Jack? Jack was the idiot mortal who’d given Nama the gun. With his Alpha Kappa sweatshirt and old baseball cap, he looked completely out of place here.
My blood turned to ice, my thoughts whirling out of control. My two worlds were colliding now in the most terrible way possible.
Of course Jack was the idiot mortal in question. Right now, he looked fairly terrified, his eyes shifting from one demon to another. And when I looked closely, I could see that new bruises marred his face. His lip had been split, and purple bloomed over his cheekbones and jaw.
Nama handed the lantern to Lydia.
“What’s going on?” I demanded through gritted teeth. I could no longer keep up the pretense of being calm and collected. Right now, my shadow-self was nowhere to be found.
With a smug smile, Nama folded her arms. As she did, the gun went off, and she screamed. Bits of rock and sand sprayed over the room.
Jack held up his hands. “Careful with that!”
Nama frowned at the gun. “These things are confusing.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I had a hunch that you spent a lot of time around mortals, Mortana. You just seemed kind of grotesque like they are. You know, like an animal. A filthy, rutting animal.”
I curled my lips in a snarl. “Have you lost your mind?”
She shrugged. “So I did a little digging. I spent today hunting around Osborne until I saw a picture of your face in a trophy closet. A track team.” She wrinkled her nose and turned to the dukes. “Humans compete against each other in running races, even though they’re slow as fuck. But do you really think it’s fair for a demon to be on a mortal track team?”
My stomach plummeted, and I watched as she crossed to Jack. She gripped him by the hair, pulling his head back, then pointed the gun at his chin. “Then things got a little more interesting. This little fucker tried to shoot me. Apparently, he fancies himself something of a demon hunter.”
Jack was shaking violently. Holy hell. Was I on the same side as Jack right now? I didn’t like that at all.
Nama slapped him across the face with her free hand. “I beat him until he told me about the picture of Mortana. Except he said her name wasn’t Mortana. He said her name was Rowan Morgenstern. And he is quite sure that you’re mortal.” She let go of him and whirled to face me. “Apparently, he can smell demons.”
I shook my head, genuinely confused. “What?”
Nama pointed the gun at his pendant—the silver one with the hammer. “The Corwins are witch finders and demon hunters.”
Jack nodded, a frantic look in his eyes. “I can smell demons. I could hunt them, if I felt like it.” He held up his hands, his face pale. “But I don’t! I never have. I just carry the gun for protection. I thought Nama was a threat. I knew your kind are all around, and I knew you might come after me because of what my family did. That was why I tried to shoot Nama. It was just self-defense. I swear—”
“Be quiet, you fuckwit mortal!” bellowed one of the dukes, a man with long black hair. “We did not come here for your trial. We came here to try the succubus. Nama claims that she’s not actually a succubus. You’re here as a witness. That is your role.”
I flexed my wrists in the ropes. “And you all are the judges?”
Nama gestured at me with the gun. “The king seems taken with you, and he won’t listen to me unless I have witnesses.” She pointed the gun at the other demons. “These are my witnesses. What I really, really want is to attend a barbecue in the Tower of Baal, with a mortal whore as the main course. I haven’t eaten roasted mortal in a long time.”
Oh, God.
“Watch it with the gun!” said Jack, his hands up. “Since I’ve done what you asked, can I leave now? We had a deal. I told you she’s mortal. She smells like a mortal, I swear to God. Burn her, have your fun, just let me go.”
“Fine!” Nama barked. “I can’t kill you since I might need you later. But if I ever catch you hunting demons, I’ll rip your guts out through your mouth.”
Jack turned and sprinted out through the tunnel.
I kept squirming, trying to pull at the ropes, but there was no point. Since I didn’t actually have demonic strength, all I was doing was scraping my skin off. With a thundering heart, I turned to look at Orion. His eyes were starting to open again, and he met my gaze.
“Why is he here, Nama?” I asked.
She grimaced. “I want him to see that you’ve been lying to him. You’re nothing but a filthy little doppelgänger, aren’t you? I want him to realize that I was right all along. I’m the right person for him. And if you were actually a demon, you wouldn’t have such a hard time getting out of rope bonds, would you? It’s just rope. Any demon can break it.”
“Maybe I don’t care to prove myself to you,” I said breezily. “Maybe I don’t want to be part of your stupid little game.”
This was the very definition of being caught between a rock and a hard place. If I told them about the locking spell, I’d die at Orion’s hands. If I were a mortal, I’d die at theirs.
My body shook. “You think that he’ll love you after you shot him?” I asked. “You’re insane.”
She crossed to me, her eyes wild and fanatical. “He’ll see that I did it because I love him. All of this, everything that I’m doing, is for him. For us. We’re meant to be.”
Lydia crossed her arms. “Can we get on with it, Nama? Your obsession with him is frankly depressing, and it’s making me regret sharing a gender with you. I should have listened to Legion. The duke of the Sathanas Ward said you were a lunatic.”
“What, exactly, are we getting on with?” My voice was shaking so hard they had to know by now that I wasn’t Mortana. I sounded terrified. “I told you that I’m not participating.”
Orion’s eyes opened just a little wider, pure black now. I could feel the room growing hotter.
“Maybe you need a little motivation.” Nama pointed her gun at Orion. “Here’s how the trial will work. I’m going to keep shooting Orion. His knees, his hand. Maybe his pretty face.”
“You just said you loved him!” I shouted, sounding frantic. I couldn’t keep up the act anymore.
Her face beamed. “Yes, Mortana. And if I can’t have him, no one else will. That’s how much I love him.”
Lydia pinched her nose. “Oh, my God, Nama.”
“So here’s how the first trial works,” Nama went on. “You prove that you’re a demon and save him. Or you can stay tied to your chair like a weak little mortal and show him that you’re an animal.”
I gritted my teeth, my entire body shaking. “What if I don’t care what happens to him?”
Nama grinned, her eyes maniacal now. She turned to Orion. “Then you prove that you don’t deserve him! You don’t even care enough to get up to help him. And I care enough about him to do all this.”
“Excuse me,” the Duke of Mammon interrupted, his golden rings gleaming. “We’re not putting her on trial to see if she cares about Orion. I just want to ensure we’re not giving our hard-earned tax revenue to a mortal. If she’s a demon, I don’t give a fuck if she cares about Orion.”
“I do!” Nama bellowed, then whirled, aimed the gun at me, and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 37
Pain exploded through my leg, the agony so shocking I could no longer think straight. My mind went dark for a second, and when my vision cleared again, I saw that she’d turned the gun back on Orion.
Nama’s laughter echoed off the stone walls. “Now let’s try Orion, my beloved. Show us how strong you are, Mortana. Show us you can use that fire magic of yours.”
She pulled the trigger and shot Orion in his kneecap. I watched as his eyes went dark, and a blast of heat pulsed through the room.
I could feel it again—that rising anger. The rage. Pure strength coursed through my body, and an ancient fury that could melt rock to stone. Darkness spilled through my blood like ink. My shadow-self was rising to the surface like molten lava, and I could no longer feel the pain of the bullet in my l
eg.
Mortals and ruthless demons had murdered Orion’s family in front of him when he was just a boy. They’d locked him in a room alone with his haunting memories. Most people would be broken by that. And now they’d dragged him here to a tunnel to torture him some more.
Fury ignited in my blood, and I could feel the ropes straining at my wrists. A light was beaming from my forehead, my chest growing hotter. Brighter. Deep down, the buried truth—the one I’d hidden from myself—was that I was stronger than all these fuckers.
And I’d kill to protect those I loved. I’d make them regret that they’d been born.
Nama aimed the gun at Orion’s face. “It’s so pretty, Orion. You know, I think that’s your problem. Your face is too pretty, and I need to make you feel—”
I would bathe my enemies in flames. I’d stop when they lay as piles of ash.
The rope shredded behind me, and hot wrath erupted.
I didn’t know the fire was streaming from my body until I smelled the burning flesh. Only then did I see the flames that filled the vault, a pure inferno of death. A vortex of molten heat.
They wanted to put me on trial?
I was Hell itself. I would burn the wicked from this earth. I was born to rule.
The flames snapped back into my body, and I gasped, looking down at myself. Pure power imbued my body, and my legs started to shake.
Magic. Powerful, terrifying magic.
The locking spell had been unlocked. I felt unsteady on my feet, in shock from what had just happened.
I was in a nightmare.
My clothes were singed, partly burned off, and my legs bare from the thighs down. Enormous piles of ash lay on the floor where three of the demons had been standing. To my right, soot covered Lydia and her seared clothes. Ashes filled the air.
Lydia gaped at where the other demons had been standing. “I guess Nama was wrong,” she said in a daze.
With a slamming heart, I stared as she ran out of the tunnel. I looked down at my hands, at my glowing fingers. Flames flickered from them like candles. I felt a jolt of magic sizzle through my arms, electrifying me down to my fingertips.
When I turned to look at Orion, a new horror coursed through my bones. The chains had melted off him, and he rose to his feet, his eyes black as night. Seems he had strength in him, after all. His clothes had been burned off in places, exposing arms and thighs thickly corded with muscle.
The pure hatred in his features made my heart stop. Time seemed to slow down, and a phantom breeze toyed with his silver hair.
But it was the mark on his forehead that made me want to murder him.
A five-pointed star.
There he was—the fucking Lightbringer. The ruler of demons.
Battle fury rippled through my body, and I could feel the air heating up around us, but I had no idea if the source was Orion or me. I only knew the stones were starting to glow beneath us, red hot. The silence pressed on us, heavy as soil in a grave.
My shoulder blades tingled with some ancient instinct to unleash my wings.
Orion’s lip curled, and shadows coiled around him like smoke. “Mortana,” he snarled, his voice a frigid blade that cut me to the core. “There you are.”
“There’s the Lightbringer,” I hissed. “You’ve made a remarkable recovery.”
“I wasn’t that hurt. I wanted to learn the truth about you as much as they did. And now I know. You managed to disguise yourself as a mortal.”
I pointed at him, feeling like the betrayal was eating me alive. “I know what happened now. You killed my mom. You made a blood oath to murder everyone in Mortana’s family, and that included my mother. This whole time, you were pretending to help me find her killer, and you knew it was you.”
He shook his head slowly, and I wasn’t sure what that meant. I only knew he looked like he was going to rip my head from my body.
I wasn’t sure which of us moved first, but in the next moment, he was pinning me up against the wall, and my feet were off the ground. His hand clamped around my throat, and he pressed me hard against the stone. Endless darkness burned in his eyes. “Mortana,” he snarled. “It is deeply unfortunate that the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen is also my worst enemy.”
But I wasn’t a weak mortal anymore, and I could fight back. My self-defense classes came roaring into my mind, except now with the strength of a god. I raised my arms, slamming my hands against his wrists. At the same time, I brought my knee up hard into his groin.
He dropped his grip on me, and I lunged forward, aiming for his face with my fist. But he grabbed my hand and twisted it behind my back, and when he shoved me against the wall with bone-breaking force, the air left my lungs.
“Did you know?” His quiet voice was like an ancient curse. “Did you know how I would feel when I learned the truth? Is that why you did it?”
“I don’t know anything.” I kicked back into his shin, hard enough that I heard a crack. “I have no fucking idea what’s happening, Orion.”
I whirled to try to punch him, but he was lifting me in the air. He threw me hard across the room, and I slammed onto the floor. The blow winded me. As a mortal, I’d be dead. As a demon, it was just a setback.
No wonder demons thought mortals were weak. I felt invincible.
From above, Orion looked down at me like a conquering god waiting for a sacrifice. “I know exactly who you are. You’re my worst enemy, and you always have been.”
I thrust my hips up and slammed the back of my heel into his knee where Nama had shot him—once, twice. With a growl, he stumbled back. From the ground, I kicked at his calves, sweeping his legs out from under him. When he fell backward, I leapt atop him. I clamped my hands around his neck, my thighs around his waist. I wasn’t squeezing yet, but I was threatening it. I felt my claws emerge, ready to rip his heart out, and I pressed them against his chest.
“I don’t know if I’m Mortana!” I shouted at him. “If I was once Mortana, she’s as foreign to me as a stranger. I’m not what you think I am. You said Mortana only cares for herself, that she’s driven by self-preservation. And you said emotions make a demon reveal her true self. But it wasn’t self-preservation that unveiled my demon side. Every time I started to feel it rising, it was from wanting to protect you. It was thinking of you as a little boy in that prison.” My chest ached from the hurt of all this. “My demon side came out because I wanted to protect you. I burned through the locking spell because I wanted to keep you safe. So I don’t know who I am, but I do know that I’m not the monster you’re looking for. But you? You’re the one who betrayed me, Orion. You were pretending to help me find my mom’s killer, when all this time, it was you,” I snarled.
He stared up at me, transfixed. “What makes you think it was me?”
“I remember you from that night.”
“No, you don’t.” His lip curled. “I never lied to you about what I am. I don’t hide my faults or what I’ve done. If I’d killed your mother, I would have told you as soon as I met you. Except now I have a new flaw, and it’s my worst one.”
“What?”
“I could have killed you five times over in the last two minutes. I could kill you now. And something fucking idiotic is stopping me.” His jaw tightened. “I have never loathed myself more than I do right now, and believe me, that’s saying something, because I have plumbed some amazing depths of self-loathing.”
“Stop changing the subject.” Tears streamed down my face. “You have the five-pointed star. I remember it from the night my mom was murdered in the woods with fire magic just like yours. It was you.”
“You might want to look in the mirror, Mortana,” he spat. “I’m not the only one with fire, and it seems Lucifer has blessed us both. You and I are both marked as the Lightbringer. But if you think you’ll take the throne from me, you’re mistaken.”
Dread bloomed in my chest. Horrified, I rose and stumbled away from Orion. With tears streaking my face, I reached into my jeans pocket for my p
hone. It was half-melted, no longer working, but in the black gleam, I could make out a reflection—one shining from my forehead.
A five-pointed star. The image hit me like a fist to my throat.
Without another word to Orion, I started running through the tunnels at full speed.
But I wasn’t running from Orion now. I was sprinting from the memory I’d been running from all this time. The reason I was so obsessed with finding my mom’s killer. This had been my worst fear—the darkest truth buried in the depths of my mind, the thing I so desperately wanted to prove wasn’t true.
What if I killed Mom?
We’d had a fight that night. She’d kept wanting me to move from one apartment to another. She’d seemed paranoid, delusional. She’d thought someone was after us but wouldn’t tell me who, and I only remembered that I hadn’t wanted to go with her.
Orion had said he couldn’t control his fire when he was younger…
I thought she’d lost her mind. I remember yelling at her, and I was so angry—
Sickness rose in my gut, and I hardly knew where I was running. I felt like the walls were collapsing around me.
Was I Mortana—and I’d forgotten?
Deep down at my core, under the lies I told myself, what if I was truly evil?
I ran and ran until I saw the moonlight in Osborne. I slipped into the shadows, my feet pounding along the waterfront. I sprinted past the brewery, the Cirque de la Mer. I didn’t know where I was going, just that I needed to move.
But I could never outrun what I was really fleeing.
Chapter 38
I leaned back on my bed in my basement apartment, staring at the wall. I poured myself another paper cup of cheap red wine, no longer caring that the spiders were crawling all over my bedspread.
Let them crawl.
I’d been down here for nearly a day, and I was on my second bottle.
If Orion wanted to come find me and throw me in prison again, it wouldn’t be hard. I hadn’t bothered to hide. I’d just come back to where I’d started—the mildewed basement I shared with six other people. Now, I had less fear but a lot more self-loathing. If Orion dragged me back, I’d go dressed in old leggings and a David Bowie T-shirt covered in wine stains. And I’m not sure I’d put up that much of a fight.
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