Darkest Before Dawn: A Muse Urban Fantasy (The Veil Series Book 3)

by DaCosta, Pippa

  I nodded but couldn’t find my voice until it occurred to me what had just happened. Ryder’s words came back to haunt me. I did too much looking with my eyes, and Akil was made to seduce and manipulate. What had Akil told me once? His vessel was a trap, designed to lure and consume. The trembling of his formidable muscles, his sculpted masculinity, how impossibly perfect he appeared to be: it was an act. Even now, as a tiny bead of perspiration trailed idly over his rippled abs while his fingers worked the buttons closed. Every part of him was fake. Akil had played the ‘nice’ card in a bid to get me to submit to him.

  My smile masked the downward tilt of my lips. “Oh, you’re good.”

  He lifted his head, and his eyes narrowed, cutting me a scathing glance. “You must have me confused with another sociopathic demon.”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. All of this…” I flicked my hand. “The Prince Charming act... Mister Nice. You were screwing with my head.” Yeah, it made sense now. Butter me up with some truths, and then royally screw me over. I lifted my chin and glared at him. “I thought we were beyond that crap. I guess I was wrong. You’re still a lying son-of-a-bitch. You’re not worth it.”

  Rage burned so quickly through his dark eyes that a blast of heat warmed my skin for a few seconds. A muscle jumped in his jaw. I’d clearly offended him, and my conviction stuttered.

  “I’ve killed demons for lesser words, Muse.” He turned and stalked toward the bedroom door.

  Oh yeah, my words had hurt him. Well, that was unexpected. If he hadn’t instigated the charming act to manipulate me, what had it all been about? Why was he being nice? I raked a hand through my hair. Nice I couldn’t figure out. Nice disarmed me unlike anything else. Had he waltzed in here, all brutal orders and demands, I wouldn’t have been surprised, and I’d have slapped him down much earlier. But he hadn’t. Sure, he’d tricked his way into my apartment, but for him, that was par for the course. Something must have rattled him enough to bring him to me with answers on his lips.

  I pushed away from the wall. “Akil, what happened in the netherworld? You were hurt. I didn’t imagine that.”

  He stopped in the doorway, one hand resting on the jamb. He didn’t look back. “Levi captured and tortured me for information on Dawn’s whereabouts.”

  Just how powerful was Levi if he could reduce Akil to a bloody mess? “Did you tell him you gave her to me?” I asked quietly.

  Akil’s shoulders twitched. He chuckled, awakening the vestiges of desire tingling beneath my skin. “No. It takes a great deal more than physical pain to manipulate me.”

  “I lost Dawn anyway. You were tortured for nothing.”

  “On the contrary, I learned a great deal about Leviathan. Previously, I relied on Carol-Anne’s ego to get what I wanted. I invited her to my apartment, feigning intrigue in her half-blood pet. Unfortunately, that didn’t end well for her.” Akil tilted his head and lifted his dark eyes to me. “Your brother took Dawn. As the custodian of half bloods, he will have returned her to Levi. And I know exactly where to find Leviathan.” He paused, a thoughtful expression lightening his face. “Life really was quite tedious when the princes were forbidden to challenge one another.” He didn’t appear beaten. If anything, he made the fact he’d been tortured sound like foreplay.

  It occurred to me that I’d been fooled by a bleeding Akil, as no doubt had Levi. “How did you get away?”

  A wicked smile played on his lips, revealing sharp teeth. “You make the same mistake he did, assuming I was tortured under duress. Levi underestimates my abilities.” His gaze told me never to screw him over, that he was the biggest, baddest, most manipulative demon out there. I believed him. And I’d just denied him a chunk of my soul.

  I smiled right back.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Akil broke the lock on the door into The Voodoo Lounge and gave it a brisk shove, almost taking it off at the hinges. I followed him inside the empty club. Within a few strides, a void of darkness swallowed me. I had a sense of space. Quiet yawned wide. I quickly spilled some of my element through me. My vision shimmered. Monochrome grays and black molded into the ghostly shapes of the bar and dance floors.

  Akil’s eyes glowed red in the dark. I liked to think of myself immune to most demon appearances, but still I flinched a little. Lacy wouldn’t have been so quick to let him sign her chest had she seen that look. Who needs horns and a tail when you’ve fire in your eyes?

  I trailed along behind him. He knew exactly where to go. During his torture he’d learned that Levi’s lair overlaid The Voodoo Lounge. The netherworld exists in the same space as our world, just not in the same realm. The veil acts like tracing paper. The hard pencil lines on one side—our landscape—scores through to the other side, creating a similar imprint. Related but different twin worlds. Boston is a barren, half-burned dead forest in the netherworld, but the landscape follows the same contours. Those points of reference don’t change. Nobody had mapped exactly what locations in our world matched the netherworld’s. Demons don’t care for maps, and nothing human (besides a few half bloods) could skip through the veil to accurately survey the netherworld.

  One of the back rooms in The Voodoo Lounge served as an entrance to Levi’s personal warren—Akil’s word. At the Lounge, Levi, the Prince of Envy had always been close. Just a veil away. We were about to hop through the veil and take a discreet look around for Dawn. I suspected there might be an element of revenge involved. Levi had taken Akil to his warren to torture him. Now Akil wanted back in on his own terms. But as long as we found Dawn, Akil could do whatever he wanted to Levi. I wouldn’t hang around to watch.

  “Are you going to tell me how cozy you and Carol-Anne got?” Despite whispering, my voice echoed through the empty club.

  “Ah, you found her body. I suppose that means the Institute people were crawling all over my apartment.”

  “Yes. They didn’t discover anything.”

  “Of course they didn’t. Did you think I’d leave my financial accounts and plans for world domination where prying eyes could see them?”

  I stumbled, alarmed, until he slowed and tossed a grin over his shoulder. Right. World domination. He was joking, wasn’t he? “Were you sleeping with her?” I asked, determined to get a straight answer before he turned away.

  He faced me, still smiling. “Why should it matter if I was sexually involved with Carol-Anne? I don’t believe you and I are in a relationship, or are you about to correct me?”

  This was awkward. I shifted from one foot to the other and wandered my gaze away. “Obviously, we’re not.”

  His chuckle promptly stopped me from further inserting my foot into my mouth. “I wasn’t, nor have I ever, been involved with Carol-Anne. I’d like to think you credit me with more intelligence and better taste.”

  I swallowed to try to moisten my suddenly dry throat. A change of subject was in order. “Detective Coleman called me when her body was discovered. He thinks I’m in cahoots with you.”

  “He’s not the only one.” Akil continued to stride across the dance floors, gait confident and shoulders proud.

  He missed my eye-roll. “I’m not here for you. You think everything’s about you. I’m doing this for Dawn.”

  “That is an important distinction.”

  Was he laughing at me again? I closed the distance between us as we hurried down the back hallway. Closed doors flanked either side of us. “Who else thinks I’m working with you?”

  “They all believe you’re working for me. Levi. Valenti. The entire netherworld. Although, perhaps not your father. Most demons—including the princes—are ignorant of the significance...” He hesitated a breath. “And Stefan.”

  Stefan’s name on his lips drove an icicle through my heart, as I suspected he knew it would. He was right. Stefan did think I was in bed with Akil. I let it go. Now was not the time. “What significance?”

  “Can we have this discussion another time?”

  “No, you always say that w
hen I’m getting too close to the truth. And there may not be another time. You’re slippery.” He stopped so abruptly I walked right into him and almost fell over myself.

  He turned. “Slippery?” Amber swirled in his eyes. In the dark hallway in the empty club, he did the whole demon-bad-ass look a little too well.

  Raking my hand through my hair, I recovered from falling over him. “Yeah, y’know... Difficult. Tricksy. I want my answers now before you disappear or volunteer for torturing again. How did you come back from that all flawless and...” I cleared my throat. “Er—y’know—pretty.” I didn’t want to admit how mind-numbingly sexy he was. Admitting I found him attractive felt too much like handing him a small victory. I crossed my arms. “When you were wounded a few months ago, I had to reach through the veil for the power to heal you.”

  His eyes widened at the memory. He liked it. “You think I’m pretty?” he asked carefully.

  Now I was smiling. Some words just didn’t sound right coming from him. I made a mental note to coerce him into saying obscure words like fluffy... or marshmallow. I snickered.

  “Is our situation amusing, Muse? We’re about to break into the Prince of Envy’s warren, and you’re giggling like a child.”

  “I’m sorry.” I coughed and shook myself. “I’m just enjoying this mutual ground I seem to be on with you.” It did feel good, though, poking a tiger with a stick.

  He pressed his lips into a thin line and peered down at me as I tried to wipe the smile off my face. Once I’d regained my composure, he said, “I’ve been... different since you shared your element with me above Boston gardens.”

  “Different?” The way he said that one word, savoring it, rolling it across his tongue, it was a good different. “Are you going to elaborate?”

  “No. What do you mean by mutual ground, Muse?”

  Hello, warning-tone. I’d touched a nerve. I eyed him the same way he scrutinized me. I’d been afraid of Akil for the majority of my human existence. Afraid, in awe of, bewildered by. But now, I wasn’t the cowering half blood afraid of Akil’s shadow. I hadn’t been since I’d drained him, and I would never be again. It was exhilarating, empowering, and I wondered if this was what freedom felt like. Or was it something far more seductive... like power?

  A smile broke across Akil’s face as he clearly read my thoughts in my expression. “And therein rests the significance I spoke of.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will.” He opened the door.

  A wall of water hit me square in the chest, blasted over my head, and slammed me against the wall. I thrust an arm out, searching for Akil’s reaching hand, missed, and gasped before the torrent of water tore me away from him and flushed me down the hall.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I coughed, spluttered saltwater from my lungs, and lifted my head out of the puddle I appeared to be laying in. My hair clung to my face, obscuring my vision. I blinked. Green eyes the size of headlights glared at me through steel bars.

  I yelped and scurried back. Pain sliced up my back, wrenching out another cry. I was caged on all sides, above and below. I couldn’t stand, couldn’t stretch my arms out without bumping the razor wire-wrapped bars. My demon reared up, but the second her intention to ride through me became clear, something rammed her back down and pinned her to the back of my mind with as much mental precision as a pin through a butterfly.

  I snarled and clenched my fists against my temples. “Get out of my head!”

  Wet laughter bubbled around the empty dance floor outside my cage.

  I snapped my head up and glared through wet bangs at Leviathan. He filled the space between floor and ceiling with his serpentine bulk. A scaled tail coiled around my cage and disappeared down the hallway from which I’d been flushed. His huge upper-body resembled a human’s insomuch as he had arms and a chest, but his head was all green-scaled sea-serpent, and those eyes pierced the gloom, spotlighting me in an emerald glow. I could never mistake the wet, sickly, touch of his mind inside mine.

  His slick green snout snuffled at the bars. A forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air. I flinched away. Leaden pressure pulled at my arms. For a moment, I ignored it, more concerned with the demon the size of a school bus eyeing me up for lunch. But then I realized my hands appeared to move away from me of their own accord. What the hell? It felt like waking in the night with a numb limb. Commands left my mind, but my arms didn’t obey. They stretched out. I watched, sickened and horrified, as I reached out and closed my hands around the steel bars of my cage. Snatches of pain twinged up my arms. The razor wire bit into flesh. Blood streamed over the back of my hands, down my arms, and dripped from my elbows, but I couldn’t let go. My knuckles whitened.

  Leviathan’s vast serpent body sashayed, which I took to be an expression of pleasure.

  “Get the fuck out of me!”

  I heaved my body back. My arms snapped taut, but my hands refused to let go. Images started to pile into my mind. I couldn’t stop them. This was my so-called talent. Make her bleed; Make her read. I could see the past in metal, any metal, but for it to work, I had to seal the link with my own blood. I jolted as though hit with an electric current.

  A limp little girl cowered in the same space as me. So tiny. Her wet ringlets matted against her head. She trembled, whimpered, and clutched her rabbit against her chest. I recognized her tatty dress and mismatched socks.

  Dawn.

  My well-maintained reservoir of rage boiled dry inside me. I screamed at Leviathan with everything I had, but when the bellow broke over me and boomed from my throat, it didn’t sound like any scream I’d voiced before. It was a pure, unfiltered, demonic roar of fury.

  Leviathan’s grip on my mind and body relaxed. He rippled back, body and tail undulating like waves on the ocean. He finally shook his demon away and stood before me in his human suit. Clad in snug fitting leather and interlocking steel plates, he was dressed for battle. He bristled with daggers and swords. A braid of auburn hair fell to his thighs and twitched like a cat’s tail. His eyes glowed green. Haughty cheekbones pulled his lips into thin lines. He should have been handsome, but something in his perfection screamed alien, and my human senses recoiled.

  Breathing hard with the sound of my own demon scream still ringing around us, I plucked my hands free off the razor wire. He was out of my body for now. I seethed so much that the water I crouched in simmered where it lapped against my clothes. Oh, I’d kill him—once I figured out how to summon my demon before he could pin her down again. He was so going on my revenge list.

  “Greetings, half blood. You have gained power, I see. Asmodeus will be pleased.”

  “Asmodeus can go fuck himself.” My demon lent my voice a throaty resonance, adding a threatening weight to my words, even if it was all bluster. I didn’t take well to being caged. It felt too familiar, and if the memories bubbling to the surface of my simmering thoughts were anything to go by, anger was all I had to protect myself from my past. Demons do so like their cages.

  Levi’s thin lips twitched like eels. “Passionate too, and yet to look at, you’re rather unremarkable. Physically and mentally fragile. Riddled with insecurity... However, I am beginning to understand why my courtly brethren have taken it upon themselves to take an interest in you. You were quite efficient dispatching the hunters I sent after Mammon and the lesser demons I subsequently sent for you. You obviously have hidden talents. Half bloods are quite the puzzle. I do so enjoy tempering your kind.”

  “You want to temper me? Let me out this cage, and we’ll dance.” He almost seemed to be considering it. “What? Asmodeus won’t allow it? Are you his pet now? Aren’t you meant to be a prince? You wanna talk about judging books by their covers? Did you take fashion tips from Legolas? You’re all trussed up in leathers and blades, and yet I’ve not seen anything to imply you’re an awe-inspiring Prince of Hell. From my humble cage, you look like a fantasy freak trying too hard.”

  Levi stalked closer and crouched in front
of the bars, leathers creaking. He draped his long arms over his knees and cocked his head. A double-eyelid flickered across his eyes. He unashamedly raked his gaze all over me, and I felt the touch of it as though he rode his hands across my skin. It turned my stomach.

  I spat excess saliva at his feet. “Coward. You couldn’t handle me outside these bars. You’re afraid of a lowly half blood, not even a full de—”

  His hand shot through the bars and clamped around my throat, jerking me against the side of the cage. Razors cut into my cheek, my chin, neck, shoulder. If I could summon my demon, I’d tear open the veil and boil the water from his veins. But she was still strung up like a sacrifice inside my mind. She thrashed, but his mental grip held firm.

  He shoved me back and watched me gasp air with no trace of emotion on his face. “If you were mine, I would take great pleasure in crushing your spirit.” His double eyelids flickered again.

  “But I’m not yours...” I wheezed, rubbing at my throat. “You really live up to your name, huh. Envious much?”

  He straightened his lithe body. A shimmer of power washed over him, leaving him female. I smiled. I couldn’t help it. What did he think he was going to accomplish by wearing a woman suit? She was just as unnaturally stunning, all wrapped up in leather and steel, like something out of Tolkien.

  “Where is the young half blood?” she asked, siren-voice pitched high enough to rattle my skull.

  I dabbed at the blood trickling down my cheek. “I don’t know. I thought you had her. Wasn’t that what all the blood-on-metal crap was about?”

  “I did have her. I kept her in that very cage. My subject Carol-Anne was her guardian. Mammon wove a net of lies to entrap my subject and stole my half blood from me. He has quite the penchant for half bloods, it would seem. Carol-Anne should have expected as much from the Prince of Greed. She failed me and suffered the consequences. Her quick death was generous of me.”