“Oh, well. At least we don’t do things by halves any more, right?”
He chuckled softly. This was…nice. Really nice. Too nice. I had issues with nice. Nice threw me off my game like nothing else. People being nice leads to hope, and false hope is a terrible thing. False hope got a nine-year-old girl killed. False hope allowed me to believe I could live a normal life. I put my toast down and frowned at my breakfast. As lovely as it was, I’d lost my appetite. One breakfast wasn’t going to make up for the past. Nor was it going to change the fact the netherworld was gearing up for an attack on this side of the veil. “Stefan… I appreciate this. I mean, nobody has ever made me breakfast before.” I looked up. The fine lines of his face creased with resignation. He knew it too. As much as we both wanted the normal, it was never going to happen for the likes of us.
He shoved away from the counter and strode across the living room to the window where he parted the blinds and narrowed his gaze, no doubt contemplating my Institute stalker.
“None of this changes anything.” I sighed. “What are we supposed to do? I can’t stop my brother. I can barely control myself. And he’s…” I gestured, as though shooing a fly. “He’s…him. All scary-immortal-lust-demon. All he has to do is look at me, and I’m terrified. And then there’s the thing…”
“The thing?” He threw a glance over his shoulder, brow tight in confusion.
“My owner wrapped around my insides.” I shoved the plate of food away and wondered if I had any whiskey left in my emergency stash. My fingers trembled. I curled them into a fist. Stefan noticed, but his neutral expression didn’t falter. I’d have better luck reading runes than that impossibly measured expression of his. “I’m not a hero, Stefan. That was your job.”
He barked a dry laugh, the sound guttural, almost dirty. “Like I’m the epitome of self-control?”
After everything he’d been through, he seemed to be doing pretty well. He was here, talking, joking, almost himself. “How do you do it? How do you control it?”
He shot me a sharp look. “I don’t. It controls me.”
“So, why aren’t you all, y’know, frosty?”
“Because right now, I either have what I want, or I’m getting it.” The glitter in his eyes sparkled. “Don’t look at me and see a survivor. I’m not human, not any more. If the demon wants, it gets. I have no control. None.”
That wasn’t a particularly comforting thought, given how he’d nearly brought about an ice age and almost killed me several times. Bowing my head, I hoped to hide how his words affected me. I’d held out hope that Stefan would win. I didn’t want to hear the truth. If he was all demon, then what hope was there for me?
I held up my finger and thumb, showing him the tiniest of gaps. “This is my control. I’m this far away from going nuclear, and I’m too much of a coward to do the right thing.”
“Which is?”
“Take P-C-Thirty-Four.”
He flinched. He had an intimate relationship with the drug. The Institute had developed it by testing it on him. Plus, a few months before, I’d pumped him full of the stuff in an attempt to repress his demon side. He hadn’t reacted well. Shadows crossed his face as the history flittered through his mind. For a few seconds, I feared the memories might flick his demon switches, and I’d be captured in ice in the next breath. Finally, after what was probably only a few seconds but felt like minutes, he lifted his head. “You’re a lot stronger than you realize.”
“I’m really not. I’m propping myself up with alcohol. I hunt demons every night, hoping one might get lucky and kill me.” Yeah, there was that ugly truth out in the open. I hadn’t even been sure until that moment when the words were out and they sounded right. My lips twisted. Self-disgust churned my stomach. “I don’t trust myself. Not even a little bit. My thoughts are all over the place. I can’t decide, right now, if I wanna curl up in a ball an’ cry, go out on the streets and kill demons—and I mean kill them, not just deport their asses—or if I should jump you because the lust in my veins is driving me crazy. My demon wants a piece of you. She wants to burn everything to the ground, and she quite likes the idea of the princes showing up so we have an excuse to go all Mother-of-Destruction on them and destroy anything within range in the process. And underneath all that neurosis, Damien sits and waits, like some fucking monster ready to swallow me whole and spit me out, stripped of my humanity. So tell me again how I’m stronger than I realize.” Breathless and trembling, I whispered, “Jerry said half-bloods shouldn’t exist. That what we are—it’s impossible. I think I know what he means now. I can’t do this any more.” Dammit, I wasn’t going to cry in front of Stefan. He’d been through just as much, if not worse, and he wasn’t a jabbering wreck. Why couldn’t I get my shit together? I attempted a smile, as though that could paint over all the emotional cracks.
Stefan’s lips barely twitched in response, but the diamond hardness of his eyes softened. For a few moments, I feared he might cross the room and gather me into his arms. I surprised myself by wanting it to happen, needing it to happen. But he didn’t move, and neither did I. Always distant. I couldn’t blame him. It was probably for the best.
“You’re so much more than you think.” Jaw set, he gave a gentle shake of his head. “You think you’re weak. You’re not. So you’re not perfect. Survivors generally aren’t. I’ve seen victims, Muse. You aren’t one of them. You’ve survived everything the netherworld has thrown at you. You’ll never let it destroy you.”
I wished I had his faith in me.
I straightened and denied the doubt purchase in my thoughts. I’d come this far. I wasn’t going to lose my mind. Not yet. If the princes were coming, there were only a handful of people who could do anything about it. I was one. Stefan was another. He’d have a plan. He always had a plan. “What are we going to do?”
“We meet Val’s force head-on. Get to the Institute half-bloods—that’ll make four of us. Val has three. We can beat back his attack here, or we take the fight to him.”
Just the thought of releasing my demon sent shivers twitching through me: good shivers, bad ones, lust, desire, madness. If I had to go back to the netherworld, I’d be gone the second I stepped through the veil. My demon would win. Would I be like Stefan? Cold? Distant?
I needed a drink. “Seven half- bloods for seven princes,” I mumbled. Surely that wasn’t a coincidence. The universe prefers order. What would chaos do to it should the princes prevail?
“Four princes,” Stefan corrected.
Right. One was here with me. Akil was locked down at the Institute, and the Prince of Envy had been killed by a little half-blood girl, a crime for which I’d volunteered to shoulder the blame. That left Sloth, Lust, and Gluttony. I was long overdue a date with the Prince of Lust—Asmodeus, my father—but had no desire to speed that process up.
The few bites I’d had of breakfast churned in my stomach at the thought of facing him. “What do you need me to do?”
“Find Operation Typhon’s Subjects Gamma and Delta at the Institute.”
“Okay, I can try, but I don’t know where Adam’s base of operations is.”
“Then find out. Appeal to my father’s scientific side. If he thinks he can get some value out of you, he’ll tell you anything. Nothing gets between him and the progress of the Institute. Plus, he’s fascinated by you. You’re the one that got away…” Stefan relaxed back against the wall and rubbed at his forehead. “I can’t go near him. I’ll kill him.”
I figured Adam was on Stefan’s hit list. He was on mine. I puffed out a sigh and raked a hand through my hair. I really wasn’t up to this. “How long do we have?”
“I don’t know… A week maybe. I only get whispers, pieces of their thoughts, bits of conversations. I try not to delve into what I’m hearing. Half of it I don’t even understand. I’m not sure I want to. I do know they’re concerned about Akil’s disappearance. It’s giving them pause.”
“Is he part of their plan?” I asked, careful not to p
ut too much weight into the question. Mentioning Akil within earshot of Stefan was like jumping on thin, cracked ice.
Stefan’s smile was far from kind. To call it a sneer didn’t do it justice. He smiled like a demon, hungry for the kill. “No, they despise him almost as much as they hate me. They’re afraid of him too.” Pausing, he seemed to mull over his last words. “He knows something that has them rattled. Whatever it is, they’re not happy about it. They suspect Akil was behind the Prince of Envy’s demise. They believe you’re Akil’s tool. They’re all too aware they’ve underestimated him.”
Didn’t everyone? They were probably right about all of it. Akil had manipulated the events that brought down the Institute. He could easily have steered the Prince of Envy into my path. If I thought about it for long enough, everything could be traced back to Akil. But confirmation that he was on our side had to be good news. At least, he had been on our team, before Adam locked him up. Now his motives were anyone’s guess. I needed to see him, to find out what he knew, to get the answers he owed me. “Akil told me the King of Hell could stop what’s coming. Have you heard anything like that?”
“No.” By the slight inflection of the word and arch of his brow, I could see I’d clearly piqued Stefan’s curiosity. “Really?”
I didn’t entirely trust Stefan and wasn’t sure whether any of the information I’d gleaned from Akil would help. It was all sporadic bits of dubious stories, nothing solid. But given the circumstances, rumors and speculation were all we had. “Alright… He told me there had once been a queen and king of the netherworld. When both ruled, they’d maintained a balance. But the queen killed the king, and the princes turned on her... That was pretty much when the netherworld went to hell.” I left out the part where I believed Akil was the king. He had told me the true king was hiding, but Akil hid the truth in plain sight. Stefan and Akil were destined to kill each other, like two freight trains on the same track. It was an unavoidable fact. I needed to keep them apart, especially if the so-called king could stop the demons.
“There’s a King of Hell?” Stefan had the same look on his face I must have had when I discovered the princes weren’t the worst the netherworld had to offer: an expression of abject shock and awe. “And Akil knows where he is?” I nodded. “That’s why the princes fear him. Do you know where Akil is?”
“Yeah, I do.” I hedged. “But I don’t want to tell you, especially after what you’ve said about who’s in your driver’s seat. Trust me, okay. Don’t ask. I’ll get to the bottom of the king rumors. If there’s truth in it, I’ll tell you.”
He nodded. “I do trust you.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Life is pretty simple now that the demon has control. Our past is irrelevant.”
There was so much wrong with his words that I pinned my lips closed and shoved the shock aside. It shouldn’t be that simple. Human beings are made up of turmoil. We challenge ourselves, we second-guess, we doubt, we live, we love, and we’re complicated, messy, and outright destructive. Stefan’s words denied all of that. Our past wasn’t irrelevant. It was right here in the room with us, but he didn’t feel it. That was how he was able to sit and chat like nothing had happened. He no longer cared.
I busied myself tidying away the breakfast neither of us had eaten so he couldn’t see the despair tugging at my face. “I guess you’re leaving again?”
“I need to get closer to Val’s half-bloods to see what we’re up against. I might be able to buy us more time.”
The thought of Stefan confronting my brother had my stomach fluttering with nerves. “Watch Val’s wings. They’re lethal.”
“So are mine,” he said from too close behind me. I turned, just enough to see he’d moved from the window to the breakfast bar, and was close enough to reach out and touch. My imagination played the scene of me doing just that, and in my head, things quickly escalated to more carnal endeavors. If what he said was true, I might never know him intimately again, and that thought, like so many others while in his presence, added to my burden.
Stefan could only wonder at the color in my cheeks. If he’d felt anything for me, it was probably buried under his demon’s desires. Demons don’t love. Maybe he never had.
I smiled despite my broiling emotions. “You know what? Maybe when all this is over, we can go out, grab a bite to eat, maybe catch a movie. Like normal people do.” I watched closely, trying to determine if what I saw was real or just a demon act.
“Like a date?” A frown touched his face, but didn’t cut deeply. Playful suspicion chased it away. He leaned a hip against the cupboard and crossed his arms. That trademark smile tugged at his lips. When he looked like that, I could forget how he’d changed. That smile reminded me of the old Stefan, living the demon-slayer dream: the wise-ass cocky half blood, with his red coat, flashy guns, and quick wit. So in control. So confident in his half-blood nature. His enthusiasm and lust for life had attracted me like a moth to the flame. But like those moths, we’d both been burned by our attraction. Yet, there I was, like an idiot, attracted to the cool burn of him all over again.
“Yeah, like a date…” I filed the plates in the dishwasher, keeping him in my peripheral vision.
“Did you just ask me out?”
“Yeah.” I gathered various plates, careful not to catch his eye, and loaded the dishwasher. “You got a problem with that?”
“Will there be ice cream?”
“Definitely.”
“Deal.”
I kicked the door closed on the dishwasher and straightened to face him. “You realize you’ve just made a deal with the Mother of Destruction?”
His eyes sparkled. “Will I forfeit my soul if I call it off?”
“Totally. No backing out, or I’ll send in my minion.” Jonesy prrped on cue despite not lifting his head.
“Hell no. My soul is all the human I have let in me.”
Chapter Five
Less than an hour later and back at Stone’s Throw, Ben didn’t hesitate when I ordered whiskey this time. He frowned at the hostile crowd and back at me while he fixed my drink. I wasn’t welcome, but it was a public bar, and unless Ben barred me, I could do whatever the hell I wanted there. Still, having half a dozen enforcers eying my head for a trophy wasn’t a particularly pleasant feeling. Ryder had made their thoughts pretty clear. I was the enemy. Adam’s intervention was likely the only thing preventing his elite squads from taking me out. I didn’t want trouble. I needed to get into the base of operations with my hands free and my demon intact. That wasn’t going to happen if I pissed them off. Time to play the good little half-demon consultant.
“Muse.” Adam acknowledged me with a nod then strode on by and sat at a table with a handful of enforcers. They spoke too quietly for me to listen in. As much as I wanted to overhear their conversation, looming behind Adam wasn’t going to win my any favors. I roamed the bar, checking out the incident wall. After twenty minutes, Adam finally joined me.
Adam towered over my itty-bitty five-foot nothing, intimidating me just by standing right next to me. Adam had the kind of natural strength you can’t hone at the gym. Good genes. Like his son.
A headache throbbed up my neck and around my temples. I took a sip of my whiskey and welcomed the burn. “How’s it going with Akil?”
He folded his arms over his chest and regarded the countless photos and documents pinned to the wall. It took a while for him to reply. So long in fact, I wondered if I was getting the silent treatment. “There was an incident.” The grave timber of his words made it clear things weren’t going well. “Conflicting reports say he wasn’t restrained properly or that he convinced one of the team to loosen the tethers. Either way, he killed one of the lab assistants and broke the arm of another before he could be…restrained again.”
“He did all that while still tied up?” What did Adam think was going to happen? You don’t capture a wild animal and expect it to roll over and let you tickle its belly.
Adam brushed a hand ov
er his chin, bristling the day’s worth of whiskers. “The lab technicians will be more careful in future.”
A member of his staff had been killed, and he thought it would teach his staff a lesson. Those reactions were why Adam ruffled my demon bristles the wrong way. “Have you got anything of worth out of him?”
“It’s early days.”
“Yeah, lots of time to lose more valued staff members.”
Adam pointed at a photo on the wall. By the shoddy focus, I figured it had been taken with a cell phone, but it was clear enough to show the hideous lesser demon with its beast-like maw about to devour what looked like a human arm. “This demon took out a family walking in the park and tore them to shreds in broad daylight in a crowd of thirty people. It turned on others. Killed eight people in total.”
I tore my gaze away from the forensic scene photograph only to find Adam pointing at another.
“A fight broke out at the Aquarium,” he continued. “In the confined space, this demon killed seven and wounded fifteen people before staff trapped it in a side room.” His throat moved as he swallowed. The lines around his eyes pinched as he removed his glasses and wiped them clean on his shirt. “They’re coming through faster then we can send them back or kill them. It’s chaos.”
I bit back the urge to tell him to release Akil. He wouldn’t, even though he should. In Adam’s world, all demons were evil. The lesser demons, the ones without conscious thoughts, no more aware of what they were doing than wild animals, the no-name demons, just trying to get by, and the princes, they were all evil and needed to be destroyed. None more so than the Princes of Hell. “I can get information from Akil. Your people won’t get anything of value out of him, not in this century, and you don’t have a lifetime to question him.”
He slid his glasses back on and regarded me with a heavy sigh. “If I let you in there, he’ll kill you. Of that, he’s been quite vocal.”
I moistened my lips and scanned the pictures without really seeing them. Adam didn’t know how deeply my relationship with Akil flowed. Nobody really did. I often wondered about it myself. Stefan had suggested I give his father something Adam couldn’t refuse investigating. If I played this right, I could get into the Institute’s base and hopefully within spitting distance of the Operation Typhon Subjects. The other half bloods had to be near where they kept Akil. How many secret lairs could one organization have?
Drowning In The Dark: #4 The Veil Series Page 4