“That isn’t true, Grace. I have known many good Angels in my lifetime—Angels who have worked ceaselessly to bring peace to the Human world, who see their Human colleagues as their friends and who grieve the deceit that they are complicit to. The Council and the Common Angels don’t know, or if some do, they have yet to reveal it. Our source on the High Council is trustworthy. I believe the majority of the Angels are as much in the dark as we were before you met Jonah.” Niamh’s voice caught on his name, and she turned to the window again, just in time to see Cat hurl a rock across the garden. I groaned and hid my face in my hands.
“She will forgive you in time, Grace, there are very few crimes that cannot be forgiven between sisters.” Niamh twisted her face away from the glass and rested her gaze on Dawn and Ozzie, who were playing computer games on the floor with Aza and a dark-haired shifter Demon. “We have no power over the past, Grace, it is carved in stone. Time will wear away at the rough edges, and perhaps one day it will be forgotten entirely, but the future…”
Dawn threw her hands in the air and whooped with delight as the voice on the computer screen declared her the winner of the game. Ozzie grinned at her and tried to swipe the controller from her hands, muttering about beginner’s luck. I pressed my lips together tightly and swallowed, the lump rising in my throat. Niamh’s lips softened as she turned on her heel and began to make her way toward the other Demons working in front of the wall of flashing screens.
“Niamh?” The Demon stopped walking at the sound of my voice but didn’t turn around to face me. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “It’s not a coincidence. Dawn, Sam, me, and now Ozzie—it couldn’t just be chance that we ended up being connected. Did the Circle plan this? Was Deirdre telling the truth about Eve and me? If you know something, from your visions…”
Niamh turned her head so that I could make out her aquiline profile through the curtain of her long golden waves. “No vision comes with certainty. I see only what may be, not what will be.”
“What may be—is it terrible?” I dug my thumbnail into the soft flesh of my bottom lip.
For a moment, I thought Niamh might answer me, but she walked away without a backward glance. I stared into the garden again, pulling Jonah’s book from inside my pocket and turning it over in my hands.
Brandon, Cain, and Sam had joined Cat now. Cat ran at Cain and lashed her whip. It snapped the air in front of his face, and he spun full circle to avoid its crack. He swung to his right and grabbed Cat by the shoulders, but she flipped over his head and struck him behind the knees, bringing him to the ground.
They lay tangled together, chests heaving, eyes locked. Cain leaned in and kissed Cat on the lips. I saw her face break into a grin and she jumped to her feet and sprinted around the corner with Cain’s Spirit Light tucked under her arm. Brandon shook his head as he watched them disappear out of sight. A fleeting smile tugged at his lips for a moment before he dropped to the floor and started a grueling round of push-ups.
Sam paced the edge of the lawn. His shoulders were bent, and his eyes were as dark as the mournful ocean beating against the shore below the cottage. He tucked his blade into his waistband and jogged toward the front gate. I hesitated for a second, then slipped out the back door and followed him.
I secured Jonah’s diary inside my jacket as I climbed over the rusting gate and traced Sam’s path down the slimy stone staircase and onto the beach. I didn’t need to use my Seeking energy to figure out where I would find him. I narrowed my gaze on the retreating tide as I picked my way over the stones and into the cave that Dawn had christened Smugglers Den during her Famous Five phase.
Sam was sitting on a jagged rock just inside the mouth of the cave, turning a seashell over in his long fingers. He wasn’t surprised by my arrival. “Do you ever ask Dawn what she sees?”
I picked at the side of my thumbnail. “Do I ever ask Dawn about her gift? No. She’s a little kid, my niece, not a random fortune teller at a fair.”
“She’s not a little kid, Grace, not anymore. She’s a Seer—more powerful than Lizzie, maybe more powerful than Niamh.” Sam’s words pricked my skin like a shower of thumbtacks.
I folded my arms over my chest. “Have you asked Dawn about her visions?”
I clamped my back teeth as I waited for Sam to respond. He stared straight ahead. “I’ve wanted to, pretty much every day since the last time we were in this cave.”
“What?” I drew my eyebrows together. Sam tilted his head and pushed his unruly waves out of his eyes. A familiar dart of electricity ran through my bones as he hit me with the full intensity of his attention. I tried not to let my gaze linger on his lips as I bit down on my own.
“That day—the day of the first Spirit Demon attack—it was the first time you saw me for what I was. I’d known what you were for months, but you… When we found her here, Dawn was talking to you, but she gave me this look—she knew how I felt about you. I still catch her watching us sometimes. Like she knows something about us that we don’t.” Sam nudged a stone with his shoe.
“I don’t like to ask her about her visions. I wish she didn’t have any stupid gifts.” I lowered myself into a seating position on a rock opposite Sam’s and pressed my palm against my jaw. “Have you talked to Frank or Lydia yet?”
Sam winced and turned away from me as if my words cut through his flesh. I clenched my teeth. “You’re going to have to face them at some stage—you can’t keep running away. Refusing to talk won’t make it disappear. Whatever happened was just a mistake, Sam. Everybody screws up sometimes.”
“I didn’t mess up.” My head snapped up in surprise but Sam’s eyes were fixed on the sand.
“I didn’t mess up. It was Eli.” I tried to keep perfectly still. “The mission was a disaster from the minute we ported in. The Silent Home was protected by twice as many Guardians as we were expecting. Cain and Jabol tried to hold them off while we searched the rooms but there were just too many. Gabriel passed on the order from Cain that we were to abort the mission, but Elijah refused to come.”
I eased myself off the rock. “Eli said he could hear voices coming from the basement—kids’ voices. I tried to drag him out of there, but he’s so damn stubborn. The Guardians surrounded us, and Elijah took the full force of the blow. I managed to slip past them and Reap Eli with me, but they closed a barrier around Frank and Lydia before I could reach them.”
“Sam, why didn’t you tell anyone that’s what happened? You let the whole cell think it was your fault?” I inched closer to him, and Sam wrapped his arms around my body, pulling me between his outstretched legs. He buried his face in my shoulder.
“Because it was my fault.” I closed my eyes in defeat and rested my chin on his head. Sam’s whisper was so faint that if the wind hadn’t died down at that exact moment, I might have missed it. “Elijah always followed orders before, Grace, but he couldn’t do it anymore. He was afraid to leave those kids behind. He just couldn’t. I should never have told him.”
“What did you tell him, Sam?” My mouth was dry.
Sam lifted his eyes—wide, green, and overflowing with more sadness than any person should ever hold. I held my breath. “Everything, Grace. I told him everything.”
Part of me wanted to ask him to tell me everything too, but the better part knew I could wait. It didn’t matter what my head thought—my heart believed Sam was worth waiting for.
Chapter Thirty-One
It was almost nightfall when Aza called us down to the ocean. Eve stayed at the cottage with Lydia and Frank. Silence still coated us like a shroud, neither of us brave enough to unwrap the possible truth of Deirdre’s claim.
Dawn and Ozzie handed everyone tall white candles to carry. Cat looked me in the face when she lit my candle. She didn’t smile or speak, but it was a start.
When we reached the beach, Sam grabbed my hand and pulled me to the side of the path, letting the rest of our small procession pass us by. He slid his arms around my waist
and stared down at me. I knew if I let myself, I could drown in the depths of his eyes. His lips almost brushed my skin as he leaned closer. “How are you doing?”
“Well—my sister hates me. Some of my friends have been imprisoned by the Angelic High Council, and some of them are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. One of them is at risk of doing something really dumb because he has finally realized he cares for the person he has been torturing for a year. I’ve found out the woman I have been desperate to call my mother since I was tiny kid might be my mom after all—or that might just be another clever plan of the Circle’s to mess with our heads. Also, the hot guy who makes my heart and head hurt is going to set my shirt on fire with a candle.”
Sam held his candle further away from my body, but pressed his other arm firmly against the curve of my waist. I tipped my head so that I could see his face more clearly in the starlight. The butterflies in my stomach escaped in the form of nervous chatter. “Oh, and the most powerful people in the world want to commit mass genocide, and everyone seems to think we have the power to stop them, even though I still blow the circuit on the microwave every time I try to create a shield. So, on the whole, I’m okay. Wonderful, even!”
I stretched my mouth into a wide imitation of a smile. Sam’s tongue brushed his lower lip. “You think I’m hot?”
I threw back my head and laughed for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
“Hey, careful with my delicate ego, I might start to wonder if there’s another guy that makes your heart ache.” Sam’s dimples flashed, but I could hear the raw edge to his words.
I took a deep breath and met his gaze. “There isn’t.”
Dawn appeared in front of us before he could respond. “We’re starting.”
Sam and I followed her in silence over the sand. As we reached the water where the others were standing in a candlelit huddle, Sam twisted my body to face him. The wind had blown tousled his hair, and his dark brows were drawn together tightly over the green of his eyes. I drank him in. He shoved his hair out of his eyes.
“This…” Sam put his hand over my heart, and my chest pounded against his palm. “Even if you decide you want nothing more to do with me, if you hate the real me when I let you in, even if you don’t feel the same way about me—finding you has been more than I ever hoped for. I know that life is a nightmare right now, Grace, and I don’t deserve you, but I want you to know that if this world is worth saving, it’s because you’re in it.”
I grabbed him by the back of his head and dragged his lips down to mine, devouring him with a need that frightened me. I closed my eyes and let myself become weightless. Behind us, Niamh sang her haunting melody and the waves crashed onto the sand.
Sam and I broke apart just in time to see the paper lanterns Dawn and Ozzie were releasing float into the heavens. Diamond and the souls lost at the Silent Home deserved much more, but I hoped they knew that someone grieved for them. Aza was the last to set her light free, and my heart ached at the sight of tears glistening on her strong face.
As we made our way back to the house, Dawn slipped something soft into my pocket, and I wrapped my fingers in surprise around the small teddy bear. Its fur was still stained with blood. Sam stared down at my hands, understanding what it was without asking. His eyes met mine and a fire blazed between us.
We would fight this war for all the children, and win or lose—we would watch the City of Shadows burn.
The End
The Shadow War
Book Three of The Demon-Born Trilogy
L.C. Hibbett
For all the wonderful teachers I have known—may the world be filled with the light you nurture.
Chapter One
Sam
My fist connected with flesh before I had even dragged my heavy eyelids open. I sprang out of bed and wrapped my fingers around Brandon’s neck, registering the thunk of cranial bones connecting with plasterboard as I pinned him to the wall. Blood trickled from Brandon’s nose, but he made no attempt to retaliate—patiently waiting for wakefulness to chase away my paranoid, sleep-induced terror. Shit. Third time in a week I’d punched him in the face, and he still hadn’t gotten the picture—don’t come near me when I’m asleep. Aggravating pain in my ass.
I released him with a grunt and stomped into the closet-sized washroom. Dawn-sized, more like. Figures Niamh would decide to put the male dorm in the tiniest room in the cottage.
“Brandon, how many times have I told you to leave me the hell alone when I’m asleep?” I blasted water from the cold faucet onto a clean washcloth. “I could have snapped your fool neck, man. Don’t wake me if I’m flailing around, okay? Just—don’t.”
I swung my hand through the air, and the washcloth struck his face with a wet slap. Brandon shook his head and pressed the make-shift cold compress against the swollen bridge of his nose. “I just really wanted you to sock me in the face, man. All the handsome bastards have broken noses, right?”
“Damn straight. Distinguished. Who wants to look like a model when they could look like a thug?” I grinned at him and pressed the palms of my hands flat against the low cottage ceiling, eyeing my misshapen profile in the mirror.
Lucas dabbed at the last trace of his blood. “Yeah. On second thoughts, I think I’ll get Aza to heal this up. There isn’t room for two surly Lotharios in a house this small.”
“Surly? Are you calling me surly? Brandon, you haven’t cracked a smile in a week. I’m goddamn sunshine and light in comparison to you, mate.” I tossed the basket of laundered clothes Cat had left by the door onto my bed and started to fold the laundry into neat piles. Not that there was much to sort. Mostly just training gear and whatever clothes Niamh had insisted we needed. I put Ozzie and Cain’s clothes on the end of their empty bunks and handed Brandon his.
“It’s not exactly smiling season, Sam. Friends imprisoned, race about to be obliterated, roommate trying to strangle me every night—not the definition of cheer is it?” Brandon threw the pile of clean laundry I handed him onto his pillow, and half of it tumbled onto the floor. I growled. He groaned and bent down to sort out the mess. “I would never have guessed you were so anal about cleaning before I had to bunk with you. Makes me question my observation skills. I had you pegged as careless with an edge of slovenly.”
“An edge of slovenly? Screw you. Tomorrow night if you wake me, I’m going to choke you for real.” I smirked as Brandon flopped down onto his bed and pretended to hide under the covers. “Nah, I get it. Messy hair, careless good looks, the natural physique of an Adonis—who would think a man this perfect would also be a domestic god, eh?”
Brandon stretched one eyebrow up to his hairline. “Took the words out of my mouth, Sam. Perfection personified.”
I leaned my shoulder against the wall and pressed my face against the cool paintwork. Exhaustion dragged at my eyelids and whispered in my ear, loosening my tongue. “I just think it’s important to mind your crap. It’s a privilege, you know? To have possessions, to have somewhere to put them. I don’t want to let myself forget that freedom is a gift.”
Brandon dropped his eyes to his hands and nodded once. He twisted the bedsheet between his fingers and glanced at me. His voice was quiet. “Is that what your nightmares are about—being back in the Silent Homes?”
“No.” I shut down the conversation with a glare and turned my back on Brandon’s torturously kind eyes. Of all the things in this stinking life that I hated, good people were what knotted me up the worst. Pitying me. Hurting for me. I didn’t deserve an ounce of anyone’s grief.
For a minute, I toyed with the idea of telling him the truth. I was waking up roaring every night because of a dream where I was holding my girlfriend in my arms. My beautiful, smart, honest, brave, hot girlfriend who I ached to drag against my body and never let go. What kind of freak has nightmares about that? Freud would have had a field day with my messed up psyche.
I could feel Brandon’s eyes burning into my back. I sig
hed and pressed my fist against the wall. “No, it’s not the Silent Homes. It’s nothing. I’m just not a good sleeper. That’s why I was trying to get a few hours rest in before Cain and Ozzie hit the hay. I should just ask Niamh if I can sleep in the front room with the surveillance equipment.”
“And spend the night with Aza watching you? God’s truth, that woman doesn’t sleep. I’ve gotten up a few times in the middle of the night to go for a run and she’s always been awake. Creeping on CCTV footage from all over the planet.” Brandon circled his finger beside his temple. “If you think sleeping beside her is going to stop your nightmares…”
“Ha, true that. I should just ask Niamh if there’s a spare room—she probably has twenty, she’s managed to turn this cottage into the Tardis. My brain can’t compute—” The sound of a fist hammering on the bedroom door drowned out my voice.
Brandon tumbled off the bed and sprinted across the floor, flinging the door open. “Is it news about the prison?”
“Sorry, Brandon, no. I just need to talk to Sam about something. Sorry.” Grace bit at her bottom lip and reached out to touch Brandon’s shoulder.
My chest tightened the way it always did when she made that face. Always apologizing for crap that wasn’t her fault, but not in the phony way most people did—Grace really was sorry Brandon was hurting. Sorry she couldn’t fix his pain. Sorry she couldn’t fix the whole goddamn world. I stepped out from behind the bunk.
“Sam! I’ve been looking for you everywhere! Why have you no shirt on? Were you asleep?” Brandon flicked his eyes in my direction, and I glared at him with a slight shake of my head. Grace didn’t need to know I wasn’t sleeping. She didn’t need another thing to worry about. Brandon mumbled something about going for a run and slipped out past Grace, shutting the door on his way out.
The Demon-Born Trilogy: (Complete Paranormal Fantasy Series) Page 47