by Nadine Mutas
The erebos holding her laughed, a raspy sound that abraded her skin. “Look at him. Look at your beloved darling demon. You let him into your life, your heart, you defended him in front of your family, while all along he played you like a fiddle. How does it feel to have fucked the demon who killed your mom? He’d have never told you, you know. He’d have let you live out the rest of your days thinking him your knight in shining armor, not knowing he’s the reason your mommy never saw you growing up.”
“Anjali…” Thorne’s face was a study in guilt and suffering, his expression revealing the depth of the truth in the accusation more than anything his grandfather could spit out.
Her vision swam, a veil of tears that blurred the world, drowning the unforgiving reality of life. She shook from her sobs, a crater field of pain ripping open her chest.
“Ah, yes,” the shadow demon behind her murmured. “This is so much more like what I wanted. Dramatic flair, emotional torture, an appreciative audience to a mental breakdown.”
He licked her cheek, lapping up her tears. She was so torn up inside, the disgust his action should have caused didn’t even register.
“I wish I could draw this out a bit more.” Thorne’s grandfather pressed her closer. “But I really should get going.”
A kiss on her temple, his acrid breath fanning across her face—and then the sharp bite of the blade through her skin as the demon sliced open her throat.
Some things really did happen in slow motion. Thorne watched the blade slide over the bronze-kissed tan of Anjali’s throat as if filmed at reduced speed. Sounds dimmed, the focus of the world narrowing down to the moonlight glinting off the knife’s sharp edge, the widening of Anjali’s eyes, the red curtain of blood as it streamed down from the cut in her throat. His grandfather’s evil laughter—a raspy, nauseating cackle—echoed in the crisp night air, and while Anjali clutched her throat, the maniacal asshole vanished from sight, veiled in his shadow cloaking. Impaired by the effect of the magic grenade, Thorne couldn’t see him anymore, his erebos powers disabled.
“Anjali!” His strained shout mingled with the yells and screams of the other two witches. He bucked against the magic bonds that kept him paralyzed, trying to get to the girl who meant everything to him, who was bleeding out on the grass just feet from him. Fear for her life held an iron grip on his heart. His skin burned with the force of his struggle against the witches’ power.
Madhuri ran past him, stumbling to a halt next to Anjali, who had fallen to her knees, still putting pressure on the slash in her throat. Her skin was getting paler by the second.
“Hold on, Anju.” Her aunt’s hands trembled as she raised them over Anjali’s wound, and the soft glow of healing magic unfolded in the night.
Anjali’s eyes focused on something behind her aunt. She jerked and parted her lips—the next instant her aunt cried out and fell against Anjali. They both thudded to the ground, a bloodstain darkening the back of her aunt’s beige coat, spreading outward.
Thorne gritted his teeth. His grandfather was still around and the bastard had stabbed Madhuri in the back, so she couldn’t heal Anjali. No doubt that fucker wanted to make sure the chaya darshini died, and apparently relished taking out more witches in the process. Of course he did. He wouldn’t stop until Anjali, her aunt, and her cousin all lay lifeless here in the clearing, and then he’d probably move on to finish Thorne.
Turning as well as he could with the magic pinning him down, he found Kiran. She stood frozen in place, eyes wild, hands raised and shaking, her skin—normally a dark teak—now paled to a shade of ash.
Fighting past the magic restraint, he shouted, “Release me!”
With a whimper, she swiveled in his direction. She trembled all over, even her lower lip quivered. Seeing her cousin and her mother bleeding out on the grass had apparently pushed Kiran past the point of being able to act on her own. Dammit, they didn’t have the fucking time for her panicked meltdown.
“If you don’t let me go,” he grunted, the magic cutting into him with invisible talons, draining his energy, “they’ll both die… He won’t let you save them… Kill you next…” Suppressing a shudder at the crushing power that held him in a steel grip, he forced out, “Release. Me. Now.”
The realization that she had nothing left to lose visibly swept over her features. With a flick of her hand and a muttered word, she undid the spell that had wreaked such havoc on his system. The magic’s retreat felt like a hot breeze gusting over his skin, sucked away by the witch’s command. He groaned at the sensation of the power lifting off him, as if he’d been buried under concrete rubble and could now finally breathe free again.
Staggering to his feet, he brought his battered body to heel and scanned the clearing. His erebos vision was slow to return. Precious seconds ticked by as he blinked, his gaze roaming over the huddled shapes of Anjali and Madhuri—still bleeding fucking out, for fuck’s sake—trying to pierce the darkness and spot his grandfather.
Kiran’s yell rent the night air. Magic whizzed through the clearing, followed by a snarl. Thorne whipped around, his eyes focusing—finally—on the shape that emerged from deepening shadows. Like fog clearing up, the shield of darkness dissolved and left Thorne with the clear sight of his grandfather—charging Kiran.
“Watch out!” Thorne dashed over to her, intercepting his grandfather’s way.
He tackled the older demon just as he was about to lash out at Kiran. Grunting, the bastard went down, and Thorne with him. He ducked the slashing of the knife from the other male and kneed him in the ribs. Blocking the swinging fist coming his way, Thorne managed to grab his grandfather’s knife arm, and with a twist that elicited a bellow of pain from the bastard, Thorne forced him to drop the blade.
With a roll, his grandfather kicked him off. Thorne skidded a few feet away, his body screaming its protest at the harsh contact with the ground. He hadn’t quite recovered from the magic grenade’s effect yet.
“To your right,” he shouted at Kiran.
Swiftly as a snake striking at its prey, the witch hurled a spell in the direction he’d indicated. His grandfather grimaced and jumped to the side. Not quite fast enough. The magic didn’t hit him full force, but it was close enough to graze his side, make him stagger and stumble. The older demon’s clothes smoked, the power having singed them, possibly the skin underneath, as well. Had the spell struck him fully, he’d most likely be dead.
Thorne used the moment of weakness as his grandfather tried to get his bearing to lunge at him. He delivered a blow to the solar plexus and took advantage of the bastard catching his breath to ram the heel of his hand into the demon’s throat, worsening the damage to his breathing. Weakened as his grandfather now was by Kiran’s magic strike, the playing field had been leveled between him and Thorne.
Still, the fucker kept some tricks up his sleeve. Or rather, blades. A malicious grin split his face as he whisked a dagger from a hidden sheath on his forearm and lashed out before Thorne could block it. Fire erupted across his front when the blade sliced through the skin on his chest. Exhaling, Thorne stepped into the pain, into the way of the dagger. His move surprised his grandfather, baffled him enough to make it easy, oh-so-easy, for Thorne to grab the back of his head and his chin in his hands, and break the bastard’s neck with one merciless twist.
Eyes losing their glint of life, his grandfather stilled and then crumpled to the grassy ground. Thorne yanked the blade out of his chest, coughing up blood.
Anjali. Dread icing his veins, he stumbled to where she lay, her skin a dusty brown that spoke of dangerous blood loss. Kiran already crouched next to her, tears streaming down her face as she held trembling hands over her cousin’s wound, trying to heal her. After a few seconds, she switched to her mother, who was lying on her front next to Anjali, panting from the pain and exhaustion of her body fighting the injury. Kiran’s hands glowed again as she began healing the stab wound in her mother’s back.
Anjali’s eyes were closed, her lips pa
rted, her breath shallow and fast. She kept her hands pressed against the slash in her throat, which hadn’t yet healed well under Kiran’s short ministration. Blood still trickled out from under Anjali’s red-stained fingers.
“I can’t heal them both.” Kiran’s voice trembled, reedy thin in the chilly night. “I’m not a healer. My magic’s not strong enough for this.” The young witch’s breath came fast and shallow, her gaze darting between her mother and her cousin.
Madhuri stirred. “Save…Anjali.”
“Maa-ji…” Kiran’s voice broke.
“Do it, beta. Please. Let me go.”
With a sob, Kiran moved her hands from the bleeding wound in Madhuri’s back. Fuck that. Thorne grabbed her wrists, and yanked her over the fatal injury again. He wouldn’t let Anjali lose her aunt, too.
“I’ll take care of Anjali,” he said in answer to Kiran’s frown.
“How—?”
“She won’t like it, but it’ll save her.” He grabbed his grandfather’s dagger lying nearby, and slit his left wrist.
Kiran’s eyes grew wide. “You’re going to mate with her, aren’t you?”
“Since you’ll kill me anyway after, she won’t have to put up with it for long.” With a glance at Madhuri, he barked, “Keep healing her.”
Kiran jerked but obeyed, resuming the flow of restorative magic into her aunt.
Crouching next to Anjali, he lifted her head, pressed his wrist against her parted lips. She was so, so cold. Please don’t let it be too late.
“Drink,” he murmured in her ear. “I need you to live.”
Consuming his blood would bind her to him in the closest bond demons were capable of. They’d be mated, linked together with a connection that went beyond the emotional. She’d share in some of his powers—like his increased self-healing speed.
“I know you hate me right now.” He pressed his forehead to hers, his tears wetting her face. “And you don’t have to stop hating me. Just drink, please. You can do whatever you want with me after. You can kill me. Hurt me. I don’t care. But you have to be alive for that.” He stroked her hair. “Please drink, Anjali.”
Her lips closed around the slash in his wrist. The first suck was feeble, testament to her frail condition. The next one was stronger already, the sensation of her drawing his blood running all the way up his arm, straight to his heart. His skin tingled as she sucked with more force. Under different circumstances, in another situation, this scenario would have been hella erotic. Sharing blood was intimate, an act of trust and passion, and it was often done in the process of making love.
With Anjali on the brink of death, her heart full of hatred for him, this situation couldn’t be further from the usual scenario of sharing blood.
As she drank, the wound in her throat stopped bleeding, and when she removed her hands from the slash, her red-tainted skin began to heal. The process was faster than when he’d recovered from the fight with the monster in the tunnel, because apparently his grandfather had missed her carotid artery—her injury had been deep enough to cause dangerous-looking blood loss, but the major arteries were intact. It would still take her body a while to repair all the damage, but she wouldn’t lose any more blood, and she’d be stable enough for now.
Even as the mating bond between them locked in, she pushed his wrist away, turning her head. Not even a glance in his direction. The faint echo of her emotions trickled down the new, shared link. One feeling stood out—revulsion. Rolling off his lap to one side, she heaved herself half-up, and then crawled over to Madhuri. Kiran had finished healing her, and mother and daughter hugged each other tightly for a moment, before Madhuri turned to Anjali and pulled her into a gentle embrace, too.
Thorne sank down on his haunches, misery and joy mixing in his blood to make for one explosive cocktail. She’s alive. Nothing else mattered. Everything else could fall away.
Magic vises snared around him, binding his limbs in paralysis as fresh waves of pain pulsed through him. He fell over and landed square on his face, unable to move his arms and hands to break his fall. Madhuri had him under her spell again. This one, though, was intent on doing more harm than the one before. He could feel the witch’s power running through him, raking barbed wire along his nerves. Undoubtedly causing internal bleeding to rival any exterior wound he’d ever had. His vision clouded over. He tasted the metallic tang of blood in his mouth.
“Stop.” The rasped command came from Anjali, her voice bearing evidence of her recent injury. When Madhuri didn’t react, didn’t ease her power, Anjali added a quiet but sharp, “Mausi.”
The tsunami of pain abated. His whole body throbbing with the aftermath of the magical assault, Thorne looked up, into the tear-streaked face of the witch he loved. Judging by the cold glint in her emerald eyes and the bitterness that resonated along the mating bond, she’d never again reciprocate that feeling.
“Leave,” she croaked.
“No.” Madhuri stepped up to Anjali. “He doesn’t get to just walk away.”
Anjali faced her aunt, the hard-set lines around her mouth and eyes brooking no argument. “You’ll let him go.”
“The hell I will. He killed my sister.”
“And he saved your life by saving mine.” Anjali’s voice sounded as if scraped over gravel from the strain on her injured vocal cords from talking this much. The flickers of pain he picked up from her via the bond between them sliced into him like claws. “His blood debt is paid.”
When she addressed Thorne again, she could only whisper, “But I never want to see you again. Get out of my sight, get out of my life. Know that the next time we meet, I will treat you as any chaya darshini should a shadow demon.”
In other words, kill him.
He’d made his peace with this, had resigned himself to death, even, if she so wished it. He’d known going in that no matter the details, he wouldn’t walk out of this with his heart intact. By rights, there shouldn’t even be any feeling part of him left with the ability to hurt.
And yet, as he stared at the cold reality that was Anjali telling him to go to hell, he would have traded this moment with the shredding pain of Madhuri’s spell. In a heartbeat. Because nothing could ever hurt as much as seeing this much contempt, such deep, devastating betrayal written all over Anjali’s face. Her loathing flowed down the bond to him, mixed with heartbreak and sadness. Nothing was worse than having her regard him as the vile, toxic creature he was, seeing her finally realizing that everyone else was right about him.
He ruined everything he touched.
8
“Anju? Have you even been listening to me?”
Anjali blinked and looked at her aunt. “Sorry, what?”
“Are you still moping about that demon?” Shaking her head, Aunt Madhuri handed her the pot to dry then switched on the kitchen light. Outside, dusk made its way across the sky, the last of the day’s bright light of spring dying away.
Anjali dried the pot with automatic movements, her mind still mired in the heartbreak of last night’s events. Everything reminded her of him. Besides the obvious shadows here and there causing her heart to jump and run pitter-patter in a painful rhythm, just spotting a book gave her a sting. The glacier blue of her aunt’s sari let her see his eyes. The almost black wood of the kitchen cabinets was the exact same shade as his hair.
When she closed her eyes, the darkness filled with images of him—laughing, leaning in for a kiss, sleeping on his couch, stealing a cookie from her plate… And, most recently, with anguish deepening the lines on his face, eyes red-rimmed and shimmering with tears, resignation and despair weighing him down.
Her heart ached in a million new ways she hadn’t even known it could feel. He’d carved out undiscovered places in her soul, filled them with a love she’d never had before, and then he’d burned them all out. Hollowing her out. She felt like the facade of the Havah Mahal, the Wind Palace, in Jaipur. She was nothing but a delicate veneer of filigree, and one harsh tremor might make her collapse.
“Seriously,” Aunt Madhuri said—she’d been talking all along, apparently—“I don’t want to say ‘I told you so,’ but you have to admit that I was right.”
Anjali polished the pot with more vigor than necessary.
“Demons,” her aunt continued with a sound of disgust, “they’re never good. It’s their nature. Can’t expect them to be rational beings. I knew he was trouble, and that’s exactly what he turned out to be. I’m just glad you realized that and walked away. He’d have only ruined your life, you know.”
Her hands stilled. She stared at the dripping faucet, unseeing, her mind whirling with a sudden understanding. I ruin everything I touch. Thorne had said that. When he’d told her about his mother’s death, how his cousins had died. He was convinced he’d killed them when—according to his account of how it happened—his involvement in their deaths had been involuntary, accidental at best, nothing he’d done on purpose and with malicious intent. How could he, when he was only an infant in the first case, and a child in the other?
Doing some quick calculations, she pressed her lips together. He’d been seven when her mom had died. Seven. How likely was it really that he’d killed someone at such a young age?
Had she judged him unfairly last night? Sure, his grandfather had said Thorne had killed her mom, but that evil piece of trodden dirt was a master manipulator and had grasped any chance to abuse Thorne—physically and emotionally—twisting the truth to make Thorne think he was worthless, toxic, unwanted… To take the words of that bastard at face value was negligent, to put it mildly.
Thorne hadn’t contested his grandfather’s accusation, had admitted it was true, and in that moment, she’d been so shocked, so rattled, she’d accepted that statement without stopping to think. But she knew him. Knew his background, his past trauma, how he perceived the world—he’d ingrained the belief that he was poison, that everything bad that happened around him was his fault. Whatever his real involvement in her mom’s death, it wouldn’t have taken much for Thorne to believe he was responsible.
