by Amy Braun
You won’t find her, the realistic voice in my head told me. If she doesn’t want to be found, she won’t be. You taught her everything she knows. She’ll live.
But what about the monsters? Another part of my brain argued. They’ll be looking for her.
That’s what she wants. She left because she doesn’t think you’re strong enough to protect her from them. She left to keep you alive.
She left because she thinks she’ll be the reason you die.
Eventually my body couldn’t handle the cold anymore. The rain was pounding on my head now, and I needed a place to get out of the storm. To my right, I could see the lights of a gas station shining in the distance. It was the only place I’d seen for miles. If Dro had gone this way, she would have needed to stop.
If she went this way. She could be anywhere by now.
I was too damn tired to keep thinking about what my sister did or didn’t do. I shut off my mind and walked into the gas station.
I must have looked like a drowned rat, because the cashier stared at me with wide-eyed disgust. I ignored him and walked through the store. My eyes picked up everything, but registered nothing.
While I continued to wander aimlessly around the store, the door opened and a man came through. He shivered loudly and shook off the water on his sport jacket.
“Hey, Sam,” the new man said. I glanced at the newcomer out of the corner of my eye. He was a trucker. “Hell of a storm, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, not a good night to be out. I tried to tell that to the girl I just dropped off.”
My head twitched ever so slightly toward the cash desk. I edged closer to them as inconspicuously as possible.
“You picked up another stray? That’s going to get you into trouble one day, Matt.”
“What was I supposed to do? Let her walk alone in the dark? You should have seen her, Sam. Pretty little thing, pale as snow, weird white hair, sad smile. I couldn’t leave her out there. She wouldn’t have made it. Can I get some Marlboros?”
“I don’t have any stocked yet. They’re in the back. Give me a second.”
Sam the cashier walked out from behind the counter toward the back room. I had seconds before he came back. I walked to Matt’s back.
“You picked up a girl with white hair?” I asked.
Matt jumped at the sound of my voice, turning sharply. “Whoa, you scared the hell out of me, sweetheart.”
I ignored his outburst. “I overheard you. Did you pick up a girl with white hair?”
He looked at me curiously. “What’s it to you?”
“I’m looking for her. She’s my sister.”
“Your sister.” His raised eyebrows proved that he didn’t believe me. “Sorry, honey, but you don’t look anything like the girl I picked up.”
“She’s adopted, and you’re going to take me to the place you dropped her off.”
“And why would I do that?”
I turned my eyes into slits and walked closer to him. I moved my hands to my hips, pulling up the hoodie just enough for him to see the hatchet I was carrying. He backed up instinctively. “Because I’m in a very bad mood right now, and if you care about your well being, you’re going to do me this simple favor.”
Matt wasn’t much bigger than me, and he was probably wondering if he could run or call the cops before I caught him.
Then he looked at the hatchet on my belt, and decided not to test the theory out. He turned and walked out of the gas station with me hot on his heels. When we walked back into the rain, I put my hand on my hatchet in case Matt got it in his head to be brave. He swung into the cab and opened it for me. I hopped in the passenger side, glanced at the radio, and switched it off. Matt looked at me nervously.
“I figured Sam would be right one of these days,” he muttered, turning the ignition and starting the truck. He put his hands on the wheel and looked at me nervously. “How much trouble am I going to get into?”
“As long as you take me to my sister and don’t try any tricks, none.”
Matt pulled out of the parking lot slowly. He avoided looking at me as much as possible.
“You’re not a liar, right? You’re not going to kill me?”
“No,” I told him. “But I do have a very short temper.”
The trucker gritted his teeth, and didn’t say anything else.
I was grateful for that, because I had other things to think about. Like what I was going to say to my little sister when I found her again…
“I still haven’t seen anything,” Max said. “She might be trying to block me.”
The grief in his voice pierced my memory, bringing me back to the harsh reality of Dro disappearing.
I’d been so lost that I wasn’t able to concentrate on where we were walking. I blinked, and let the world settle around me. We were moving briskly from the Mercado Juárez market district toward the Colegio Latino Américano, one of the colleges. The street on the left was lined with brightly colored shops and hole-in-the-wall diners, which contradicted the massive stone and wrought iron fence on the right that guarded the college.
This street, like so many others, was empty of any living person. Scattered corpses lay in pools of blood. Some of the pools had been turned into smudges, like the bodies had been dragged away by hungry demons for food.
I should have been grateful that there wasn’t anyone to confront us. Except that I didn’t want to avoid a confrontation. I wanted to find someone, and beat answers out of them. I wanted to find a demon and make it scream. I wanted to find one of Mateo’s Blood Thorns and send a message to my sadistic ex.
I wanted to do anything to ease the ache in my chest.
The guys were struggling to keep up with me, and none of them were telling me to slow down. They knew better than to get in my way.
“Constance,” Max said warily.
“I heard you,” I snapped.
He paused. “I wasn’t going to repeat myself,” he told me quietly. “I was going to ask where we’re going. It has to be somewhere Dro is headed, right?”
I slowed down just long enough to think. I didn’t actually know how to answer him. My original plan had been to scour old hideouts and places I’d worked to find Dro, but she knew I’d come looking for her, and she wasn’t going to make it easy. There weren’t going to be any convenient truck drivers to take me to her. Dro was going to stay away from anywhere she assumed I would look.
But she had to have gone somewhere. She wanted to end this as much as I did, and the only way to do that was…
I stopped walking, staring ahead and seeing nothing.
“Constance?” Warrick’s hand touched my shoulder, but I didn’t feel it.
“No,” I whispered. Horror strangled around my throat like a noose. “No, she wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t what?” Warrick moved in front of me, gripping my shoulders and trying to get me out of my trance.
I hated that all three of my friends were staring at me, waiting for me to tell them what I couldn’t doubt now. But I didn’t want to say it. Saying it would make it true.
Then you might as well face it. The sooner you do, the sooner you can find her before it’s too late.
I closed my eyes and sighed. “Dro won’t be in any place familiar to her or me. She’s not going to hide. She’s trying to find him. She’s looking for Lucifer.”
I heard Max’s sharp intake of breath and watched Sephiel’s face pale. Warrick squeezed my shoulders and looked at me sadly. I twisted out of his arms before he could hold me and watch me break down again. I turned to Max, who looked completely crushed.
“Why?” he asked. His eyes were glistening. “Why would she do that?”
“Because she wants to stop him,” I said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.” And I was too afraid to think of any other outcomes.
Max swallowed. “Then I won’t be able to find her,” he said quietly. “Lucifer will block everything I see.”
“What about Mateo, Drake, or the slaye
rs? Can you still see them?”
Max’s eyes lit up briefly. “You think they’ll have seen her?”
“I’m not sure. But if they have, I’ll make them tell us. And if not, we can find out where the fragments are. Maybe if we destroy enough of them, we can draw Lucifer’s attention away from finding Dro, and keep her safe for a little bit longer.”
Max nodded. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to concentrate.
“Attacking Lucifer and his sycophants directly is by far your most dangerous plan yet,” Sephiel remarked from my left.
I looked at him. “How else are we supposed to do it? We can’t keep running and hoping we’ll get lucky potshots. We were going to be in this position sooner or later, Seph. You knew that.”
His blue eyes were impatient and dark. “I did. But that was also before I knew Michael and his Seraphim were seeking to cleanse the city of its evil.”
I faced him directly. “You think they’re going to be a problem?”
Sephiel’s impatience turned into unease. This didn’t seem like a conversation he wanted to have.
“I think Michael will be closer to locating Lucifer than Andromeda will be. He still retains incredible power, and if she crosses his path, he will use her to provoke the King of Hell.” He dropped his head. “And he shall not be gentle about it.”
The memory of Michael’s cold, hard eyes flashed through me. He would have killed me with a flick of his wrist, and only kept us alive to keep Dro in compliance. If he got his hands on her…
“We’ll deal with them if we find them,” I said. It was the only truth I could believe in. “If it turns out that Michael has her, then we’ll take her from him.” Yet another truth, but one that I was going to have a difficult time keeping.
Max’s sudden, heavy sigh drew my attention. He blinked to register his surroundings, then looked at me grimly.
“We’re not far from the slayers,” he announced. He pointed to a red apartment building about five blocks away next to a back road. “They’re doing something there with some Blood Thorns. Drake and Mateo aren’t there, but I could see them arguing. They’re planning to draw a crowd and start a fight.”
“They wouldn’t do that if they were trying to stay under the Thorn’s radar,” Warrick pointed out.
“Unless they were carrying fragments,” I countered.
No one wanted to believe that might be a scenario, but no one disagreed either. I started walking toward the red apartment. The closer I got, the faster I moved. By the time I reached the stop sign in the corner, I was nearly sprinting. I slowed down when I heard raised voices. I crossed the street to an empty strip mall parking lot, knowing the slayers and Thorns were behind it. I pressed myself to the wall of the motel and listened. I couldn’t hear most of the conversation, but I picked out certain words.
“… sick of waiting.” That was Elle’s voice.
“Is this even gonna work?” Jackson said. “We should just…”
“Boss said it should be here,” a Blood Thorn mumbled.
I carefully turned my head around the corner of the motel. Seven black clad Blood Thorns were standing with the three demon slayers. All their eyes were on the two story brick condos in front of them.
“Just pick one,” Elle said impatiently.
Carver lifted a finger and pointed to the house across from him. “That one. The dust looks like it’s been cleared away recently. There are probably people inside.”
I didn’t know why the Blood Thorns would want anyone who wasn’t Dro or me, but it couldn’t be for anything good. I glanced back at the guys and held up all ten of my fingers. Max winced, but Warrick and Sephiel silently drew their blades. I took out my hatchet and a throwing knife.
Three of the Blood Thorns marched up the front porch steps of the condo. They started picking the lock to the house.
I looked around for cover, and saw nothing. Open ground was the only way to meet them. I wasn’t happy about it, but if there were innocent people in that condo, they were the ones who deserved to be hidden.
And I really, really needed to hit something.
I turned around the corner and started jogging down the alley. Most of the Blood Thorns were watching the house, but it was the slayers who noticed me first. Carver turned his head and locked eyes with me. He shoved aside the men in his way and stood in front of them. Eventually the attention on the condo shifted to me.
“What are you doing here?” Carver demanded. “You’re supposed to be dead!”
I slowed to a steady walk and grinned at him. “What’s that saying about bad pennies? You’re old enough to know it, Carver.”
He snarled at me, and then something about his face changed. His snarling mouth curved upward, and the anger in his eyes glittered with cruelty.
I never thought I would see Carver smile. Now that I was, I wanted to see him do anything else.
“Forget the house,” Carver shouted, never looking away from me. “This bitch will do.”
Three of the Blood Thorns standing next to Carver marched toward me, ready to converge left, right, and center. As they got closer, I began to feel something. It wasn’t just the adrenaline beginning to build in my veins. It went deeper, sliding over my skin like oil and sinking toward my bones. I wasn’t just looking to the release a fight would give me. I was looking forward to spilling the blood of my enemies, listening to their screams and laughing at them. I was…
My head turned back to Carver, Elle, and Jackson. They were standing back, their fingers itching for weapons. They each had the same, sadistic expression on their faces.
I imagined my face had looked like that back when I lost my mind.
It was too late for me to warn the guys, because the Blood Thorns attacked me at the same time.
Left Guy swung a punch at my head first, hoping to down me with one strike. I ducked and stepped back, seeing Right Guy’s boot flying toward my chest. I sliced down with my hatchet, catching him along the shin. He cursed and recoiled while Center Guy punched for my chest. I leaned to the side and stabbed my knife up into his forearm. As he screamed in pain, I ducked under his arm, twisting the knife to keep him subdued. I slashed my hatchet across Left Guy’s stomach. He clutched his belly, too shocked to stop me from driving the blade of my hatchet into his chin in a fatal strike.
Center Guy’s uninjured hand shot forward to grab my throat. I staggered back and pulled my knife free to get out of his reach. It worked, but it also gave Right Guy the chance to swing at me with a knife of his own. It grazed the leather jacket on my shoulders, just barely missing my skin as I twisted away. I grabbed his outstretched hand, spinning low to drive my elbow into his gut. Center Guy was coming up behind me, a savage roar bursting from his throat.
I flipped my knife and drove it into Right Guy’s chest with a heavy thunk. I felt him go rigid under my hand, twitching once when I twisted the blade in his heart. Center Guy’s shadow grew behind me, and I snapped my elbow back into his throat. He skidded to a stop and clutched his neck, trying to breathe but unable to do anything except cough.
I kicked him in the chest to get him back, then ripped my knife from my latest victim and spun on my heel, launching the throwing knife and hitting the middle of Center Guy’s chest perfectly. He tried to reach for the knife, but he was already dead.
Power and excitement surged through me. I felt strong and unstoppable, just as I had when the fragment was embedded under my skin. I looked over my shoulder, and saw the slayers were moving closer.
But they didn’t see the group coming up behind them. I did, and noticed they were wearing an alarming amount of white.
Someone appeared in my peripheral, and I didn’t have time to react. I raised my hand to block whatever was coming, only to watch Warrick jump into sight, grab the Blood Thorn’s wrist, and snap it. The big man screamed in pain, silenced when Warrick slashed his knife across his throat.
On my right, Sephiel stalked forward with both of his short swords drawn. He stopped
and watched the last three Blood Thorns run for him. He waited until the last second, then spun his swords in two large rotations. The blades sliced through the faces of the Blood Thorns, spraying blood and making them scream. The last Blood Thorn wasn’t deterred; at least not until Sephiel lunged forward and stabbed both swords into the man’s chest. He stood there, impaled on the blades until Sephiel tore them out. The two half-blind Blood Thorns rushed him stupidly, and he destroyed them by striking his blades along both of their throats in one fluid motion.
We faced off with the remaining Blood Thorn and the three slayers. They were all smiling. I could feel a haze drifting into my mind. A comforting shadow that whispered in my ear and told me to let go. I needed it. I’d earned it.