I trailed along behind, not wanting to think about the nightmare that had been real all along. Peeking inside the bag, I spotted a handful of jet injectors. Doctor Taylor was Allard’s source for PC34A. That was information worth holding on to.
“Do you know which prince freed you?” Allard continued, his tone mildly enquiring, but the politeness gave him away. He was treading carefully, choosing his words with thought.
“Who says me and Del didn’t escape and make our way here alone?”
A few more strides passed beneath us. A breeze filtered through the palms, dislodging dust and sending it raining down as a fine mist.
“You remember how I found you?”
On my knees, rifling through trash like a lesser demon. It didn’t need to be said. I could hardly forget.
I was expecting Allard to turn and flash me his smile again, but he walked on, weaving around a sapling that had taken root between paving slabs and cracked them apart. “You’re many things, Gem. But you lack real-world experience. You didn’t escape without help.”
I clung to the grocery bag and fixed my gaze on Allard’s straight shoulders. Empty buildings loomed on either side. Something skittered across Allard’s path—a stray cat maybe, or a lesser. This close to the Promenade nw-zone, it could be either.
I tried to think of anything but the prince, but the images dragged me down. I’d never seen anything like him before or since. Few people had. Skin like black marble veined with fire. He was my first lesson in how the Institute was unprepared to deal with beings of such immense power. Then everyone learned what real nightmares looked like when the veil fell, and they came.
“Gem…” Allard growled, snapping me back into the moment.
We’d stopped on the sidewalk outside the high school. The noise from the crowd inside lapped at an otherwise quiet night. The loitering groups had thinned, leaving a few stragglers discussing the fights.
“What?” I snapped.
“The prince?”
“I don’t know anything.” That was true enough, but Allard was looking at me like he might at any moment decide to grab me by the neck, slam me down on the pavement, and bury me under tons of earth. Not knowing wasn’t an option. I shrugged. “I don’t remember. Something happened after he broke us out. There was a fight. Another demon grabbed us, and the next thing I knew, we were in the netherworld. I never saw the prince again.”
I turned my face toward LA’s blanket of city lights. At least the netherworld was locked away behind the veil. That place, that world, made the leftover nw-zones here look like petting zoos. And the demons there, they were the true monsters.
“Which other demon grabbed you?”
I swung my attention back to Allard to find him frowning. “Does it matter?”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. He was…” He was beautiful with dusty wings. One touch of that dust, and I’d almost lost my mind in my need to ruck with him. It was madness, that need. The human parts of my mind would have done anything to touch him, for him to touch me. I could still hear myself begging. After that, just flashes of pain, the taste of blood, and one word. More.
I hugged my arms around me and sighed through my nose. “I don’t remember much of the netherworld. It was madness. I was demon, and I wasn’t in control of anything. Stuff just happened to me. The demon, he… I… I only saw him a few times. Then I was back here. Okay? I don’t know anything.” I realized I sounded whiny and petulant, and Allard’s unimpressed frown wasn’t helping. But it was the truth. Whatever plans the demon had, he didn’t share it with Del and me. Then he was gone, and we were on the run in the netherworld—until the veil fell.
I scratched at my arm and relished the human pain. It grounded me, reminded me who I was, where I was. Human. Gem. In Los Angeles. Not demon. Not in the netherworld. Not lost to the horror.
Allard’s dark eyes studied me closely. “Interesting how a prince would go to the trouble of breaking you both out of an Institute facility. Why was that?”
“I told you. I don’t know.”
“Speculate.” The ground trembled, and a sound like a truck rumbling by shuddered through the air.
Clearly, he wasn’t going to drop the subject. “Why do you think?” I snarled.
He drew in a deep breath. “Be very careful, half blood. I’ve treated you kindly, given you sanctuary. How long do you think it would take for the Institute to find you? Minutes?”
I clamped my teeth together. Control. I had to stay in control. Now was not the time to challenge him.
Allard regarded me coolly, waiting for my reply. Further along the sidewalk, we’d earned ourselves a small audience. It was probably that audience that stopped him from driving me into the sidewalk.
“The prince wanted our combined power.” My teeth tingled, lengthening. My demon was bleeding through, and I let her stretch, just a little. “Before the veil locked up tight, half bloods could draw their element from this world and the netherworld, making us twice as powerful as any demon—besides the princes.” Sighing through my nose, I loosened some of the knotted tension. “The Institute, the princes, they all wanted a piece of us. We were created as weapons to defend humanity against demons like you.” But it didn’t quite go down that way.
Allard stood demon still, his predatory mind going over the facts. Had he known I had the potential to blast him and his demon buddies all to hell if the veil should ever fall again? He did now.
He shifted his stance, ran the top of his tongue along his bottom lip, and canted his head. A new suspicious curiosity narrowed his eyes, and I started to wonder if I’d given away too much.
“What did you feel, Gem, when you drew your element from the veil?”
Unstoppable. Lethal. A force of nature. Like I could freeze both the worlds. “What does it matter? The veil’s locked. And I can barely make a snowball in this heat.”
He laughed, properly laughed from deep inside. “Gem, you have me all wrong! I have a surprise for you at Fairhaven.” He turned and sauntered up the street, leaving me frowning at his back.
What if the surprise is my brother?
With a flick of my fingers to shake out the slither of power, I jogged after Allard.
Chapter 9
Allard pressed his hand against the basement door. The glyphs flared white hot and dissolved with a dramatic lick of smoke. Had he bothered to look over his shoulder, he would have seen my impressed gawk, but he simply swept the door open and stepped to the side. I couldn’t say I wasn’t curious. I’d never seen anyone use the basement door, and Allard had never mentioned it. Still, there was something sinister about the cool stairwell.
The hotel had settled around us. Most of the demons preferred the night and were likely prowling the shore. Perhaps it was that unusual quiet that had my instincts all jumpy. Whatever it was, I hesitated to pass Allard.
“Really, Gem. If I was going to hurt you, we both know I wouldn’t have to go to these lengths to cover it up.”
I forced a bright, utterly fake smile onto my lips and strode past him, chin up. Bastard. “What are you hiding down here?”
“Patience, half blood.”
His voice echoed down the stairwell, sinking into the bowels of the building. The door slammed shut behind us. I flinched, glanced back at Allard, and shivered at the sight of his too-black eyes. Great, I’m heading into a basement with a demon at my back. What a fantastic idea, Gem. I wasn’t backing out now. To do so would tell Allard how I was indeed a frightened little half blood quaking in her boots.
“This is a great honor. Only the select few know what I keep hidden below this hotel.”
Okay… So why show me? And why now? I ran my hand along the handrail and jogged down the bare concrete steps. Allard’s element pushed at my back, a constant reminder of his power. But as we descended deeper into the cold, another element leeched out of the air. It shifted, loose and light, like the ghost of a demon’s touch. All elemental touches are invisi
ble to human eyes, but this one was so weak, it could easily have been imagined.
I gave the glyphs painted on the walls the side-eye. They were sloppy, spray-painted symbols. Demon symbols. The Institute knew a few of them and had gone to great lengths to ward their buildings with protection glyphs. These were unfamiliar.
“The King of Hell originally designed them.” I jumped at Allard’s voice, too close in my ear. “As a way to control the elements and his princes.”
I hadn’t known that, and the fact Allard knew about the origins of the glyphs had me wondering about his status in the netherworld. Vanessa had called him Azazel. I’d heard the name during the Institute’s endless research sessions, but there were a lot of demons with a lot of names, many reused and altered over time. Much of the truth about demons had long ago been corrupted by religion. Trying to filter the truth from fiction was a full-time career at the Institute. Allard was powerful. That much was true.
“Do you know much about the king?” I attempted to make it side like an idle question. Allard had never volunteered information before. But then, we’d never really talked. He ordered, and my brother and I obeyed. That was how it had always been.
“Only that he fled after the princes killed the queen.”
In the netherworld, kill or be killed. The fact their own king ran from them says a lot about the princes.
“The king, the hierarchy—none of that matters in this, the new world. When the veil sealed shut, it severed our connection to the netherworld and my allegiance to any court.”
“Do you miss it?” I asked then wished I hadn’t. Of course, he didn’t miss it. He was demon. He didn’t feel much of anything besides fulfilling his wants and needs.
“I find it…freeing. The hierarchy among our netherworld kin was stifling.”
He sounded almost whimsical, like he was surprised by his own admission. I couldn’t imagine Allard following anyone’s orders, but what did I know about demon hierarchy? Only that I was at the bottom of it.
“What do these glyphs mean?” I passed another swirling, rippling stamp of power.
“If you didn’t have your demon shackled, you’d feel them. These are containment glyphs, like the ones used to keep the stock subdued.”
I felt the glyphs and how they pushed and pulled on my demon, but I had no intention of sharing that knowledge with Allard. He’d likely use the glyphs against me if he realized I wasn’t immune to them.
Clearly then, he was keeping a demon down here. Was that the slippery whisper of an element I sensed? What kind of demon needed to be hidden underground and subdued by countless glyphs?
We descended another flight of stairs and came to a heavily glyphed door. Allard placed his hand against it, as he had the first, unlocked it, and opened it. Electric lights buzzed on, illuminating what had once been an underground parking garage. All the bays were empty, and the exit ramp had collapsed, sealing off the outside world.
In the dead center of the garage, caged in what looked like an old wrought-iron elevator car, hunched a demon.
“Go on,” Allard urged, his grin wide.
I wet my lips and approached the cage. The demon had all the appearances of a man. His virtually hairless skin shimmered a true ebony, so dark and smooth he could have been dipped in ink. But it was the burned wings that gave him away as demon. A smattering of silky black feathers clung to ragged bits of crisped sinew and pale bone. I couldn’t see his face. He’d hunched over, burying his head under his arms, hugging himself into a tight crouch.
Tiny glyphs throbbed where they’d been scratched into the metal. Although small, their combined effects made my skin want to crawl off my bones and scurry into a corner. The weight of those glyphs against the demon must have been immense.
I stepped closer, pushing against the repelling glyphs. My stomach squirmed, along with my demon. Those wings... What had happened? He had to be in terrible agony. But he didn’t tremble, didn’t mummer, barely breathed.
Whoever he was now—for Allard to have gone to such extraordinary lengths to keep him caged, hidden from the world, and subdued beneath what probably equated to tons of power—this demon had to be something, someone powerful.
“He’s really quite the specimen,” Allard said from beside me. If the sight wasn’t enough to convince me, Allard’s reverent tone certainly was.
“He is,” I agreed carefully. Allard was clearly hunting for compliments. Here was his grand prize, his big secret. It would be an insult if I projected anything other than absolute admiration for Allard’s prowess. Why then did I feel the need to reach out and tear the cage apart, freeing the demon? I was supposed to kill demons, not set them free.
“How long has he been here?” I whispered.
“Since the Fall.”
I clamped my teeth together, stopping the gasp before it could break free. Six months hunched in an elevator cage. It would have killed most demons. This specimen was not a typical demon.
“Who is he?” I asked, my voice small.
Allard smiled. He stretched the pause, relishing his moment of anticipation. And then, each word smooth and precise, he said, “He has many names and just as many titles, but his chosen name is Li’el, the Prince of Pride.”
Chapter 10
Allard had a Prince of Hell in his basement. Either he was insane, or he had a plan. Why else would he keep a ticking bomb?
I sat on the sloped roof of the house neighboring Torrent’s, arms draped over my drawn-up knees, worrying my lip between my teeth. After Allard had told me the demon’s name, I’d spent a few painful minutes gawking at his prize and excused myself before I said or did something that would insult Allard, and/or get me a trip to the white room all over again.
That had been at least an hour ago. I’d wandered out of the hotel grounds, my mind awhirl and no destination in mind, until I’d wandered onto Torrent’s street. The lights were off inside his house. I’d considered breaking in again but figured he’d expect me to. Besides, the coronam wouldn’t be there.
I should have already gone back to Fairhaven, found Joseph, and demanded to know exactly what steps he’d taken to find my brother. Instead, I’d scaled the rear wall of Torrent’s neighbors’ house, found a spot where I could observe any comings and goings, and that’s where I sat, wondering why in the netherworld-hell Allard would keep the Prince of Pride.
He couldn’t hope to sell a prince. That was ludicrous, even for a demon like Allard. He was many things: sometimes vicious, often enterprising—but stupid wasn’t on that list. So why? As a trophy? That would make sense if he had the prince on display.
How had he even captured a prince? It’s not as if they went down easily. They were immortal, for one. And once Pride got free—which he would; if an immortal demon has nothing else, he’s got time—I sincerely doubted he’d kill Allard quickly. He wouldn’t stop there either. He’d likely wipe out every single demon in Fairhaven just because he could. Including me.
I began to wonder if all those glyphs were enough.
“You just can’t stay away—”
I’d shaped the stiletto of ice, twisted, and launched it straight at Torrent’s chest in less than a blink. I couldn’t miss. He only stood a few strides behind me on the crest of the roof. He lifted a hand, froze my icy splinter, and plucked it out of the air as easily as picking a flower.
“Would you stop throwing these at me?” His green eyes narrowed with irritation, and the quick smile was gone, leaving his lips in a hard, stubborn line.
He wore his tattered brown coat. It had been leather once. Now, it wasn’t much more than a used-up chamois, all buffed and worn raw in places. His black pants and dark blue tee were in better condition but only slightly. He looked ragged and worn out. I read all of this in a glance and shot to my feet. A few roof tiles slipped under my boots. They skittered off the roof and smashed out of sight.
“How?” I blurted. Why did my ice miss him every time?
He closed the melting ice-shard in his
hand, turned it over, and when he opened his fingers, melt water pooled in his palm, and my ice was gone. “You’re good. You’re quick. You think on your feet, and you know your demons.” He flicked the water away, his lips lifting in a faint, tired smile. “I saw you deflect the larwrari’s bile. Not many demons know how flammable that shit is.”
I scowled, a dirty, vicious scowl. There was a but coming.
“But you lack experience.” He tipped his head to the side. “Watch the edge.”
I knew where the damn edge of the roof was, thank you very much. “I told you, I don’t need your help.”
He blinked, perplexed for a moment. “Huh?”
Playing dumb. What an ass. “In your house, when I tried to kill you, you told me if I walked away, you couldn’t help me.”
His confusion tightened into a scowl. “I didn’t say I was trying to help you. I was asking you for help.”
“What?”
“Wait?” He stepped forward, forcing me back, then paused, noticing the edge again. “You’d just broken into my home. Why would I want to help you?” He huffed like it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard, but the humor in it soon died. His curiously green eyes flared, and in the dark, they glowed. “You have no idea how much I paid for losing that artifact.”
I swallowed, feeling the ghost of Allard’s marble-white hand around my throat. “You’d be surprised.” And with that, I stepped back, dropping off the roof to land in a satisfying crouch.
It was only as I walked away that I wondered why he’d been asking me for help. I’d believed he’d been dying at the time, but that hadn’t happened, and as he’d clearly demonstrated, my ice was at the mercy of his water.
I could have kicked myself for that idiotic mistake. No wonder he knew when my ice-blades were coming in sharp and fast. He could sense them and to some degree, control them. That changed things. No more using my element on him. Not that it mattered. I’d already bloodied him several times. I could kick his ass.
Chaos Rises: A Veil World Urban Fantasy Page 7