by Jenny McKane
Kicking the door shut behind him, he advanced in the room a few feet and stopped as he squared his shoulders up to hers.
“What in the hell are you talking about, Sunny?” he said. His voice was low, but the anger wasn’t hard to hear.
“Go away, Gideon,” she said sadly as she turned to look out the window. “I’m done with this. With you and her. With us. I can’t keep aiming if you’re giving me nothing to shoot for.”
She heard his sharp intake of and half-expected him to slam back out into the hallway and downstairs. For good. Forever.
But when she hazarded a glance over her shoulder, he was still there. His eyes were a little calmer now and there was the slightest tug at the corner of his mouth.
“You’re jealous.”
In a flash, she turned on him, her anger surging back to the surface.
“You’re serious?” She wanted to scream at the smug look on his face. “This is funny to you? I’m some sort of joke between the two of you?”
Just as she was working herself into a giant lather, Gideon held his large hands up in a defensive stance.
“Sunny,” he said softly, but Sunny wouldn’t stop.
Her emotions were riding one hell of an elevator now and they weren’t going to stop until she had one hell of a breakdown and burned down not just the bridge, but the entire village with it.
“…the audacity to just act like I’m nothing…” she was saying when Gideon grasped her shoulders and gently shook her, the words dying on her lips.
“Stop it, Sunshine,” he whispered and the tone of his words, not necessarily the command in them, is what made her comply. “You’ve got it all wrong. So, so wrong. Selah and I don’t have anything going on—come on. Really?”
The anger returned.
“Gaslighting me won’t work, Gideon,” she frowned, the emotions rising back up. “Don’t try to make me feel crazy for feeling edged out and ignored when you spend all your free time with her. In her room.”
He nodded then, as if the words were washing over him and making sense.
“Okay, I get it. I admit that it probably looks bad and that I’m a little distant with you right now…”
Gideon didn’t get to finish his sentence before Sunny was snorting in derision.
“You’re the Grand-fucking-Canyon when it comes to distance, Gideon,” she all but shouted at him, pissed off that the tears that stung her eyes were going to fall at any moment. She’d been so good at keeping them bottled up for so long that there might be no stopping them once they started.
Gideon nodded his head, acquiescing to what she was saying.
“You’re right, Sunshine. You’re right,” he was trying to calm her down, moving forward slowly. “I’ve been keeping you at arm’s distance, but I had to. I had to.”
The softness in his voice and the way he was looking at her now, like he had when they’d first made it to Montana and he let his walls down, were her undoing and the tears came. She guessed that this glimpse of the Gideon that she loved wouldn’t last long, that he’d go back to the aloof and angry angel/demon that he’d become lately—but for the moment, seeing a ghost of the man she loved opened a floodgate of emotions and when he opened his arms for her, she ran to him without a second thought.
She might regret it later, but she soaked up his warmth and his smell as he wrapped his muscled arms around her and squeezed.
“I have so much to tell you,” he whispered against her hair. “So much for you to understand, baby.”
The endearment thudded against her heart and made her close her eyes, new tears forming and sliding down her cheeks.
CHAPTER TEN
“Selah’s changing,” Gideon said as he pulled Sunny down beside him on her bed.
Keeping her features blank, she let him continue.
“It started a few weeks after we got back,” he said. “She started having nightmares and couldn’t sleep. Then she started having visions and she couldn’t distinguish reality from dreams. And then I started having the dreams.”
Sunny held her breath at that. This didn’t sound like it was going to end well—and yet he’d seemed so eager to pull her in and talk to her. She chewed her lower lip.
“Whatever Alder did to her in the demon realm is causing a transformation and we’re not certain it’s a good one,” Gideon said, his voice low. “It’s why the Powers seem so on edge when she’s around and its why she avoids being around anyone. It’s just a matter of time before whatever is happening to her is complete.”
She searched Gideon’s face as she took in his words. Selah had nightmares. Selah was changing. Selah was on a path to a complete alteration of some sort.
Gideon had dreams. Gideon had been a pet project of Alder’s…
“What about you?”
The words were out in a rush. Sunny didn’t give a damn what happened to Selah at this point, truth be told. But she did care about Gideon, no matter how hard he had pushed her away in the past months.
He shook his head as he spoke.
“I had nightmares in the beginning,” he answered. “Horrible visions that messed with my reality and haunted my waking hours. It was like some sort of prison my mind couldn’t escape, even when I was awake.”
Sunny swallowed hard.
“When did they start?”
Gideon’s gaze was on the window behind Sunny.
“A few days after we crossed the portal.”
She frowned.
“You never told me,” she said quietly. “Why? Why would you confide in Selah after all she did to you and to me over there? But you shut me out?”
The hurt had returned, and she closed her eyes to make sure she didn’t start crying again. It wasn’t that she hated emotions, but they didn’t serve any purpose at the moment. She needed the truth from Gideon and she didn’t need any extra distractions while she was getting it.
With an exhale, she nodded before opening her eyes, the threat of tears gone.
Gideon’s eyes were on hers now and his large, warm hand was covering hers.
“I was afraid that I was going to become whatever creature they’d tried to turn me into,” he said plainly. “I was terrified of getting too close to you and then I’d turn on you and hurt you without being able to stop it. What’s happening to Selah isn’t good, Sunny. She can’t stay much longer.”
She’d unpack the Selah nonsense in a minute—right now, Sunny needed to know what was on Gideon’s mind.
“So not once, not one single time, you couldn’t clue me into what was going on? To let me know what you were doing? What you were afraid of?”
Trying to keep her voice down, Sunny glared at Gideon.
“I was afraid that if I truly opened to you the way I wanted to, that there was no way in Heaven or Hell that I’d make the right choice if my worst fears were realized, Sunshine,” he said. “If I let our connection go full steam ahead, what I wanted from the moment I realized it was you in the demon realm, I knew I wouldn’t be man enough to do the noble thing and leave you before it was too late. I was a coward, Sunshine, but I was trying my best to do what was right.”
She was looking at his feet. His boots, light tan Timberlands, were speckled with imp blood from their fight in the toy factory. She recognized the gun metal gray glint the substance gave off because she’d had a hell of a time getting it off her favorite (and last pair of) broken in jeans.
“So, what’s changed, Gideon?” she asked, bringing her attention back to his face; his beautiful, haunting face with its golden skin, burning hazel eyes, full lips.
She mentally shook herself to clear those poorly timed thoughts from her head. Not the time. Not the place, she chastised herself. Sunny had a lot of hurt and a lot of questions to work through with Gideon before she could allow herself to dwell on all his handsome features. And how soft his lips were when they had last kissed in Montana…
She all but slapped herself to focus on what Gideon was telling her.
“W
hatever was happening to me and Selah got worse with Selah and all but reversed with me,” he continued. “I don’t get the nightmares anymore. She does. I never felt pain in the sites where Alder tried to alter my DNA or do his freaky experiments on me, but her pain is excruciating, and her skin is changing. She’s changing.”
Selah had been sure to stay away from everyone as much as she could and spoke even less than she ever had.
“First question, what’s changing,” Sunny asked, then stopped herself. “Scratch that, more importantly, does the team know the little developments you were keeping from me?”
Gideon’s lips thinned.
“Metatron knows,” he said. “I don’t know about Eli. I don’t know about the Powers to the extent that they couldn’t just see it happening with Selah. They’re the perfect genetic hunters of rogue demons and it seems like that is what she’s becoming. Actually, what she’s becoming is much, much worse.”
Sunny braced for what Gideon was about to say and when he didn’t continue she had to press it from him.
“What’s she becoming, Gideon?”
The tension in the air was thick and sour, as if the very notion was upsetting to him. Hell, it was upsetting her not knowing what the hell was going on.
“A nox, Sunshine,” he finally said with a grim expression. “Selah’s skin is turning into shadow and darkness and it’s slowly spreading from the surgical site were Alder attached the demon arm.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Metatron knows she’s turning into a nox and she’s still here?” A thought crossed her mind in a flash. “And why would I have dreams about the nox around the same time you two are fighting this transformation?”
Gideon shook his head. “It couldn’t have been a coincidence, but none of us can find the connection,” he said. “And we’ve been trying.”
“But you couldn’t include me in the conversation? Why could you bond enough with the chick who was going to marry a dummy version of you against your will and still not tell me?”
Gideon had the sense to look truly heartbroken as she spoke.
“Mostly it was because I was in denial, Sunshine. I didn’t want this to happen to me, I didn’t want the Powers to have to put me down if I shifted,” he said. “But part of me couldn’t stomach the fact that you would have every right to reject me in horror—this is a death sentence and a bad one to boot. I wasn’t at the point where I could brave being rejected by you. It would have cleaved me in two.”
After a prolonged moment of silence, Sunny let out an unladylike snort. Gideon frowned at the sound.
“And yet,” she said slowly, her fingers gripping the comforter she sat in like a vise. “You could shut me out completely, just so you could both keep me safe and save yourself a little heartache?”
To her, the entire thing sounded just a bit too selfish. He could hurt her, but he’d be sure to do what he could to avoid Sunny rejecting him for good.
He didn’t reply to her, leaving her numb inside.
“And what was with you stomping around downstairs? You almost acted jealous. You make no sense, Gideon.”
His breath came out in a long sigh at that one. “I was, I am, jealous of Eli,” he admitted quietly. “Every day you get closer to him and sometimes, in my darkest moments when I thought it was just a matter of time before I turned into the most reviled demon in the grimoire, I thought he’d actually be good for you. I thought, hell, if I wasn’t in the way being my surly self, maybe you’d take a chance and go for Eli. And I hated myself, I hated him for it. But I felt how I felt.”
Just when Sunny thought it couldn’t get more complicated, Gideon managed throw in a huge heaping dose of vulnerability into the mix.
“Jesus, Gideon,” she said, closing her eyes. “You’re a big, dumb motherfucker, aren’t you?”
His mouth just dropped open at the way she spoke to him and he was smart enough not to respond.
“I don’t want Eli,” she said, punctuating her words with jabs into his chest with her forefinger. “I’m not even sure I can stand you right now after all this shit you put me through, but I sure as hell am not harboring a secret wish to be with Eli. He’s my friend, you moron. My mentor. I didn’t go through everything I went through to lose sight of who is who at the end. But it seems like you kind of did, didn’t you?”
Gideon balked at the words.
“No, that’s not it at all,” he denied. “I was trying to save you a bigger heartbreak at the end if I was truly going to turn into something that needed to be destroyed.”
“So, what? You’d just be gone one day, like the family dog? Eli would have to come back after putting you down behind the barn and say that you ran away? Who are you fucking kidding, Gideon? You didn’t consider me at all in anything you’ve done in the past few months, you selfish prick. And now that you’ve had your execution stayed, you think I’m just going to welcome you back with open arms?”
Gideon’s lips were pressed thin again, but he didn’t try to stop her.
“You cracked me neatly into two with the way you’ve been treating me, letting me think you’re carrying some newly formed relationship on with Selah with all the times you two disappear—with how you completely shut me out like I’m not even here,” she said, her voice cracking again. Damn it. “I’m not even sure what you want with me at this point, to be honest, but I do know that you’ve done major damage to me, to us, with your inability to see me as a partner in this thing with equal footing and equal access to the truth.”
He nodded at the words, as though he were slowly absorbing them and taking them in.
“I know, Sunshine,” he said, his voice lower and more monotone now. It was one of his tells when he was battling back his own emotions. “I’m not trying to pick up where we left off—I know that ship probably sailed. But I’m done shutting you out, that much I can swear to you. Can we just start there? No other promises? No other expectations? Partners?”
He stuck his hand out for her to shake like he was making a deal and she raised her eyebrow at him.
“Seriously? We’re shaking on it? I’ve totally seen you naked before.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at her own crack and it made Gideon’s lips turn up in a smile, too. Sunny reached for his hand and just as their skin made initial contact, Gideon pulled her into a full-on hug, wrapping her in his arms for the second time that night. And she let him.
As mad as she was at the jackass, she let him.
Chapter Eleven
“We’ve got ourselves complication heaped upon complication now, don’t we?”
Sin, as always, stated the obvious. He was reclining on the couch, picking at his nails and listening to the conversation happening around him.
For the first time since they arrived in Tammer Park, Selah was sitting at the edge of the conversation.
“She can’t stay,” Tesah said simply. “She needs to be destroyed.”
Now, at this point in their travels, nobody was exactly friends with the former princess of Hell, but she was still a presence that they’d all somewhat gotten used to. And for as much animosity as Sunny held for her, hearing the Power speak like that made her balk.
“Easy now,” Metatron said, likely feeling the same way.
“Nox, Archangel,” Eron clipped beside Tesah. “We’re not dealing with an imp or a succubus. There is no room for negotiations—we simply cannot allow a death eater to walk the earth.”
Death eater? That was the first time Sunny had heard the term and Tesah noticed the look of confusion on her face.
“Oh, didn’t know that the nox is the most reviled creature in all the realms, human?”
The sarcasm dripped from Tesah’s words, but all Sunny could focus on was the way that the once-proud Selah flinched with each syllable, as though Tesah was physically slapping her in the face with the sentence. A small, miniscule, tiny part of Sunny felt bad for Selah.
“Is that so? I thought my kind were the most reviled in the re
alms,” Sin chirped from his spot on the couch. He was being cheeky—probably trying to lighten the mood and derail the heightening tensions.
“Yours is the most annoying and least productive,” Eron hissed.
Gideon was beside Sunny, and she felt the tension in his body. This whole conversation was going nowhere—and quickly.
“I’m sorry for what is happening to you, Selah,” Metatron cut in. He had dark circles under his eyes and Sunny guessed he hadn’t been sleeping much. “But you have to understand the Powers’ concerns.”
Selah swallowed hard and nodded. Her hair, once perfectly coiffed and maintained, was a dry, limp mess of washed out blonde and brass. It hung in a low ponytail at her back and looked like it hadn’t been touched in days. Her nails, once perfectly manicured and painted, were chewed-up nubs with bloody cuticles—evidence of her mental state. Her skin was sallow and her eyes empty.
She was a shell—a tortured shell.
Her anger and resentment for Selah cracked in that moment as Sunny took in just how far the former princess had fallen in the past six months. She played her part, for sure, but now she was facing her own death and it was written all over her once-pretty face—she had all but given up.
Sunny frowned. “There’s nothing to be done, then?” she asked, looking to Metatron. She knew the Powers would put a blade between her ribs in the middle of the living room right now if they could get away with it. They were predators and they sensed not only the demon that was building up within Selah, but also the fact that she was weakened and essentially dying.
Nobody spoke, and Gideon let out a long sigh, obviously having had this same discussion with Selah before.
“What about in the demon realm?” Sunny asked. “Her mother? Healers in that dimension?”