“You need to go,” he said, then coughed. Blood tinged his lips. “Before they find you.”
“Who?” I asked. “Who will find me? What happened here? Why are you—”
A door opened. Footsteps sounded.
Lucifer’s eyes widened in a panic.
“Go,” he ordered in a whispered roar.
The vision broke apart. Like shattered glass, it fractured and dropped away, leaving me still standing and bent over the table in the greenhouse.
I took several deep breaths, trying to calm myself.
The ice-cold bite of magic drained away, leaving me disoriented and numb. I leaned over and grabbed the wicker basket, putting the vegetables that spilled out back in it. My mind reeled from what I’d seen.
When I lit him on fire, I’d hoped he’d die, but he didn’t. I felt it then, just as I knew it now. Ronan assumed he was in stasis and recovering . . . but that wasn't stasis. Or at least not like mine.
Someone had trapped him and chained him up.
Someone he didn’t want to know about me.
He was the devil. The morningstar. The blight upon my world. The reason magic existed here.
And he was being held prisoner.
8
I stood up and held the basket tightly as I left the greenhouse, taking the stairwell off the roof to the elevator.
Still lost in my thoughts, I didn’t register the figure at the end of the hall fast enough.
“Hey, Pipes.”
I stopped where I stood and cursed internally.
Does everyone know where I live now?
For fuck’s sake, this was getting ridiculous. I knew the wards only worked to keep people who meant harm from entering the building, or uninvited people from entering Nat’s apartment—but my ex? Apparently, that was where they drew the line and failed.
“What are you doing here, Flint?” I asked, my voice coming out icy and stiff.
His warm brown eyes looked me over, but I didn’t feel anything. No stir of heat. No flush my skin. Once upon a time, I’d dated him. If you could call it dating. He wanted a life together. Marriage, as outdated as it was. Real marriages rarely happened anymore when there wasn’t any sort of true government keeping track of us. Few were religious enough to demand it these days. It was mostly higher ranked supes looking for alliances that bothered with the prospect at all—and even then, it was simply an arrangement for power or influence. The marriage Flint spoke of was a pretty nostalgic idea because humans liked those things. They clung to them because it was all they had. He wanted a white picket fence outside the city where we could raise little blonde-haired, brown-eyed babies.
But that wasn’t me.
I was a bounty hunter. A woman haunted by my past and chasing answers for my sister’s future.
I was with him out of complacency because I needed something—someone—to feel less alone. That didn’t mean I was in the market for marriage.
He looked at me as if no time had passed. As if he hadn’t proposed and I hadn’t left him that night and never looked back. Most men would be put off by that, but not Flint. He may not grovel, but he had a nasty habit of popping up when I least expected him.
“I wanted to check on you. See how you were doin’. It’s been a while.”
I lifted my hands and motioned to myself, dark jeans, jacket, and all.
“Well, as you can see, I’m perfectly fine. So if that was all . . .” I let my voice taper off, adding a pointed look over my shoulder, toward the elevator.
Unfazed, he grinned like I hadn’t just suggested he should leave.
“I was hopin’ we could catch up.”
“Not interested,” I said, voice harder than before. He didn’t respond, but instead kept watching me with brown eyes too intelligent and nosy for his own good.
“I heard you were in trouble. Boys down in the Underworld told me they saw you there. I know you don’t like asking for help, but if you’re in deep, I can help you.”
My lips thinned. Now we were getting to the real reason for this visit.
“I can handle myself, Flint. You didn’t need to track me down.”
I tried to step around him, but he moved with me.
“Pipes—”
“I left,” I reminded him softly. “You can’t just fly in like you’re some knight in shining armor. You tried this back then, and it didn’t work. What makes you think it will now?”
Flint stared at me and then sighed softly. “I know you can take care of yourself, baby, but Lucifer? Come on, we both know you’re no match for a demon. If I could track you here, so could he. It’s only a matter of time—”
“I can handle it,” I said, trying to keep the bite out of my voice.
“Why do you have to be so damned stubborn?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, not liking the way his tone was shifting with me. “Why do you have to barge in here and try to save the day?”
His lips pressed together. He leaned into me, and I didn’t move as he lifted a hand to my cheek. “I miss you, Piper. You’re not easy to love, but—”
I lifted my hand, stopping him right there.
“That’s where you’re wrong. You don’t love me. You think you do, but really, you’re in love with a different girl that’s wearing my face in your mind. A girl that stays home and makes dinner, letting you handle all the scary things that go bump in the night. You need a damsel to save, but I’m not her, Flint. I never was, and I never will be.”
Instead of taking it easy, anger settled in. I could see the dark gleam in his eyes as he dropped his hand from my cheek to my neck, holding it just a tad too tight for my liking.
“We were good. We could be good again.” The words would be sweet in a way, if they weren’t so forceful. “You come back to human patrol and we could be a team again. I won’t pressure you to stay home. I heard about your apartment. You could move in with me, and we—”
“I said no,” I snapped, stepping back to try to break his grip. He squeezed harder.
“How’d they do it?” he asked.
My brows came together, and I frowned. “How’d who do what?”
“The supes. How’d they get you? Because the Piper I knew was humans first, and she wouldn’t be living with a goddamned witch.”
My expression smoothed. I went flat. He glared, not seeing the thing he was provoking. As much as I thought of myself as human, Nathalie, Ronan, and even Lucifer were forcing me to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t.
I was anything but.
A demon. A monster. A predator.
And he was provoking me, oblivious to the damage I could cause. Perhaps I was wrong about Flint in a way. It would seem he was taking our breakup harder than I’d thought, and me moving in with Nathalie had somehow added fuel to a fire I thought was nothing more than ashes.
“I’m going to give you one warning, out of respect for the time you gave me and the relationship we once had. Take your hand off me, get in the elevator, and leave.”
His thumb brushed over my bare skin and I shivered, but not in desire.
His mere touch made me uncomfortable.
“You wouldn’t hurt me,” Flint said softly. He leaned forward, lips parted, and I knew what he was going for. I reached back, grabbing the handle of my gun. I’d just pulled it out and was lifting it when his hand on my throat disappeared.
A bang echoed in the hall and I stepped back, lifting my gun.
Standing next to Nathalie in the doorway was none other than Ronan.
He was holding Flint by the throat.
9
“I believe she told you to leave,” Ronan said. His voice was just a sliver of darkness. An echo of death. He didn’t raise it. He didn’t yell. He simply spoke with absolute authority.
Flint clutched at the hand gripping his throat, his face turning pink, and tinged purple in some places. “Let . . . me . . .” He couldn't get out the last word as Ronan squeezed.
“Put him down,” I said.
Ronan paused, turning his head and tilting it to the side. His silver eyes narrowed on me.
“He touched you.”
The words; so simple. The logic; incredibly fucked up.
“I was handling it,” I said.
Ronan seemed to contemplate what I’d said, and Flint reached for his side. My lips parted as a glint of steel registered only a second before it moved through the air—and stopped.
Ronan caught Flint’s arm by the wrist. The knife in his hand flashed under the hall lights, only inches from Ronan’s throat. The demon’s nostrils flared in anger, and Flint gulped visibly.
“Ronan . . .” I said slowly.
A crack echoed, followed by a scream.
Blood splattered the hallway before I knew what had happened. The knife left his hand and hit the floor, the sound drowned out by Flint’s cries.
Ronan flung him down as if he weighed nothing. Murderous intent shone in his gaze, but he didn’t move an inch.
Flint crawled back, clutching his hand to his chest. I could see now that it was broken, and a shard of bone was sticking out.
He eyed the knife several feet away, but then thought better of it when he saw the look on Ronan’s face.
“She has chosen to spare you. Do not return. I will not tolerate your presence near her again.”
Confusion filled Flint’s features. His eyebrows drew together, and then slowly smoothed. He was starting to get it, even if he didn’t have all the pieces.
“What are you?” he asked, but not completely out of fear. He was fishing, trying to find out what I was to the man in front of him.
Ronan smiled cruelly.
“Hope that you never have to find out.”
Flint shuddered and got to his feet. He stalled for a moment, torn between whatever he wanted to say to me and being ripped apart by Ronan.
I didn’t want to see the betrayal in his eyes. The hurt. I could handle the anger, but the rest of it was deep. Too cutting. Too guilt-inducing.
He stepped closer, and Ronan growled under his breath, only stopping when he stepped back.
“So this is what you wanted? To be some supe’s toy? He’ll use you up and throw you away like every other human. We mean nothing to them. I thought you knew that. I thought you—”
I punched him.
Flint stumbled back, stunned.
“You don’t know me,” I snapped. “You don’t know a damn thing about me, and if you did, you’d know better than to try manipulating me. Stop being a prick who has to have the last word, and just go.”
He rubbed at his jaw, and his lips pressed together. His eyes shifted back and forth between me and Ronan. I could tell he wanted to say something, but with a broken wrist, a bruised jaw, and a hurt ego—he’d taken more pain than he signed up for when he tracked me down. Accepting his cause was lost, at least for now, Flint started down the hallway. I waited until the elevator closed to breathe easy.
Nathalie let out a laugh that made me want to shoot her for being the one to instigate this by letting Ronan in to begin with.
The hall door cracked open.
Señora Rosara peered out, assessing the scene. She looked at the blood on the ground and then lifted her eyes to Ronan. There was respect there. Knowledge. But she was still a crazy old woman with no fucks to give.
“That stain better be gone by tonight,” she said. Ronan nodded once. Señora Rosara turned to me. “You need better taste in men,” she said with a disgusted glance toward the elevator. “Pendejo.”
Her door slammed shut, leaving me baffled and insulted.
I blinked, not knowing what to do with that encounter. I shook my head and started down the hall, stepping around Ronan and a guilty-looking Nathalie. Without speaking to either of them, I put my key, the basket of vegetables, and my gun on the kitchen bar.
The front door closed behind me.
I turned around and crossed my arms over my chest.
“What is he doing here?” I said to Nathalie without looking at Ronan. His stare was drilling into me, burrowing under my skin. I couldn’t stand the way he affected me, and while I could lie to them and say he didn’t, lying to myself wasn’t getting me very far.
Not when he was so damn reasonable sometimes.
Then there were times like the present when he made it clear how much he was not human.
“What is he doing here?” I asked again when neither of them answered.
“He came to see you.” She sighed. “You were upstairs, so I invited him in for tea.”
She cast a hopeful look toward the two cups sitting on the end table in the living room. I closed my eyes. Had the Magic Wars not happened, I might have prayed to some god for strength. I knew better than to pray to gods, though. Only demons answered.
So I drew on what little patience I had. “We don’t invite demons in for tea,” I told her.
“But it’s just him—”
“A demon.”
“But—” My eyes hardened like blades of ice, and Nathalie sighed.
“I told you, no one in the apartment. Especially demons.”
“No,” she said. “You told me no one in the apartment because Bree was going to be here. She is not here. We talked about that. We never had a talk about inviting demons in for tea.”
My eyebrows shot up.
Why did she have to be so frickin’ pedantic sometimes?
“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “Consider this that conversation.” Nathalie inclined her head, as if agreeing.
“I will not invite demons in for tea, then. Next time, he can stand outside and beat your ex-boyfriend to a pulp.” She shrugged, and walked out of the kitchen, leaving me with Ronan. Her annoying sense of reasonableness ate at me.
I didn’t love Flint. I didn’t want to be with him. But he was human . . . and I took issue with humans dying. Which is what that would have inevitably led to.
But I wouldn’t say that in front of said demon. No, Nat and I would have to have another talk. Later, when she was being less . . .right.
“She made me stand outside until the human showed,” Ronan said. I glowered.
“You’re not helping.”
He arched an eyebrow and took a step closer. A shudder ran through me as something warm and languid rushed through my veins. I pushed it away, standing strong.
“And here I thought you’d be happy to see me. You were so keen for the second blood exchange last time we spoke,” he murmured. My pulse fluttered, and my mouth went dry. I swallowed hard, tasting blood. Had I bitten my lip?
Yes. Yes, I had. God, why did I react this way to him?
That one was easier to answer, and not so hard to swallow.
Magic. I was his atma. His soulmate. His destined mate.
Magic made me lust after him, and he lusted after me in return.
It wasn’t real. Not really.
I focused on that as I nodded slowly. “Right. I do the blood exchange, and you tell me what’s wrong with Bree.”
“It won’t be that easy,” he warned, searching my face.
Was that compassion? Was he testing me? Making sure that I—
I stopped myself right there.
Don’t question it. Don’t look further. Don’t dig. This is an exchange for knowledge. Knowledge is power. Power will save Bree.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You’ll enter stasis,” he pointed out.
“I know.”
“It will likely be longer than the previous bouts. You’ll need to be monitored to make sure your body doesn’t begin to break down.”
“Break down?” I asked.
Ronan reached around me and grabbed something off the counter.
A knife.
I didn’t realize until he slashed himself over his palm that fear had never touched me. My heart didn't squeeze, and panic didn’t rise.
And I didn’t like it.
Blood welled in his palm, yet Ronan didn’t flinch. Just as fast as the skin split and began to bleed
, it also healed.
“Demons are immortal. We do not age or die or break down, but humans do. We do not know how immortal you are, or if the stasis could kill you by starvation, dehydration, and muscle atrophy.”
My lips parted. “I . . . I’m not sure,” I said, uncomfortable with the prospects.
“Which means you’ll need to be monitored.”
“Nathalie can do it,” I said. He nodded. I wasn’t backing down, no matter the cost, but I also wasn’t stupid. Nathalie was smart. She’d either find a way to magic me out of dying, or get the physical means needed. I trusted her enough to handle it and not let me die either way, which said a lot, given I didn’t trust anyone else.
“There’s one more thing . . .” he said, looking around the shabby chic living room. He picked up a picture frame and examined it for a moment before setting it back down. “Every blood exchange will deepen the bond.”
I lifted both my eyebrows, not that he could see them.
“What does ‘deepen’ mean?”
He lifted his head. Dark fire threatened to consume me.
“It’s different for every pair. Some experience what they think is love, some it’s simply intense lust, and others feel a merging of some sort. The latter is not common.”
Well, shit.
“While unfortunate, I won’t let that deter me,” I said. “We’re doing this exchange.”
The follow-up exchange was a problem for my future self. I’d figure it out. Same as everything else I did.
“Very well,” Ronan said. His tongue darted out and swept across his bottom lip.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would he take me back to his place and try to make this out to be something different than it was? Would he just grab me as we stood in Nat’s apartment and bite?
Turns out the answer was neither.
Ronan offered me his hand, a devilish, cruel smirk of amusement tilting his lips. In his eyes was a challenge. To me.
For all my talk, would I go through with it?
Would I willingly enter an eternal partnership and what little was left of my soul?
Haunted by Shadows: Magic Wars: Demons of New Chicago Book Two Page 6