Revealed in Fire (Demon Days, Vampire Nights World Book 9)

by K. F. Breene

  I stood my ground, taking the pain. Owning it. Pushing past it. When bonding Darius, I’d been on the brink of death. I’d nearly bled out, a necessary part of the bonding process. I’d felt what it was like to walk the line, and I’d come out the other side stronger for it. Not easily ruffled. Not apt to panic.

  Harnessing my inner fire, wrapping myself in ice, I rose to the challenge. I rose to their magic. I was my father’s daughter. Running through my veins was the blood of the ruler of the Underworld and, with it, the blood of gods. My power equaled theirs, but my might didn’t stem from that. It stemmed from my experiences. My ability to survive. My ruthlessness when threatened and my undying loyalty to my loved ones.

  I was the Underworld—I was love and lust, hate and violence. I could forgive, but I could also wield my wrath with no impunity.

  In a blinding flash of power, I struck back. The ground rumbled. The windows shook, then exploded outward. Those by the walls quailed, sinking. The magic all around me throbbed, fighting.

  Run, Emery thought, and I knew the best I could hope for was to get out from under these elves. They were more experienced, and experience would ultimately decide the victor, but damn it, I wanted to go head to head and come out swinging.

  Run! Penny thought.

  The spell they unleashed widened my eyes. It filled the room and then some, blistering in its intensity, nearly as powerful as the magic coursing through me and the elf royalty. The natural dual-mages had godly power, and they were showing their might.

  The spell slammed into the onlookers before rushing for the thrones. Agonized screams drowned out the crackling of fire. Eyes popped out and bodies twisted. Bones broke, snapping as arms and legs curled in on themselves. Skin continued to melt from the other spell, and now it peeled away in strips, like from an invisible potato peeler.

  “Go,” Emery said, grabbing my arm and yanking. “Go!”

  I spun and pushed Penny forward before bending to haul Dizzy up to his feet. Emery helped Callie, and we sped for the door. A wall of elves waited for us, trapping us in.

  Our magic together, Penny thought.

  She’d handle the togetherness part, I knew, so I swelled my ice magic and readied to shove it in front of us. A spell wafted up, latching on to my power and adding it to the might of the natural dual-mages.

  “Ignite with your fire,” she yelled back, clearly forgetting she didn’t need to verbalize her thoughts.

  I did, starting with a spark and burning hot. That spark turned into an electrical explosion that likely meant Penny was close enough to Charity to borrow her magic too. A concussion of air blew out from Penny, crashing into the wall and flinging it backward. The doors got caught in the push, ripped from their hinges and frame. They banged and tumbled into the room beyond, squishing bodies as they did so.

  In the waiting room, power surged and swords swung, four elves to every fae, and more coming into the room from the other side. The elves were attempting to subdue the fae somehow, maybe tie them up, I didn’t know, and I didn’t plan on sticking around to find out. The fae wouldn’t be killed. We would.

  “I blame the Seers for this,” I said to absolutely no one, wasting no time, hefting Dizzy into a wedding-night hold and sprinting for the hall. Penny stayed close behind me, a natural runner, and Emery thankfully kept up, carrying Callie.

  More elves ran our way. I crushed them with air, in no mood to spare anyone. They squished against the rug, and I jumped over the bodies. I heard Penny gag behind me. Around a bend and into a larger room, I eyed the windows.

  “We need to get out of the castle—”

  “Look. Watch out!” Penny screeched.

  A jet of magic hurtled our way, ripping through my middle and trying to come out the other side. It wasn’t as strong as the royals’ magic, though, and I counteracted it with my own power. Spells rose from Penny and Emery even as Penny groaned and sank down. The spells must’ve been the tracking type, because they seeped through a cracked open door in front of us. Screams ensued.

  “Let me down to fight,” Dizzy said, struggling out of my grasp.

  “No! We’re not fighting, we’re running, and you don’t do that fast enough.” I squeezed him tighter.

  “I feel ridiculous,” he shot back.

  “You also look ridiculous. Just go with it!”

  I barely stopped when I reached the tall but fairly thin doors, jumping with Dizzy in my arms and kicking. The wood cracked into the head of someone who was already sinking from Penny’s spell, the damage clearly internal, because I couldn’t see the effects.

  “Using their magic against them. Nice, Turdswallop,” Emery said with pride.

  The next room opened up to a space as tall as the throne room. It had tall windows along one side and doors on the other, plus a second-floor balcony looking down. I skidded to a halt, my eyes widening, my stomach dropping out of me.

  “Turn around,” I yelled, trying to back-pedal and bumping up against Penny. “Turn around! This is a kill zone!”

  “Too late.” Emery’s voice was suddenly rough, realization dawning.

  Doors opened and bodies entered, their swishing clothes moving in the unseen wind, their outfits formfitting and made from tough material that would undoubtedly make them more difficult to kill. They stood in a line on the railing above, their position giving them a clear advantage. They poured in through the downstairs doorways and spread out in numbers.

  This was the fighting force, and they had us surrounded.

  Twenty-Two

  “When I say go, run for the windows,” Reagan said in a low tone that made Penny’s small hairs stand on end. “Jump through and get out of here. They can’t have much of a force on the outside if they have all these people in here.”

  She gave Penny a shove that also jostled Emery and Callie, who was uncharacteristically quiet in his arms. “There is no way we’re going to get through the windows,” Penny whispered at Reagan. “They’ll grab us before we do.”

  “I’ll make sure that does not happen.” Reagan set Dizzy down and ushered him behind her.

  “Right, fine, but then they’ll just chase us down. We need a new plan. We need to think—”

  “No. Not all of us. Just you four,” Reagan said, and Penny knew she was speaking to Emery. “It’s me they want. They want you too, but they’ll let it go if it helps them get me.”

  “No.” Penny grabbed Reagan’s shoulder as even more elves crowded into the room, their hands in front of them and their magic building. Penny could feel it. Trap. Kill. Destroy. The elves had a different goal for each of them, and none of them were good. “No, you’re coming too. We can get out of here. All of us can. Maybe if you yell for the shifters or—”

  Reagan whirled and leaned in, her face now a foot from Penny’s, eyes lit with fire and determination. “You are here because of me. I will not let them have you,” she said, and Penny knew in her heart of hearts this was the start of a goodbye. Heat prickled her eyes as Reagan kept talking. “They won’t kill me right away. They see value in me. They’ll keep me alive until they figure out what to do with me. They will kill you, though. All of you. You cannot be caught, do you hear me? You need to run.”

  “But…” A tear slipped down Penny’s cheek.

  “Miss Somerset,” one of the elves said, stepping forward, and Penny harnessed their magic and cut out that blasted fake wind tousling their hair, ripping it from the room and exploding it upward. The elves on the balcony flinched, but they didn’t crouch, squeal, or duck. These were trained forces, and there were definitely too many of them for their small crew to take on. Even if they managed the impossible and defeated this many elves, reinforcements would arrive before they could escape. “Give it up. You must know this is the end.”

  “You need to go,” Reagan told Penny urgently. “Get Darius. He’ll figure something out.”

  Penny nodded mutely, her heart breaking, sobs threatening to overcome her. Because Reagan was sacrificing herself to save th
em.

  “You are one of my best friends,” Penny told her. “I will return the favor and rescue you.”

  Reagan smiled, her velvety brown eyes softening a little. “I knew it.” She stuck her finger in Penny’s face. “I knew you would grow to like me. See? I’m always right.”

  “Okay, but”—Penny wiped her face with the back of her hand—“don’t gloat about it or anything.”

  “I am going to gloat. I’m going to gloat all day long.”

  “Reagan.” Dizzy’s eyes were mournful. He shook his head, also at a loss. Callie didn’t utter a sound. Her face was closed down in a bulldog expression, but her eyes were glassy. Helpless.

  Surprisingly, Reagan laughed. “You guys need to lighten up.” She shrugged. “It’s good. I’m going to blow this bitch sky-high. I’m going to be the absolute worst prisoner they’ve ever dealt with in their lives. They will loathe the day they made this decision. In three…”

  “This has to be part of the overall journey somehow,” Penny said, partially to herself, clutching Reagan’s arm. It had to be. Her mother wasn’t wrong. Not on big things. And both she and the Red Prophet had told them to come here, and to do it without Darius.

  Except what if they’d been wrong? Or what if the crux of the crossroads had been in that throne room and they’d gone down the wrong path?

  The elf said something that Penny couldn’t make out in her panic.

  “I’ll be with you in one second, fancy dresser,” Reagan said. “I’m just saying goodbye to my friends before you kill them.” She glanced the elf’s way. “You are going to kill them, correct?”

  “If they come quietly, we will hang them, as befits enemies of the kingdom.”

  “Yeah. That’s a real good reason for them to come quietly, sure. Tell me, are all elves this stupid? Because I haven’t actually met a smart one.” She held up her finger. “Wait, don’t answer. It’ll just annoy me, and I’m busy.”

  Penny felt Emery’s hand on her shoulder. “We will stand together at the final battle,” Penny continued, thinking of her mother’s first vision of the three of them, together at the end. She had to believe in it. She had to. “My mom wouldn’t send you to your death. This has to be part of the plan. It has to be.”

  “Whatever it is, it will be.” Reagan’s smile was serene, and Penny knew that meant she was about to partake in one of her favorite activities: demolition. “And that’ll happen in two…”

  “We’ll be back,” Emery told Reagan, or maybe it was Penny, because she couldn’t bring herself to budge. She didn’t want to leave her friend to this. She didn’t know if she could.

  Reagan paused in her counting. “You’re only allowed to say that line if you use an Austrian accent.”

  “Get ready to run, Penny Bristol,” Emery said in Penny’s ear. “They won’t kill her. We’ll get out, round up Darius and Cahal, and regroup. We will be back for her. We might be running now, but we will come back. She needs you to stay alive. That’s the only way she gets out of here. You are the yang to her yin. You need to stay alive.”

  “I hate to say it, but he’s right,” Callie said, leaning in. “If there was any other way, we’d take it.”

  “There’s no time to call a circle right now, or we’d summon a demon to fill Lucifer in on the situation,” Dizzy added, and he’d kind of missed the mark on acceptable solutions. The whole point of coming here was to avoid Lucifer.

  “One… Go!” Reagan spun, and then Emery was jostling Penny, yanking at her, running with her, corralling the older dual-mages.

  “Use her magic and bust us out of here, Penny,” he yelled as elves swung up swords in a neat sort of unity and prepared for battle.

  “What’s up, fuckers!” Reagan shouted, her voice echoing through the room. “Come at me!”

  Air punched out in all directions, hitting all the windows at once, knocking the glass out. The elves standing in front were thrown against them. Another blast of air took out the frames. A third blast blew out the walls and the elves with it. The power built, expanding, growing, filling the room with such unspeakable menace that Penny felt her limbs shaking. She’d stopped without realizing it. So had Emery and the older dual-mages.

  “Come on!” Emery got them moving again, but bright light made Penny look back, her heart in her throat, tears streaming down her face. Reagan bent at the knees, slapped two hands together, and shot a thick stream of hellfire at the columns above. It sliced through stone like it was water, bodies like they had always been two halves, the walls beyond with just as much power.

  “If I’m going down,” Reagan hollered, “you’re all going down with me!”

  “Oh crap, she’s really going to do it,” Penny said, dragged out through the gaping side in the building.

  Fire blasted out all around Reagan, the heat forcing Penny to duck away and throw an arm over her face. Glass crackled under her feet. Shouts rang out outside. A roar reverberated off the building. The shifters were outside.

  “Go toward the shifters,” Emery yelled. “Penny, come on! You can’t help her now.”

  Penny looked back one more time. Reagan stood within a bonfire, holding elves with her air magic and burning them alive while she cut down the top floor and punched at the walls and the ceiling. She was going out in one hell of a fight, and Penny doubted there’d be anyone left. Not in that room, anyway.

  “We could’ve stayed,” she said, pulling to go back. “She can handle them. All by herself she can—”

  But the fire was being pushed back on one side by unseen hands, the powerful elves now fighting back. The hellfire lost potency, winking out. Reagan sagged but didn’t stop. Spells were next, and she started throwing them before faltering, sinking to a knee, fighting what Penny knew had to be powerful waves of magic. Reagan hadn’t held anything back. She’d started with everything she had. She didn’t have the energy to keep going—she only had the energy to give her friends a chance to escape.

  Resolve hardened, and then Penny was running for all she was worth, throwing spells, hurling insults replete with the worst actual swear words she knew, all while blinking back a stream of tears.

  “I will avenge her,” she said as she turned a corner and tore down three elves trying to stab a lion. “I will avenge her and make the elves pay for this!”

  “First, you need to live.” Emery pulled her toward the pack of wolves organizing, Roger at the front. They were clearly under attack too, but they’d made it out of the castle. “Callie, Dizzy, get into the Brink and tell Karen what happened here,” Emery said as they ran, moving much slower with the older dual-mages. “Do not get caught.”

  “What do you think we are, stupid?” Callie clapped back.

  “Penny and I will get Darius. We’ll call you when we can.”

  “Good.”

  Emery put on a burst of speed, and Penny caught up. He glanced at her as they ran. “The shifters will get the fae out, or they’ll bring in more people who can. I still don’t think the elves will try to kill the fae. They’d be incredibly stupid to do that. If I were a betting man, I’d say they were keeping the fae contained, and the shifters out of the way, so they could grab Reagan. And us. They’ll probably try to talk Romulus around. We need to get out of here. We need to let them handle it.”

  “Are you sure they won’t kill Reagan?”

  “If they do, there will be war.”

  “There’ll be war anyway.”

  “Not if they can talk the fae around and make some sort of deal with Lucifer. They are ten times more conniving than the vampires, Penny. Their best interest is to keep Reagan alive and use her as collateral.”

  Either way, their friend would be lost.

  “We need to get Darius,” Penny said.

  She hoped to hell he’d be enough.

  Twenty-Three

  Lucifer stared down at the blueprint for the new resting area without really seeing it, his mind churning. There had been a lot of turmoil in the Dark Kingdom of late.

&n
bsp; Time rippled out behind him, a river of it, and over the many, many centuries, there had been natural rises and falls in activity as various factions or individuals fought for placement or peace, but this was different.

  The traders across the river had suddenly become much more sophisticated. Squabbles for goods or power had turned into organized plays for strength and power in the Edges. The quality of trade had risen, and in turn, the riches had quadrupled. Because of that, those in the kingdom looked outward with interest, making more frequent trips, staying longer, and returning with a heightened sense of ambition and purpose. His people were fighting for larger territories, requesting larger sporting battlegrounds and leisure sex huts, and seeking more robust entertainment…

  Something had stirred them.

  He tapped his charcoal stick against the parchment, leaving dots of black along the edges.

  Magic had worked its way into the kingdom as well. Hardwearing, complex, powerful magic, the likes of which Lucifer had rarely seen. It was being brought in through the Realm, but sources said it was created in the Brink and transported through a series of intricate steps that had completely slipped the elves’ notice. Rumor had it that a mastermind elder vampire was behind the scheme.

  Lucifer dropped his charcoal and stood, strolling across his workroom, watching the play of light against the marble floors. He stopped at a large window that overlooked the garden dedicated to his most recent love, a woman who could bloom flowers with her laugh and wilt men with her glare.

  Instead of lingering on her memory, a pleasant distraction, he lifted his gaze to the sky, summoning images of the various areas in his kingdom—a magical form of surveillance he’d instituted after getting the idea from the Brink. The Brink had such remarkable ways of tracking and spying on its subjects. It had been incredibly useful. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. Even now, after an endless life, he could still learn from others and benefit from their efforts.