Stephanie Rowe - Darkness Unleashed

by Stephanie Rowe - Darkness Unleashed

  She lifted her chin. "I have three things to say."

  He almost grinned at her statement. Her determination and feisty spirit were hot shit. She was no delicate angel, that was for sure. "What are they?" If anyone else had given him that look and that attitude, he would have snarled and considered decapitating them. But with Catherine looking at him like that, all he could do was think she was sexy as hell, and damned brilliant.

  She held up her index finger, as if she were speaking to a small child with the inability to grasp the most basic concept. "First, I'm not the Order's guardian angel."

  He shrugged impatiently, dismissing her statement. "Like I said, the others didn't realize they were either at first. We'll figure it out when you're safe."

  Completely ignoring him, she held up two fingers. "Second, I'm not going back with you."

  His good humor vanished. "Of course you are."

  She met his gaze, and in her eyes he saw a desperation that made his heart twist. "And third," she said. "You will be my guide into the nether-realm."

  * * *

  Ryland stared at her for a long moment, so long that her heart started to pound with hope.

  She sat up. "I know you're familiar with the area. It's obvious." She grabbed her backpack, which had somehow ended up on the ground beside them after Ryland had tackled her. "See, I have this map, but one of the markers is gone, so—"

  "No."

  She looked up and her heart sank at the haunted darkness on his face. "You have to—"

  "No." His refusal was almost a growl, and his upper lip was curled, as if he were baring fangs at her, not regular human teeth. "We're going home. No arguments. No—"

  "Hey!" She jumped to her feet, grabbing his arm as he started to turn away. When she tried to force him back to face her, he spun around so quickly she almost fell over. He grabbed both her upper arms, trapping her. "We're not going to the nether-realm," he snarled. "You're not, and I'm not. End of story."

  "No, it's not!" She knew she should be afraid of him, but she was too mad to drum up that kind of emotion. Here was the man who could help her, and not only was he refusing to help her, but he was going to ban her from going herself? "My daughter is trapped in the nether-realm," she snapped. "There's no chance in hell that I'm going to leave her there to suffer for an eternity. She's four years old, for God's sake, Ryland. Four!"

  Ryland's eyes closed at her words, and he tipped his face toward the night sky, as if he was trying to make her words go away. "Jesus, Catherine."

  Darkness and death were flowing off Ryland, increasing by the moment, but at the same time, she felt a wash of intense emotion from him. She couldn't quite identify it, but it gave her hope. Ryland was not the stoic, harsh man he seemed. Well, he was, but there was something else there. The man had committed his life to protecting innocents. There was no chance he could be immune from the plight of a four-year-old girl. "Ryland," she said urgently. "I have to get there now. I'm almost out of time."

  His eyes opened, and darkness glittered in their tormented depths. "Why are you out of time?"

  God, the truth was too complicated to explain right now. He'd never help her if he knew what she was dealing with. And why would he help her anyway? She had no leverage to motivate him to help her, nothing except trying to call upon his promises of protection and support, as well as his basic humanity. "Because in three days, there will be no chance to save her." Three days if she was lucky.

  Ryland stood for a long moment, and she could feel the battle raging within him. Something was brewing inside him. The aura of death was stronger now, the violence lurking in his eyes. Finally, he met her gaze. "I'm sorry, Catherine, but no."

  Then he turned his back on her and ended the conversation.

  * * *

  Ryland had made it only two feet when he felt the vine around his wrist tighten. Dammit. He'd forgotten about the restraint. Swearing, he turned around. Catherine had folded her arms over her chest and was glaring at him. Not just a glare. The cold, calculated face of a woman who would not give in.

  Admiration flickered through him. He understood her need to go after her daughter. He'd had that same need to go after Thano. To preserve Dante's Order. To protect those in his charge. He understood what was driving her. He really did. Not that he would change his mind, but damn if he didn't like her for that loyalty. He walked back over to her, not that he'd been able to get too far with the vine. "Listen, Catherine," he said. "I get it. She's your daughter. I know. But I can't help you. Taking you in there is death to both of us—"

  "So what?" she challenged. "Since when does the Order of the Blade fear death?"

  "I don't." Jesus. He ran his hand through his hair. Memories of a time long past assaulted him, and that same sick feeling pulsed through him like the rancid stench of a rotting soul. "I can't go back in there."

  She pounced on his words. "Back in there? So you've been there before?"

  He hesitated, then shrugged. "Yeah, I've been there. I was born there. I lived there for twenty-five years before Dante tore me out of there and gave me another chance."

  Intelligence flared in her blue eyes. "So, he rescued you? You couldn't get out on your own? Don't you owe someone that same favor? Where would you be if Dante hadn't rescued you?"

  Ryland swore as sweat began to trickle down his spine. He knew damn well where he'd be if Dante hadn't pulled him out of there, and he knew where the rest of the fucking world would be as well. "Listen, Catherine, when Dante pulled me out of there, he gave me a purpose. I will never forget the night at his shack in the woods, the first night away from this cursed region. I was still—" Shit. How could he even explain the darkness that had still gripped him that night? "I almost murdered him that night," he said softly. "Not on purpose, but because I couldn't stop it. If it hadn't been for Dante, all would have been lost, but that night, he saved me from hell. I owe him, Catherine. He was a great man, and his legacy has saved the world in ways you can't imagine. I can't walk away from that, and I can't let you put it in jeopardy. It's so much bigger than you know." He stopped, cutting off the long-winded explanation. What was he doing explaining himself to Catherine? He didn't explain. He didn't engage in discussions. He did what he needed to do. And that was it. "Never mind," he said, turning away to head back to camp. "We're not going."

  "Dante? Your former leader was named Dante?" Her voice was a stunned whisper.

  He glanced back at her, frowning when he saw her skin had gone ghostly white. "Yeah. Dante Sinclair."

  Her face was stark with shock. "He had a shack in the woods? In Oregon?"

  Ryland turned back to face her. "I didn't say it was in Oregon," he said softly.

  "Did it have a door? Or was it a simple hut about twenty-five yards from a river?"

  A cold foreboding began to simmer through Ryland. "No door. Near a river. Why? How do you know that?"

  She pressed her hand to her forehead. "Was his weapon a spear?"

  Jesus Christ. He grabbed her upper arms and hauled her over to him. "What do you know about Dante?" he demanded. "What do you know?"

  She looked up at him. "I took his soul," she whispered. "I took it."

  Ryland stared at her in disbelief. "What are you talking about?"

  "When he died, I was there to take his soul." She closed her eyes. "I took his soul that night, after those weapons did their job, after those men killed his body."

  Ryland went cold, ice cold as his fingers dug into the arms of the woman he'd wanted to make love to only moments ago. He remembered all too well what Ian's sheva, Alice Shaw, had told them about Catherine. "No one's soul dies unless you kill them," he echoed. "You are the forever death." His mind shot back to that moment when Dante had visited him after his death, when he'd said he couldn't come back again. Was that the moment Catherine had killed him? The moment when his existence ended forever? Jesus Christ. Was Dante's spirit gone as well?

  "I am forever death," Catherine said. "This is true."

  "Jesu
s." His fingers tightened on her arms as he fought to stay in control. He was holding the woman who had killed the man he had dedicated his life to? No, no, no! Furious, he tore his grip off her and turned his back on her, clasping his hands behind his head as he fought to rationalize what was going on. "You're an angel," he said. "Angels aren't evil." He knew they weren't. They were beautiful and amazing, merciful creatures who brought light into darkness.

  She laughed softly, a chuckle with no mirth. "No, I'm not evil. But I am hell." She touched his arm, and he instinctively stiffened. "I'm sorry, Ryland. I didn't mean to do it, if that is any consolation."

  "Didn't mean to?" He spun around to face her, suddenly furious. "How can you kill someone and not mean to? You have to be stronger than that! If you're given the gift of being able to take a life, you have to control it! You can never unleash it by accident!"

  Fury blazed in her eyes. "I am strong," she snapped. "I would have killed a lot more if I wasn't! And Dante's not dead forever! They took his soul from me before I could destroy it. So—"

  "They took his soul from you? Who? Who has his soul?" Jesus Christ, was Dante's soul still alive somewhere? "Where the fuck is he?"

  She met his gaze, and in it he saw the ultimate regret. "He's in the nether-realm," she said.

  Ryland stared at her. "What?"

  "The nether-realm. They took him."

  "They?" But he didn't need to ask who 'they' were. He'd been born in the nether-realm. He knew what it was like there. He knew the creatures who ruled those lands, and he knew what drove them: greed, power, and pure, untainted evil. He knew, because he'd been one of them. "Jesus," he whispered, sinking down onto a damp rock. He bowed his head and ran his hands through his hair, fighting to stay focused. "Dante's soul is trapped in the nether-realm?"

  Catherine nodded. "Same as my daughter, except her spirit is still in her body," she said. "I'm going to get her out."

  Ryland's fingers dug into his scalp, and he suddenly realized that his fingers were elongating. Silver claws jabbed out of the tips of his fingers. "Jesus Christ." He jerked his hands off his head and fisted his hands, willing the claws to recede. "I can't go back in there," he said. "I fucking can't."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it will turn me back into this!" Ryland grabbed the collar of his shirt and tore it open with a roar of fury, showing Catherine the secret that he had kept for so long, the secret that only Dante knew.

  * * *

  Emblazoned on Ryland's chest was a drawing of a fanged monster with massive wings, blood dripping from its teeth, and claws plunged deep inside the chest of a woman. The creature's eyes raged with violence and death. Its body was covered in spiked scales, its head tipped upward in what could only be a howl of victory. Strewn around the creature were dozens of dismembered people, their faces still etched in the terrified screams of a violent death. It was like an ancient biblical drawing of a horror unleashed upon the earth by the very devil himself.

  The image of the creature was a black outline on Ryland's flesh, as though someone had sketched it but never had time to fill it in. As she watched, the eyes of the creature seemed to move, rolling toward her as if targeting her as its next prey. Sucking in her breath, she tried to scramble backwards, stopped only by the vine that bound her to Ryland. "What in God's name is that?" she whispered, too horrified to speak. She could almost see its ribs moving with each breath, its nostrils flaring as it scented her.

  "Me." He jerked his shirt closed, and she saw the sharp tips of something silver poking from the ends of his fingers.

  Catherine gasped. "How can that be you?"

  "It's what I was born to be," he said, his eyes almost boiling over with violence and anger, and death. So much death. "If I go back to the nether-realm, I will become it again." He met her gaze. "And the first thing I'll do is kill you."

  She stared at him. "Me? Why me?"

  "Because you're good, and I kill good things." He swept his forearm across his chiseled stomach and bowed low. "Say hello to one of the nether-realm's most prized experiments, a slave of the utmost power," he said. Then he raised his eyes to her, even as he maintained his bow. "And your worst nightmare. Everyone's worst nightmare."

  "Slave?" she echoed. He couldn't mean slave. Ryland was a man of such power, an immortal warrior above and beyond the hold of anything and anyone. Nothing and no one would have the power to force him to submit to their reign. But even as she asked the question, she saw the grim acknowledgment in his eyes. He spoke the truth. Slave.

  "Yeah." He touched the tail of the creature. "When color begins to fill this in, the power of the nether-realm begins to take me. When the image of the beast is completely filled in, I lose the ability to say no." He looked past her at the mountains behind them. "Every step I take closer to the entrance tightens its grip on me. I can't go there. Dante saved me for a reason, and if I go back there, all he wanted me to become is destroyed forever. And he is who I owe."

  She lifted her chin, struggling to recover after his revelation. "Are you so sure about that?" she asked.

  He narrowed his eyes. "Sure about which part? Because, yeah, I have a pretty vivid memory of what I used to be and what I had to do."

  Empathy flickered through her for what he'd endured, but she fought to suppress it. She had to focus. Her daughter's life depended on it. "I meant the part about how going back there would violate what Dante wanted for you. How do you know what he wanted for you?"

  Ryland scowled. "Trust me, I know. I'm not going back there."

  She saw in his eyes that he meant it, and she understood it. She really did. She lived every day with being the creature she didn't want to be. She accepted that, and she could not ask him to turn himself back into that which he despised. "Will you at least guide me to the entrance so I can go in and save my daughter? I'll go in by myself."

  Ryland laughed softly, bitterly. "If I take you there, how does that protect the Order? You're our angel. I owe you safety, and delivering you to the mouth of hell won't do it."

  Catherine gritted her teeth in irritation. "I'm not the Order's guardian angel," she said for what felt like the thousandth time. "I'm an angel of death. How would an angel of death protect you?"

  Ryland shrugged. "You give our weapons the power to kill."

  "Don't you think that goes against what defines an angel? An angel who blesses your weapons with the power to take life isn't really very angelic, is it?"

  Ryland narrowed his eyes at her. "I don't give a shit what you think you are," he said. "I know you're our angel, and I'm going to keep you safe. No nether-realm."

  She lifted her chin. "Not even to save Dante? You're going to let his soul rot in hell because you don't want to be a demon again, or whatever you are?"

  "Hey!" He grabbed her arm, his eyes flashing with fury. "Don't ever judge my commitment to Dante. There are not always simple answers."

  "So, you'll let him rot there?"

  True pain flashed in Ryland's eyes and he swore. Catherine saw the torment in his eyes, the weight of the choice he had to make, and her heart softened. How could she ask this man to break a promise he had made to someone else? There was so little of that kind of loyalty left in this world.

  But if she let him be, she would be allowing her daughter to die. And there was no chance of that. Besides, she would never make the mistake of believing in a man again. She could not afford mercy. "If you take me to the nether-realm," she said, offering him what she already could tell he wanted most. "I will be able to find Dante's spirit and free him. You wouldn't have to go in there."

  Ryland's eyes flashed with interest, and she knew she had him. "Take me there," she said. "Let me go get my daughter and Dante. When I come out, I will go with you." And she would. Once her daughter was free, she didn't care where she went. And if Ryland would protect her, then he'd do the same for her daughter.

  His jaw flexed, but she saw the yearning in his eyes. "It's too dangerous," he said. "The nether-realm would kill you."r />
  Galvanized by the window of acquiescence she heard in his voice, she stepped forward. "I can't be killed, Ryland. I'm the angel of death." It was a lie, a blatant lie, but she didn't care. So little could kill her, it was almost the truth. Unfortunately, much of what could hurt her was in the nether-realm.

  Anger flashed in his eyes. "Don't lie to me, Catherine. Never fucking lie. I hate lies."

  She swallowed, again accosted with that creepy sensation that he could see into her soul. "Okay," she said. "There are things in there that can kill me, but I have a lot of control over stuff in the nether-realm. The angel of death has powers down there."

  "Do you?" Sudden interest flared in his eyes. "What kind of powers?"

  She grimaced. "I don't know exactly. I've never been there. But the nether-realm is about the most heinous kinds of death, and that's my specialty."