by Erin Embly
Hell, if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with Adrian’s concerns in the first place, I would have trusted my gut and killed the vampire in the alley instead of leaving her stunned, and Simeon’s head would have been there waiting for Miriam to pick it up regardless of how unimportant she thought it was.
Adrian lifted his gaze and took off his glasses to look at me, the boyish expression of concentrated curiosity falling from his face to be replaced with a cold stare.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m . . . glad you’re not dead.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked me, closing the book and standing up.
“Waiting to see my brother,” I said, thinking that was obvious. “You?”
“He has books here that are hard to find in this country. Mostly because they’re not in English, but . . .” Adrian stopped and shook his head, his fleeting excitement abandoned. “That’s not important. The important thing is I can’t work with you anymore, even informally—especially informally.”
“What?” I gaped at him, trying to make sense of what he’d just said. I had plenty reason to stop working with this man, but I hadn’t expected him to be the one to want to cut contact with me. “Why?”
“You lied to me,” he said, staring at me levelly.
“I . . .” Fuck. Had he somehow found out about what I was really doing behind his back with Miriam and Dirk?
“You told me all you saw were dead things in the walls, besides that clay statue.” He walked towards me around the desk. “Then I asked how Ray figured out it was the chaneques, and he said it was the visions of children with old faces that clued him in.” Adrian was speaking faster now, gesturing at the many books around us. “Plenty of dead things and clay statues in mythology and folklore everywhere—far too many to be useful. But children with old faces?” He shook his head, and I could feel the heat from his chest now as he hovered over me. “I just did a search on my phone and found the chaneques in five minutes. I wouldn’t have known how to stop them, but I would have known where to go to find out.”
“We did stop them, though.”
“Eventually,” he snapped. “When was the first time you saw them?”
I swallowed as the memory came back to me. It was right after the incident with the shifter in the train, when I was looking for Noah . . . “Friday morning,” I said softly, like maybe if he couldn’t hear me then it wouldn’t be true.
“All those people in the bar, and the ones Carina burnt,” Adrian said just as quietly. “We might have saved them if you’d only been honest with me.”
“I had no idea it was connected at that point,” I said in a weak voice. “I thought I was hallucinating.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Look around you—look at your life. What makes you think it’s ever a good idea to assume you’re hallucinating? I promise you, you wouldn’t be able to make up the kind of shit that happens to you.”
He was right, and I knew it. The truth was I hadn’t really thought I was hallucinating. I’d only hoped I was, because the chaneques as I’d seen them had molded themselves to look like Noah. They’d done it just to fuck with me, like they’d shown Carina the boy in her class, but I hadn’t known that at the time.
“They looked like Noah,” I said, and that made Adrian’s expression soften just a tiny bit. “I was worried . . . I didn’t want him dragged into a police investigation.”
“Exactly,” Adrian said, sadness in his eyes. “You didn’t trust me to do my job properly. You thought I would harass your kid, treat him unjustly.”
“No.” I looked straight into his eyes for the first time today. “It was him I was unsure of. I know you would never . . . I know he’d have nothing to fear from you if he was innocent. I was just afraid he might not be.”
It felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest to hear myself say that out loud, especially after I’d witnessed how disciplined and kind and self-aware Noah had been about his abilities throughout this whole nightmare.
Adrian looked like he could see that horror in my face, like he knew that I knew what I’d just trotted out as my defense made me even worse than what he’d been accusing me of.
“You need to stop being so afraid.” Adrian lifted his hand as he said it, like he wanted to touch me, then put it back down when my eyes shifted towards the movement.
I swallowed. “I know that now.”
“Do you?” he asked. “Or were you planning to never speak to me again, even before this conversation?”
I took in a deep breath and pressed my lips together, looking down. “Some fears don’t go away easily.”
Adrian’s fist clenched briefly, and then he brought his hand up swiftly to take hold of the side of my face. I couldn’t stop myself from leaning into it, remembering the way his fingers had felt curling through my hair with his lips on mine.
He lowered his face until his forehead was almost touching mine, then stopped. “Since when do you give up on anything just because it’s not easy?”
I closed my eyes, not wanting him to see just how right I knew he was.
Then he was gone, cool air replacing his hand on my face, and when I opened my eyes he was halfway to the door, book in hand.
I’d like to think I might have asked him to stay if I hadn’t seen Ray standing in the doorway, watching us.
But I didn’t, and he left without another word.
Ray had the grace to say nothing as he led me downstairs to his basement, where he had apparently been holed up for the last hour or so with Carina and Vera.
The space was unfinished, wood rafters running overhead and pipes visible. Dark, dusty, walls lined with boxes. It was the basement of a normal person, except for the obsidian shrine in the center of everything.
Sharp, jagged pieces of black glass brought me back to the cave and the magic and those damn rabbits—back to the decision I’d made to accept this god’s power, which I supposed was why I was here today.
I tried to clear Adrian’s words out of my head, eyes landing on Carina as she smiled at me too wide, showing her teeth to an unnatural degree.
I narrowed my eyes at the loose t-shirt she was wearing, not at all her style. “What’s with the getup?” I said, and her fake smile went away instantly.
“The burns,” Ray said to me softly, which only caused me to deepen my frown.
“I can heal them.” I moved to go to her, but Ray put a hand on my arm to stop me.
“Burns on a dragon cannot be healed with magic,” Vera said from behind Carina. She put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, causing the girl to wince. “She will bear these scars for the rest of her life, a reminder of what she has done.”
Whoa. I gritted my teeth together, wanting to admonish this woman, tell her that it wasn’t Carina who had killed anyone last night. She couldn’t be held accountable for anything she had done without her soul, and she shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed for it.
But I could see in Carina’s eyes that the damage had been done long before I’d arrived, and fighting about it wouldn’t get me anywhere now.
“Why are you even here?” I said to Vera instead.
“For you, of course,” she replied. “They thought I could convince you to accept us, but it seems you didn’t need much convincing.”
I nodded, letting steam out through my nose while I held my mouth tightly shut.
“We’ve contacted Popo.” Ray stepped in between us as if his presence could cut the tension. “You’ve been ordered to report to the mountain, to officially swear your oath.”
I tilted my head. “The mountain?”
“The volcano, in Mexico,” he said. “The physical embodiment of our god’s divine spirit. You must visit to prove to him you are loyal.”
“Just me?” I asked. “I thought we needed to stick together.”
“For now, he wants us to stay in DC, and I can’t leave my business unattended.”
“In case the icy death god tries to gain a foothold here again?” I asked, but
in the back of my mind I also wasn’t sure I could leave my business unattended. How long could I keep asking other people to cover for me before Baz realized I wasn’t running the show anymore?
Ray nodded. “He’s tried twice already. We have to assume there will be a third time.”
“So you should go as soon as possible. I return tomorrow,” Vera said, then threw a stern look over to her daughter. “And I’m taking Carina with me.”
Ray and Carina both stiffened when they heard her say that, Carina’s little hands balling into fists and Ray pinching his lips tight.
I wrinkled my forehead in confusion. “I don’t get it. You got what you wanted—I’m officially a member of Team Volcano Witch. Doesn’t that mean Ray and Carina can stay together?”
“Theoretically,” Vera said. “But Carina can’t stay in this city after what happened last night.”
Ray’s face went slack, his shoulders falling. “If the law isn’t looking for her now, it’s only because we have friends on the inside,” he explained. “As soon as witnesses identify her, there won’t be anything Adrian can do to keep her out of prison.”
I nodded slowly. They made a good point, and it was true that Carina couldn’t stay here. But that didn’t mean she had to go straight back to Mexico, and it certainly didn’t mean she had to go with her mother.
“I can take her with me,” I said. “Give her a few days at least, to say goodbye and pack her things. I can keep her out of handcuffs until then.”
Ray and Vera exchanged a look, but Ray spoke before Vera could voice any complaint. “If that’s what Carina wants,” he said.
Carina’s mouth fell open, and then she let out a squeal. For the first time today, the bright expression on her face looked real. “Hell yeah!” she said. “I’ll start packing now!”
She ran up the stairs, and I followed her after getting the okay from Ray. It had been a while since I’d talked to Carina alone, and it had been a while since she’d seemed like herself.
“Road trip! Road trip! We’re going on a road trip!” Carina sang loudly as she threw clothes around her room.
“Uh,” I said, “I was thinking we’d just fly.”
“What, because we both have wings now?” Carina scoffed and threw a flowy orange skirt at my face. “Yeah, and any human can run a marathon with no training because they all have legs.”
“I meant on a plane,” I said as I peeled the skirt off my head and tossed it on her bed. She was getting on my nerves already, but I couldn’t deny it was good to see her spirits lifted. After what she had been through last night, it was an absolute fucking miracle to see her spirits lifted.
“I don’t do planes,” she said, going still for a moment as a shadow moved over her eyes.
“Okay . . .” I held back a comment about how silly it was for a dragon to be afraid to fly.
“Hey,” she said, her brow furrowing as something seemed to dawn on her. She came over close to me and whispered, “We’re not really going to the mountain, are we?”
I grinned, my smile opening into an actual laugh as I saw her eyes brighten with my reaction.
“Nope,” I said, only a small part of me worried at how easy it had been for this little girl to read my intentions. “At least not right away.”
She leaned in and bounced up and down, looking like she might breathe fire on me if I didn’t tell her my actual plan right this instant.
I shifted my eyes to her door and chewed on my tongue for a moment, unconsciously fingering the spot on my ankle through my jeans where my tattoo had been before Ray had made Carina rip it off me.
I wanted it back. And I had a tiny hunch—which was growing steadily by the second—that Carina might want one too.
“Get ready, little dragon,” I said as she bit her lip. “Cause we are going to California.”
Carina pressed a pillow into her face and screamed into it, falling onto her bed and kicking her legs up in the air in her excitement.
Laughing, I let myself fall next to her, finally finding the contagious joy I’d been looking for when I’d woken up this morning.
I’d have to find a way to make sure the club didn’t implode without me for a while, because I might need this road trip just as much as she did.
It might be exactly what I need, I thought as I pulled Minnie’s phone out of my back pocket and brought up the photo album again. This time, it sent a fluttering through my chest.
I’d scrolled through the whole thing while Ellis had driven me back. Wedding photos had given way to everyday life, couple’s selfies turning into individual ones as it became evident the blonde half of the equation had to travel frequently for work.
An assassin’s life couldn’t be easy.
At the very bottom, the most recent set of pictures had backgrounds I recognized instantly from my childhood.
Dusty brown hills with hazy air and strong sunlight, palm trees shooting up into the sky as ocean waves lapped behind them, the distinctive white lettering of the Hollywood sign making the deadly woman posing in front of it look like just another tourist.
The bitch was in California. And if she had already killed Simeon once . . .
Maybe she could help me do it again.
Afterword
Thank you for reading Awakened Abyss!
I hope you enjoyed it, because Darcy’s story is far from over . . . I currently have six books planned for this series, and Book 3 will be released in early 2021.
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Till next time, happy reading!
Erin
Acknowledgments
Thanks so much to my amazing team of beta readers:
Nikki Dekeuster
Wendi Adams
Sam Rooney
Katheyer
Stephanie Mirro
Pat Walsh
Sue Walsh
You’ve helped me make this story much more enjoyable than if I’d tried to go it alone, and I’m immensely grateful for your input!