Christian tested the grip on his handgun and slowly pressed down on the door handle. The seal cracked. Air breathed through the slim gap like the inhalation of an enormous beast waiting in the dark. He kicked the door open.
Power.
It slammed into me, bowing me over, tearing out my thoughts. I had no choice but to crumple around it, but its beat rode up and over me, down my back, and scattered across my wings, yanking them open. I dropped to my knees, numb, stripped raw, and ravaged, but also alight with… the veil.
Shouts. Anna’s. Christian’s. Help him—Leave him—Oh my god…
Slowly, so slowly, sensation crackled into my fingertips, danced up my arms, and fizzled across my barren wings. I blinked, found I was propped up on my hands, facing the floor, and lifted my head. Inside the chamber was a glass dome made up of triangular segments, all interlocked, and around it throbbed the blues, purples, and greens of the veil. Right there. So close. Close enough to touch. Close enough to take.
“Stay back.”
I was moving, walking. I wanted—no, I needed to touch it. Power. So much. So close.
“Li’el?” Anna. She didn’t matter. Nothing did but the sweet whispering promise of power. One touch and everything would be right again.
“Stop him. If he reaches it—”
Voices. They meant nothing. I lifted a hand, claws shining. If I touched it, the veil would become part of me. Chaos, control, ice, air, fire, water, earth. All the elements. Mine. I wouldn’t be a prince. No, I would be more. So much more. I would be a king.
I stretched my wings, their pain insignificant. Yes. It was always meant to be this way. This world was mine—would be mine. None could challenge me.
The hunter blocked my way. He pointed his little gun at my head, snarling, showing me blunt human teeth. “Do it. Make me kill you.”
So small and fragile. It was a wonder their species had survived evolution. Bone and flesh. They were not even attuned to the veil and the elements that made up everything they saw, heard, experienced. They were cattle. Lesser creatures. And this one would learn his place.
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s the veil… Help me.” The human woman was at a control panel. The panel controlled the dome, the veil’s anchor. She couldn’t stop it, could she?
“Not her, me!” the hunter barked. “Look at me, you ugly-ass fairy. Yeah, that’s right.”
I yanked the air from the man’s lungs, buckling his chest inward. He collapsed. Dead or alive, I didn’t care.
“Anna!” A second man. This one stood back, watching, not stopping me… studying me. He was a coward, this man. I knew him. He was no threat. The woman though… Yes, she must be removed.
“Stop,” I ordered.
She didn’t. Her hands worked across the panel, flicking switches. Lights flashed. Alarms sounded. I pulled the air from her lungs like unspooling a thread. She choked, clutching at her throat, and turned to me. Pain haunted her expression. A strange kind of pain, as though she hated herself, not me. Her little cross pendant glinted.
“Stop,” the coward begged. “Don’t do this. You’re better than this. You’ve fought your instincts for centuries. You can overcome them now. Fight it. You’re more than demon, Li’el. You know it.”
I moved in. The colors of the veil played across the female’s stricken face, sparking in her glistening eyes. Yes, she had already given in. She had known this would happen. None of this surprised her. But she had hoped a demon could change. I understood now. She had hoped her human feelings were right, and perhaps they were, but I had always been demon, and I would always be demon no matter what disguise I crafted for myself. And the veil, the power, to have it so close, to have it become mine. Wasn’t that what I had evolved to become? Wasn’t that my purpose?
“Oh, little human, did you think me tamed?” I moved in close, brushed my lips against hers, and breathed in, pulling the last of her life with it. There was an art to killing. An art to everything I did. I was the master of my element, and soon to be the master of this world.
The veil stuttered. Power shuddered. No!
I shoved the girl aside and plunged my hands into the stream. It sparked and licked at my touch, and then it was gone, dissolved beneath my hands. No, no, no!
The coward stood at the panel, hands on the lever. “You’ll understand why I did it when you’re yourself again.”
I saw the reflection of a monster in his glasses, wings aloft, claws extended. All this coward had done was invite death upon him.
“Li’el!” a male called from high above in the building. “You need to get up here.” Noah.
No. What I needed to do was kill Adam Harper, and Christian, and…
Anna lay on the floor. Her chest didn’t rise. Her breath didn’t stir. Her blue eyes stared at nothing.
I’d done this.
The veil, the power. I’d needed… I…
“Help her,” Adam urged, still clinging to the lever.
The lever. The veil. The power. I could still take it. Push the coward aside and—
Anna.
Strong, defiant Anna. What had I done?
“I can’t be here…” I scooped up Anna’s lifeless body and fled the level. Inside the foyer, I set her down on the security table and pressed my lips over hers. Breathe. Breathe again. I give you air, life. Breathe again. Please.
Noah was close, hiding in the corner of my vision. The others were coming. Distantly, a storm stirred against the air, a storm made of hunger, and power, and desire, and worse. But I couldn’t think of that.
Anna, please. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. Breathe. I pushed air into her lungs, kissed life back into her body, but she didn’t take it. She couldn’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I proved them right and you wrong. Please, don’t let this be the end for you. There’s so much more to love, to live.
“Li’el…”
I shook off someone’s grip. The kid’s, Noah’s…
Don’t make me a monster.
“Get away from her, you son of a bitch!”
A hunter’s gun fired. Pain bloomed in my wing.
I didn’t care.
Breathe.
“He’s trying to help her!” Noah yelled.
“He’s the one who killed her!”
Breathe, Anna. I’m sorry. You know I am. I was always different. I was always the one who had hope, who could do more, who was more. I’m sorry I did this. I’m sorry it had to be you.
Sobbing. Christian’s. “Why not me!?” he demanded. “Not her. It shouldn’t have been her.”
“Something’s coming,” Adam boomed. “We have to go now! Leave her. Leave him…”
They listened, moving away as the storm outside drew closer.
“I’m trying,” I whispered. Her eyes didn’t see me. She didn’t hear me. Not anymore. Never again. The feather I’d given her poked out from under her belt. I’d given it to her to keep her safe, but it hadn’t saved her from me. “I’m trying to be better, to be different, to be good. I’m trying, Anna. But I’m demon. And I’m sorry.”
She was gone, and I couldn’t bring her back. The woman who had trusted me, seen hope in me, and against everyone, against herself, she had believed in me.
I’d killed her. For all my games, all my acts, all my pretenses, I was demon. My actions defined it.
“My child.”
I was no longer alone. I lifted my head and looked into eyes colored with the veil. A demon like nothing I knew was possible. She was light and dark, power and control, hardly there but everywhere, and she looked down at me, crafting a smile onto lips that weren’t real.
The veil, my fragmented mind realized, given form and thought and life and consciousness.
“There.” She touched my face, claws cutting, but I didn’t care because her touch changed everything. Power flooded in, power like I’d lost, power like I’d wanted, and feared, and sacrificed, and given up on. Somewhere underneath the maddening ecstasy, doubts huddled together for safekeepi
ng. Doubt and grief for the little police officer who believed I had changed but was wrong.
Chapter 18
I woke sprawled on a bed, not in Anna’s bungalow but in a bedroom the size of my entire apartment. Impressive wings draped across the king-size, cushioned and blanketed in glossy black feathers. My wings. Oh. I lay still, wondering if they might dissolve into air, never to return, should I move. Tentatively, I flexed one tip. The leading feathers fanned wider. Definitely my wings. My element spread far and wide, unhindered, smooth and unstoppable. I tasted the sea on the air, tasted the heat, the ebb and flow of life, and mentally rode the currents swirling nearby.
I hadn’t felt this good in… I couldn’t remember the last time I had been this restored.
Rising from the bed, I approached a wall of mirrors. My wings gleamed, every feather pristine. I flexed their reach and breathed in, expecting pain. None came. My reflection admired me in return. Taut muscle, a body sculpted for strength and stamina. Every inch a marvel, every hard curve exquisite.
Magnificent.
Even my scars had vanished. The one on my chin, given to me by Mammon, and the dimple on my lower waist… gone, like Anna was gone.
Wetness tracked down my cheek. I touched the tear, let it rest on my fingertip, and peered at it.
No. Don’t think about her. About how this power cost her her life. About how your pride killed an innocent, brave, wonderful woman.
Twisting grief interrupted my thoughts, doubling me over.
I hugged my wings in close.
Don’t think about Anna.
Don’t think about what I did.
I had killed others over the years. Too many to count. Slaughtered hundreds merely because it had suited me, because I was demon. But that was before…
Grief hollowed me out and dumped me on my knees. All this time, Christian had been right.
He should have killed me.
In the mirror, my wings—my restored glory—mocked me. But not for long.
There had to be a kitchen, and in it would be knives or sawing implements, a means to sever the offending appendages. If I hacked them off, it wouldn’t bring her back, but I couldn’t stand to see them. I couldn’t bear this terrible remorse.
I dashed from the bedroom, down a curving hallway, and strode through an empty living room. No kitchen, but there had to be one somewhere. Every house had a kitchen. On and on I searched. Room led into room and corridors abruptly ended. Was this a house or a maze?
Floor-to-ceiling windows pulled me closer. I pressed my hands to the glass, almost covering the city sprawl of LA with my fingers. Then it occurred to me that there were no seams in the windows, no joins in the polished marble floor, no kitchen or bathroom either. Human hands hadn’t built this house. It had been crafted the same way I crafted my human vessel. It was too perfect.
“She is a god.”
I turned, wings sweeping across the floor, and found Kar’ak, in human form, reclining on a perfectly white couch. His shabby jacket and jeans didn’t fit the scene.
“As much as I admire your magnificence, Pride,” he drawled, “how about you cover up so I can think straight without us having to measure the size of our assets.”
My wings vanished in a suitably dramatic puff of air at a gesture, and I built my human vessel and wrapped myself in casual clothing.
“So,” he sighed, “you got your mojo back, huh? She does that too.”
“Torrent?”
“For now. The other asshole comes and goes. Or he did…”
“That’s… unfortunate.”
“A pain in the ass is what it is. He’s a pain in my ass. I have to listen to him snarling inside my head. Like now, he wants to strut around and kill something to prove he’s better than you. He’s an animal.”
A higher demon with a split personality, one pure demon, the other a demon who thought he was human. What an interesting development. “He would say the same about you.”
“Oh, he does.” Torrent tapped a finger to his temple. “Constantly.”
“It’s good to see you,” I admitted. Torrent and I hadn’t gotten along, but much had changed. We had changed. “I wasn’t sure if you had survived Santa Monica.”
“I did, although I’m not sure how…” He trailed off, listening to the thoughts inside his head.
I listened too, hearing the echo of thoughts and intentions that weren’t mine. The Court linked the princes both physically and mentally. But Torrent and I had no Court… unless we didn’t need one. What had she done to me? The effects of the power she had poured into me were similar to an ascension, but so much more, and all from a single touch.
“What is she?” I asked carefully.
“What is she?” he repeated, drumming his fingers on the arm of the couch. “She is everything. She is all the elements. She’s a force of nature. She’s all the forces of nature. I have no idea what she is.”
I’d only seen her for a few seconds, but in those few seconds, she had blown my mind, restored me to my former glory, and rendered me unconscious. Instincts told me she was more dangerous than anything I had witnessed before, but those same instincts wanted more of her. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only been here two days. I woke up in a room not long after you kicked Kar’ak’s ass. The fire was a nice touch, by the way.”
“It wasn’t without its cost.” Like Anna… Don’t think about her.
“She came to the marina, found me on my boat… and offered to take Kar’ak away. I’m… I think I lost my mind for a while. I woke up here, just like you, and now Kar’ak is behind some kind of mental wall. Feels like…” He winced. “It feels like this might not even be real.”
“She gave you what you wanted,” I thought aloud. She had done the same for me. “We’ve been recruited. Do you know why?”
“No, but it beats the alternative. She’s killed all the other predators she’s found.” He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his hands together. “We could be recruits—or prisoners.”
“Have you tried to leave?”
“Thought about it.”
But he hadn’t tried it because there were other reasons. “She gave you power.”
He nodded. “It’s like the Court we made but a thousand times stronger. She is power.”
“She’s the veil,” I corrected, remembering the swirl of colors I’d seen in her eyes. Was she tied to the EcoZone facility? Is that why she had been there, or had she simply had time to find me?
“How did she get you?” Torrent asked.
I explained about EcoZone, their attempts to harness the veil, and the results near Hidden Springs.
“Well, dayam. It’s not every day you find a new energy source, only for it to come alive and eat you.” Torrent got to his feet and joined me at the windows, watching LA swelter in the sunlit basin below. “Is your team still out there?”
“Some. Not all of them made it.” A new kind of pain tightened my chest and clogged my throat. I couldn’t bring Anna back. Death had taken her, as I knew it always would, eventually. Short-lived was the fire belonging to all mortals. Hers burned out too quickly. I’d burned it out. That was my burden to carry, as I’d carried many, many others over the years. Every time I looked in the mirror, I’d see my perfection and feel the kiss I’d used to steal her life.
Never again.
Torrent folded his arms and squinted into the light. “I don’t trust myself around her. I see her, and I lose my demon mind. She could tell me to do anything and I would, without hesitation.” He blinked as if only now realizing it.
I’d experienced a fraction of her control and assumed more would follow. I, too, would do anything for her to see me again. For her to touch me. I’d ruin worlds, and now that she had restored all of me, I could do exactly that. I had all my power… but she had the control.
“One thing is for certain.” Torrent turned his ocean-blue eyes on me. “LA is her beginning.”
The
princes of the Dark Court had always done as they pleased. The Court was a byproduct of the king’s control. The princes were solitary hunters hiding behind the guise of order. When we weren’t trying to manipulate our kin, we were outright trying to kill one another. Not directly, though. That wouldn’t be the demon thing to do. We schemed, manipulated, and used everything and anything to gain power over others, fighting for the top spot on the demon food chain. The Court created order in chaos. With the king and queen at its head, the elements had been stable for thousands of years. Seven elements, seven Princes of Hell. It had always been that way for as long as my memory served. But the demon whose eyes I’d looked into at the EcoZone facility had rewritten those rules. She was a Court in one demon body. She was the veil. Her power was limitless and intoxicating. It had no boundaries or restrictions. What if she brought down the veil? What if she rewrote the rules of this world, turning the elements inside out? She was a god playing in a sandbox, and as Torrent had said, she had only just begun.
I had to tell Adam and the others. Tell them to get out of LA, get far, far away, and hope this new demon wasn’t everything I feared she was.
“Not so easy, is it,” Torrent said from the hallway behind me.
I stood in the front doorway, inexplicably unable to step through. Despite everything I knew she could do, I also didn’t ache when I moved, my wings were full and magnificent, and my power breathed within me. The last time I felt this alive, humans had worshipped and loved me. And then the demon prince Mammon had ripped it all away. If I walked away, would she take her gifts back? Would I suffer her wrath?
Wasn’t that all I deserved?
I gripped the doorframe, claws scratching into the wall. I had never considered myself a coward, but I had also never crossed anything like her before.
“You don’t want to leave, not really. She speaks to the part of you rooted in the elements, the primal part. All demons love her. And our love is no fragile thing. It’s savage like us.”
“Demons don’t love,” I whispered.
“You and I both know that’s a lie we tell ourselves. You can’t help but love her. She’s hardwired into your soul.”
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