by Angie Fox
“What are you doing with those?” I gasped. “They could kill you.”
“Not if they’re not branded to a demon slayer.” He walked over to them. “In this form, they can merely take years off my life.”
That’s right. He’d thrown switch stars back when he trained me. “What do you mean they took years off your life?”
He stood tall, the torch light flickering off his chiseled features. “Switch stars get their power from energy. As a demon slayer, you are able to offer them an unlimited power source, separate from your life force. It’s not the same for griffins.”
The truth of it hit me hard. “You sacrificed years in order to train me?”
“Yes.”
I tried to find anger behind his words, resentment even. But there was none. “Why?”
His eyes never left mine. “It was the only way.”
The answer seemed too simple. He’d done it so I could prepare myself to rescue his sisters. It was all well and good, but I came from a world that taught me to take care of myself, a society where Good Samaritans were sued as often as they were thanked and loyalty was a quaint and proper notion that came up when people talked about the Greatest Generation.
“Are you ready?” he asked, moving toward the switch stars.
“Don’t touch those!” I said, rushing for him, ready to toss myself between him and the life-stealing weapons.
“I won’t,” he said, stopping in front of them. “I don’t believe in sacrifice without cause.” His fingers brushed my cheek and my insides went gooey. “But I will ask you to step outside what you think you can do.”
I nodded. I was ready.
He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “You’ve prepared. You’ve built a structure. Now it is time to let go. Trust that you’re in the place you need to be.”
“But that’s the thing,” I said, reaching for one of his stars instead of the five at my belt. It seared itself to me with a hot certainty that touched me to the bone. “I can’t plan this one out.” And there lay the crux of the problem. How did I know I was on track if I didn’t know where I was going?
Dimitri towered over me. “You rely on instinct. But you need to stop seeing the world as you think it should be and start recognizing your allies and your enemies for what they are.”
“I see my allies,” I said, irritated.
“You think so?” he challenged. “You see the biker witches. They’re easy. They’re ready to charge the demons of hell with jelly-jar magic and an army of motorcycles. They’d do anything for you. There’s no risk.” He stopped me before I could push back. “And don’t say Pirate. He’s another easy one. That damned dog tried to follow you into the second layer of hell.”
“True.” If we hadn’t leashed him, Pirate would have gone through the vortex with me.
He took a step forward until we were practically touching. “But you don’t trust me,” he said, his mouth inches from mine.
Oh please. I backed away. How dare he hash out our relationship at a time like this? “I thought this was about my training.”
His eyes flared. “It’s all tied up, believe me.”
Okay. Well then maybe that was part of my problem. “I don’t belong here and I certainly don’t belong with you.” I’d felt it on some level since I’d gotten here, and I’d only grown more sure as time went on.
Did I really need another lesson like the one I’d gotten sitting outside his sisters’ door tonight? Alone. Knowing I didn’t belong and wanting it anyway.
It was torture and I refused to keep doing it to myself.
Dimitri opened his arms wide. “Come on, Lizzie. Tell me what you really think.”
He was the most annoying, infuriating, single-minded oaf I’d ever met. “I have no clan.” I didn’t belong here. When it came right down to it, I didn’t belong anywhere.
Didn’t he understand? “I can’t settle down. Not here. If I’m going to be a demon slayer—and I’m working hard to be a darned good one—I have to go where I’m needed.” Yes, the Red Skulls may be easy to get, but they were also the types who would follow me anywhere. After thirty years on the run, they didn’t know anything but the open road. Dimitri wanted a home and a wife. I couldn’t give him that. Not right now, at least. Maybe not ever.
He reared back. “Have you ever bothered asking me what I want?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Dimitri valued family above all else. He’d been willing to go to hell and back for the chance at a normal life.
I’d finally met a guy who wasn’t afraid to commit, and I couldn’t have him.
His eyes blazed. “You don’t know jack about what I want because we haven’t taken the time to stop and talk about it.”
“And now is the time?”
“Hell, yes.” He gripped my arms. “Everything has to fit in a nice box with you, doesn’t it?”
“It helps,” I said, purposely flippant.
“That’s not life.” He broke away. “In fact,” he said, backing toward the scarred wall, “you have to be okay with losing me in order to truly love me.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I’d almost lost enough people in my life without his making light of it.
“Is it?” He wrenched the nearest torch from its holder. This one had been used many times before. It burned low, almost to his hand.
“What are you doing? Put it away or it’s going to burn you.”
He held it at eye level as he stood against the wall. Shadows played over his wide shoulders and a fine sheen of sweat coated his chest. “Cut the flame.”
“What?”
“Cut the flame before it burns me.”
“Dimitri,” I demanded. He’d gone too far. I could fire and I was 99.9 percent sure I’d hit it. But I wasn’t about to play that game. “Stop it. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then don’t,” he replied.
Ridiculous. “Why are you doing this?”
“Other than the fact that I don’t believe you’ll hit me?” he ventured.
I braced a hand on my switch stars. “You always were the dreamer in the relationship.”
“And you’re the deflector,” he accused. “Not anymore, Lizzie.”
I stormed straight for him. “What are you trying to prove?” I shouted.
“That I’m here,” he ground out, back to the wall. “I’m not leaving.”
It was an impossible promise—completely out of place in the real world. People left. There was always a reason. I’d abandoned my friends and my coworkers in Atlanta to become a demon slayer. My adoptive family dropped me to an every-other-Sunday obligation as soon as they realized I’d never turn into the perfect country-club daughter. My biological mom had walked out on me when I was still in the hospital nursery. No matter how perfect you were or smart you were or organized—and believe me, I was trying to be all that and more—everyone left eventually.
So now, being the imperfect girlfriend who was about to lob a switch star at his head, I didn’t see any reason why Dimitri would stay.
“Damn it,” he spat. “Believe in yourself. Just this once—trust yourself.”
The flame inched lower, toward the edge of his hand. He had to feel it. It had to burn. He ignored it, his entire attention focused on me.
“You have amazing powers, Lizzie, and you won’t use them because you don’t even think they’re there for you. You don’t trust them.”
I watched the flames lick lower. “I don’t understand,” I protested, with more than a hint of desperation.
A rivulet of sweat trickled down from his hair. “Why didn’t you levitate outside?”
“What?”
“You climbed the damned rocks, Lizzie. Didn’t it even occur to you to use your power?”
No. The horror of it crept over me.
It hadn’t.
What kind of a demon slayer was I?
“You don’t trust your powers,” Dimitri said, “just like you don’t think my love for you is something that bolsters you,
that fills you up. You look at me—and your gifts—like a damned obligation. It’s insulting.”
I opened my mouth and closed it. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t you ever imply that my loving you is a mistake.” His hand shook under the flame. “I don’t make those kinds of mistakes. Now back up and throw the damned switch star.”
Oh my word. The fire almost touched him. My palms sweated. I could feel the blood thundering through my veins. He trusted me. He loved me. Could I find it in myself to accept that?
I backed up to a place where I could—if I dared—make a good shot.
My fingers touched my belt and I unhitched a switch star. The blades churned as I held the glowing pink weapon out in front of me, watching the sparks of energy that flew from its blades. Then I hurled it at Dimitri’s torch.
I watched it with a mix of pride and horror as my switch star cut the flame away.
Dimitri, the jerk, stood motionless as smoke curled around him, the jagged remainder of the torch cut right at the edge of his hand.
“How did that feel?”
I swallowed, my mouth dry. “Awful.”
“Good. Then you won’t make me do it again.”
Dimitri tossed the ruined torch on the ground and closed the distance between us.
He swept me up in a kiss that stole my breath away. Electricity slapped through me, the charge of what I’d just done and what this man meant to me. I tipped my mouth up to his again and again as his arms closed around me. When I had him like this, so good, so right, it made everything else worth it.
“I don’t deserve you,” I whispered against his shoulder.
“You don’t.”
“Then why are you here?”
He tipped his head toward mine. “You know I’m willing to go to hell and back for the people I love.”
The very idea sent my blood pressure up a notch. “That kind of loyalty can get you into trouble.”
“It always does.”
I looked at him for a long moment, this man who wanted me to do the impossible. He believed it.
Did I dare?
He ran his knuckles along my jaw. “If you don’t believe in yourself, if you don’t trust your magic, you can’t use your magic,” he said against my lips. “It doesn’t mean the magic isn’t there. You don’t trust my love for you, so you dismiss it. But that doesn’t mean my love isn’t there.
“You can count on it.” He caught me in another mindsearing kiss before he pulled away, the intensity in his expression nearly taking my breath away. “And it isn’t going away, whether you feel you deserve it or not. Because it’s not your choice.”
I pulled him toward me as he shoved us both back against the scarred wall.
Tears clouded my eyes. “It’s not you,” I said, fighting to be strong. “I accept you. For heaven’s sake, Dimitri, you’ve given up everything for me. That’s the problem. It’s me. I can’t accept me and I can’t accept that my life will do nothing but screw up yours.”
“You can’t tell me whether I should be with you. I’m not something you can control. Love isn’t controlled, Lizzie.”
“I just want to have some kind of handle on my life.” I’d had so little of that lately.
“If you’re going to give it up because it doesn’t fit into your idea of the way things ‘should’ be, then you don’t deserve it. But I’ll give it to you anyway, because I love you.”
I choked up and felt the tears, wet and awful on my cheeks. I hated to give this up, hated to lose my control.
But at that moment, I also realized I couldn’t live without him—without this.
It was like when he’d given me the emerald. I had to accept it freely. I never thought of him giving it freely, but the truth of it slammed into me. It was about free choice and acceptance, two things I’d always craved but never truly had in my life to that point.
“I’m sorry,” I managed.
He kissed away my tears, his lips touching my cheeks, my chin. “I don’t want your apology,” he said, his voice like velvet. “I just want you to trust in yourself and your worth.” He pulled away. “My love exists, just like your powers. It’s yours and you have to accept that.”
“I do,” I said, crying, laughing, wrapping my arms around him.
His hands slid down me, held me, drove us together as his mouth seared mine. I poured all my love, my fear, my sheer desire for him into that kiss.
He made a low sound in his chest, base and primitive, as he demanded everything. But that was Dimitri. He gave as much as he took.
And he loved me.
Not because I deserved it, but because it was simply so.
He was hot and slick as I stripped him, easing the black T-shirt over his head, my mouth finding the pulse at the base of his throat.
There was no teasing this time. No pretending we didn’t know exactly where this was going.
We’d torn away our defenses, cast out our pretty notions. What we had left was base desire.
Naked and panting, he took me up against the wall.
He held his body tight, his neck steely tense. His breath came in sharp pants, his eyes glittering shards. I wrapped my legs around him as he drove into me again and again.
Tears streaked down my cheeks at the sheer pleasure of letting go. It was wild and raw and it didn’t fit at all into my view of how things “should” be.
Afterward, as I slid bonelessly down the wall, my mind was more settled than it had ever been.
I ran a hand down his arm and he wound it around me, kissing me on the top of the head.
For as long as I could remember, my life had been a muddle of trying to cover all my bases. I was everything to everyone, with color-coded file folders to prove it.
But at that moment, I saw what it was like to let go and just be.
In that space, I unlocked a part of my power I’d always held back. I hadn’t even known it existed. It was like it was waiting for me to acknowledge it and I never had.
I hadn’t looked because I didn’t trust it.
The enormity of it filled me, and I suddenly saw the thread of myself that had gone missing. It was trapped on the estate, exactly as Amara said.
Only it had taken on a life of its own. The dark-haired woman I’d first spotted in the woods had grown stronger. She was gaining strength with every hour that passed, just as the sisters lost their power.
I gasped and sat up straight. I squeezed my eyes closed. Just like that, I could see it.
She was on the move. She had an entire army behind her, waiting just outside the wards.
I could feel Dimitri’s eyes on me. “What is it?”
“It’s the dark-haired woman.” She ran through the trees, laughing, snapping branches, charging forward. She tilted her head and I choked when I saw her face for the first time.
She looked exactly like me.
Chapter Twenty
I shoved my palms into the rock, elbows shaking as the realization swept over me. “I know who’s been sabotaging the estate.”
Dimitri crouched in front of me. “Who?”
“Me.”
He leaned forward. “Lizzie?”
“Well not me.” Not exactly. “But a mirror of me.” I could feel her, see her. She was growing stronger. “She’s so evil. Whenever I’m in her head, I feel pure hate.”
I leapt to my feet. “That’s who I saw in my dreams stealing from Diana, crushing the Skye stones!” Holy Hades. “How could something so awful come from me?”
“It didn’t,” Dimitri insisted, standing beside me. “This came from me. I didn’t safeguard your magic well enough. God, Lizzie. I’m so sorry.”
I touched his cheek. “I know why you did it.” It was for the same reason he did everything—to keep the people he loved safe.
Well he was going to have a doozy of a time with my double.
“This thing, this evil twin, knows what I know. If I have her thoughts and memories, she has to have mine. She’s done terr
ible things. And she wants to do worse.”
“She also has switch stars,” Dimitri said, grim.
“What?”
“Five are missing from my supply. They were here last night.”
I shivered. So she had found this place.
“But what does she want?” I searched through my memories of her. What was her ultimate goal? “I need to see her again.”
I closed my eyes and fought to bring the image of her to the surface once more. I could feel her outside in the forest—slinking through the trees, her movements barely a whisper. She was stealthy, at one with the estate. And she was very, very angry. I felt her rage and her suffocating darkness as she rested a steady hand against the five switch stars at her belt.
H-e-double hockey sticks. I didn’t even want to try to imagine what kind of destruction she could wield with a belt load of switch stars, not to mention the rest of my powers.
She’d already hurled a switch star at my head.
“Training’s over,” I said. “We need to find Rachmort.”
He had to have some idea of what had happened to me. He’d been an instructor for hundreds of years.
“This way.” Dimitri turned and roundhouse-kicked a hole into solid limestone wall behind us. I jumped back, my eyes watering from the dust of the impact.
“What the—?” I stared at him. He’d kicked a foot-wide opening in a rock face as thick as my arm. I could taste the broken stone.
“Don’t worry,” he said, his boot coming around and bashing an even wider opening in the rock. “The ceiling is strong here. There’s no danger of a collapse.”
Yeah, that’s not where my mind had been going.
He spun and gave the Lizzie-sized opening a final slam, the muscles in his legs and thighs taut with the effort.
Not to mention his firm backside. “Now you’re just showing off.”
He grinned, breathing heavily. “It might have been quicker to go out the front, but this way”—he reached out and yanked away a few vines that had fallen over the hole—“you get to use your powers.”
“Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the mule.” I poked my head out of the opening. The cliff face fell straight down, at least twenty stories, into a dried-up stream filled with shards of volcanic rock and petrified tree trunks jutting out at odd and rather sharp-looking angles.