clung to cliff-like slopes. A sea of demons churned around its grounds. Battlements crawled with lessers. From our height, they looked like glistening rivers of ants flowing through the fortress gates and lapping at its towers.

“Looks like the party started without us.” I’d have sounded blasé, if not for the quiver in my voice.

Li’el tucked me into his embrace, pulled his wings in, and we dove, fast and sleek. My insides felt as though they’d dropped through my feet. Wind whistled past my face. I wasn’t cut out for flying. We landed on a battlement with the sea of demons rippling below. Li’el let me go. Head spinning, I staggered back and breathed.

“Mammon is inside.” He straightened his spine, threw his shoulders back, and glowered. “
You
resurrected him.”

“Yeah.” I peered over the edge and gulped. Demons. Thousands. I could snuff out a few, but the second I did, they’d sense me and rush in. Li’el was right. I was mortal. They had mind-boggling numbers on their side. Above, cawing hunters circled, turning the netherworld sky black. I’d pulled off some impressive pyrotechnics the day of the Boston battle but had no idea if I’d survive the same again. And even if I could, more demons would spill in to fill the void my meltdown would create.

“He is not what you expected, is he?” Li’el asked.

“No. But I know him now.”
If you think you know Ahkeel, you don’t
. With a growl, I shoved Jerry’s little nugget of wisdom aside.

“I’ll rip the air from his lungs while you quench his fire. Together, we can make him lesser.” Li’el spread his wings, bolstering his size, as though making himself bigger did the same for his words.

He would tear into Mammon without much thought. That kind of revenge was dangerous and foolhardy. I’d been there.
Demons rush in where angels fear to tread
. If pretty Li’el went against Mammon, my money was on the lava-veined badass. Pride had saved me. I couldn’t let him do something foolish. “Mammon is mine.” I’d expected Li’el to bristle and bluster. His swirling eyes narrowed—the argument was coming—and then he nodded, accepting my authority. No fight?
Could Li’el genuinely be good?
All I’d had from him was honesty, allegiance, and respect. If I hadn’t been in the middle of a war, I’d have sat him down and talked him around in circles, trying to figure out what made him tick. Now, all I had was my less than reliable gut, which told me Li’el was one hundred percent thoroughbred demon, who was setting me up for a fall, probably from a great height. “How are we going to get inside?”

Li’el moved to the edge alongside me and scanned the fortress. “They will head for the throne room where the king’s original symbols control the elements. The entrance is blocked, but if we enter there” —he pointed at the highest tower, crawling with Scorsi scorpion bodies— “we will find the halls less choked.”

“Why are they all here?”

“Chaos. It calls.”