It wasn’t a coincidence.
Stefan stepped forward, concern etched across his face. His father hung back by the meeting table, watching our reactions. “It’s a warning. Akil can’t find you, so he’s sending a message.”
I scratched at my arm, grimacing. “He could have killed someone.” I had a moment of panic as I wondered if my cat, Jonesy, was okay, but there was nothing I could do. On the screens, flames licked from the arched windows, and black smoke billowed skyward. The last part of my normal life—Charlie Henderson’s life—had just gone up in smoke.
Ryder watched my reaction. “He will kill if you don’t go to him.”
“I can’t.” They were all looking at me, waiting for me to make the call on what to do. “I can’t go to him. He wants to take me home, to the netherworld. I can’t… I won’t go back there.” The thought alone turned my stomach. The world works differently there. My human half wasn’t cut out to survive among the demons, especially considering what Akil had planned. I looked at each of them, my frown deepening with each disapproving stare. “He wants my demon. He wants her out of me…”
Adam shook his head as he perched on the edge of the meeting table. “It can’t be done.” Briefly, he flicked a glance at Stefan, who ignored him. “Half-bloods are irrevocably one and the same, demon and human. He can’t separate your demon from you.”
I grinned and threw a hand in the air. “Right. Are you going to tell him that? Because he’s going to try. If he takes me back there… either he’ll kill me, or Val will. The second I step through the veil, I’m demon bait.”
Stefan spoke up. “You have the strength to fight them.”
Sure, if this were fantasyland. “Not all of them, Stefan. I’ve barely begun to experiment with what I’m capable of. I could maybe fight off one or two, but…” I didn’t need to finish the sentence. I was as good as dead if I stepped through the veil, and everyone in the room knew it.
I glared at Adam. “You need to give me my demon back.”
“I can’t do that. Not while you’re under our roof. You’re too dangerous.”
“And he isn’t?” I flicked a gesture at Stefan.
“Stefan has control,” Adam said calmly. “You do not.”
Maybe he was right, but without my demon, I was vulnerable. “You have to give her back to me.” I crossed the room and stopped in front of Adam. He looked back at me without an ounce of fear, so complacent, in fact, that he just about dared me to lash out at him. “Please.” I didn’t want to beg, but I needed her back in my skin. She was my strength, my soul, my fire.
“There is a way.”
“Please. Anything.” I despised the desperation in my voice.
“You stay here. Work for us.”
I blinked, as taken aback as though he’d struck me. He noted my reaction and smiled. “We can always use half-bloods like you. Properly trained, you’re valuable assets.”
Stefan stepped between us at about the right time. He eased me back a few steps, perhaps sensing I was about to leap at Adam to try and shake the antidote out of him.
“I’m not working for you,” I snarled. Stefan held me back. “Give me my demon back! You had no right to take her! Who do you think you are?”
“Muse,” Stefan warned.
“I don’t care.” I tried to step around him, and he caught my arms. “Let go of me. He’s putting this right. He has to give her back. I need her.” An unexpected sob choked me, and with a sneer, I broke free of Stefan’s grip and lunged for Adam. He lashed out before I could reach him, the back of his hand striking me across the face with enough force to fling me down against the table. Blood pooled in my mouth.
I pushed down on the table and flicked my hair out of my face, pinning him with my stare. His expression had barely changed at all. Stefan saw me tense and grabbed me from behind, pulling my arms behind my back as I struggled to get free.
I spat blood at Adam’s feet, fighting against Stefan’s viselike grip. “If you don’t give her back, I’ll tell the world where this place is. I’ll tell Akil.”
Adam sighed and removed his glasses, rubbing at his closed eyes. “Take her away.”
Stefan swung me around and shoved me toward the door and then rounded on his father. “This is all your doing.” He jabbed a finger at Adam. “Don’t make an enemy of her.”
Adam stood slowly. “Like I did you?”
Stefan clenched his right hand. His knuckles whitened, and then he spun around to escort me out of the room. In the hall outside, I shook off Stefan’s grip. “I need her back, Stefan. They don’t understand. You don’t understand…” A few passing employees gave us a wide berth.
Stefan pulled me along a few steps until I managed to yank my hand free again. He glared at me. “How do you think they came up with the poison they injected you with? Who do you think they tested it on?” He saw the horror on my face. “I understand more than you know, but lashing out at him won’t get you anywhere. We’re prisoners here until he says otherwise.”
I sunk a hand in my hair. Panic began to steal away my rational thoughts. I needed my demon back. With every hour that passed, her absence damaged me. An ache had begun to spread outward, a terrible heartfelt ache, like grief. On top of everything else, it was almost enough to flip me over the edge toward insanity.
Ryder emerged from the Prep Room and froze midstride. Stefan waved him back. I darted my gaze between them. A sickly wave of fear washed over me. I had to get out of this prison, get away from these people. I wanted to go home, to my apartment, to my cat, to Sam. None of those things existed anymore, and besides, the Institute wouldn’t let me go. If they did, I’d be walking straight into Akil’s arms. Oh god, I didn’t want to do this anymore.
Bumping against the wall behind me, I slid down to the floor, pulling my knees up and scrunching myself into a ball. “He’s going to kill me.”
I heard Ryder tell someone to keep walking and felt Stefan’s warm touch on my back.
“Akil…” I lifted my head. “He won’t stop. I can’t escape him, and I can’t stay here. What am I supposed to do?”
“We can stop him.” Stefan slid his hand down my arm and took my hand, lifting me back onto unsteady legs. “There is a way.”
We were back in the little-used library with books strewn across a coffee table. I sat in one of the comfy armchairs, knees drawn up, hands clasped around a Styrofoam cup. I listened to Ryder and Stefan talking. Ryder sat on the arm of a chair while Stefan paced. He collected and deposited books as he voiced various plans. I hadn’t said a word in at least twenty minutes. My coffee was cold, but I didn’t notice. The shock of the events over the past week had finally caught up with me. I’d showered, thinking it might help me feel halfway to human again, but not even the hot water could banish my trembling.
“There is a way. Muse can drain him of power,” Ryder was saying. “Akil can’t summon from the veil like she can. He has to draw his element from the city, and that’s a limited resource. If she drains him, he’ll be vulnerable.”
“But still immortal,” Stefan said.
Ryder shrugged. “Well, yeah. There ain’t no way around that.”
“We can trap him though. I’ve trapped demons before using the glyphs. Once inside, he’s contained. He can’t summon his true self. If there was a way to keep him like that…”
I ran my tongue across dry lips. “What about the drug they put in me?” They both looked a little surprised that I’d spoken. “What would it do to him?”
“PC-thirty-four,” Stefan replied. “The Institute uses it to knock out lesser demons. It represses the demon aspect. To Mammon, Akil’s true form, it’d probably give him a headache.”
“What if I could administer it while he’s in his human form? Would it prevent him from manifesting his true self?”
“It might.” Stefan nodded. “If you then summoned your element, you could render him weak enough to trap him.”
“How do we trap him?” I asked.
&nbs
p; Ryder grinned and nudged an elbow into Stefan beside him. “You remember that time we sent Barbatos back to Hell? The look on his pig-ugly face when he realized what was happening… Man, that was priceless.” Ryder chuckled. “Good times.”
Stefan fought not to smile, then gave in and grinned. “Yeah, that was something…” He realized I was waiting for the two of them to get over their male-bonding moment and cleared his throat. “We can either send him back through the veil to the netherworld or trap him here, on this side. Sending a Prince back won’t be easy. They’re too powerful. It would require a blood sacrifice.” Stefan hesitated, seeing my confusion. “A human sacrifice. Someone mortal has to go with him, but it’s a one-way trip.”
Ryder nodded. “That’s a death sentence. Nobody is going to volunteer for that.” We all silently agreed. “So we have to trap him here.”
Shoving some books aside, I set my coffee down on the table. “How long does the drug last?”
“It’s uncertain. At least…” Stefan’s pause held more weight for what he didn’t say. “We know it can last years.” He tried to hide the tremor in his voice while avoiding my gaze. He swallowed and dragged a hand across his chin.
I thought I’d had it bad, but at least I’d always had my demon with me. Through the beatings, the torture, she’d always been there. The Institute had taken that strength from Stefan; his own father had torn out half of Stefan’s soul. No wonder Stefan had control. He’d had it conditioned into him. The pain he’d endured—I’d spent less than a day without my demon and already felt her absence like the loss of a limb. What would the drug do to Akil? Would it even affect him?
“I suppose they’ve never tested it on a Prince before?” I said, halting the approach of an awkward silence.
“No. It may not even work. Lesser demons are weaker here than across the veil. Princes… they’re different. His vessel is little more than a mask. The drug may have no effect at all; in which case, he’s gonna be pretty damn pissed when you try and inject him with it.”
I nodded slowly. Akil would kill me if he figured out what I was planning, but I was as good as dead anyway.
“You’re going to have to get close to him, Muse, without him realizing what you’re doing. Otherwise, he’ll manifest and then…then he’ll likely kill you without hesitation.” Stefan crouched in front of me, searching my expression. I let him see the resignation on my face. Hiding from the truth was pointless.
“I can get close to him.” I closed my eyes and dipped my chin. Getting close to Akil would be the easy part. I knew exactly how to distract him while keeping him tied to his human vessel. A little black dress and a bottle of red wine should do it. Getting the drug in him would be more difficult.
Stefan’s touch on my cheek roused me, bringing me back to the present. The concern on his face wasn’t particularly encouraging. I smiled, more for his sake than mine. “What happens once I’ve injected him?”
“Hopefully, if it works and he’s trapped, he won’t be able to summon his true self. He’ll be virtually human.”
The idea twisted a knot of regret inside me. It felt wrong. What I was planning, it was worse than death for Akil. To trap him in his human form, unable to return to his home, unable to summon his true manifestation. Killing him would be kinder.
“Is there another way?”
Stefan glanced at Ryder, who gave him his usual noncommittal shrug. “Had he been anything else but Mammon, we could have warned him off, but he won’t respond kindly to threats.”
“Can’t you just tell him about this place, tell him what they can do? He might walk away.” It sounded as hopeless as it was. I was clutching at straws. Akil wasn’t going to walk away. That wasn’t his style. He wanted it all. If he knew about the Institute, he’d tear it wide open. Threats wouldn’t deter him.
Stefan didn’t even bother answering my halfhearted question. He stood and sucked in a deep breath before weaving both hands through his hair, hissing sharply as his shoulder twinged. “We had originally hoped to reason with him, to stack his crimes against him, and persuade him to go home.” He sat on the edge of a chair, leaning forward to rub his hands together before facing me. “That was before he killed Sam. Before I realized how far gone he is.”
I couldn’t help wondering if I was somehow responsible for Akil’s unhinged behavior. I hadn’t known any of this would happen when I’d left him. It had been a simple case of just leaving. I’d told him I never wanted to see him again and turned my back on him. He hadn’t called, hadn’t shown up outside my apartment, so I’d thought it was over. Easy.
Ryder dropped into his chair. Hooking a leg over the arm, he slouched at an angle, crossing his arms. “It’s not just you, Muse. Nica’s caught in the middle of it too.”
“Nica?” Seeing Stefan slice a glance at Ryder, I immediately knew he’d said something wrong. “What is it?” Stefan struggled to meet my eyes, muscle jumping in his jaw.
“Nica was the one who put us onto Akil in the first place,” Stefan said. “She set everything up from the inside. Akil voiced his… displeasure with you. She knew he was preparing some sort of retaliation, so she planted the idea of hiring an assassin and then steered Akil in my direction. She’s been playing him from the inside and feeding us the information.”
She was a braver woman than me, that was for sure, and not even half-demon. “She works for the Institute?”
“Yes and no.”
Ryder let out an exasperated sigh. “Just tell her.” When Stefan still didn’t elaborate, Ryder said, “Nica is Adam’s daughter. There. That didn’t hurt. Jeez.”
“She’s your sister?” I asked Stefan, voice pitched with surprise.
“Half-sister.” He cast a dismayed glare at Ryder, who shrugged.
“Why didn’t you tell me? How… Wha–Why didn’t she?” All this time, she’d been working against Akil. Sourcing the “file” on Stefan, chatting with me at the party. She’d been right beside me, and I didn’t have a clue. “At your workshop, you removed the battery on her phone… You didn’t trust her.”
“You didn’t trust her.” Stefan leaned back, becoming increasingly restless. “I removed the battery because I didn’t want Akil tracking her cell. I didn’t know you’d invited him into your life, leading him right to us. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that her safety is paramount. Her life is at risk.”
“No shit.” What kind of father lets his daughter go undercover as the PA to a Prince of Hell? Adam had a lot to answer for. “She’s there now…”
Ryder arched an eyebrow. “Yup, and Adam won’t pull her out. Says her intel is too valuable.”
“I hate that man.” I fingered the bruise on my cheek where he’d struck me. I was beginning to realize what kind of man Adam was, the kind who would indeed use and extort anything and anyone to get what he wanted, even his own children. At least the creatures that were trying to hurt me were demon; they couldn’t help themselves. Adam was meant to be human. I’d seen demons behave more humanely.
“Nica’s involvement shouldn’t matter,” Stefan said. “If Muse can carry out the plan, she’ll be safe soon enough.”
“Okay.” If Nica was there, in the middle of all of this, then I could certainly find it in me to back her up. “Then let’s do this.” But first, I needed my demon back.
Chapter 22
Stefan held up a small cylindrical device, no larger than a spool of thread. “It’s a jet-injector. Fifteen times smaller than the mass market varieties. No needles. A quick jab to the skin and it’ll administer the drug into Akil’s system via a near sub-sonic blast. Within a few seconds, he should feel the effects.”
Such a small thing could deliver such a debilitating drug. I absently rubbed at the back of my hand where I’d been jabbed the day before. We were in Stefan’s apartment, where I’d waited for him to return with the antidote for me. Every second I’d waited seemed like a lifetime. How on earth Stefan had endured months—years—without his demon, I couldn’t even imagine
.
He placed the injector on the desk next to its twin, which was marked with a plus symbol. That was my antidote. He reached for it, but didn’t pick it up. Instead, he curled his fingers into his palm and looked back at me. “You’re as close to normal now as you’re ever going to be.” I must have frowned, because he leaned back against the desk with the injectors sitting neatly beside him. “If you ever wondered what it would be like to be human, you’re feeling it now.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that, without my demon, I was essentially normal. I lowered myself onto the edge of the bed. Of course, I had wondered what it would be like to be human. I’d tried to imitate a normal life and might even have succeeded had I kept running, but I was never going to actually feel normal.
Tucking my hair behind an ear, I lifted my gaze to Stefan. He might have gotten away with the neutral expression if his eyes hadn’t betrayed an intensity that belied his calm exterior. He had dressed impeccably for him. His black shirt with ultra-fine vertical white lines emphasized the brilliance of his eyes while his jeans bunched in all the right places. And there I was, dressed in an unflattering Institute jump suit.
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say. Maybe if I didn’t have half the netherworld trying to kill me, I could flirt with the idea of repressing my demon—maybe. But it wouldn’t feel right. It wouldn’t be right. I couldn’t hide from what I was; the events of the past week had taught me that. Besides, the thing inside me, my demon, she deserved more.
Without a word, Stefan shoved off the desk and strode into the bathroom. The door swung behind him. A few seconds later, I heard the hiss of the shower. He leaned around the doorframe and beckoned me inside. My gaze lingered on the injector.
The bathroom gleamed with stainless steel fittings while a waterfall shower billowed steam behind glass doors. Its relentless hiss was the only noise I could hear. I opened my mouth to ask why we were in the bathroom, but Stefan pressed a finger to my lips. He leaned in close and said, “The noise from the shower will prevent them from hearing everything.”
[The Veil 01.0] Beyond the Veil Page 18