Bishop shook his head. “My bet is it passes. The will to live, happiness in general, is not a measurable entity. It’s an emotion, a mental state. It’s possible when he wakes up he’ll be back to normal. We’ll take him to St. Andrew’s and monitor him.”
Stephen was incapacitated. Jordan and I had escaped. Any broken bones had been healed.
We were lucky. It really could have gone much worse than this.
“I’m so sorry. It was my fault.” Zach shook his head. “I had him, but he slipped away from me.”
Connor had pushed himself to his feet. “I’m fine. A couple bruises. Nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah, forget it,” Bishop said. “He was possessed. You’re lucky he didn’t attack you, too. His strength is off the charts.”
“But I’m the one with the dagger.” Zach looked down at the golden weapon in his grip. “I should have been the one to stop him.”
“Like I said, forget it.”
“I can’t. I can’t forget it. It’s always this way. I have potential, but I don’t live up to it. My father told me that once. Nothing I did ever impressed him. Nothing.” He let out a shaky sigh. “He was ashamed of me. It made me ashamed of myself. I hated him so much. I—I can’t believe that hate didn’t turn my soul dark and heavy. There were times that I wanted to kill him.”
I’d completely stopped breathing. “Zach...the angel...did it touch you, too?”
He turned his anguished gaze toward me. Tears began to streak down his cheeks. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much. I thought I was strong, but I’m not. Trinity is doomed. We were set up to fail. Do you know what happens then? The city will be destroyed—wiped off the face of the earth because I failed. I have nothing to live for. Nothing!”
“No, Zach! Don’t!” I screamed.
But it was already too late.
Zach turned the dagger toward himself and plunged it into his chest.
Chapter 23
There was nothing we could do to stop him.
“Zach!” I screamed again, but the sound of my voice was swept away by the thunderous roar of the Hollow opening up.
Zach dropped to his knees.
“I’m sorry,” he said, before collapsing completely.
“What—what is that?” Jordan shrieked. “What’s going on?”
“Stay back.” I held out my arm to block her from coming another step closer. Panic shot through me as Bishop started moving toward Zach. “What are you doing?”
He met my eyes, his expression grim. “The dagger.”
Oh, God. The Hallowed Blade...it was still in Zach’s chest. And the Hollow was reaching out for him with its fingerlike tendrils of darkness.
Bishop was ten feet away from Zach. I was farther back, but even I felt the powerful suction.
My throat hurt, and I realized it was because I was screaming. Losing Zach like this was bad enough, but Bishop was risking everything to get the dagger back.
“Leave it!” I yelled. “Don’t get closer to him!”
But Bishop rarely did what I wanted him to do.
I hated that dagger, an instrument of death that had taken Zach and was about to take Bishop, too. I started to move closer to stop him, but Jordan held tightly to me to keep me back.
Bishop made it to Zach’s body and didn’t waste a second before pulling the dagger from the dead angel’s chest.
The very next moment, the Hollow’s dark fingers wrapped around Zach’s body and snatched him back into the horrific, swirling vortex.
Then it reached out for Bishop. He struggled against its pull as those smoky, black tendrils moved around his wrists, his chest, his throat.
“Bishop!” I screamed.
Suddenly, Kraven was on the move, nearly too fast to see. For a second, I was terrified he was going to shove Bishop all the way into the Hollow. I let out another strangled cry. Connor appeared at my side to help Jordan hold me back and keep me out of the vortex’s pull.
But instead of pushing him, Kraven tackled Bishop hard and rolled them both out of range.
The Hollow didn’t disappear; instead, it swiveled as if on an axis. When I was lined up in its sights, it stopped. I swear it stared at me—a hurricane of darkness.
I stared back as my heart thundered in my chest. I couldn’t have looked away if I tried.
So close now. Can you feel it? I will need you soon—sooner than I thought. Prepare yourself, Samantha. He can’t save you. Only I can.
The words sounded hollow in my head, loud and clear, but empty and devoid of emotion. And a sudden, terrifying realization froze me in place.
This thing, this horrible thing, had a mind I could read. It was sentient.
And it knew who I was.
I couldn’t keep looking at it. I forced myself to tear my gaze away toward Bishop and Kraven, who scuttled away from the Hollow’s roaring mouth.
A moment later, it began to swirl smaller and smaller, until it disappeared completely. The roaring sound vanished, but the echo of it still rang in my ears.
The five of us stood in the warehouse’s empty parking lot in stunned silence.
Zach was gone.
Bishop was at my side in an instant, pulling me into his arms.
“What just happened?” Jordan demanded. “Am I going completely insane?”
The next moment, Stephen began to come to. He groaned and lifted his head. Kraven swiftly moved toward him, pulled the groggy gray to his feet, then whacked his head off the wall again. “Stay down.”
We’d saved the monster, but lost an angel.
* * *
Walking next to Kraven, Connor carried Stephen fireman-style over his shoulders as we made our way back to St. Andrew’s. Jordan trailed silently next to me, sending scared, but annoyed looks at me every few moments. Bishop was to my right, his solid presence something I needed for strength right now, even though we weren’t touching.
No one said anything. We were all in shock.
Standing between two people with tempting souls, I struggled against my hunger, which had begun to increase again to a level impossible to ignore.
The misery must have been clear on my face.
“How much longer?” Bishop asked quietly.
He didn’t have to clarify that he meant my stasis. That had to be what the voice in my head had also meant, although I didn’t know what or who it was, only that it scared the hell out of me. “I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
I swallowed hard. “Not long.”
He swore under his breath. “When Stephen wakes up again, I will get your soul back.”
I tensed. “By hurting him.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes.” He said it so firmly that I believed every word. The cold that had worked its way into every part of my body thawed just a tiny bit to know he was willing to go to extremes for me.
But I didn’t say thank-you. I couldn’t thank him for an offer to torture somebody for information, even if it was to save my life.
Once we returned to the church, the reality of losing Zach set in. Grief clawed at my chest, but I fought to hold back any tears.
Also the fact that I’d been held captive for a day and a half was catching up to me.
“I need water,” I said. “My throat’s so dry.”
“There’s a bathroom at the end of that hall.” Bishop nodded toward the back of the sanctuary.
With a sweeping glance over the grou
p, including Jordan, who didn’t meet my gaze, leaning against the pews in the darkened church with its high ceiling and stained-glass windows, I slipped away to freshen up. I desperately wanted to eat, drink and have a shower. Not necessarily in that order.
The halls were dark, but I found the bathroom easily. I pressed my hand against the smooth, cool door and pushed it open. The electricity might not work in the church, but the water did, which was a relief. I scooped handfuls of it from the tap to my mouth, until my thirst faded.
I heard something and stopped drinking, raising my gaze to look at my reflection in the mirror above the sink. I saw a very pale girl with dark, tangled hair and haunted brown eyes.
The sound I heard was low voices from nearby. I immediately recognized them as Cassandra’s and Roth’s.
I left the bathroom and moved farther down the hall to the end, where there was a small secretarial office, its door slightly ajar.
“You have to stop this,” Cassandra said.
“You think it’s that easy?”
“It has to be. There’s no other way.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Then you’re delusional. I didn’t come here for this. I never wanted this.”
“That makes two of us.” Roth’s words were sharply edged with annoyance.
“I hate you.”
“Yeah, I hate you, too.”
What were they arguing about now? Cassandra despised the demon as much as I did, but constant squabbling wasn’t going to help anybody right now.
They’d gone silent, but then I heard a quiet moan. My heart skipped a beat. If he was hurting her...
I pushed the door open all the way, ready to interrupt like I’d done at Ambrosia the other night.
Then I stopped when I saw them, and my mouth fell wide-open in shock.
They weren’t squabbling. And he wasn’t hurting her.
They were kissing. Passionately.
I must have gasped loud enough for them to hear, because they broke apart so fast it was almost comical. Cassandra’s hand flew to her mouth and her gaze shot toward me.
Guilt flooded her expression.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” she managed.
Roth glared at me defiantly. “Yes, it is.”
She sent him a withering look. “Shut up.”
I hadn’t just seen things. They were kissing. Mouth to mouth. A demon and angel were kissing.
Roth met my surprised gaze full-on, and I sank into his mind like butter. He was currently wide-open, his walls one hundred percent down.
Damn angel. Why does she make me feel this way? I’m so screwed.
From the look on Cassandra’s face, the feeling was mutual.
They were falling for each other.
And here I’d been absolutely sure she was into Bishop with her touchy-feely-healy ways. Boy, was I wrong about that.
Normally, and despite my animosity toward Roth, I might think this was cute. But I knew the rules that forbade demons and angels from being together like this. I was the result of such a relationship—and it had destroyed my real parents. It had killed my birth mother.
My thoughts must have been written all over my face, because Roth swore. “Influence her to forget this.”
Cassandra shot him a look. “I’m not doing that.”
Now she has a problem using her angelic influence—which, for the record, I didn’t think would work on me, anyway. Before, however, with my mother and her impromptu trip to Hawaii, she’d had no second thoughts about taking the easy way out.
They were afraid I was going to tell on them. But doing that would doom them, just like telling anyone my secret about being a nexus would potentially doom me.
I knew all about keeping dangerous secrets.
“I won’t tell anyone.” It was the first thing I’d said since entering the room.
“How can we trust you?” Roth asked tightly.
“You’ll just have to.” Honestly, though, if I’d read anything malicious in his mind all bets would have been off. But he liked her. He didn’t want to, but he did, anyway.
Roth, the hateful demon, had emotional layers. Who knew?
“Where have you been?” Cassandra suddenly demanded, coming toward me to grab my arm. “We’ve been so worried about you!”
“I’m fine now,” I said, swallowing hard. “But you need to know something. Something bad.”
I told them about Zach. Roth’s expression hardened, but Cassandra’s eyes filled with tears.
“No,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”
“But it’s not a demon like you all thought,” I said, my voice hoarse. “It’s an angel. One who feeds on happiness and the will to live with a touch. It happened to Stephen, too. We don’t know how he’ll be when he wakes up.”
“This is terrible. I didn’t know it would be this bad.” Cassandra drew a shaky hand through her long, pale hair.
I looked at her, confused. “What do you mean? It sounds like you knew it was an angel.”
She nodded gravely. “I’ve been searching the city for her.”
“Her?” Roth said, every bit as surprised as I was about this. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I’ve been trying to find a solution to this problem myself, but I’ve failed. I was about ready to share the details of my true mission with the rest of you.”
So Cassandra did have a secret mission after all. And it was to find the bodiless angel who’d escaped from the Hollow.
“I wish you’d told us earlier,” I whispered, my throat tight.
“Me, too.” She blinked back tears.
They followed me down the hall toward the office at the far end where Connor had tied up the still-unconscious Stephen, the ropes tight at his wrists and ankles. Bishop and Kraven stood nearby. I lingered at the doorway as I filled Bishop in on everything—everything except Roth and Cassandra’s secret romance.
Jordan stood next to me, her attention fully focused on Stephen. She slanted a glance at me as I watched her carefully. “What?”
“Don’t you want to go home?”
“Not yet. I need to know what’s going on here.” She blinked. “And nobody’s kicked me out yet.”
“So Blondie’s an angel with secrets, huh?” Kraven said, rolling his eyes. “How utterly shocking.”
He had his smart-ass mask firmly in place. The fact that he’d saved Bishop from the Hollow hadn’t come up since it happened. It was one of many elephants in the already too-small room.
Roth thrust his chin at Stephen. “Why didn’t you just kill this loser?”
“Because he has Samantha’s soul,” Bishop said with a look toward me. Our eyes met. He was holding on to his sanity with both hands tonight, but I could see it was a struggle. I wanted to help him, but I held back. Since I was a large part of the problem right now, the least I could do was stay out of the way.
“So what do we do?” Connor asked.
“We deal with this,” Bishop replied. “Then we go out and find a way to stop that angel.”
“And how do we do that if it doesn’t have a body to kill?”
“Simple,” Roth said. He was making an excellent attempt at not looking at Cassandra at all, even though she stood right next to him.
“Simple?” she said with disbelief. “How can you say anything about this is simple?”
His jaw tightened, but he still didn’t meet her eyes. “Sounds like the angel sometimes possesses a body before i
t feeds. That’s when it’ll be at its most vulnerable. We can kill it with Bishop’s dagger.” He finally glanced at her, giving her a half grin. “Not simple, but fairly brilliant. Don’t you think?”
She didn’t comment on Roth’s brilliance.
But I would. “That’s a terrible plan.”
Roth glanced at me, his eyes narrowing. “Why?”
“Because you’d have to kill a human—or whoever the angel is possessing. That’s called murder.”
He just stared at me. “Bishop, could you muzzle your pet, please? She’s getting all moral on us.”
I spun to face Bishop. “You can’t possibly think this is a good plan.”
His expression was grim. “It’s not a good plan. But it may be the only one we have that will work.”
I felt the color drain from my face. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m serious. That angel’s driven at least two dozen people to their deaths, including Zach. If it takes the sacrifice of one innocent in order to save an entire city, then that’s unfortunately what will have to happen.” His harsh expression softened just a little. “Try to understand.”
I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t find the words. It was a horrible plan, the worst ever, but I couldn’t think of another way to end this. And I didn’t want more people to die because of that angel’s hungers.
“This is so messed up,” Jordan blurted out. “Everything I hear is seriously blowing my mind. Are you all for real? You’re literally making Samantha look like the only sane or smart one in this room right now.”
Coming from Jordan, that nearly sounded like a compliment.
“Red’s mouthy,” Kraven said. “Could be a problem.”
“What are you going to do?” I challenged him. “Kill her, too?”
“Don’t give me any ideas, sweetness.”
Then Stephen grunted, low and weak. He was waking up. Everyone’s attention shot to the restrained super-gray. He raised his head with effort and blinked open his eyes. There was dried blood on his forehead from where he’d hit the wall twice.
He scanned the five of us, lingering on Jordan, before he ended with Bishop. “Change of scenery, I see?”
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