“I’ll always find you,” he swore, giving me a hard kiss.
Another round of aftershocks shook the ground, breaking our kiss. Gods, the house, filled with hundreds of people celebrating a ball when the walls came crashing down! How many had gotten out like we had? How many were still trapped?
I set Silver down. “Stay,” I told the Simargl. Then I grabbed Ian’s hand. “We have to go back and help!”
Something like a snort escaped him. “Knew you’d say that.”
We flew back to the house, me wiping the blood from my eyes, Ian muttering something I couldn’t catch due to the wind and the continued sounds of concrete smashing and people screaming. In the short seconds it took to get back to Yonah’s, his four-story mansion had crumpled to barely one level, with the sea pouring into a huge fissure that went from the ruins of his home all the way to the night-darkened surf.
Ian dropped down near a group of vampires who were digging in the rubble where the pool area had been. It was gone now, replaced by huge pieces of the house that had slid off and an even deeper hole that seemed to swallow the remains. I was about to join him when fresh screams sent me flying past him to the collapsed section of what had been the second-floor balcony.
“You take that section, I’ll take this one!” I yelled.
The balcony was on the ground, crushing anyone who’d been unlucky enough to be underneath it. The scent of blood and death was choking, but from the moans and screams, there were also some survivors beneath it. I began throwing aside the pieces of the former balcony, careful to aim them at the sand behind me instead of what could be more buried people around me.
“I’m coming!” I called out, digging and throwing even faster. I soon lost my grip on a hunk of railing because my hands were dripping with blood, but I would heal. The people trapped might not have that chance, if I didn’t hurry.
Something large and heavy landed next to me. Yonah, wings nowhere to be seen, pulling at the debris with a single-minded determination that matched my desperation.
“Stop,” he said, shocking me. “I can do this, but only you can halt the sea. Pull back the waves from the fissure, Ariel. Now, or we’ll never reach the human survivors in time.”
“I can control some water, but I can’t hold back part of an ocean!” I protested.
“Then do what you can!” was Yonah’s impatient reply before he disappeared to begin tunneling beneath the debris.
I was still furious with Yonah, but he was right; the biggest danger to mortal survivors now was the sea. Manipulating these waters might be against the Leviathan’s rules, but I couldn’t value a mere threat to my life more than the guaranteed deaths of the trapped human survivors if I did nothing.
I raised my hands and sent my senses down to find the water that I knew was churning beneath the rubble of Yonah’s house. Besides, I thought grimly. These parts of the sea had crossed onto here without permission. I was only sending them back.
I closed my eyes. Sight wouldn’t help me. Only senses, and I let them wrap around the energy in the water beneath the house’s ruins until I felt it pulse through me. Then I wrapped my power around that energy and pulled, trying to force it back from the countless crevasses it had filled while also trying to hold back the sea’s relentless flow into the main fissure.
But almost instantly, I was swamped by the crushing force of more power than I could ever understand, let alone bend to my will. Run! a shrieking, primal part of me urged. Run now or die!
At the same time, my other nature reached through the bars of her cage. Not only was she unafraid, she was intrigued by the potential of all the uncontrollable energy roiling around her.
I didn’t think. I grabbed at her hand and pulled.
Chapter 31
When my other half finally relinquished control, the vampire, ghoul, and demon survivors had plugged the largest of the fissures with multiple pieces of debris from the house. It wasn’t a permanent fix, and seawater still ran through the cracks, but it was no longer the massive deluge that had overwhelmed me with its power before.
And I was so exhausted, I couldn’t even pull myself into a sitting position as I watched bloodied survivors wait at the edge of the ruins. Some were crying, some were praying aloud that their loved ones would be among those still being pulled out from under the collapsed house. I couldn’t hear heartbeats beneath the rubble, but I hoped that was because of all the noise those digging through the ruins made. I wanted to join them to help, but I couldn’t seem to move yet.
When something foaming and deep blue rose up from the sea, for a moment I thought it was a rogue wave. Then I realized it was several Leviathan forming out of the waters. Of course, once they did, they came out of the surf and headed right toward me. I couldn’t even summon the energy to be afraid. All I could think was, Took you long enough.
Then ripped black pants filled my vision. I followed them upward to see a muscled, pale back and soaked auburn hair. Ian raised his arm, and the horn that had been wrapped around it stabbed at the air as if wishing it were flesh.
“I chalked up the first threat to her life as a cultural misunderstanding, but now I’m all out of fucks to give,” he said in a loud, chipper tone. “So if any of you water-logged sods comes near her, I’ll shove this horn so far up your arses, Poseidon himself will be screaming from his new hemorrhoids!”
If that was the last thing I ever heard, at least it was memorable.
“That will not be necessary,” a smooth voice stated.
I don’t know why I thought it would be Yonah. Probably because I’d saved at least some of his people, so I’d hoped the demon would speak up in my defense, if it came to this. But the man who stepped into my vision had long white hair instead of a shiny bald pate, and his skin . . . Wow, I thought hazily.
He must’ve had it covered up by an elegant tuxedo at some point, but deep rips in the fabric revealed skin that at one moment was so pale it resembled moonlight resting on the waves, while in the next it was deep blue shot through with silver. Staring at it was like watching light refract and diffuse as it penetrated through water, and now I knew what his hair reminded me of: the roiling froth that formed when seas were at their stormiest.
“The Leviathan ruler,” I mumbled. I might not have seen him when my other nature took control earlier, but I’d felt him, and that was enough to recognize him now.
Ian turned, placing himself now between the stranger and me. “You don’t say?”
Ian’s drawl didn’t fool me. His aura burst out like the detonation of a bomb; a warning as clear as the deadly horn now pointed at the tall, white-haired Leviathan ruler.
“As I said, that won’t be necessary,” the stranger replied. With that, the Leviathan melted back into the sea.
Ian didn’t relax his stance. “Do I owe you thanks, or did you call off your sea dogs to take a crack at Ariel yourself?”
“Ariel?” The Leviathan ruler’s lips twitched as he looked past Ian to me. That’s when I finally noticed that if his skin wasn’t so unusual, he’d look like a normal, handsome young man. “You of all people named yourself after a fictional mermaid?”
I summoned up the energy to reply. “That book wasn’t written until the thousands of years after my sire named me, but the irony of it isn’t lost on me now.”
Another smile touched his mouth. Then he looked back at Ian. “I mean her no harm.” But you couldn’t stop me if I did, his newly hardened stare added.
Ian’s smile made me drag myself into a sitting position. I’d seen that same smile right before Ian threw himself into a gleefully violent fight to the death.
“I could use some help,” I said to distract Ian. It wasn’t a lie. My body felt like a wet rag, and now Yonah was striding toward us with his wings out. That couldn’t mean anything good.
“I’ve finished taking the wards down, so I and my people are leaving,” Yonah announced, seeming to speak more to the Leviathan ruler than Ian or me. At his declaration, everyone sto
pped working with a suddenness that made the new silence eerie. “I will give you our new location when it is safe,” Yonah went on, again seeming to speak to the Leviathan leader alone.
They grasped upper arms in the ancient form of a handshake. Since Yonah didn’t immediately start spewing water from his mouth, the Leviathan leader must not have the same “drown upon contact” limitations that his fluid-formed kinsfolk had.
“Safe journey, Yonah,” he said in his unaccented voice.
“To you as well, Indus,” the former demon prince replied.
Indus. The name of a river not far from my homeland in ancient Mesopotamia. Coincidence? Or had the cradle of civilization birthed much more than I’d realized?
Ereshki distracted me by limping up to our pile of debris. “Please,” she said. “Please, Yonah, do not leave me behind!”
“Rules state that only the most trusted members are brought to a new sanctuary after an attack,” Yonah replied in a harsh tone. “You are the newest, so you are the least trusted. Even if you were not, this place has been a haven for over five hundred years, but less than a month after your arrival, an earthquake levels half the island when it is nowhere near a fault line? No! Dark magic was afoot. I can sense it, meaning this one”—he stabbed his finger at Ian—“is right. Your enemy tracked you here, and I cannot allow him to track you to where we are going.”
Ereshki tried to cling to him. Yonah shoved her away. She sank to her knees, weeping with a hopelessness that caused a poignant stab of remembrance. I knew how hopelessness that deep felt. I wished it on no one, not even her.
“How are you getting your people out of here?” Ian asked, ignoring Ereshki’s tears. “As you might know, our plane is no longer functional, so we could use a ride.”
“Not with me,” Yonah replied curtly. “You can call for help, if you find a working mobile phone. Or start flying. Or swim; the Leviathan will be gone soon, too. I care not which. With the wards down, I can now teleport all my people out of here, even those still trapped beneath the ruins. But that also means this island is now completely unprotected.”
With that, Yonah unleashed a shockwave of power. It threw Ian backward and must have knocked me out, because when my eyes opened, only Ian, Ereshki, and I remained.
Ereshki’s sobs turned into wails as she realized Yonah had made good on his promise to leave her behind. Then she scrambled to her feet and ran, but soon tripped on a piece of sliding debris and fell.
“I’ll deal with you in a moment,” Ian muttered before raising his voice. “Silver! Get over here, mate, we’re leaving!”
I was relieved to see a streak of gray flying toward us. Then all I saw was Ereshki when Ian teleported her over and dropped her in front of me. “Need to make it quick—we have to leave before this island is overrun with Yonah’s enemies.”
For a second, I didn’t understand. Then I did. So did Ereshki. Her sobs became frenzied, and she looked at me with a bleakness that transcended despair.
She expected no mercy. I certainly owed her none. Dagon didn’t merely slit my throat before claiming he was the one to raise me from the dead when I came back to life later. No, Dagon had all the flair of a showman combined with the ruthlessness of his ambitions. The more prolonged the suffering, the more grotesque the method of execution . . . the godlier Dagon looked when I came back from the dead, thus the more power he derived from his worshippers.
And I’d loved Ereshki so much, I begged Dagon to make me the object of his cruelties instead of her. When he did, I was relieved for her sake because until the day Tenoch rescued me, I thought Ereshki loved me as a sister, too. But on that last day, I recovered from a beating faster than my captors anticipated and overheard Ereshki laughing with Fenkir and Rani over how easily she’d deceived me. She wasn’t a helpless captive. No, Ereshki was Dagon’s willing demon-branded acolyte, there only to keep me loyal to him through her deceit.
Finding that out had hurt worse than anything Dagon had done to me.
Now, I could finally get my revenge. In many ways, I needed to, not only for myself, but for all her other victims, too. But even as my hands shook with the urge to choke the life from her, I couldn’t. The Ereshki who’d betrayed me and all those other people wasn’t here. Only this one was, and she couldn’t remember her many crimes.
Murdering this Ereshki wouldn’t be justice. It wouldn’t even be vengeance. It would be cruelty for cruelty’s sake. That’s why I couldn’t do it. If I did, I wouldn’t be much better than the monster Ereshki had been back then, and I was better, dammit! She’d taken a lot from me, but she wouldn’t take that.
“I’m not killing her,” I said.
Ian shrugged. “If you’re too tired, then I’ll do it.”
“No.” Now my tone was steel. “We’re taking her with us.”
Chapter 32
I’d never argued with someone while teleporting before. I can’t say I recommend it. Whenever Ian didn’t want to hear what I was saying, he’d blink us another hundred kilometers or so over the expanse of the ocean. Between that, we flew. Or, more accurately, Ian flew while toting me, Silver, and Ereshki because I was still too weak to carry myself, let alone anyone else.
I’d never heard such a litany of curse words in different languages during the hours it took us to fly, teleport, rest, and repeat before we finally reached the mainland, which turned out to be the coastline of Santa Monica, California. Many times, I expected Ian to leave Ereshki behind to drown, but despite his clearly stated objections, he kept her with us. In the end, I wasn’t sure if that was out of respect for my wishes or because of my colder assertion that Ereshki was worth more to us alive.
That’s how the four of us stumbled into the first gorgeous beach house we saw after swimming the last couple hundred meters to shore. It wasn’t empty, but a few flashes from Ian’s gaze later, the rich middle-aged Caucasian couple was all too happy to host us as their unexpected guests. Demons couldn’t enter a private home unless invited and we were well into midday, so for the next several hours of daylight, we were safe.
I took a long, grateful sip from the husband’s wrist while his wife busied herself asking Ereshki if she wanted something to eat. Ian, to my surprise, went straight to the couple’s phone and started dialing.
“Crispin,” he said moments later. “Something urgent has come up. Need you to meet me at my favorite house tonight, and I know you like to keep her close, but whatever you do, do not bring the girl with you.”
I heard Bones’s snort through the phone. “You know Cat won’t agree to staying behind—”
“Not that girl,” Ian interrupted.
A tense silence followed, then Bones said, “See you tonight,” and hung up.
I was intrigued. Was Ian finally asking his friends for help to take Dagon down?
Ian put the phone down. Then he sprawled onto the nearest sofa without care that he was still soaking wet. Ereshki scrambled to get as far away from him as the stunning ocean-view room allowed. I caught her glancing at the side door that led to the deck and its stairway to the beach as if estimating her chances of reaching it in time.
“You’re safer with us than on your own. Dagon will rip you apart to get what he wants from you.” I couldn’t kill her in good conscience, but I wasn’t about to coddle her, either. “All we’ll do is be rude and keep you confined. Be wise, Ereshki. Take rudeness and confinement over death.”
“He still wants to kill me,” she said in a shaking voice.
The grin Ian flashed her said she wasn’t wrong.
“He won’t,” I replied, ignoring Ian’s challenging arch of the brow. “You’re the perfect bait. Dagon has clearly found a way to track you; Yonah’s destroyed island sanctuary is proof of that. We arrived less than twelve hours before the earthquake, and a spell that powerful would’ve taken much longer to implement, so Dagon followed you there. Not us. But Dagon’s not at full strength yet. Plus, he’ll be struck with crippling pain as soon as he’s near Ian, so we’re go
ing to finally set a trap for him that he can’t escape from.”
We only had the element of surprise and the results of whatever my father had done to Ian to combat Dagon’s wild-card ability to burn through souls to increase his power, but it would have to be enough.
“Why will being near Ian harm him?” Ereshki asked at the same time Ian said, “Do go on,” in a dangerously silky tone.
I stiffened. Had I not mentioned that to him before? From Ian’s darkening expression, I hadn’t. I sighed.
“My father put a spell on you that only activates when Dagon is near. You saw what it did when Dagon crashed our date at the amusement park. He dropped to his knees screaming.”
The memory warmed my heart, but Ian’s fingers began to drum against the armrest of the sofa hard enough to send bits of fluff from its inner stuffing into the air.
“Once, I thought the most awful thing I’d heard was Vlad’s witchy wife cursing me to fall for someone who insisted on monogamy.” Ian’s tone was deceptively jovial. “I must not have heard the part where she added that the object of my affection would also have an enraging set of scruples combined with insane protective instincts that led to repeated suicidal tendencies!”
I must not have drunk enough from the rich husband. If I had, I might have known what the hell Ian was talking about. “Is this your way of saying you don’t want to be monogamous?”
An end table went sailing through the window. Glass shattered and the wife let out a frightened squeak that Ereshki echoed. Ian was in front of me before I could speak, those strong fingers now digging into my shoulders.
“No.” His voice was harsher than a growl. “It’s my way of saying I can’t believe you avoided me for weeks for my supposed protection when all the while, doing so put you in more danger because I was spell-bound into being a bloody Dagon-repellant!”
“I wasn’t thinking about my danger,” I snapped, weariness turning to anger. “I wasn’t much thinking at all, as I’ve tried to explain to you over and over. Yes, I handled things badly, but after you hold my dead body in your arms, you can react with all the cool rationality you want. Until then, excuse me for not acting with my best cold logic right after holding yours!”
Wicked Bite Page 17