I watch closely as she gets into the car, the safety lights coming on, and she slams her head against her seat. I look to the man who is waiting for her and see that he is an attractive blond. His mouth starts to move, and the girl screams. This has the man screaming as well.
She turns to the man, grabbing him by the throat. Her face, however, isn’t the pretty one from earlier; it’s an ugly, gnarled face of a demon. From my hiding spot, I have a great angle. I know exactly where I have seen her before now. I quickly snap a photo of her with my phone before finding my second-in-command’s number. I bring it up to my ear, waiting for the rings to end.
“Things just got interesting.”
Chapter 23
I Thought We Could Have a Little Talk
“Scar, it’s only me,” Adrian says. What is he doing on Earth and more specifically, in my car? The reason for his last visit was because my dad sent him up with some blood. Is my dad the reason behind his visit this time?
“Gods, Adrian, what are you doing here?” I ask, letting go of his neck, pushing him back.
“Um…Well,” he starts hesitantly as he looks around anxiously. I watch him, getting more and more concerned. I’ve never seen him like this before; something must definitely be wrong.
He lets out a shaky breath; rubbing his hands over his face and up into his blond hair. He bunches it between his hands as he looks at me. I swallow when I see the scared look there. Is he scared of the thing he seems to be running from, or of my reaction?
“What is it?” I ask him forcefully.
“First of all, I want you to know that I didn’t do what I’m accused of…” he starts. My eyes widen. Accused? What is going on? If he’s not down in Hell, probably in fear of his life, then it must be bad. I close my eyes.
“Shit, should you be talking to me?”
Adrian lets his hands fall from his hair, looking out into the dark, empty parking lot. My phone starts to ring, breaking the silence. I jump, pulling it out of my pocket. Whoever is calling now has the worst timing. I look down at my phone and see my dad’s contact photo, an image of a cartoon devil with a pacifier in his mouth. I look up to Adrian, turning it so he can see.
“Do I tell him you’re here?”
“No, you should answer it, though. He’ll suspect something if you don’t,” Adrian responds, looking out of the window again.
I survey him, deciding whether whatever is going on with him is worth me lying to my dad. I finally decide to hear him out before deciding whether to turn him in to my dad. If he says he’s not guilty, then I believe him. He’s innocent until proven otherwise. My phone’s rings continue to fill the car.
“Okay, wait here. He’ll hear you if I stay in the car.” I open the car door and step out of my car, hitting the answer button as I go.
“Hey, dad, what’s up?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady to sound normal as I answer the phone. I move away from my car, putting some distance between the phone and any noises Adrian could make. I start to walk into the park.
I love night on Earth. After the sun has set, it brings out all kinds, and not all of them are human. At home, there are no stars, but looking up now, I can see the black canvas is spotted with white flecks and swirls of blue. This is one of the times that I am thankful for my enhanced eyesight.
“Scar? You there?” my dad asks.
“Yes, sorry. What can I do for you?”
“You’re friends with Adrian, right?” he asks, his voice serious.
I clear my throat, my worry heightening. What did he do to get even my dad worried?
“Yeah, what about him?”
“Have you seen him recently?”
I let my fingernails grow and pierce the skin of my hand, taking my attention off the lie I am about to tell, hoping that it will calm me down enough so my dad can’t tell I am lying to him. I grit my teeth but keep my voice steady and light.
“No…Why?”
“I just want to speak with him…Let me know if you see him,” he instructs.
“I will,” I tell him, my fingernails still embedded in my palm. “Why do you want to speak to him?” I ask, finally flexing my hand after letting my fingernails shrink. I bring my hand up, watching as the crescents heal before my eyes.
“Don’t worry about it,” he comments, sounding distant as if he’s listening to someone else.
I turn and walk back toward my car. I stop just short of being able to hear the radio that Adrian is fiddling with. I watch him for a moment, wondering if the Adrian I know is still the same person as I hear my dad mumbling incoherently to someone.
A movement from behind a tree catches my eye. I step to the side, trying to work out what I saw. A blond woman, with a scar running down her face, has her phone to her ear as she keeps sending quick glances to my car. I narrow my eyes. What is she up to?
“Dad, I have to go,” I mutter into the phone, hanging up after. He sounds like he is busy anyway.
I stroll back to my car, bending down as I rap my fingers on the glass in the window of the passenger side. Adrian looks up from the radio.
“I’ll be back in a minute, and then I can take you home where you’ll explain your reason for being here,” I say. He nods, although I can see his blue eyes are silently asking me what I’m going to do.
I straighten, looking to where I saw Meredith finding that she is still there talking animatedly on the phone. I contemplate for a minute on how to approach her. I quietly tiptoe until I am standing by her, waiting for the perfect moment to act.
“I’m being serious. This could be our chance. I knew that I had seen her before. I knew I wasn’t crazy…” she says.
“Chance for what?” I ask.
She leaps into the air, spinning around, with her phone now down by her chest. Her gray eyes are wide as she looks me over, her expression scared.
“I thought we could have a little talk,” I tell her, flashing a quick smile before nodding down to where she is clasping her phone like it’s a weapon. “Wrap it up.”
She hesitantly brings the phone back up to her ear.
“I should go. I’ll be able to tell you more than I know now, later,” she says quickly into the phone, ending the call afterward. I check the screen just to be sure.
“How long have you been here?” I ask, thinking back to when I first found Adrian in my car. If she was looking at my car, she could have seen me turn into a demon. Her scared expression now has nerves thrown in there too.
“Why?”
“Just wondering,” I reply lightly.
“I was here when you arrived with Reid,” she says, looking expectantly at me, waiting for some kind of reaction.
Dread starts to run through my veins. However, I try and keep my feelings off my face. I obviously didn’t keep it all hidden, as Meredith begins to smirk. “Oh, I saw, and I have proof,” she continues, getting more confident. She unlocks her phone, tapping on the screen a couple of times, turning it to me when she’s done.
I look down at the screen and see that it’s holding a photo of me with my demon features present on my face, holding a shocked Adrian by the throat. I’ve never really seen myself like that. Yes, I’ve seen my demon features on my face before in the mirror but never when I’m attacking. I don’t look as bad as I thought I would.
“Oh, come on, you could have got a better angle. That is so not my best side,” I tell her.
“Wh—” she starts, surprised and confused at my reaction. She looks back down at her phone and then up to me.
“Sweetie, if you did show anyone that photo, which you won’t, they would think that it was Photoshopped,” I tell her, faking sympathy. “Anyway, like I said, you won’t get the chance to show anyone.” I grab her by the neck, slamming her into the tree behind her.
“I sent it to my second-in-command. They’ve already seen it,” she chokes out, her head lifting to try and alleviate the pressure on her windpipe.
I tilt my head with an amused smirk on my lips, knowing tha
t she’s lying. “You’re lying.”
“Try me,” she says cockily. She’s being bold for someone in her situation.
“I will,” I respond, slamming her head back into the tree again, this time, harder than the first. Her head lolls forward, and a trickle of blood makes its way onto my hand from the wound on the back of her head. I lift her up, slinging her over my shoulder. Her heartbeat is still there, letting me know she’s not dead.
Yet.
I look around the park to make sure no one saw as I lift my hand to my lips, licking her blood off my hand.
When I am satisfied that we were the only people around, I make my way back to the car, going to the trunk. I am not getting blood in my car. I open it, stuffing Meredith’s unconscious body in the space. I slam the lid down, but it doesn’t go down all the way. I push down on the top, only to realize that one of Meredith’s arms is sticking out.
“Oops,” I say, not caring as I open the trunk again. I push her arm in, quickly closing the lid after to hold all of her in there. I walk to the driver’s side and get in. I let out a sigh as I slip the key into the ignition.
“So, let me show you my house,” I say to Adrian as if nothing just happened.
***
I turn the car onto my driveway, putting the roof up as I drive the short distance. Adrian wants it down, even though the sun isn’t out. I put the car in park and get out of the car. When I see Adrian’s head pop up over the car, I throw him the keys.
“Go and let yourself in. I’ll go and get our package.”
I hear Adrian unlocking the front door as I walk to the back of the car again. I open the trunk, causing an arm to flop out. When I see that her eyes are still closed, I check for a heartbeat again. She’s still not dead, just unconscious. I didn’t mean to hit her that hard.
“Come on then,” I say as I hoist Meredith onto my shoulder again. I turn around as I slam the trunk close again, meeting eyes with Rosie’s gray ones. She’s standing at the end of her own drive, her mouth agape as she takes in the sight of me carrying a body.
“Hi. Lovely night, isn’t?” I call out to her. Her look turns to horror as she turns and rushes up the drive.
I chuckle as I make my way up my own drive, pushing the door open. I find Adrian already sitting on one of my couches as I nudge the door close with my foot.
“Have you eaten recently?” I ask as I grab the blanket lying on the back of my couch.
“Is she my dinner?” he asks, nodding to Meredith still on my shoulder. I shake my head as I unfold the blanket.
“There’s blood in the cupboard under the sink,” I tell him, lifting the blanket into the air, letting it float down to the floor.
“What is she for then?”
“She took a photo of me,” I reply simply.
He shakes his head at me, muttering under his breath something to the effect of ‘I will never understand you.’
I let Meredith drop down onto the blanket now covering my floor to stop the blood from staining it. A blanket is a lot easier to clean than a carpet. Once my work is done, I take Meredith’s phone out of her grasp and plop down onto the couch, grabbing the TV remote and switching the TV on.
“Grab me one as well?” I shout to Adrian who is bending down to collect some blood. He appears beside me in a second after running from the kitchen. He passes me a bag before sitting down with his own. I rip the top off and sip at it as I turn Meredith’s phone on.
Noticing that it has no passcode, I enter the phone and go to messages, checking them to see if she was telling the truth earlier. Even though her body told me she wasn’t, I still want to check. You can never be too sure.
“Mm, this is good stuff,” Adrian comments as he takes a gulp of his own. I look up and notice how quickly he is drinking it. How long has he been without blood?
“So…why have you come to me?” I ask as I move onto the mail app.
“I need a place to stay,” he admits.
“Why?”
“Some demons have been causing trouble by trying to rally forces to join them in a plan to overthrow your dad. Your dad thinks I am the one that is leading them.”
A revolution? This is serious. How did I not know this was going on? How bad is it? Hundreds of questions run through my mind, but Adrian is not the one to ask them to. My dad should be the one to answer my questions about it all, especially if Adrian is the one behind it all.
“What? Why didn’t he tell me?” I exclaim, moving my gaze from the phone, which is clear of messages with my photo in.
“He thinks he can handle it.”
Of course, he does! He will rarely tell me things unless it’s a life or death situation.
“Why does he think it’s you?” I ask, looking back down at the phone. I go to the photos and clear all the ones she has of me as a demon.
“Gossip,” he simply replies. Sucking the last bits out of the bag of blood, I throw it over the back of the couch. Not knowing what other evidence my dad has, I decide to believe what Adrian is telling me. He has been my friend my whole life, and if he’s risking his life by coming to me, then he’s either insane or innocent.
“Okay. I believe you, but if I ever find out that you do have something to do with all of this, I will personally be the one to kill you, got it?” I ask, poking him in the chest.
He nods quickly, agreeing to my terms. I just hope that I don’t have to sharpen my sword.
“You can stay here until my dad is able to find the culprit.” Either my dad will find someone else to blame, or he will come for Adrian; either way, he can stay until then. It will be nice to have someone from home staying with me. It might even begin to feel normal.
“Thanks, Scar,” he says sincerely. I give him a forced smile.
Meredith starts to come back to awareness, so I turn the TV off. I throw the phone back down, as I am quick enough; if she tries to reach for it, I can stop her.
I run into the kitchen, grabbing a knife and a chair. I walk back into the living area, sticking my tongue out at Adrian who is rolling his eyes at me. I turn the chair around, the back facing Meredith, and straddle it, waiting for her to wake fully.
When Meredith’s eyes finally flutter open, they flick around the room before her face contorts to show her pain. She groans and clutches her arm which has a deep blue line.
“What the fuck happened?” Her eyes finally fall onto me and Adrian, realization dawning on her face.
“Hi,” I greet her, waving the knife in my hand. Her eyes fall onto the moving blade, her eyes widening in fright.
“What did you do to me?” she asks, her eyes going to Adrian before continuing. “Am I like you?”
“What? A demon?” I ask, amused.
She nods.
I burst out laughing, Adrian joining in with me.
“What?” she snaps.
“The transition process is long and complex. It involves drinking the blood of a demon, which you haven’t. You then need to drink the blood of six humans in six days, so you have it in your system when you die. After you have died, you complete the process by drinking a soul’s blood. If you don’t drink the soul’s blood, you’ll be stuck in a limbo place, and apparently, it’s not so nice there. If you drink too little blood before you die, it doesn’t work, and it’s the same if you don’t die, at all or in the six days,” I explain to her. “See? Complicated.”
Some demons make humans go through the process without them knowing; they put the demon and human blood in their food or drink, and they never know that they’ve had it. The demon then kills them, and the human then does the rest because they don’t want to go to limbo.
“Oh,” Meredith says.
I smile, pointing the knife down at her.
“Now, I have a knife, as you can see, and I don’t really want to dispose of a body. Are you going to cooperate and make this easier for me so I don’t have to kill you and worry about getting rid of your body?” I ask her.
“What do you want to know?”
she asks shakily.
“How do you know me?”
“You’re Reid’s girlfriend,” she replies.
“Hm. Not going to cut it. Well, it might your carotid artery,” I tell her, reaching down to pull her up to face me. I press the knife against the skin of her neck. Her eyes widen, looking to Adrian frantically for help.
“Don’t look at me. I can’t stop her. Scar can’t be stopped when she has a goal,” he tells her matter-of-factly.
“Okay, okay,” she pleads, a tremor in her voice as I press harder with the knife. I pull the knife back gradually, taking it off her skin.
“When I was still in the Grim Reapers, I was going to deal with a payment issue. When I arrived, I saw you and a man talking to the person I needed to talk to. I waited a minute, and things started to get more heated. You grabbed him by the neck with the same face as earlier, and then all three of you disappeared. Nobody believed me when I told them, and after that, people thought I was crazy. Reid was angry because I hadn’t retrieved the payment and didn’t trust me after that. You were younger then, but I recognized your face all the same,” she explains.
I must have been helping my dad. A tip: never break a deal with Hades. I look over my shoulder, sending Adrian a sweet smile.
“Adrian, would you be a dear and leave?” I ask.
He sends me a quizzical look. I drop Meredith to the floor and turn more.
“You thought that the bagged stuff that has been in my cupboard for a while was good…It’s much stronger from the source,” I say. Adrian narrows his eyes at me.
“Just don’t kill her.”
“Aw, why not?” I pout.
Meredith lets out an eardrum-piercing scream as she tries to scramble away from me with her injured arm. I get up from the chair and step into her path. I grab a handful of her hair, bringing her to her knees. I look back up to Adrian, motioning to the stairs with the knife. He sighs but leaves. I turn back to Meredith.
“Listen here, bitch. If you tell anyone about our little conversation or what you saw, I will personally hunt you down and finish what I have started,” I threaten.
Hades’ Daughter (The War of Fate) Page 19
