I looked over my shoulder at the water elemental. He leaned casually against a wall, arms folded, expression neutral. “I stood where you are, thinking the same things you are. Tell me I’m wrong. Go on. I want to be wrong.”
I couldn’t.
“You’re too demon to walk away from her gifts.”
I stared ahead at the road winding away from the house. I was too demon. That would never change, but if I stayed, if I let myself give in to all the things I wanted, what would happen to my city, its people, and to other cities? I could make this right. If I could get to Adam, if he and Christian could return to the facility and destroy it, it might be enough to stop her before she rooted herself in this world—if it wasn’t already too late.
I had killed Anna in the pursuit of power and my foolish pride. I couldn’t cut that mistake out, but I could use it.
I stepped across the threshold and dissolved into air before I could change my mind.
Find the others and help them before it’s too late.
I filtered in through the gap in the bungalow’s window and rebuilt myself, only to come face to face with a gun. Christian fired. I dodged—though I didn’t have to, since the round would have sailed through my ghostly form—and grabbed the hunter’s face. With the gunshot still ringing and a new bullet hole in one of Anna’s walls, I slammed Christian down onto Anna’s coffee table, snatched the gun from his hand, and tossed it out the window. It sploshed in the canal outside.
“If I wanted any of you dead, you already would be.” I spoke to them all, sensing their numbers crowding in close.
“Li’el?”
“Gem?”
She’d grown out her now-blond hair and French-braided it close to her scalp. She’d filled out too, gaining muscle, where before she’d been little more than skin and bone. No weapons. She didn’t need them. Ice was her weapon. Her element crackled a warning in her eyes.
“Hello, little icy half-blood.”
She scowled at me and at my wings, making me feel smaller under her glare. “Is it true?”
I pulled my wings in close and ruffled them. Her presence here was unexpected, her icy response even more so. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“You killed a police officer, someone who trusted you?”
I looked at the others. Noah, Adam, and Christian moved away. They were all wide-eyed and afraid. I’d lost them, maybe Gem too. But it would always turn out this way, wouldn’t it? I’d played the human act for a long time, so long I’d believed it was real. But an act was all it was. Whatever I did, whatever I said, the real me would always be demon.
“It’s true. And I’m sorry for what I did,” I said and meant it. “It’s not enough, but I’m trying to make it right.”
Gem’s icy blue eyes widened. She believed me. At least I hoped she believed me. We had been through enough for her to understand how my words weren’t lies.
“What else did they tell you?” I asked.
“Humans are siphoning power from the veil, and that’s why it’s unstable here.”
“It’s much worse than that. Whatever EcoZone was doing in the forest, they got more than they’d hoped for. After you left”—I nodded at Adam—“the storm came.”
“What was it?” Adam asked.
“Demon. But nothing you know.”
“Who was it?” Gem asked.
It hadn’t escaped my attention how she’d placed herself between me and the others. She was their protector now. And they’d need her. A half-blood was likely the only demon who could resist the demon who had restored me. Gem’s humanity would keep her real.
I told Gem and the others everything I knew and suspected. Christian skulked in the kitchen, angry enough to tighten the air around him.
Once I was done, the group sat in silence around the coffee table. Adam poured himself a glass of water in the kitchen. “This is…” He removed his glasses and rubbed his face. “I don’t even know where to start. A demon from the veil?”
“A demon made of the veil.”
Noah had been silent since my arrival, but in the quiet, he spoke up. “That could be the Katrina B referenced in the files. I’ll need to go over them again. Maybe there’s something that could help us.” He averted his eyes, regret and pain shutting him down.
“I’m… of no use to you.” I’d been about to say enthralled by her, but speaking it made it real and I wasn’t yet ready to give in.
“You should have stayed away,” Christian grumbled, still loitering in the kitchen. “We can’t trust a word you say.” He thrust a gesture my way. “This creature gave you everything you wanted, and all it cost you was one human life. You’re here to mess with our heads by pretending you’re on our side.” He slammed a fist down on the kitchen counter. “I’ve said it from the very beginning, but none of you would listen! He’ll get you killed!”
“Back off,” Gem warned, rising to her feet. “Li’el is different. He’s here—”
Christian snorted a dry laugh. “You’re half demon and you shacked up with him. Yeah, I know all about you, Project Gamma. You don’t get a say in this either.”
Gem’s eyebrow arched perfectly. The hunter had no idea how that ice he was walking on was getting thinner with every word. “Li’el, can we talk somewhere private?”
We moved to Anna’s bedroom, the same room I’d woken in after fighting Kar’ak. I tucked my wings in tighter, plastering them around me like a cloak. Guilt had its claws in me, piercing every thought with regret. Focus. Help these people.
“Li’el… Hey, you okay?”
I lifted my gaze from the bed and settled it on the little icy half-blood. Not so little anymore. The woman who looked back at me had lived through too much horror. Raised as a demon-killing machine, she had faced trials that would have broken lesser people.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” I blurted. “I wasn’t in control.” The words had come too fast for me to stop them, but I’d needed to hear them. Something inside threatened to break. I clutched my wings closer still, holding myself together. How could I be so perfect on the outside and so broken in the middle?
“It’s okay…” She settled a hand on my arm, her pale skin all the lighter against the dark of mine. “It’ll be okay.”
The hope in her eyes, the understanding—I didn’t deserve it.
She smiled a sideways grin and threw her arms around me, trapping me inside her embrace. “I missed you.”
She smelled like a winter morning, like something alluring but sharp. I brushed my chin against the top of her head and fought the urge to close my wings around her. If any of my half-blood spawn had survived, I imagined they would have matured to be like her. Wonderfully human and demon, the best of both.
“Did Adam call you?” I asked.
She stepped back and blinked quickly, hiding the wet glisten of her eyes. “He told me he was coming to LA. I had a few things to settle in Boston, before I came too. We still have a deal, remember? I gotta keep the fire from your door.”
“The stakes have changed.”
“Sounds like you need my help more than ever, and don’t deny it. Even princes need a friend.”
“I’m… I thought I had everything under control. I failed in the worst way. I’m afraid I’ll fail again.”
Her easy smile faded. “We’re all afraid, and we all screw up.” She punched me lightly on the arm. “Even you.”
“Keep them safe, Gem. Safe from me.”
“I will.” She touched her fingertips to her chest, right over her heart. An echo of that touch quivered through my wings. I’d given her a feather. She still had it on her. “So, you found Torrent. Is he okay?”
“Okay” wasn’t the word I would have used to describe Torrent. “He’ll find you when he’s ready.”
“Oh, I know…” She shrugged. “I—that’s fine, I guess.”
I opened the window and paused when the glyphs drew my eye. This room still smelled of Anna, like she might come through the door at a
ny moment and ask me how to swear in demon.
“You need to get back inside that facility and destroy everything,” I told Gem. “It isn’t a coincidence the veil demon came to me when the power was shut off. Maybe if the veil is left to settle, she will return?” It was a longshot and unlikely, but in the absence of any other plan, it was a start.
“What are you going to do?”
I pressed a hand to the window and watched the glass fog around my fingers. When I lifted my hand, the handprint ghosted away. “I’m going to build a new me and hope she doesn’t see through my act.”
“Li’el…?”
I loosened my grip on my form. My edges blurred, wings dissolving until I was mist on the breeze.
“Burn the feather,” I whispered. As air, I funneled through the gap in the window and out over the canals.
She threw the window open behind me. “Li’el, wait! You’ll come back, right?”
Be careful what you wish for…
Chapter 19
The veil demon was inside the house when I returned. Instincts told me to run, but older instincts, ones I had long ago thought extinct, pulled me forward. My fear fell away like beads of water rolling off my feathers. She stood in the center of the main living area, facing the landscape of LA painted on the canvas of windows. I had never witnessed anything as terrifyingly beautiful in my thousands of years spent maneuvering through time.
The colors of the veil played across her snow-white skin. Her wings, what my limited mind could understand of them, spread in webs of light, impossibly intricate. When I thought I had her in my focus, a subtle shift confused my understanding all over again. My mind told me I couldn’t see her because she wasn’t real, but she was real and close enough to touch. Tears pricked my eyes, and when they fell, droplets of blood bloomed across the smooth floors.
I bowed my head, looking at those drops of blood. It was true. Demons did love. What other emotion could slay me like this?
She spoke, but not in words, not at first. The sound fractured my thoughts. I was on my knees before I realized I’d fallen. Then her words softened. Understanding crept in one word at a time, either breaking down barriers or building them up.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
“To see some people.” Replying happened automatically and without hesitation.
“What did you do?”
“Told them of you.”
“What of me?” Her tone was neither curious nor angry, merely neutral in a way that made her mood impossible to read. And with her back to me, I had yet to see her face.
I couldn’t stop speaking, didn’t want to, didn’t care. She asked, I answered. It was simple. “That you are like nothing I’ve ever known, like nothing that should exist.”
“How did they respond?”
“Fear and denial. Bravery. Resilience. Defiance.”
“Defiance…” She tasted the word and let it linger in the silence. “How?”
“They will destroy the facility that created you.” Guilt choked me, and the phantom pains of regret and loss fell heavily on my shoulders. But I couldn’t deny her. I couldn’t displease her. It wasn’t a conscious decision. She had a hold on the most primitive parts of me. Instincts, needs, wants. She was the veil. I didn’t stand a chance against her.
“When?”
“I don’t know.” They hadn’t told me, and for that I was grateful. Christian was right. I shouldn’t have gone to them. But maybe Gem and the others would succeed. And any chance was better than none.
She moved toward the glass, turning from light, to shadow, to motion, and back into herself. The windows vanished under her touch. A trembling rumbled through the floor and shook the air. In the distance, dust rose in clouds over LA. It looked as though something was tossing toys into the air. But those objects weren’t toys. Stone and steel spiraled through the clouds, remaking themselves into a different structure. Higher and higher it climbed, its base crawling outward, absorbing neighborhoods, changing them, twisting them.
Were there people down there?
“Wait…” I began.
Her head tilted, and the vast structure’s construction paused.
Tightness clamped my heart. She was remaking LA, my city. Building something out of homes and land people had toiled for decades to claim. It wasn’t right. This land wasn’t hers.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
She blinked. I still hadn’t seen her entire face, just he perfect outline of her profile and at EcoZone, the fathomless depths of the veil inside her eyes. Would I lose my mind if she looked upon me? There was only one way to know for sure. Head held high, I climbed to my feet. Stretching my wings wide, I spread each feather, presenting all of me. She might have control of what made me demon, but if she was also demon, then she also had weaknesses. If I could expose them, I could use them against her.
Carefully, I approached. My invisible elemental touch looped ahead, trying to coil around hers, but she stood inside an impenetrable bubble of power, untouchable, unreachable. What would it take for her to see me?
She turned her head, stopping me dead. Light licked along the line of her jaw, the curve of her smooth lips, and a crown of short horns.
She could break minds, break worlds, break me. I almost wanted her to, just so she’d notice me. What was she really? Just demon?
I am Pride. See me. See everything I am. See the magnificence of me.
She reached out a hand. Like her wings, her gossamer skin shimmered, held together by a fabric of light. She touched my shoulder. The power of the veil shocked my veins, burning, cutting, tearing. Too much. She shattered my mind into a thousand pieces, wrecking my soul, and she did it all with a smile.
She said, “My work begins.”
“You touched her, didn’t you?” Torrent’s voice reached me through the heavy fog muffling my thoughts.
I was sure my skull was in pieces and kept my eyes closed to prevent further damage. Mentally, I ran through all the necessary body parts. Arms, legs, wings—all present and correct, though I had gained an all-over pleasurable tingle. The kind of satisfied body thrill that came after a long night of sexual exploits, only magnified a thousand-fold.
“Feels a bit like touching a high-voltage power line,” Torrent added.
“She—” I croaked, and then whatever sentence I’d had planned vanished. Thoughts were tough enough. Talking would come later.
“Be grateful she didn’t give you another head or turn your wings to literal ribbons.”
I cracked an eye open and found Torrent sprawled in a chair beside the bed. Considering the way he was slouched, as though poured into the cushions, he’d been there for some time. I wondered if he’d brought me into the bedroom, but after rooting around my memories, I found fragments of my stumbling in here and collapsing.
“She did it to lessers.” He winced and rubbed his face. “You’ll probably see a few of her experiments. It’s some weird Frankenstein shit. Why do you think they ran?”
“They ran?” I had assumed the lessers had attacked the zoo and marina, driven there with a purpose, but Torrent’s words suggested otherwise.
“Fear drove them to swarm.” He dropped his head back, resting it against the back of the chair, and sighed hard. “At the marina, they flooded in. I didn’t realize they were running from something until it was too late.” He blinked at the ceiling.
I propped myself up on my elbows and waited for the room to stop spinning. “How long have I been here?”
“Sleeping her off? No idea. Found you in here after she left.”
Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I tried to piece my mind back together to coordinate my body and stand, but as the walls shifted and the floor slid away, I bowed forward and covered my face with my hands. Darkness, that was better. But I couldn’t stay there. I’d told her about Gem and the others. It had been hours. I had to get to them—no, I couldn’t. Every time I tried to help, I made things worse. She—this incredible de
mon—had my unwilling devotion. Gem would keep them safe.
I dragged my hands down my face and opened my eyes. The room had ceased spinning.
“She was…” I remembered houses being pulled apart and streets turning to dust. Had that been real? “She was building something.”
“Yeah,” Torrent replied grimly. “A tower of some kind.”
“I can’t let this happen.”
He snorted. “Good luck stopping her.”
“You could help,” I snapped. “Instead you lounge around here, doing what exactly?”
Torrent rolled his eyes and pushed out of his chair. He crossed the room, threading his fingers through his hair. “Okay, fine, sure. I’ll do something. Oh, wait. I must have misplaced my magic demon-killing wand.” He turned his sarcasm on me and lifted three fingers. “Let’s recap: God is real.” One finger went down. “She’s an all-powerful demon.” The second finger curled inward. “And we’re all screwed.” He glared, expecting me to deny it. “You’ve got a plan, oh mighty Prince of Pride? You wanna tell me how I can stop myself from turning into a love-struck demon puppet every time she looks at me? Or maybe you could tell me how to resist answering all her questions about this world and its people, because I damn well don’t know how.”
I didn’t have answers. Not yet.
Torrent blustered a dry laugh. “You can’t because you’re as screwed as the rest of us. You know, when that wave hit Santa Monica almost three years ago, I was prepared to sacrifice everything. I went on that pier knowing it would kill me. It was my choice.”
“I know.” I had told Gem not to save him, knowing Torrent had made his last choice as a man. It had been the right choice.
“I couldn’t control an ocean, but I could shape it. I could do something good with my pretend life before Kar’ak took it all away. It should have ended there.” He laughed bitterly. “But here I am, more powerful than ever, more screwed up than ever, and she’s here, a thousand times worse than Delta, worse than the demon I am. And I know I’m her tool. I have no control around her. It’s… it’s not right. It shouldn’t be like this. I gave up everything. Everything! But not for this. Not for this, Pride. So, tell me your grand plan. Tell me how to stop her.”
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