by Callie Rose
Then Kingston stopped short in front of me so fast I almost ran into him.
“Can you feel that?” His voice was full of shaky excitement.
All I could feel were my own rattled nerves, so I took a moment to center myself the way Jayce had taught me and tapped into Kingston’s feelings. Excitement. Awe and greed. Something so close to lust it was almost indistinguishable. As I widened my senses, I could almost feel the stones myself. It was like magic was thicker down here, and I was positive we must be getting close. If we could—
A pebble skittered down the passage behind us.
With my senses on full blast, still charged up from our moment in the woods, I heard it first. My eyes flew open and I spun around, prepared to fight whatever monster was after us this time.
Xero, Jayce, and Kai followed my lead. Kingston was still radiating that gem lust, focused only on the thickening air deeper down in the cave. I gestured for Kai to go toward the sound on the left, Xero on the right, and for Jayce to stay by my side. We crept forward as silently as possible, hoping to take whatever it was by surprise. My heart thudded so loudly that I was sure the intruder would hear us even though our footsteps were silent.
Xero and Kai were in position, almost invisible against the dark walls. Jayce and I stopped just before a soft curve in the passageway, ready to take the unknown monster from the front while the other two attacked from the back.
It would have worked beautifully. My muscles were tensed and ready, my body and mind primed to take on whatever new threat the underworld had thrown at us—but the instant the person following us turned the corner, I froze in shock.
What the ever-loving fuck?
The guys froze in place as the woman with milky skin and red hair passed by them and came face-to-face with me.
“Sonja?” I blinked, utterly confused. “What are you doing here?”
Rather than giving me an answer, she shifted into her demon form and started building up a fireball.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Xero leapt out of the shadows and pinned her arms to her sides.
She kicked and screamed, wriggling to get free, but he was at least twice as strong as she was in either form. When she tried summoning another fireball, he head-butted her, and the spell fizzled out of existence. Physically spent but still radiating fury, she fell limply back into her human form as Xero spun her in his arms to face me. Her fiery eyes glared at me from beneath her hair.
“Sonja,” I said again, pushing persuasive power through my voice. “Why are you here?”
“To stop you,” she said breathlessly, the answer pulled from her against her will. “I knew it. I always knew you would betray the light the second you had the chance! Ow! Let go, you’re hurting me!”
Xero glanced at me, and I saw the glint of his eyes rolling in the dim light. I looked at Sonja and cocked my head to one side.
“If I tell him to let you go, will you be a good girl and not throw any more fireballs at me?”
“Oh, fuck off, bitch. Let go of me!”
“Ah-ah,” I said. “Not until you promise to stop throwing those things around. They’re dangerous, and this is a confined space. You’re liable to hurt someone.”
As if that hadn’t been her intention all along.
“Fine, I promise,” she spat.
“Good.” I shifted my focus to Xero, nodding slightly. “Let go of her, but stay where you are in case she has trouble keeping that promise.”
She huffed as the fire demon released her. I felt around with my mind for Kingston; he had gone on without us, but he wasn’t too far.
“Kingston.” I raised my voice as loud as I dared, adding a tiny nudge of persuasion to break through his dragon’s covetousness. “Get back here.”
He was resistant, but he began slowly making his way back. That was fine. I just didn’t want him getting hurt with no backup. And to be honest, I wanted him to be our backup.
Stepping forward, I turned my attention back at Sonja, whose eyes were darting around at the four of us like she was going to try to make a move. She shook her wrist, jangling the bracelet there. The bracelet caught my eye and made my heart race. It was a simple bracelet, just copper and leather braided around and through a turquoise rhombus, but something about it made every hair on my body stand on end.
I recognized it.
I couldn’t remember exactly where I’d seen it before, but for some reason, the sight of it made me want to tear her arm off.
Take it. Take it from her. Don’t let her have it.
The thoughts filtering through my head made no sense, but before I could sort out why I wanted to yank the bracelet from her wrist, she lifted it to her lips and pressed a finger to the rhombus. The thing glowed a brilliant, blinding blue and emanated a frequency that I could feel more than hear.
“I need backup in the cave!” she shouted into the bracelet. “Now!”
Goddamn it. Some kind of communication charm.
I lunged at her, but she snatched her arm back with a smug look, twisting in Xero’s grasp.
“Now you really won’t get away with this.” She flashed me a triumphant look. “The Custodians are on their way to arrest you.”
I almost laughed. She was full of shit. But she looked so damn confident that I hesitated, then frowned.
“How have you been communicating with the Custodians? They didn’t come with the school. And there’s no way to reach anyone on earth.”
That wasn’t strictly true, but the only method I was aware of was the enchanted phone Kingston had smuggled in.
“That’s what you think,” Sonja said in sing-song. She raised her wrist and jangled the bracelet again. “This little beauty here? It’s a charmed comm link. I can talk to the Custodians anytime, anywhere I want to. They’ve been really interested in hearing all about the little conspiracies you’ve been plotting, and about the filthy demons infesting the school.”
I glared at her. “What, you mean the students?”
“No!” Her lip curled, and she squirmed in Xero’s grasp as if she couldn’t stand being touched by someone as corrupted by the underworld as him. My blood pressure rose as she let out a scoff. “I mean all ones who have turned traitor, who’ve forgotten that our only purpose is to serve the Custodians and protect humanity. The ones who have truly fallen. The Custodians were very interested to hear about how many of them have been brought downstairs because they couldn’t resist the evil atmosphere in this place.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong. On so many levels, wrong.
My frown deepened as I resisted the urge to scream at her for her ignorant prejudice, focusing instead on filling in the gaping holes in her story. None of what she was saying made sense.
“Okay—so you can talk to the Custodians. But you just called for backup. Who’s going to come? Do they have other students working for them in the underworld?”
I couldn’t believe they had anybody working for them on the inside. Dru would’ve told us if he’d known, and I was almost positive he was high enough up the chain of command that he would have known. But Sonja clearly believed what she was saying, and I wanted the whole story.
She sniffed and tossed her red hair back. “Of course not. They only trust me to be their eyes and ears in the underworld—everyone else is caught up in one conspiracy or another. It’s my job to tell them who’s definitely been corrupted, like you, who’s potentially corrupted, like Toland, and everything else that happens.”
The more she talked, the more confused I got. If the Custodians had a presence in the underworld, why hadn’t they contacted the school?
“Sonja.” I shook my head. “Do you even know what you’re talking about?”
Before she could respond, a man stepped around the corner.
My whole body jerked in surprise, and I felt Jayce grow tense beside me. The man appeared to be in his mid or late-thirties, with ash-brown hair, a straight nose, and a defined jawline. He looked a little like Dru, actually.
But this m
an was definitely not Dru.
As he moved toward us, I was smacked in the face with a presence that made me physically ill. The stench of poison and pure evil overwhelmed my senses, and I had to grab Jayce’s arm to keep from collapsing.
I wanted to throw up until I turned inside out. I wanted to cry until all of the water was gone from my body. I wanted to find the nearest cliff and jump off of it. My insides were on fire, curdled and churning in the face of this monster.
There was only one being on either world I could imagine making me feel this way.
“Gavriel,” I gasped.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sonja cackled.
“Gavriel? No, idiot, this is the Custodian who’s been my contact. The one I’ve been reporting to all year. Jonathan.” She smirked at me, her expression so damn smug I wanted to punch it right off her face. “You’re finished, you and all of your evil schemes. The school is safer now, and everyone will have me to thank.”
Gavriel—it was him, it was, it fucking had to be—floated forward and put a hand on her shoulder. Xero released her and staggered back, his eyes wide.
“Hush, child,” Gavriel murmured. “You have done a great thing. You will soon receive the reward you deserve.”
“Reward? You mean I’ll be getting promoted to Custodian early? Thank God. I can’t stand to be in that school with those corrupt fallen for another day. None of them believe in our cause like I do.”
The naïve glow on her face made me want to shake her. Are you fucking kidding? Wake the hell up!
Gavriel chuckled, the sound low and warm but ice-cold at the same time. It made me shudder. I felt a spike of Kingston’s fear from somewhere behind me. I wanted to push a feeling at him to make him stay back, but I didn’t want Gavriel picking up on the fact that there was someone else here if he didn’t already know. I didn’t know if he was capable of intercepting projected feelings not meant for him, but I wasn’t going to chance it. I had to trust Kingston to be smart enough to figure it out, although the control freak in me wasn’t happy about that at all.
“Promoted?” Gavriel’s full lips tilted up into a smile. “I sincerely doubt that.”
Sonja’s eyes went wide with hurt. “But why? I did everything you said! I’m the one who found the bracelet! You said only the chosen one could have found the bracelet you left at the school. You chose me!”
“I did,” Gavriel acknowledged, his smile turning almost cruel. “I chose you because you were so very thirsty for approval. So obsessed with being the righteous savior, the smartest one in the room, the only one who really knows the truth. I chose you, Sonja, because it was so very, very easy.”
“What the fuck, Sonja?” My voice was weak, so raspy and shaky I almost didn’t recognize it. “This guy’s name isn’t Jonathan. This is Gavriel.”
She blurted a disbelieving laugh. “Give it up, you bitch! Maybe you see Gavriel everywhere because you worship him so much, but the rest of us can tell the difference.”
Oh, fuck. She’s completely in his pocket. And she doesn’t even know it’s him.
I believed that without a doubt. Sonja was a raging bitch, but she was completely dedicated to the Custodians, anxious to rise up the ranks of their organization. She would never knowingly help Gavriel. But unknowingly?
“Sonja, listen to me. This is Gavriel.” I kept my arms wrapped around myself, clutching my belly to keep my shaking to a minimum. I was beginning to recover, and Jayce’s hand on the small of my back was helping. “He’s been manipulating you. I don’t know why, but he’s been playing you this whole time.”
The redheaded demon stiffened, and the man in front of her did too, the movement so slight it was almost imperceptible. She looked from me to him and back again, and he shrugged, grinning wider.
“Well,” he drawled, “I was trying not to ruin the surprise, but I suppose now is as good a time as any.”
As he spoke the last words, his features began to shift.
His body grew and elongated, his skin changing color until he was pale as a ghost and two feet taller than Xero. His grotesquely elongated fingers tapered into purple claws, which were almost black. His eyes were deep pools of the darkest black, dotted with specks of bright red where his pupils should’ve been. His lips pulled back in what might’ve been a grin or a grimace, exposing his long, sharp teeth.
Sonja gasped. It was like a veil had lifted from her eyes, allowing her to see him clearly for the very first time.
She turned whiter than I’d thought was possible, then two bright spots of red popped up on her cheeks. When she spoke again, her voice was trembling with fury.
“You—you had me following them the whole time.”
“And you did wonderfully, Sonja. You are special, you know. No one else would have been so dogged in picking up their trail again after that little disappearing act of theirs. You will make a fine spy for my army. The best of the best. And that’s what you will receive in return—only the best of everything. Would you like that, Sonja? To be revered as Gavriel’s favorite?”
Her eyes glazed over in a moment of confusion. He was getting to her, I could tell. His form of persuasion wasn’t like my succubus ability, but it was powerful nonetheless.
But something about all of this didn’t make sense. If she’d been communicating with Gavriel this whole time, why hadn’t he just made her tell him where the school was so he could destroy it? Why bother with hunting us down when he could attack directly?
I thought about how long we’d been gone and my blood ran cold.
We didn’t know that he hadn’t already done that. We’d been traveling for days, maybe more than a week. Plenty of time to flatten the whole school. I shot a look of terror at Xero, and his grim expression told me that he’d thought the exact same thing. We could very well be the only ones left.
Gavriel was running his fingers through long tendrils of Sonja’s red hair, gazing deeply into her eyes. He was mesmerizing her, but she was fighting it. She was also losing.
“Sonja,” I said, trying hard to get through to her. I pushed with my power, then recoiled as it bounced off the solid wall of Gavriel’s black magic.
Fuck it, maybe I need to go old school with this.
“Hey, ginger bitch! Get on your knees if you’re going to suck Gavriel’s cock!”
A spark of fire flashed in her eyes. She was still dazed, but she was coming out of it. Gavriel turned to me and hissed, sending a wave of his disgusting aura in my direction, but I was ready for it. I’d grown accustomed to his stench in the long minutes that he had been manipulating Sonja, and the magic wave rolled around me without touching me. His concentration had broken, and it was just enough to allow Sonja to snap back.
“You bastard! You almost had me kill them!” She leapt away from him and shifted into her demon form. “You made me betray everybody! My friends, my professors—even my enemies! You—you—”
As she screamed, she built a fireball up in her hands. Fueled by her rage, the orange globe cracked with power.
Gavriel sighed. “It was so much easier with Owen. I thought when you found the bracelet I’d used to communicate with him, I could make you his replacement, but—you’ve never really lived up to his level of blind obedience. Ah, well.” He shrugged resignedly.
Shifting my eyes, I caught the men’s gazes and nodded slightly. As soon as Sonja tossed that fireball, we would have to attack. It was our only chance of getting out of here alive, and he might be lord of the underworld, but he was still just one guy.
I carefully reached out to Kingston with my mind and found him ready, lying in wait down the dark tunnel. If our initial attack failed, and Gavriel pushed us down the passage, Kingston would be waiting with a fireball of his own.
“But think of the accolades,” Gavriel whispered, still trying to charm her. “Think of the—”
“Think of this, you son of a bitch!” She lobbed her fireball with more force than I had ever seen from her.
The air t
asted like burnt ozone and indignation as the four of us moved in to attack. Xero blasted his own fireballs at Gavriel’s back, Jayce shifted and sank his hellish teeth into Gavriel’s skinny torso. Quick as lightning, Kai grabbed the knife he had stored in his pack, hurling the bag to the ground even as he threw the blade with his other hand. It grazed the demon lord’s arm as he twisted his torso to avoid a direct strike.
I slid under the fray and touched the skin at Gavriel’s ankle, forcing a connection. Then I infused persuasion into every cell of my body, pushing it into him as hard as I could.
Kill yourself. You want to die.
It might have made a difference if I’d been able to hold on a little longer, but he shoved so many terrible images into my head all at once that I had to recoil. Sonja was gearing up to blast him again, and Jayce was still clamped firmly onto Gavriel’s flank. The powerful demon swiped at him.
“Jayce, claws!”
I thought my scream would be swallowed by the sounds of battle, but somehow it reached him. He dodged in the nick of time.
Sonja wasn’t so lucky.
Before her fireball could reach its zenith, Gavriel embedded his claws in her throat. Her mouth fell open, moving like she was trying to speak or swallow, but she couldn’t do anything. Xero hurled fireballs in rapid succession, lighting Gavriel up and almost obscuring the gurgling scream as the lord of the dark tore Sonja apart.
Her death was quick, but that didn’t ease the shock and horror that crashed through me as I watched her fall. Tears spilled down my cheeks and I pulled my dagger out of one boot and a stake out of the other. I didn’t know exactly what the fuck kind of supernatural Gavriel was, but he was going to die one way or another.
I lunged at him, but never made contact. A furry black thing struck my side like a freight train when I was in mid-air, making me tumble to the ground a few yards away.
He brought minions. Of course.
Gavriel stepped back, grinning maniacally as demon after demon joined the battle. The one who’d tackled me was on top of me, its ugly pig-teeth darting for my throat as it pinned me down. I buried the knife in its skull and it squealed, its eyes rolling back as all three hundred pounds of it collapsed on top of me.
