Ah, so that was why he was here. “You want to go home?”
“I want what is mine. When my father died, the princes denied me ascension. The others rule over the netherworld in my place. I want that power. I want what is mine and what was taken from me. I am a prince in all but name.”
Envy. He was his father’s son. It was embarrassing how predictable my kin were.
“Let the girl go and we’ll discuss the veil, the netherworld, the Court and your place in it.”
“Release my leverage over you? I don’t think I will.” He tilted his head. “You said her name was Anna… Humans rarely think of their own names. However, she often thinks of you. I admire your work, Pride. Seeding yourself into her thoughts, making her believe you’re almost human. It’s admirable. Even my father would be impressed with your art. She’s smitten with her dark prince, though she paradoxically hates herself for it. The human capacity for self-hatred is an unusual evolutionary trait, but an interesting one to study.”
Humans adopted that same gaze when pinning butterflies to corkboards. Anna was nothing to him. Just a means of getting to me. He lifted his hand. “Anna, come to me.”
She obeyed, slipping off the stool like a puppet on a string.
Rage burned hot and fast inside me, seeking a source. If I betrayed my feelings, I’d betray my weaknesses. Demons didn’t feel and certainly not for puppet-humans. If he knew I was weak, he would likely kill Anna, Noah, and Adam, and I was in no condition to stop him. Kar’ak was of no use to me. He epitomized everything I was trying to save the human world from. But I’d promised Gem I’d try to save Torrent. Even if I could kill Kar’ak, I couldn’t.
Anna strolled toward the demon. In two steps, she would be close enough for him to tear her heart out of her chest. She would be dead and gone, and I would have done nothing to prevent it. Gem had often berated me for my lack of action, but hers wasn’t my life to toy with. This was different. Anna had no defense against Kar’ak. I couldn’t let this happen. Anna was mine.
I snatched the rifle, lined the sights between Kar’ak’s eyes, and pulled the trigger. The Institute-etched round punched into his forehead and flung him backward through a window, shattering the glass and bending the shutters. He collapsed in a heap, left wing twitching.
Vaulting over the bar, I aimed loosely and emptied the clip into the demon’s body. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would buy us time.
“Holy shit,” Anna gasped, Kar’ak’s hold on her mind broken. “What the… what is that?”
“That is our cue to leave.” I snatched her hand and yanked her toward the elevator. “Gather the essentials. Leave everything else.” I shoved her inside and handed her back her gun. “Get the others out. Now!”
“What—who is that?!”
“That’s the demon you never wanted to meet.” The doors closed, and I let out a weary sigh. Battling Kar’ak was the last thing I wanted to do, but what choice did I have?
I returned to Kar’ak’s limp body and watched the head wound tug itself back together. It would take time for him to regain consciousness, but when he woke up, he’d come for them.
Noah hurried by, arms filled with their research. Adam carried the still unconscious Christian. I helped them through the doors and outside to Adam’s waiting car. Anna climbed into the front passenger seat.
“There’s more…” Adam said after stowing Christian into the back seat. He tried to head back inside.
I blocked the door. “Leave it.”
“There are important documents—”
“LEAVE IT.”
Behind me, air sailed over Kar’ak’s tongue and down his windpipe, inflating vast lungs.
“Go!” I ordered.
“It won’t take long—”
I snatched Adam’s shirt and shoved him into the driver’s seat. “Do you want Leviathan’s son to turn you into a puppet? No, I didn’t think so. Do not argue with me, Adam Harper.”
He paled and stammered what was likely a protest.
I slammed the car door closed. “Listen to me and go. I’ll catch up with you.”
Noah jumped into the back. “Go, go, go. He’s waking up!”
“You’re not coming?” Anna asked through the open window.
“I am…” I checked behind me. Kar’ak’s wing twitched and lifted. “Go.” I had to delay him. He was too close. He could track them. If I bought them enough time, he’d lose their scent. I plucked the feather from my sleeve and reached in through the window. “Take it and go as far as you can. Use elemental glyphs to shield yourself. Adam knows how.”
The engine sputtered to life and roared under Adam’s foot.
“How will you find us?” she asked.
I tracked the feather in her hand and watched her lay it against her thigh. Good.
A growl sounded behind me. “I just will. Go!”
Adam slammed the gas pedal to the floor, and the rental car sped away. Air shifted behind me, recoiling from the mass of demon inside the restaurant. I discarded my human vessel and twisted, fully demon in one fluid motion. Steeping back inside, my wings snapped outward, barreling pain through me.
Kar’ak was on his feet. He saw my wings first. His eyes widened. Shock. Horror. They must have been quite the mess for a firstborn prince to recoil. I grabbed a half-finished bottle of bourbon and smashed it across his face. He staggered, wings sweeping forward to balance him. I had him weakened from the headshot and on his back foot. If I was going to beat him, now would be the time. I couldn’t let up. Couldn’t give him an opening. I leaped over the bar and yanked open the drawers. It had to be here.
Kar’ak’s snarl rippled the air. An explosion of pain shattered my thoughts and stole my breath away. Claws had cut through my wing. Didn’t matter. I needed… There. The lighter glinted on the bartop. I snatched it up, twisted and came around laughing. “You think that’s pain?”
Claws extended, I raked them forward to catch his chest, but he flung a wing in. I tore through the membrane instead, wrenching a furious cry from him. He swatted his wing outward, shoving me back, and sprang. I flicked the lighter, summoned a tiny flame, and threw it at his face.
Fire whooshed across the spilled bourbon. Air rushed in, feeding the flames.
Kar’ak roared and staggered back.
As air, I shifted sideways, appearing to vanish. In a blur, I was behind him. I hooked my arm around his throat and punched claws into his lower back. He arched away, wings spread, and bellowed his rage.
Brutal. Savage. Everything inside of me that I’d fought to escape. It all came back, stronger and harder than ever.
He bowed forward, trying to pull me over him. He would have succeeded had I not dissolved. Pain snapped and flooded through every insubstantial piece of me. Sparks of light exploded in my vision. Kar’ak whirled. His wings sliced through my insubstantial form, but it didn’t matter. I was air and everywhere. I yanked on my element, pulled it in through the broken window, under the doors, and through every gap, and pushed it into Kar’ak, crushing him under its sudden, deafening onslaught. It was all I had to give, and when the air died, Kar’ak knelt, wings shredded and skin sanded raw, but he was alive. The flames had spluttered out.
You will save him…
I could finish him off. He was stunned, on his knees. I should tear his throat and heart out and be done with him. Without a Court, it might kill him.
I had given a feather to Gem and made a promise to help Torrent. I couldn’t break it.
I backed up, scooped up the lighter, dissolved my wings, and funneled into the air vents.
In my bedroom, I pulled out the chest of feathers. I had to do this. The extinguished lighter burned in my hand. I looked up at the room in which I had spent many a day and night being worshipped and worshipping those in return. It was just a room, wasn’t it? Just an apartment. Just another act.
I opened the chest of feathers and looked down into their gleaming mass.
I knew how fire liked to consume them. I’
d once had my feathers burned from my wings—every single one.
I flicked the lighter alight and swallowed.
This life as Li’el. This apartment. This restaurant. More than any of my personas, this had been the one I could have lived for centuries to come.
Not anymore.
I breathed in, summoned my element, and blew. Feathers flew into the air and sailed through the door, out into the living room. I lifted the lighter.
Keep the fire from my door.
I could never have imagined I would be the one to light that fire.
The little flame caught a dallying feather and instantly turned blue, flaring hotter. It spiraled to the bed, spilling flames where it landed. Fire licked across the sheets. More feathers caught, each one bursting bright, and each one delivering shredding agony. Fire raced across the floor and up the walls.
I backed away. Fire would slow a water elemental.
The elevator pinged, and Kar’ak thundered into the living room. Air swept in too, lifting the ash and blasting a cloud into Kar’ak’s face. As the fire raged and the water elemental roared his fury, I turned to air and vanished.
Chapter 17
Somewhere inside, I registered standing on the doorstep of Anna’s little canal house, staring at the feather left out on the window sill, and thinking that being surrounded by so much water wasn’t the best place to hide from a water elemental, but I never spoke the words. Exhausted and barely able to hold a physical form, I heard Anna invite me in and then nothing but the beat of my heart and the ebb and flow of voices. Or were those voices my courtly kin from beyond the veil, calling to me as they called to Kar’ak? That power was so close, yet so out of reach. That old life, that old me. Prince of Pride, one of the Seven. A killer, a manipulator, a demon at the height of evolution. I’d lost my life in LA. I’d lost my wings. My feathers were gone, as was my strength and my power. What was left for me here?
“Hey there.”
Her hair is dark, but her eyes are blue. Defiance.
Anna was in the room, I realized. She had been here a while. I had felt her hand on my arm, her fingers caressing my shoulder.
“Noah answered the door,” she was saying. “You were naked. If he didn’t have a crush on your before, he does now.”
Color touched her cheeks. Her darker skin hid it well, but I felt the warmth kiss the air. I ran my gaze over the outline of her lips, along her jaw to the braid draped over her shoulder, then up to her eyes. She looked down at me, the humor in them fading away.
I was naked now too. Someone had tried to toss a sheet over me, resulting in something of a tangled mess with glimpses of dark limbs. “You kept my feather?”
“Adam said I should.” She bit her lip. “He said there weren’t many left.” She swallowed and settled back in the chair beside the bed. I appeared to be in a woman’s bedroom, sprawled on a woman’s bed. The sheets smelled of Anna, of soap and something like hand cream. My winged burdens throbbed, sprawled beneath me and hanging off the bed, one tucked at an odd angle. It didn’t matter. I had no desire to move.
“Your wings.” She caught herself peering over my shoulder and tore her gaze away. “Did that demon do that to you?”
“No.”
“What’s happening to them—to you?”
I propped my head up on a hand and consciously worked to heal what I could. “There was a time when I reveled with humans. Demon-kind find humans revolting and weak. I never did. I admired you and loved you, and when you admired and loved me in return, when you worshipped me over decades, I loved you more. Eventually, that love turned into Pride. Not just for myself, but for you and your kind.”
The sheet slipped down to my waist, inviting Anna’s gaze. I let it happen and watched her attention drift. I still had the dimple where her bullet had sailed through me. She noticed and arched an eyebrow at me.
“Humans helped me become more than just demon. Once I had that power, I didn’t want to let it go. I sought more worshippers, more love, more admiration. It changed me, and when the Prince of Greed—Mammon—ended my life here, the power I had gained turned bitter.” My skin itched. More scars would remain, but I didn’t have the energy to care. “I no longer have that pride, and without the Court, I find I am becoming something else again. Something weaker. I fear I may lose my wings entirely, and after that… I don’t know.” It didn’t hurt to tell her. I’d thought it would, but all I felt was relief at sharing my concerns. She knew more about me than any human ever had. It should have been a weakness to reveal so much, but the more I told her, the more I wanted to tell her. Every truth I gave her she measured, weighed, and embraced.
“Is Kar’ak gone?” She looked out the windows. They’d hastily scrawled glyphs on the walls, blocking out all demons besides me. I had been invited.
“For now. Thank you”—I gestured at the bed—“for this.”
“Thank you. For everything. He would have…” Her eyes narrowed. “I guess that’s how he got the reporter.”
“I’m sorry.” The sight of her at Kar’ak’s mercy was one I wouldn’t readily forgive or forget.
“When he was inside my head, it felt… it felt like he could have done worse. Like he was being careful. But he showed me things too. He showed me you in your world. It was… I didn’t truly understand who you were before, but I do now.”
The things he could have shown her. Massacres, the power I’d wielded, the games I’d played. I had always been different, but I’d always been demon too. The netherworld was not the human world. We ruled by claw and tooth.
“He showed me things, but he got it wrong.” She looked down at her lap and picked at her thumbnail. “He showed me what a demon would consider weaknesses. He showed me how you helped the half-blood girl, Gem, and others. There was a girl made of fire and a prince made of ice. They needed you. He wanted me to see you as weak, but I saw something else instead. He showed me what makes you different, what makes you stronger than all the others, but he couldn’t see it because he’s just demon.”
“I’m sorry you had to see all that.”
“And that’s the difference.” This time her smile meant something more. Rising from her chair, she admired the parts of me on display. She chuckled at her own thoughts and left the room.
My smile faded.
Kar’ak, the veil, the lessers, the pain, the weakness. There was one solution. Almost too dangerous to consider. I could tap into the veil. I could regain the power I’d lost. But with power came the lure of the Dark Court beyond the veil, and it would call to me, just like it called to Kar’ak. They would call. My brethren. I was not immune to the Court’s temptation. I had left that world behind long ago, and I had been forced from its embrace when the veil fell. But I hadn’t known the cost. Recent events had reminded me of exactly what I’d lost. Would it be better to wither away by choice or become the creature hundreds of thousands of demons feared? Become the prince once more? Should I become the devil to save the City of Angels?
I drew air through my teeth, over my tongue, and breathed it in.
“Here.” Adam tapped at the map, pointing to a green field near Hidden Springs in the Angeles National Forest. “It won’t be easy to get to. Roadblocks are everywhere. We’d have to hike on foot. But that’s where EcoZone was running their tests.”
“And these tests were what exactly?” I leaned against the counter separating Anna’s living area from the kitchen. The bungalow was bijou, with quaint windows and timber nooks. It was perfectly Anna.
The group had gathered around a low coffee table, looking oddly comfortable among soft furnishings and potted plants. Christian was among them, curiously serene. He hadn’t once insulted me in the forty minutes since I’d emerged from the bedroom, now clothed and none the worse for my run in with Kar’ak. I made sure it appeared that way.
“In the absence of more information,” Adam replied, “we can assume they were trying to harness the veil for clean energy. At least that’s their public remit. Behin
d closed doors…” He shrugged. “The military had an interest in the netherworld long before the public was aware of it and demons. Had EcoZone succeeded, the possibilities would be endless.” His tone drifted along with his thoughts.
“But something happened?” I said, bringing him back on topic.
“This isn’t my area of expertise, but from what Noah uncovered on the laptop, it looks as though they deliberately or unwittingly latched onto an element they couldn’t control or contain. My guess is Chaos. They got what they wanted: a massive spike in energy production. The results are off the charts, and then there’s nothing. The reports all stop. That happened two days before the lesser swarms started. Considering the relatively short time that’s elapsed between now and when the veil was last opened, it’s a wonder they didn’t tear a hole through it and let all the demons through. Perhaps they had fail-safes in place, which is why we’re looking at a weaker veil and not a second collapse. Astoundingly foolish. But with high risks comes high rewards.”
“Foolish like breeding half-human demons?” Christian said matter-of-factly. He didn’t look up. He wasn’t interested in making Adam a new friend.
“Remind me again why you’re here,” Adam asked. “All I’ve seen of your performance so far is your talent for becoming a liability.”
“I’m here…” He looked at me and then reconsidered whatever he was about to say. “I can get you into that facility. A squad I know worked security there before an accident shut the whole place down. It’ll be locked up tight, but I can probably get my hands on some key cards. If not, I can at least get you there. I also know where to get guns since we’re all out.”
“And you didn’t think to mention all this before?” Anna asked.
“I didn’t know that place was EcoZone. It’s called something else. But that’s the location. I dropped off a few of the squad guys there once after we went out drinking. The whole place is wrapped in razor wire and twelve-foot-high electric fencing. I didn’t ask questions. Even if I had, they wouldn’t have answered.”
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