Bryce half-heartedly ate the hummus, dipping slightly slimy carrots into the spread. The crunch of them filled the silence of the apartment.
That too-familiar surge of self-pity came creeping in, and Bryce chucked the carrots and hummus in the garbage before padding for the couch.
She flipped through the channels until she found the local news. Syrinx peered up at her expectantly. “Just you and me tonight, bud,” she said, plopping down next to him.
On the news, Rigelus, Bright Hand of the Asteri, appeared, giving some speech on new trade laws at a gilded podium. Behind him, the five other Asteri sat enthroned in their crystal chamber, cold-faced and radiating wealth and power. As always, the seventh throne sat empty in honor of their long-dead sister. Bryce changed the channel again, this time to another news station, blasting footage of lines of human-built mech-suits going toe-to-toe with elite Imperial Legions on a muddy battlefield. Another channel showed starving humans lined up for bread in the Eternal City, their children wailing with hunger.
Bryce switched to a show about buying vacation houses unseen and watched without really processing it.
When was the last time she’d read a book? Not for work or research, but for pleasure? She’d read loads before everything with Danika, but that part of her brain had just turned off afterward.
She’d wanted to drown out any sort of calm and quiet. The blaring television had become her companion to drive the silence away. The dumber the show, the better.
She nestled into the cushions, Syrinx curling up tightly against her leg as she scratched at his velvet-soft ears. He wriggled in a request for more.
The silence pushed in, tighter and thicker. Her mouth dried out, her limbs going light and hollow. The events at the Den threatened to begin looping, Ithan’s cold face at the forefront.
She peered at the clock. Barely five thirty.
Bryce blew out a long breath. Lehabah was wrong—this wasn’t like that winter. Nothing could ever be as bad as that first winter without Danika. She wouldn’t let it.
She stood, Syrinx huffing with annoyance at being disturbed.
“I’ll be back soon,” she promised, pointing toward the hall and his crate.
Throwing her a baleful look, the chimera saw himself into his cage, yanking the metal door shut with a hooked claw.
Bryce locked it, reassuring him again that she wouldn’t be out for long, and slipped back into her heels. She’d promised Hunt she would stay put—had sworn it on the gods.
Too bad the angel didn’t know that she no longer prayed to any of them.
Hunt had drunk all of half a beer when his phone rang.
He knew exactly what had happened before he picked up. “She left, didn’t she?”
Naomi let out a quiet laugh. “Yeah. All glammed up, too.”
“That’s how she usually is,” he grumbled, rubbing his temple.
Down the carved oak bar, Vik arched a graceful eyebrow, her halo shifting with the movement. Hunt shook his head and reached for his wallet. He shouldn’t have come out tonight. The offer had been thrown to him so many times these past four years, and he’d never gone, not when it had felt so much like being in the 18th again. But this time, when Isaiah had called with his standard caveat (I know you’ll say no, but …) he’d said yes.
He didn’t know why, but he’d gone.
Hunt asked, “Where’d she head?”
“I’m tracking her now,” Naomi said, the wind rustling on her end of the line. She hadn’t asked questions when Hunt had called her an hour ago to ask that she guard Bryce—and give up her spot in tonight’s hangout. “Looks like she’s headed toward FiRo.”
Maybe she was seeking out her cousin for an update. “Stay close, and keep your guard up,” he said. He knew he didn’t need to say it. Naomi was one of the most talented warriors he’d ever encountered, and took no shit from anyone. One look at her tightly braided black hair, the colorful tattoo that covered her hands, and the array of weapons on her muscled body and most people didn’t dare to tangle with her. Maybe even Bryce would have obeyed an order to stay put, if Naomi had been the one to give it. “Send me your coordinates.”
“Will do.” The line went dead.
Hunt sighed. Viktoria said, “You should have known better, friend.”
Hunt ran his hands through his hair. “Yeah.”
Beside him, Isaiah swigged from his beer. “You could let Naomi handle her.”
“I have a feeling that would result in them unleashing Hel together, and I’d still need to go end their fun.”
Vik and Isaiah chuckled, and Hunt dropped a silver mark on the bar. Viktoria held up a hand in protest, but Hunt ignored it. They might all be slaves, but he could pay for his own damn drink. “I’ll see you two later.”
Isaiah raised his beer in salute, and Viktoria gave him a knowing smile before Hunt elbowed his way through the packed bar. Justinian, playing pool in the back, lifted a hand in farewell. Hunt had never asked why all of them preferred the tight quarters of the street-level bar to one of the rooftop lounges most angels frequented. He supposed he wouldn’t get the chance to learn why tonight.
Hunt wasn’t surprised that Bryce had bailed. Frankly, the only thing that surprised him was that she’d waited this long.
He shouldered through the leaded glass door and out onto the muggy street beyond. Patrons drank at reclaimed oak barrels, and a raucous group of some sort of shifter pack—perhaps wolves or one of the big cats—puffed away on cigarettes.
Hunt scowled at the reek that chased him into the sky, then frowned again at the clouds rolling in from the west, the heavy scent of rain already on the wind. Fantastic.
Naomi sent over her coordinates in Five Roses, and a five-minute flight had Hunt arriving at one of the night gardens, just beginning to awaken with the fading light. Naomi’s black wings were a stain against the creeping darkness as she hovered in place above a fountain filled with moon lilies, the bioluminescent flowers already open and glowing pale blue.
“That way,” Naomi said, the harsh planes of her face gilded by the soft light from the plants.
Hunt nodded to the angel. “Thanks.”
“Good luck.” The words were enough to set him on edge, and Hunt didn’t bother saying goodbye before soaring down the path. Star oaks lined it, their leaves glittering in a living canopy overhead. The gentle illumination danced on Bryce’s hair as she ambled down the stone path, night-blooming flowers opening around her. Jasmine lay heavy in the twilight air, sweet and beckoning.
“You couldn’t give me an hour of peace?”
Bryce didn’t flinch as he dropped into step beside her. “I wanted some fresh air.” She admired an unfurling fern, its fronds lit from within to illuminate every vein.
“Were you going somewhere in particular?”
“Just—out.”
“Ah.”
“I’m waiting for you to start yelling.” She continued past beds of night crocuses, their purple petals shimmering amid the vibrant moss. The garden seemed to awaken for her, welcome her.
“I’ll yell when I find out what was so important that you broke your promise.”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing is important.”
She said the words with enough quiet that he watched her carefully. “You all right?”
“Yeah.” Definitely no, then.
She admitted, “The quiet bothers me sometimes.”
“I invited you to the bar.”
“I didn’t want to go to a bar with a bunch of triarii.”
“Why not?”
She cut him a sidelong glance. “I’m a civilian. They wouldn’t be able to relax.”
Hunt opened his mouth to deny it, but she gave him a look. “Fine,” he admitted. “Maybe.”
They walked in silence for a few steps. “You could go back to your drinking, you know. That ominous-looking angel you sent to babysit me can handle it.”
“Naomi left.”
/>
“She looks intense.”
“She is.”
Bryce threw him a hint of a smile. “You two …?”
“No.” Though Naomi had hinted about it on occasion. “It’d complicate things.”
“Mmm.”
“Were you on your way to meet your friends?”
She shook her head. “Just the one friend these days, Athalar. And she’s too busy.”
“So you were going out alone. To do what?”
“Walk through this garden.”
“Alone.”
“I knew you’d send a babysitter.”
Hunt moved before he could think, gripping her elbow.
She peered up into his face. “Is this the part where you start yelling?”
Lightning cracked through the sky, and echoed in his veins as he leaned closer and purred, “Would you like me to yell, Bryce Quinlan?”
Her throat bobbed, her eyes glowing with golden fire. “Maybe?”
Hunt let out a low laugh. Didn’t try to stop the heat that flooded him. “That can be arranged.”
All of his focus narrowed on the dip of her eyes to his mouth. The blush that bloomed over her freckled cheeks, inviting him to taste every rosy inch.
No one and nothing existed but this—but her.
He never heard the night-dark bushes behind him rustling. Never heard the branches cracking.
Not until the kristallos crashed into him and sank its teeth into his shoulder.
46
The kristallos slammed into Hunt with the force of an SUV.
Bryce knew he only had enough time to either draw a weapon or shove her out of the way. Hunt chose her.
She hit the asphalt several feet from him, bones barking, and froze. Angel and demon went down, the kristallos pinning Hunt with a roar that sent the night garden shuddering.
It was worse. So much worse than that night.
Blood sprayed, and a knife glinted as Hunt pulled it from its sheath and plunged it into the grayish, near-translucent hide.
Veins of lightning wreathed Hunt’s hands—and faded into blackness.
People screamed and bolted down the path, cries to run! ringing through the glowing flora. Bryce barely heard them as she climbed to her knees.
Hunt rolled, flipping the creature off him and onto the pathway, wrenching his knife free in the process. Clear blood dripped down the blade as Hunt angled it in front of himself, his shredded arm outflung to protect Bryce. Lightning flared and sputtered at his fingertips.
“Call for backup,” he panted without taking his focus off the demon, who paced a step, a clawed hand—crystalline talons glinting—going to the wound in its side.
She’d never seen anything like it. Anything so unearthly, so primal and raging. Her memory of that night was fogged with rage and grief and drugs, so this, the real, undiluted thing—
Bryce reached for her phone, but the creature lunged for Hunt.
The angel’s blade drove home. It made no difference.
They again toppled to the path, and Hunt bellowed as the demon’s jaws wrapped around his forearm and crunched.
His lightning died out entirely.
Move. Move, she had to move—
Hunt’s free fist slammed into the creature’s face hard enough to crack bone, but the crystal teeth remained clamped.
This thing pinned him down so easily. Had it done just this to Danika? Shredding and shredding?
Hunt grunted, brow bunched in pain and concentration. His lightning had vanished. Not one flicker of it rose again.
Every part of her shook.
Hunt punched the demon’s face again, “Bryce—”
She scrambled into movement. Not for her phone, but for the gun holstered at Hunt’s hip.
The blind demon sensed her, its nostrils flaring as her fingers wrapped around the handgun. She freed the safety, hauling it up as she uncoiled to her feet.
The creature released Hunt’s arm and leapt for her. Bryce fired, but too slow. The demon lunged to the side, dodging her bullet. Bryce fell back as it roared and leapt for her again—
Its head snapped to the side, clear blood spraying like rain as a knife embedded itself to the hilt just above its mouth.
Hunt was upon it again, drawing another long knife from a hidden panel down the back of his battle-suit and plunging the blade right into the skull and toward the spine.
The creature struggled, snapping for Bryce, its clear teeth stained red with Hunt’s blood. She’d wound up on the pavement somehow, and crawled backward as it tried to lunge for her. Failed to, as Hunt wrapped his hands around the blade and twisted.
The crack of its severing neck was muffled by the moss-shrouded trees.
Bryce still aimed the handgun. “Get out of the way.”
Hunt released his grip, letting the creature slump to the mossy path. Its black tongue lolled from its clear-fanged mouth.
“Just in case,” Bryce said, and fired. She didn’t miss this time.
Sirens wailed, and wings filled the air. Ringing droned in her head.
Hunt withdrew his blade from the creature’s skull and brought it down with a mighty, one-armed sweep. The severed head tumbled away. Hunt moved again, and the head split in half. Then quarters.
Another plunge and the hateful heart was skewered, too. Clear blood leaked everywhere, like a spilled vial of serum.
Bryce stared and stared at its ruined head, the horrible, monstrous body.
Powerful forms landed among them, that black-winged malakh instantly at Hunt’s side. “Holy shit, Hunt, what—”
Bryce barely heard the words. Someone helped her to her feet. Blue light flared, and a magi-screen encompassed the site, blocking it from the view of any who hadn’t yet fled. She should have been screaming, should have been leaping for the demon, ripping apart its corpse with her bare hands. But only a thrumming silence filled her head.
She looked around the park, stupidly and slowly, as if she might see Sabine there.
Hunt groaned, and she whirled as he tumbled face-first to the ground. The dark-winged angel caught him, her powerful body easily bearing his weight. “Get a medwitch here now!”
His shoulder was gushing blood. So was his forearm. Blood, and some sort of silvery slime.
She knew the burn of that slime, like living fire.
A head of sleek black curls streamed past, and Bryce blinked as a curvy young woman in a medwitch’s blue jumpsuit unhooked the bag across her chest and slid to her knees beside Hunt.
He was bent over, a hand at his forearm, panting heavily. His gray wings sagged, splattered with both clear and red blood.
The medwitch asked him something, the broom-and-bell insignia on her right arm catching the blue light of the screens. Her brown hands didn’t falter as she used a pair of tweezers to extract what looked to be a small worm from a glass jar full of damp moss and set it on Hunt’s forearm.
He winced, teeth flashing.
“Sucking out the venom,” a female voice explained beside Bryce. The dark-winged angel. Naomi. She pointed a tattooed finger toward Hunt. “They’re mithridate leeches.”
The leech’s black body swiftly swelled. The witch set another on Hunt’s shoulder wound. Then another on his forearm.
Bryce said nothing.
Hunt’s face was pale, his eyes shut as he seemed to focus on his breathing. “I think the venom nullified my power. As soon as it bit me …” He hissed at whatever agony worked through his body. “I couldn’t summon my lightning.”
Recognition jolted through her. It explained so much. Why the kristallos had been able to pin Micah, for one thing. If it had ambushed the Archangel and gotten a good bite, he would have been left with only physical strength. Micah had probably never even realized what happened. Had likely written it off as shock or the swiftness of the attack. Perhaps the bite had nullified the preternatural strength of Danika and the Pack of Devils, too.
“Hey.” Naomi put a hand on Bryce’s shoulder. “You hurt?”
The medwitch peeled a poison-eating leech from Hunt’s shoulder, threw it back in the glass jar, then replaced it with another. Pale light wreathed her hands as she assessed Hunt’s other injuries, then began the process of healing them. She didn’t bother with the vials of firstlight glowing in her bag—a cure-all for many medics. As if she preferred using the magic in her own veins.
“I’m fine.”
Hunt’s body might have been able to heal itself, but it would have taken longer. With the venom in those wounds, Bryce knew too well that it might not really heal at all.
Naomi ran a hand over her inky hair. “You should let that medwitch examine you.”
“No.”
Her onyx eyes sharpened. “If Hunt can let the medwitch work on him, then you—”
Vast, cold power erupted through the site, the garden, the whole quarter of the city. Naomi whirled as Micah landed. Silence fell, Vanir of all types backing away as the Archangel prowled toward the fallen demon and Hunt.
Naomi was the only one with enough balls to approach him. “I was on watch right before Hunt arrived and there was no sign—”
Micah stalked past her, his eyes pinned on the demon. The medwitch, to her credit, didn’t halt her ministrations, but Hunt managed to lift his head to meet Micah’s interrogation.
“What happened.”
“Ambush,” Hunt said, his voice gravelly.
Micah’s white wings seemed to glow with power. And for all the ringing silence in Bryce’s head, all the distance she now felt between her body and what remained of her soul, she stepped up. Like Hel would this jeopardize Micah’s bargain with Hunt. Bryce said, “It came out of the shadows.”
The Archangel raked his eyes over her. “Which one of you did it attack?”
Bryce pointed to Hunt. “Him.”
“And which one of you killed it?”
Bryce began to repeat “Him,” but Hunt cut in, “It was a joint effort.” Bryce shot him a look to keep quiet, but Micah had already pivoted to the demon’s corpse. He toed it with his boot, frowning.
“We can’t let the press get wind of this,” Micah ordered. “Or the others coming in for the Summit.” The unspoken part of that statement lingered. Sandriel doesn’t hear a word.
House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) Page 44