They were trapped. They had been from the start.
“Watch me. Fighting is as much a part of my heritage as wine and song,” Michael said.
“And Brimstone blood,” Lily whispered.
He didn’t agree. He didn’t have to. The heat rising from his body gave him away. The car slowed to a stop. They were a hundred yards from the blockade. The SUVs were closing in from behind.
“Stay in the car,” Michael ordered. He sounded like a future king.
Grim had materialized. He stood by the car waiting for his master.
“I’m not safe in the car. Nowhere is safe for me,” Lily said. Except maybe Ezekiel’s palace, but she kept that thought to herself. She opened the door and got out before Michael could try to stop her. She wasn’t hiding anymore.
Her sword came easily from its place in her pack. She quickly drew it and shrugged the backpack over her shoulders. She didn’t bother to close the car door. Michael had also left his door open. The Firebird sat in the middle of the highway with its “wings” ineffectually spread. She might never get the chance to “fly” in it again. But at least she had. She had flown. Refuge wasn’t everything. Home, for her, had always been elusive. A lie.
She was a tool. That’s all she’d ever been. She could fight that or accept it. Her chest swelled as she gulped a big breath of bracing air. Ezekiel might want her to marry his heir. And she might never fulfill that wish. But she could be the best ward she could possibly be.
Her mother had wanted Lily to stop the Rogues for the daemon king. Sophia hadn’t intended her daughter to do it with arm-to-arm combat. Sometimes the best intentions dissolved into necessity. Her father had prepared her for that. His sword felt balanced and deadly in her hands.
“I’ve resisted your call because I had to, not because I wanted to,” Michael said as they turned to face in opposite directions. The SUVs had stopped and more Rogues than she’d thought could fit in the vehicles exited. Slowly. They were obviously savoring their triumph. “I’ve always hated the Brimstone in my blood. You make it very hard not to celebrate it.”
Lily froze. She didn’t look at him. But her whole body stilled in response to his declaration. He wanted her. What’s more, he wanted to want her. They prepared for death, but she suddenly felt more alive than she’d ever been.
“These bastards want your affinity. They want Ezekiel’s throne. I just want you. I need you to know it isn’t affinity or my Brimstone. I’ve resisted its burn my whole life,” Michael said. “I don’t want to resist you.”
“Now you tell me,” Lily replied.
But she didn’t believe him. She’d been a prisoner of her affinity her entire life because others couldn’t or wouldn’t control its effect on them. She wanted to believe that Michael was different, but that want was a weakness she couldn’t afford.
Grim whined and shifted from Michael’s side to hers in a swirl of disembodied smoke. He stood between her and the closest approaching daemon. The protective act caused tears to fill her eyes. He might not trust her, but he placed his intimidating body in harm’s way for her after his master’s declaration. The ferocity of his love for Michael caused her heart to ache in an echo of the same emotion. Even if they survived, she couldn’t allow herself to love her warrior angel. Not when he would surely hate her once he knew Ezekiel planned to use her to tempt Michael to the throne.
“I’ll show you when this is over. Count on it,” Michael said.
She had no time to respond. Not to argue or throw herself in his arms. Suddenly, Michael and Grim exploded into action and she was left holding her sword and standing alone. Grim fought in an ever-widening circle around her. His terrible jaw crunched again and again and the air was filled with Rogue screams. But while he protected her, Michael was left to fight alone. Lily watched him bleed as daemon blades bit into him again and again. She was trapped by the smoky vapor of Grim’s wake and the bodies and blood that fell all around. Before she could escape the circle a wall of fallen Rogue bodies prevented her from reaching Michael’s side.
Once again she was enclosed and protected while others died.
Lily dropped to her knees. But she wasn’t giving up. She allowed her father’s sword to clank to the ground so that she could take the pack from her back. Her fingers fumbled with the wrappings, but long hours of practice saved her.
This time she unwrapped them all.
Earth, Wind, Fire, Water...and the tiny black-winged angel.
She placed them in position and wasn’t surprised when the warrior angel claimed a place in the center of them all. Her flute came from its velvet pouch and she brought it to her lips in a move that seemed to take an eternity. Grim had howled in pain multiple times now. Many daemons had fallen, but there were too many for one hellhound to fight alone.
Michael was nowhere to be seen beyond the smoke. It wasn’t only smoke from Grim’s rapid materializations. His wounds smoked, and the bodies of fallen daemons smoked as well. The burned smell of wounded flesh and Brimstone filled the air. Her affinity had been shocked into paralysis, but the second her shaky breath brought forth the first note from the flute against her lips, the rush of it filled her body from the heart out. Blood pumped and the affinity rode it as well as her song until she vibrated with a music that daemons could hear above all else, even their own screams.
She thought she heard her name. She played on. She didn’t pause. She summoned the elemental spirits that she’d been able to hear since she was born. To many they were only tradition. To her they were real.
Wind whipped her hair and her clothes and whirled smoke and sand into her eyes. She didn’t close them. She tried to squint through the sulfuric smoke to find Michael. A storm coalesced around her and droplets of moisture fell. The earth trembled beneath her knees.
But it was Fire that saved them.
The ring of Rogue bodies piled around her burst into flames. Grim leaped over the ring of fire and disappeared. She knew he would reappear to fight by Michael’s side. But would it be too late? The daemon king would never forgive her if she allowed his heir to die. Her heart thumped a more tragic reason to fear his death.
She would never be his queen. Not through manipulation. Not when he’d told her that he wanted to want her in spite of the Brimstone and not because of it. But she needed him to live for reasons other than Ezekiel’s throne. Rivulets of water ran down her face, cooling the heat of the fire that consumed the Rogue daemons around her. The warrior angel kachina stood silently. Her flute didn’t call it to life.
Lily wasn’t sure if offering her as a bride was part of Ezekiel’s plan, but she would give Michael up before she’d force him to...
The tiny kachina doll in the center of her elemental spirits toppled over and Lily gasped. Her song was broken just as her lungs had begun to be scorched from acrid smoke.
A howl like none before it rent the air. Lily’s head went light and her stomach clenched in fear. There had been too many daemons. Michael had been right. Even with the power of her elemental spirit’s fire amplified by Brimstone, they had lost.
Chapter 9
Lily stood. Steam rose from her wet clothes and hair, threading upward to join the smoke of the burning dead. She couldn’t see beyond a small circle of space left around her. She could only stumble in the direction of the howl that had trailed off to nothing. But not before the grief it conveyed chilled her to the bone.
She almost tripped over her father’s sword and she paused long enough to pick it up. If Michael had fallen, it would do her no good. She couldn’t stand against the daemons alone, and she doubted Grim would stay to help her if his master was dead.
The thought of Michael gone caused her chill to deepen, as if her very marrow had turned to ice in spite of the flow of burning Brimstone on the ground. She stepped over and around, weaving among the carnage until sulfuric ash c
oated her skin. Her lungs hitched in protest with every breath against the thick air.
Far beyond the ring of bodies Grim had created with his horrible jaws, there were other bodies strewn in a more haphazard way. Michael had commandeered a daemon blade. That one man could fight so many and win sent frissons of shock down her frozen spine. She looked away from the bodies to try to avoid imagining what they had done to her warrior angel before they’d fallen. But not before she saw that they burned. They all burned. Flames licked away at their flesh where the blades had parted their skin and Brimstone had escaped.
The elemental Fire she’d called had reached farther than she’d thought possible. Her desperation had strengthened the spirit’s ability. The Brimstone Michael had released had been all the fuel it needed. Her elemental spirit had taken it from there.
But Michael must have been cut as well. There was no way he could have fought with so many Rogues and escaped injury. Lily stopped. With that thought, her heart froze, too. She couldn’t go on. What if her ability had caused Michael to relive his worst nightmare and what if this time he hadn’t been able to stop the burn?
A whining growl thawed her with a stab of fear that shocked her into motion. She forced herself to move toward the hellhound’s terrible sounds. Tears streaked from her eyes. She blinked, cursing the hateful ash and smoke and horror that caused them.
Finally, she saw movement. She gripped her blade, but her fingers were numb. All the water had evaporated from her clothes and her body. It had saved her from being scorched, but it was fear that had kept her cold in the heat. If Michael was gone, she’d never be warm again. She knew it. Her body protested his loss even as her mind tried to deal.
She jerked to a halt again, her feet shuffling awkwardly, when she made out the hulking form of Grim and his fallen master. Smoke had cleared around them. It dissipated upward in spidery threads as if driven away by the hellhound’s despair.
“No,” Lily said. The syllable choked out from a throat raw from the thick, superheated air she’d breathed.
Grim raised his head. He growled low in his chest, but unlike the smoke she wouldn’t be driven away. Michael wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. She had worried about betraying him. This was so much worse.
Grim continued to growl, but she hurried forward. Michael’s clothes smoked, but there was no flame. His face and hands were covered with blackened blood. A daemon blade was clutched in each fist. He had taken out dozens of Rogues and disarmed at least two of them. Alone. Before he’d been wounded so badly that he couldn’t go on.
Lily dropped to her knees beside Michael’s smoking body. Much of the blood wasn’t his. He had soaked in the blood of his enemies. But only a second of relief came from that observation. He was injured. His leather jacket was shredded. She reached with her free hand to uncover his chest before she lost the nerve. Her sword arm was limp by her side between her and Grim. She didn’t need to raise it against the mourning beast. She wouldn’t. But she was glad when he allowed her to check his master’s injuries.
A daemon blade had bitten him deeply. She closed her eyes against the sight but quickly forced them open again. The whole world seemed to pause as she held her breath to see if his chest still rose and fell. She started and released pent-up oxygen when he stirred and a soft moan came from between his slightly parted lips.
“They retreated to regroup. They’ll be back,” Michael struggled to say. “Go. Now. Grim, take her away.”
“We won’t leave you,” Lily said. She glanced into Grim’s eyes to be sure the monster agreed. He blinked in acknowledgment, then looked back at Michael.
“You didn’t burn,” Lily said. She said the words out loud to reassure herself and claim the miracle. She wasn’t sure Michael heard.
“You’re wrong. I always burn,” Michael said. “But that was...intense.”
Lily touched his face and he opened his eyes. The hazel of his irises was impossibly light and bright against his grimy skin. A rush of relief flooded through her, thawing, warming, but it was immediately chilled away by the truth. He had fought her element of Fire and won, but he was badly hurt and she didn’t know what to do to save him.
Michael’s eyes had widened as he took in her appearance, but he closed them again as if seeing her covered in ash and Brimstone blood was an added pain he couldn’t bear.
“Leave me,” he ordered.
The hellhound beside her shuffled and whined.
“No,” Lily said again. More firmly than before. This time she raised the blade between her and Grim. She intended it to be a warning in case the hellhound thought she should listen to Michael. She wasn’t prepared for the giant beast to throw himself against her sword. She released it but her reaction was too late to prevent the blade from slicing through Grim’s smoky hair and into the flesh of his barrel chest.
“Grim,” she shouted. Michael’s eyes opened once more. The bloody sword clanked to the pavement and the hellhound slumped against his master’s body. Lily reached for him, but she wasn’t fast enough to help him before he fell over Michael’s chest.
“Damn it, mutt. Don’t die for me,” Michael groaned. Then he cried out as the hellhound’s pure Brimstone blood mingled with his, coating the ugly chest wound with its pure Brimstone flow.
Lily reached for Michael’s arm and he released his death grip on the daemon blades. He grasped her hand as his face contorted in pain. She didn’t try to pull Grim away from his master. The hellhound knew what to do. She leaned closer to Michael instead. Desperate to soothe his torment. She placed her lips against his. In that instant she shared his pain, burning and brutal and inexorably linked to a time when he’d almost died as a child.
She kissed him. Through the pain. She tasted ash, but she thought of wine. She faced immeasurable darkness, but she thought of the sun. And music. Her flute had been abandoned back in the circle with her kachina dolls. She hummed low in her throat instead. He was in agony, but her affinity reached out to engulf him in a nearly invisible aura that shimmered in the air around him to join with the waves of heat rising from the Brimstone blood that cauterized his wound.
She continued to hum against his lips until he went limp beneath her mouth. The extreme pain had caused him to pass out. Lily reluctantly pulled back. She had soothed him. It had been torturous, but without their connection it would have been worse.
Grim stirred and rose. Lily swallowed and wiped sweat from her brow. Her tears had dried. Or they had evaporated away. The hellhound dragged himself from Michael’s body. The burn of their mingled blood had sealed his master’s wound, but Grim still bled. He moved weakly away and collapsed nearby.
“You would gladly kill yourself to save him,” Lily whispered. He blinked at her and whined.
She stood, but it was an unsteady process that took longer than usual. She’d nearly used herself up to perform the extreme summoning that had saved them. Sharing Michael’s pain had almost been more than her body could handle. She could barely move now. Adrenaline had drained away, leaving her numb.
“I guess we would both kill ourselves for him,” Lily said. The hellhound’s head had slumped to the side and he breathed heavily as his body tried to recover. If he acknowledged their common cause, he couldn’t show it. “I’m going for the car. We do need to get out of here and I don’t think you’re in any shape to take us anywhere.”
She headed back to retrieve the Firebird. This time she walked through piles of ash that were beginning to blow away in the desert breeze. There would be nothing left but abandoned vehicles soon. It was hard to believe a battle had raged less than an hour ago. Only their bodies told the tale. She was no longer numb, but the aches and pains that had woken with her return to feeling made it hard to move. Only the knowledge that the surviving Rogues would be back made her hurry.
Michael and Grim needed time to heal. She needed to refuel. And there was some
thing else even more important that she needed to do.
She sank behind the wheel of Michael’s car. The seat had conformed to the muscular curves of his body, and it embraced her. She breathed deeply of the car’s pleasant scent. She gripped the wheel. It reminded her of Michael, strong and uninjured, before he met her. Of the music he’d made and scars he’d managed to survive.
She would get him and Grim to safety and then she would seek out the answers she needed from the daemon king. She deserved to know all of his plans. Michael might be bound to the throne of hell, but she could never be part of the bargain that held him there. She wouldn’t be used to sweeten the deal. He shouldn’t be forced or beguiled onto the throne. She’d had enough of obligation, daemon deals and forced devotion. She would give up her haven in hell rather than marry someone who longed to be free.
Chapter 10
Peter limped back for a car when he was certain Samuel’s daughter and her half-daemon escort—and the hellhound—were gone. One of Peter’s legs had been shredded almost to the bone by the hellhound’s teeth. He’d been so close to his prize, but he’d retreated then. Thank Reynard. Because the Brimstone that tainted his blood might save him from the injury, but it would have killed him if it had ignited from what came after.
He’d heard the flute—deceptively beautiful and haunting, so delicate that it seemed to ride on a light desert wind. But the wind had whipped faster and harder and the music had become thunderous. He’d only been able to save himself from the fire the bitch had brought forth from her ridiculous dolls by crawling into a ditch and burrowing in sand when it had come to consume him. If he’d been a daemon, he’d be dead. They all were. Or dying. Too burned for their Brimstone blood to heal them.
He didn’t pause when he’d crawled past the remains of his suffering companions. He had no blood to spare.
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