A quick succession of knocks at the door gave me a temporary reprieve. Lacy was right, but I had an on-again-off-again relationship with ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ I often envied Ryder his staunch black and white outlook on life. All I seemed to experience was the messy gray area.
I opened the door. The sight of Stefan tightened my chest and stopped my heart for a beat. The tub of ice cream slipped from my fingers. I made an ungainly lunge. Stefan caught it, quick as lightning, and I found myself looking into his eyes as we straightened. He drew up to his full height and turned the ice cream tub over in his hand, eyebrows hiked up and lips parted. “That could have been a disaster.”
My thoughts had careened off course and jolted to a stop. The newly crowned Prince of Wrath was at my door, standing so close his icy aura tickled the fine hairs on my arms. His nonchalant stance carried the same self-assured, infallible confidence I’d come to expect from him. Only a few lines around his eyes and lips spoke of the torment he’d been through. I wanted to smooth those marks away and wished it could be that easy to erase the scars of our past.
I cleared my throat. “I’ll have my ice cream back, thank you. Unless you’re planning on sticking around this time?”
He arched a brow, hooking the corner of his sensuous lips with it, turning the faint smile into something more salacious. “You left me the last time I was here.” A low growl wove beneath his words. His demon brogue fluttered my insides and roused my demon’s curiosity.
I should be angry. He had accidentally stabbed me and then disappeared for weeks before returning with the kind of revelation you don’t just dump on someone. I’m a Prince of Hell.
“Only after you went all evil-frosty on me.”
“Ouch.” That wicked smile stayed. Damn it.
I snatched the tub from his hand. “If you want ice cream,” by the way his gaze tracked the tub, I knew he did, “you have to promise not to try and kill me while in my apartment. I’m not at my best right now.” I pointed a finger, ignoring his smirk. “So don’t fuck with me.”
It occurred to me I’d just chastised a Prince of Hell. I curled my finger back into my palm. His eyes sparkled with humor while his unseen icy touch coiled around my ankle, up my leg, around my waist… If he controlled that explorative touch, he didn’t show it. I had no idea where I stood with him. Did he want to kill me, kiss me, or screw me over? The last thing he’d told me was that he’d been promoted, and he needed help. Now, there he was, catching my ice cream like he hadn’t recently stabbed me in the chest and looking every part the rakish don’t-give-a-damn demon-hunter. The gray sweats he wore did nothing to temper the kind of sexy vibe that should be outlawed. Blonde hair licked at his cheeks and fell over his eyes. I struggled to fight back the urge to brush a few errant locks back from his face. He’d probably freeze me solid if I touched him.
“I promise not to try to kill you while in your apartment,” he said solemnly, then tacked a smile on the end.
“Fine.” I stepped back and let him by. “You’ve met Lacy.” Lacy gaped, eyes wide.
“Yeah.” Stefan cleared his throat, ridding himself of the guttural accent. “Last time we met, I told you Akil likely wanted to wear your skin as an apron.”
She climbed down off the arm of the sofa and straightened up to her imposing five feet of Boston-Irish pride. “Yeah, that’s right. Asshat.” She stopped short of poking him in the chest, but the fire in her eyes said she wanted to.
He tucked a thumb over the waistband of his sweatpants, the epitome of chilled, and held out a hand, inviting her to shake it. “Maybe we should try this again?”
Lacy looked down at his hand, scrunched her face, and glared back at him. I’d told her the good and the bad when it came to Stefan, but even I had to admit the bad outweighed the good. Stefan didn’t retract his hand but returned Lacy’s glare with a casual expression of good humor. “I was—”
“Rude. Arrogant.”
“Out of line.”
“Damn straight.” She caught his hand, gave it a tight shake, and pulled back. “Dude, whatever, but if you hurt Charley, I’ll ruin you on the Internet, and the Internet is like forever. Got me?”
Stefan’s lips twitched. “I think so.”
“Good.” She crossed the room to me and handed me her empty ice cream tub. “Think about what I said, Charley, please.”
I offered what I hoped to be my most compliant smile and waited until she’d closed the door behind her before pinning a hardened stare on Stefan. He stood by the couch, chin dipped, blue eyes sharp behind fair lashes. He could project outward calm all he liked. It wasn’t fooling me. No sword. No coat. No drama. I could convince myself he was just a guy—built like an athlete honed for stamina, with a stubborn jaw, wicked sensuous lips and eyes that pierced the soul. Who was I kidding? He’d never passed for normal, and I wouldn’t have him any other way. So there we were, the two of us. Bad things happened when Stefan and I were together. Workshops exploded. Truths and lies blurred. People died.
“Ice cream?” I asked.
He puffed a sigh. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Turning my back on him, I busied myself in the kitchen, fully aware of exactly where he stood, how long it would take me to get to the front door, and how many side steps before I could reach the gun in my cupboard. “What’s with the sweats?”
“I got back from the netherworld and landed in someone’s back yard. These were just lying around…”
“You stole them. From someone’s clothes line?” I’d seen Stefan naked, both in human and demon form. I’d delighted in his sinewy muscles and teased my tongue over the entwined scorpion tattoo low on his navel. I’d tasted parts of him that brought a rush of heat to my cheeks. It felt like years ago, and yesterday.
“Considering our…volatile relationship I wasn’t sure how you’d react if I showed up sans clothes.”
Funny guy, ha ha. I turned and tried to will the heat from my face as I handed him a bowl of ice cream. His fingers brushed mine, launching a snap of raw chaos energy up my arm. Flinching, I pulled back with a tight hiss.
Chaos. If my demon hadn’t already been paying attention, she sure was now. The elements of chaos made up everything demon. And Stefan was chaos giftwrapped in a delicious body.
“Sorry… It does that sometimes.” Something like concern and resilient acceptance passed over his face before he turned away, opening a void between us that felt bigger than the physical space allowed for. “The way we left things last time wasn’t ideal,” he said, the master of understatement. Last time, Akil had used his ability to reality-jump from one place to another, and snatched me out of Stefan’s arms right after Stefan had dumped the ‘Prince of Wrath’ bombshell on me. By the time I’d convinced Akil to take me home again, Stefan had vanished.
I dug into my ice cream again, dampening down the desire to cross the space between us and…what? Devour him? Hug him? Hit him? My demon wanted all the power wrapped up in Stefan, and I wanted someone to hold me and make me forget how thoroughly messed up I was.
He relaxed against the arm of the couch, body angled toward the door, bowl cradled in a hand. “Are we okay?”
Laughter burst from my lips. “Are you kidding?” Apparently not, if his frown was genuine. “Stefan, we’re so far from okay, we’re in different time zones. You’re a Prince of Hell. How did that even happen?”
He swallowed and looked away, twitching a muscle in his jaw. “After I thought I’d killed you, I lost control.” His eyes narrowed. “The princes noticed.”
“All of them?” One Prince of Hell was bad enough. I couldn’t imagine facing more.
“Not Akil.” No, because he’d been unconscious with grief at his suburban house. “I only remember fragments. My demon was… We were high on power. I pulled it all from the veil.” He stabbed his spoon into the ice cream, scooped out a chunk, and tasted it. The resulting groan was more demon than man. “I miss this,” he mumbled around his mouthful.
“And? What
happened?” He licked the spoon. My demon and I shared an internal purr. I swatted her back.
“One demon came at me. I didn’t know who or what he was. Wolf-like, but huge. I’m not talking about some hellhound mongrel. He was the size of a truck and would have torn me apart.” His lips turned down. “I fought with everything I had. They wanted me dead. They still do.”
“The wolf demon was Wrath?”
He nodded, taking another spoonful of ice cream. “When I worked as an enforcer, I suspected the princes had some sort of advantage over the demons. Turns out I was half right. The princes have a purpose; you might even call it a weakness. When chaos is shaped over time, it becomes honed, powerful, focused. It reaches out, hungers for more, and latches onto the thing the demon wants the most. Greed, lust, gluttony. All I had was anger. Wrath sensed that, I think. The others pulled back when he attacked, like it was personal.” Stefan licked more ice cream from his spoon, suddenly finding it fascinating.
Stefan was a skilled demon-hunter. I knew that. I also knew, as demon, he was powerful. But to battle a Prince of Hell on his home turf, surrounded by his brethren? I’d wiped out a few hundred demons once, and the memories still terrified me. How was he here, eating my ice cream like nothing had happened? “Did you kill him?”
“No.” His blue eyes darted to me. “You can’t kill a Prince of Hell.” He was wrong about that. A nine-year-old half-blood girl had recently proven the exception to that rule. “When I came back to my senses, Wrath was beaten, torn apart…” Stefan cleared the growl from his throat. “There wasn’t much left of his physical form. The princes backed off and...”
“What?” I’d forgotten my ice cream, forgotten everything, absorbed in his story. I’d seen Stefan in the netherworld, seen him battle Akil’s true form, Mammon. As a demon, Stefan was beautiful, as though carved from crystal—if crystal had razor-sharp edges and murderous intentions.
He lifted his gaze and fixed me in his sights. “The power I’d summoned should have killed me, but I took it all in and controlled it. Shaped it. It responded like our elements do, only this was chaos in its purest form. It wasn’t just about ice any more. I had control over of all the elements.” A slither of fear trickled down my back. Stefan’s eyes brightened. Their usual winter-sky blue churned darker, flecked with greens and purple, the colors of the veil. He blinked, and the colors vanished.
Stefan shoved off the arm of the couch and placed his bowl on the coffee table before settling on the couch. Jonesy gave him a prrp greeting and stretched feline limbs out, inviting Stefan to tickle his belly. Stefan stretched his own legs out, popped his feet up on my table, and threw an arm over the back of the cushions. Between him and my cat, they hogged the entire couch.
“How do you know you’re a Prince of Hell exactly?” I asked quietly, still uncomfortable speaking the words.
“I hear them.” He tapped his temple. “As if it wasn’t crowded enough in there already. It’s like having a radio on in another room. For the most part, I filter it out. I also heal quickly. I barely bleed when cut. The wound closes in seconds.” Stefan paused and steadied his gaze on me, waiting for my reaction.
Holy hell, was he immortal? Would he age? Was he still half human, or was he something else now? Akil had said Stefan was lost, but I didn’t believe it then, and I didn’t believe it now. “Do you hear Akil?”
He paused, listened, tilting his head slightly. “Not anymore.” He grimaced. “Why is that?”
I’d promised never to lie to Stefan, but I couldn’t help wondering why he was there. He was the Prince of Wrath, and he had debts to pay, scores to settle. Akil was vulnerable. “He’s otherwise engaged.”
A quiet settled over us, disturbed only by Jonesy’s purring. Stefan watched me watching him. I deliberately roamed my gaze, taking in his casual appearance. There was a difference in him—a stillness—but it wasn’t something quantifiable. His very presence gave off a low-level charge, like the electric tension in the air prior to a lightning storm. The more I looked, the more it occurred to me that I might not know this new Stefan at all. Power destroys people. Stefan had survived things that would have killed most or at least driven them insane. I barely held into the last thread of my sanity. He’d already let go of his. I swallowed hard. My pulse fluttered and beat in my ears. “Am I talking to Stefan or his demon?”
This time, the smile barely masked a tightly controlled wince. “You’re talking to me. You’ll know it when he’s in control.”
Did he know how I feared him? Feared for him? “So why are you here? You didn’t come back for the ice cream…”
“It feels good, being back.” He dropped his head back against the couch cushions and closed his eyes. “It’s too easy to forget in the netherworld.”
I knew that feeling. It tempted me every waking moment: the lure of freedom. I could look at him now and kid myself that everything was fine. Relaxed like he was, he almost looked the same as he had when we’d first met. He’d been quick to smile then, cocky and over-confident. Now he was too still, pulled tightly like a rubber band about to snap. “You said you needed my help…”
Stefan sighed and opened his eyes. “Yeah, I did. I do. Do you still have the file Adam gave you? The one about the half bloods they have?”
“Operation Typhon. There’s not much in it. After they failed with you and me, the Institute kept their half-blood experiments tightly controlled. They locked Subjects Gamma and Delta away. I don’t know where they’re keeping them.”
Leaning forward, he rubbed his hands together and drilled down the easy-going attitude, replacing it with the keen-eyed glare of an enforcer. “Does it say what they’re like? Mentally? Physically?”
“A little. They’re obedient.” Unlike us. “More demon than human. Not particularly powerful. Yet.”
Stefan hesitated a beat, just enough to jolt my heart with the thought of what was to come. “There are three half-bloods in the netherworld, controlled by your brother, Valenti. He’s about to release them on this side of the veil. Probably right here in Boston. Once the half bloods have annihilated the military response and created chaos, the remaining princes will step through the veil, bringing half the netherworld with them.”
It was so much, so suddenly, and delivered so effortlessly, that all I could do was stare, open-mouthed. The princes were indeed coming, and they had half-bloods: all-powerful, messed-up-in-the-head half-bloods. I tried to think of something to say, some wonderful words of encouragement, a way to sweep the implications aside, but all I came up with was, “Oh.”
Chapter Four
I woke to the sounds of someone rattling around my kitchen cupboards and the smell of cooking bacon. I was either being burgled by a hungry thief, or someone was in my kitchen, cooking breakfast. That someone could only be Stefan. He’d left me the previous night, saying he’d be back with a plan. I’d waited, but after two hours, exhaustion had gotten the better of me. I didn’t sleep though, not really. Sleep was a luxury I no longer had. The nightmares had come the way they always did, dark, twisted things, so deep, so hungry, they were almost alive enough to exist once I snapped open my eyes and listened to my own scream ringing in my ears.
I threw my legs over the edge of the bed, tossed on some jeans and a sweater, and trudged from my bedroom into the kitchen. And sure enough, there he was, brewing coffee, frying bacon, and making toast. He’d ditched the stolen sweats for jeans and a button-down, dark blue shirt. Rolled-up sleeves revealed steely arms, arms I yearned to have wrapped around me. He had held me once, held me against him as he’d whispered words of hope to the naïve half-blood girl I’d once been. At least that girl had hope. What did I have now? I hadn’t realized how I’d ached to have company, and seeing him doing simple domestic things, like normal people did, left me speechless. Thankfully, he didn’t notice me blink back a surge of emotion. Inside of a few seconds, I had myself under control again. I hadn’t expected him to come back. The men in my life tended to disappear with no explanat
ion, and if they did return, it was often with dire news. Yet, there he was, and by the looks of it, he could fry up a mean breakfast. The world really must be ending.
“Hey.” He spilled the strips of bacon onto a plate already stacked with toast, fried tomato, eggs, and a salad tossed on the side as an afterthought.
He’d been shopping for groceries too? For me? I hitched myself onto the breakfast barstool. “Wow, this is… Wow.”
He slid the plate to me and flashed a smile. “You have an institute tail parked outside.”
I tensed, a piece of toast half way to my mouth. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Leaning on the breakfast bar, he nodded toward the window across the living room behind me. “Enforcers are about as subtle as demons bargain hunting at a garage sale.”
“Were you seen?”
Stefan gave me a give-me-some-credit look. I shrugged and crunched into my toast. He hadn’t made breakfast for himself, I noticed. So not staying then. “Are you going to watch me eat?”
“I killed him and hid the body in the trunk of his car.”
A jagged piece of toast lodged in my throat. “What?” I spluttered.
His grin was pure mischief. “You think I would?”
“I don’t know… Prince of Wrath much?” I coughed and rinsed the toast down with some juice.
“Your Institute tail is fine, despite there being a kill-order out on me. I guess I’m reformed.” His lip curled. “Mostly. I can’t take back what I’ve done, but I can make up for it by stopping the princes.” His smile wavered. The memories of his encounter with the princes was obviously not pleasant.
“They really want you dead, huh?”
“I’m a half-blood prince—not the Hogwarts kind—and an ex-enforcer. Plus, my father’s the Institute’s employee of the month. I’m sure my every breath infuriates them. Not to mention, Wrath wants his title back.”
Drowning In The Dark: #4 The Veil Series Page 3