I refused to put their essence in the torque because I knew the damn thing would be around my throat and I’d be under their command before I took two steps. My only chance was to have those few moments to give Maddie a running start. But still, it wasn’t enough. I’d thought if I could do this, I could at least keep more of Cooper’s people from dying, more humans from wasting their lives for my mistakes. And yet, here I was, about to watch this beautiful child be torn apart by monsters. Because of me. It was too much to bear. The guilt scored a gash in what was left of my heart.
Rook stalked toward me and gripped my jaw in his hand. “Oh, yes, Bone. You will do anything and everything I want. For the rest of your immortal life. But right now, I’m going to teach you a lesson.”
“I’ll fight you if you kill her,” I growled, fuming. “You think it was hard to get me to forge one weapon for you? And you want hundreds of these, don’t you? I’ll not make a fucking one if you hurt her. I’ll let you beat me to death before I obey one single command.”
He froze, his black eyes considering as he glanced at the girl held between two priests, her tiny arms slanted uncomfortably high for her little body. My heart ached.
Rook turned with eerie slowness back to me, finally realizing I was telling the truth.
“Something happened to you with that hunter, didn’t it? You really are one of those creatures, aren’t you?”
Those creatures? I scoffed.
“Yes. I am.”
He grinned for the first time since I’d stepped onto the compound. “Then this will be even more enjoyable.” He reached for his buckle. “Take off your top and on your knees, Bone.”
Horrified, I glanced at Maddie. “In front of her?” I whispered. Never mind the hundreds of freaky priests watching with their cold black eyes.
“In front of her.”
This had nothing to do with sex, and I knew it. This was about control and humiliation, Rook’s favorite form of punishment. I needed time to save Maddie. So be it.
“Close your eyes, Maddie. And do not open them.”
She closed her eyes with a nod and a frightened whimper.
Simian let my arms go, but he moved directly to my right to get a good view as I unbuttoned my shirt, his creepy eyes watching my hands.
“So whose essence is in that thing anyway?” he whispered close as if we were intimates. White-hot anger flared in my chest.
As I unbuttoned the last one, I lifted my hands as if to remove my shirt and pivoted to him. Then I jerked the torque off my neck and shoved it on Simian’s, holding his nape and pressing down over the torque. There was a reason I used bronze in the making of it. It was the element that had always received my seraph song the best. It listened to me better than any other, almost as if the metal loved me.
“Mine,” I grinned.
With a sudden summons of my seraph magic, I wailed out a long note, sending the powerful vibration straight into the weapon. It harmonized with the magic singing in the air, obeying my will. This time, I called it not to create, but to destroy. Simian’s face blackened, his eyes bulged, his mouth gaped as he screamed. Then I sang a higher note, the old words dancing in my mind, and Simian’s head exploded into charred pieces of ember and ash, his body crumbling to the ground, the torque rolling onto the snow.
I spun toward Rook, who already had Maddie in his grasp, his claws at her throat. He couldn’t speak, his shocked expression on his twin brother. The body of his twin brother. “Where did you send him?” Rage and disbelief simmered in his icy voice.
“Erebus. Where else?”
“How could you?” he demanded, death and destruction in each syllable before his quiet promise, “I’m going to make you hurt so very much, Bone.” I shivered at his black vow. “The pain will be long. So, so long, sweetheart.”
Yes, I’d once wielded the ancient words to expel demons to hell. Just like my hunter. Demons always knew them. They just never used them on their own kind. But I wasn’t one of their kind anymore. I had nothing in common with this creature in front of me.
“My name is Carowyn,” I corrected.
Straightening taller, he seemed to gather his strength as the priests circled closer, being cautious because they didn’t understand my magic. Good for them. Because I wasn’t done yet. I could expel them with my touch and my voice. I didn’t need a blade or a bullet like the angels and the hunters. My voice was my weapon. And my salvation.
He laughed, darkness resonating in the air. “You’ll never make it out alive.”
Hellhounds snarled and snapped, creeping closer. I watched my inevitable end drawing closer. Of all the ways I thought I might be expelled to hell, I never thought it would be like this. Judith flickered in my mind. Her regal demeanor, her triumphant smile in Klimt’s painting as she caressed the evil general’s decapitated head. I smiled at Rook.
“As long as I take you with me, I’ll be fine with that.”
When I saw the shifting flash in his eyes, his tell that he was about to slit Maddie’s throat, I tensed to lunge. But then a horrific roar shrieked from the darkening sky. We all looked up as one at a sight I’d never before seen in all my immortal life.
“No. Fucking. Way.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Carowyn
None of us could move as we watched the dragon Circe, Rook’s spawn—red-scaled, open-mouthed, and roaring—beating her great black wings as she descended through the wards above Allerton Castle. Standing—yes, standing—at the base of her head and holding on by her black horns that curled backward was Uriel. His white wings were open, seemingly catching the updraft as they descended. The dragon’s eyes glowed white-gold, the same color as the tips of his angel wings and the aura of power he wore when in battle. He looked as if he were about to take flight. That was because he was. As Circe broke through the invisible wards with a sizzling vibration, Uriel leaped into the air and flew straight for us.
Behind him atop the dragon’s neck was Xander. Oh, my love. Holding on to her spiky mane, he wore a face of a berserker warrior, full of maddening fury. In line behind him were George, Kat, Dommiel, Axel, Wolfrick, Gustav, Anya, and Maximus. It was the most insane thing I had ever seen.
Anya and Maximus shot off into the air, swooping down with blades drawn, and began slicing into the priests who tried—and failed—to prepare for the onslaught. Circe landed with a resounding boom and another screeching roar. Uriel lifted off, and with a flick of his wrist the dragon inhaled deep and belched out a molten stream of fire, incinerating priests and hellhounds that had turned to attack.
Xander and the others were on the ground, cutting and firing their way through the red priests and furies like a sad ripple of water. Slashes of steel, the sharp spray of black demon blood, the fiery burst of the priests into cinders and ash… They were nothing—nothing—next to my man and his warrior friends. My warrior friends.
Maddie screamed. I spun around. Rook was dragging her back into his castle. He was blocked from the front gate and from escaping beyond his own wards where he could sift away to safety. Trapped in his own prison. Pulling my favorite weapons from my boot sheaths, the twin tantos, Japanese daggers forged after the ancient Samurai blades, I headed after him. Of course, my version of the tantos were embedded and laced with ether to send my victims to a pit in hell.
I sprinted up the drive while fire roared and blades clanged and guns blasted. The smell of sulfur and smoke wafted into the air, while thunder rumbled, adding to the din of battle. The sky had darkened to deep night, but ethereal lightning flashed above the clouds, a sign of supernatural combat. I hurried away from it all and into the eerily quiet front hall of the castle.
Last time I was here, there was a menagerie of orgies and black silk and flickering candlelight. Now, it was all empty. Hollow, like the masters who lived here. Only one master left now.
A child cried. Maddie. I tore down the left hall and caught him on the stairs right where it branched off to go up. A rumble of thunder vibrated through the hall.
“No point in running, Rook.”
He put the child in front of him, his claws digging into her little neck. Pinpricks of blood trickled down. She whimpered softly, her chin trembling.
“Rook. Don’t. If you kill her, you’ll have nothing to bargain with to get out of here.”
He laughed with disdain. “Will I get out of here?”
My heart hammering, I made a show of placing my tantos on the carpeted step of the staircase. His manic expression eased, his fingers loosened around her throat without digging in his claws.
“Your only way out is to get past the wards,” I reminded him. “Take me instead of her. I’ll get you past them.” I nodded toward the exit.
He seemed to be considering, his tight expression assessing. “How did you do that to Simian? It was the torque?”
I gulped, recognizing his rage rising. “Yes,” I half lied.
I’d amplified my own power by melding it into the bronze, but I knew that if I could get my hands on Rook, I could expel him without the torque.
So strange. I wasn’t that kind of angel before the fall. A seraph was meant to inspire, influence, and persuade souls toward the good. But that power could also persuade souls to vacate their mortal bodies and descend to the nether-realm. Using the influence that way had simply never occurred to me until I needed to damn a soul to hell. And now I needed to damn another.
“Come to me, Bone,” he commanded in the way I was used to being spoken to by this particular demon prince.
I did, slowly ascending to the middle landing where the staircase split and spiraled up to the second floor. As soon as I was within reach, he shoved the girl away and grabbed hold of my shirt with both hands. It was still unbuttoned, so his hold on me revealed my bare chest in a black lace bra. A good distraction, which seemed to be working.
“Go, Maddie,” I said quietly. “Find Xander. He’ll take care of you.”
She didn’t hesitate this time and ran down the steps, her tiny feet pattering on the marble in the long corridor.
“You bitch,” he crooned like a lover’s endearment. “You wicked, wicked bitch.” His gaze roved down my body and back up to my mouth, then finally to my eyes. “You killed my fucking brother.” He pulled me with his hands clutched in my shirt till my body was flush with his. “I’m going to punish you hard, Bone.”
All of this he said in the slightest whisper as if he were seducing me. Had I been the old Bone, the one he knew who enjoyed violent danger and rough play, the one who’d been lost in sad oblivion for a time, I would’ve been ready for his punishment. Eager for it.
“You can try,” I countered.
I reached up to press my hand to his bare neck, but then his eyes went wide, and his body shuddered with a hard jolt. Black blood oozed from the center of his neck. A blade was protruding from it. No, not just a blade. A thick and wide Bowie knife. I’d recognize it anywhere. Rook crashed to his knees, grasping at his bleeding throat.
Xander stood behind him, his stony visage on Rook. He gripped him by the black hair and pulled out his Bowie knife, which only set off a spigot of black blood oozing out both sides of his neck. He slung the demon prince backward. Rook hit the carpet, grappling at his throat to no avail. His mortal life force would be gone soon enough.
But apparently, that wasn’t Xander’s plan. He wiped the blade on his dark denim and sheathed the blade, his grave expression on me. Something about his curt, sharp movements told me to be still and wait. He wasn’t done. And I didn’t want to get in his way. Because the look on his face told me his fury was still riding him hard. My hunter was dangerous right now. Not to me. Never to me. But all I could do was stand there and watch him.
He stepped over the writhing body of Rook toward the upward staircase of the landing. There, on the outer wall was a stained-glass window of a water nymph dancing in a stream. Xander combed both hands feverishly through his blond hair then raised his arms.
“Veniunt ad me, Stygos. Veniunt ad me.”
Oh, God. I knew what that meant.
His gravelly voice radiated vengeance. Within seconds, the blue stained-glass of the water nymph brightened with a moonbeam that pierced straight onto the red-carpeted steps. The air grew thick, the sounds of metal on metal and cries of pain diminished, sucked into a soundless vacuum.
Rook stopped writhing, staring toward the shaft of light, which quickly materialized into the Soul Collector, Stygos. Like before, she drifted down as if from a ghostly cloud, her white gown hugging her curvaceous form, billowing at the ankles, her feet not touching the ground.
Xander bowed to her as if she were a queen and gestured toward Rook on the floor, still bleeding out, staining the red carpet inky black.
“Manducare, Lady Styx.”
She hissed with glee, her black lips spreading wide, wide, wider than was possible, cutting across her face like a demented Cheshire cat. She floated horizontally down over Rook who now shook his head in fear, gurgling out black blood as he tried to speak. To scream.
I glanced at Xander, who simply watched, still elevated on the second step. I didn’t recognize that expression on his face. But when Styx snapped off Rook’s head with a splattering crunch and gobbled it down her abnormally large and sickeningly unhinged mouth, he smiled. And I shivered. He would’ve made an awfully beautiful demon if he’d ever taken that path.
A ruffling sounded behind me, coming down the stairs. Uriel walked down from the second floor, completely unaffected as Styx made the most horrifically disgusting sounds I’ve ever heard. She was already down to Rook’s torso and one leg. Uriel must’ve helped Xander into the castle through a window so that he could attack stealthily. And attack, he did.
“Good work, Alexander,” was all Uriel said as he strode past us and across the marble floor toward the exit.
I glanced back to find Xander staring at me. I jumped. His intense gaze so serious, so severe, it kicked up my heartbeat several paces.
“Xander? Are you—?”
He got to me in two strides and swept me off my feet—literally—like some princess in a fairytale. But I was far from a princess. And this wasn’t nearly like a fairytale. But I was fine being a demoness, as long as I was his demoness.
I clasped my fingers around his neck and said quite calmly, “I can walk, you know.”
The searing flicker of his gaze, telling me something along the lines of Don’t even think about it put me in my place well enough. This taciturn version of Xander was something new altogether, the emotions of a few moments before still rolling off of him in waves.
“All right, then,” I said with a sigh. “Carried out like an invalid, it is.”
A snarky look joined a half frown that probably meant, Not even close.
So I added, softly and intimately, edging closer, “Or maybe like a bride.”
He clutched me tight with a smoldering look that said, You got that fucking right.
I smiled as we passed Uriel in conversation with George, Kat, and Maximus, who paused to watch us pass before getting back to their plotting and planning. Mixed in with the white of the snow-laden ground were patches and patches of black soot and floating ash. No priests. No furies. No hellhounds in sight. Only these splotches of ash and soot where they’d been before they were sent back to hell.
The storm clouds had moved on, but now a drift of downy snow fell from the sky. Maddie giggled from her perch on Anya’s hip. Anya said something low and gentle, and the girl laughed again, holding her hand up to the snow. Dommiel watched the pair with a strange look in his eyes. It made my heart clench.
Off behind them, Axel, Wolfrick, and Gustav were petting the snout of Circe, whose eyes were half closed in slumber where she’d stretched her long body out, her spiked tail twitching like a contented cat’s. Apparently, she was enjoying the attentions of the three demons crooning sweet-nothings in German to her.
I glanced over Xander’s shoulder at Uriel. I’d never heard of a demonic creature being possessed by an angel. I
’d certainly never seen a demon spawn in the form of a dragon being mastered by an archangel. The heavenly kind didn’t want to stain their souls by getting in the minds and bodies of a beast of the Dark. But Uriel was different. He was certainly still on the side of the Light, but he was bending the rules to win the war. He might be the smartest one of us all.
Yes. Us. I was part of an us.
We were near the gate when I heard Dommiel call out.
“Hey, Goldilocks! You need some help? I can—”
“Fuck off, Blackheart,” said Xander, the first words he’d said at all since he’d stepped up and put a blade in Rook’s throat.
A dark chuckle of merriment followed us into the Void where it was quite apparent Xander wasn’t letting go any time soon.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Xander
I set her down and stood apart, facing her as I undressed. Not slow, not fast, just one thing after another dropped to the floor, shoved aside. I wanted nothing between my body and hers. Nothing.
She was shaking, too. Standing there like the goddess she was, watching me. Watching my hands remove my coat, my shoes, gun harness, shirt, pants. When I finally stood nude before her, I approached and unwrapped her, piece by piece. Both of us were splattered with demon blood and the gut-punching fear of losing one another and the breath-stealing relief that we’d found each other whole and alive. Once her body—her beautiful fucking body—was revealed to me, I lifted her again and carried her to the bathroom. She said not a thing, understanding I needed silence. Needed her. Just her.
With steamy water streaming, I pulled her inside with me. She seemed content to be led. Her hair had been in one long braid, so I uncoiled it all, letting the wavy lengths fall loose around her delicate shoulders. Her chest rose and fell quickly as my hands moved slowly over her. Soaping her body clean, smoothing my hands over every lovely curve of hip, waist, shoulder, breast, I needed to ensure that every part of her was intact. She winced when I glided my palm across her belly, a purplish bruise forming there. I glanced back to the welt blooming on her cheek, then I wanted to go back and pull Rook from Styx’s throat so I could torture him more, longer.
Hardest Fall Page 22
