Drowning In The Dark: #4 The Veil Series

by Pippa Dacosta

  Mega-demon lifted a foot and slammed it down, quaking the earth below the entire park. Stumbling, I fell to one knee. Wasn’t I meant to be some uber-powerful she-demon? Hello, Mother of Destruction here. There had to be more to this, more I could give. I jerked my head up. Mega-demon crouched down, oblivious to the bullets raining over him. I met his huge eyes and thought of Stefan and how he’d brought me back from the brink of madness. I thought of Dawn, and how the brave little half blood had stared into the face of death, accepting her fate. I thought of Ryder, his stubborn determination and need to protect is family. Nica—sweet Nica—she’d died believing I needed to be stopped. I owed it to Nica, to everyone, to become all that I could be. My friends, my family. If I didn’t stop this beast and those that would surely follow, everything I loved would be gone. Hope, when the storm passes, there will be something worth returning to.

  Standing tall, wing held high, I lifted my chin, glared into the curious face of a demon the size of a mountain, and reached out to the warm, beating heart of Boston.

  Akil was right. Until tested, we never know what we’re capable of. It is only in the eye of the storm we discover who we truly are. Fire consumed me. Heat overwhelmed my flesh, spilled through my veins, filled my mind, and scorched my demon body until solid became liquid. Fire is not good. It isn’t bad. It just is. I became fire and soared high with the taste of freedom on my lips. I sought the soul of mega-demon—the center of his power—and set it ablaze, drowning him in flame from the inside out. A river of molten heat flowed through him, and laid him to waste. When the fuel had burned away and my power had nowhere else to go, I withdrew, snapping back into my body with a sudden, painful jolt that dropped me to my knees. I kneeled and poured all my remaining effort into staying conscious.

  The smell of charred earth tickled my nose. I sneezed and felt someone place a coat over my quivering body. Stefan knelt beside me, his slanted smile the best thing I’d ever seen. Behind him, a small contingent of lesser demons crowded: the ones I’d charged with his safety.

  “Hello,” I croaked.

  “Welcome back. These guys won’t stop following me. You know anything about that?”

  “Maybe.”

  He cast his gaze to his right, and I followed it to where a sea of molten lava cracked and throbbed as it cooled. Mega-demons liquid remains. If he was a prince, maybe he’d come back from that. But not yet. “It’s not over,” Stefan said.

  Beyond, where the netherworld yawned wide, came another wave of demons. “How many?”

  “Looks like all of them.”

  I wasn’t sure I had anything left to give. “Help me up.” Taking his hand, I leaned into him and shivered at the sight of battlefield. Dead demons. Dead people, the air stank of death, charred flesh, and the horrible netherworld burned-rubber smell that coated my throat. My ears rang, and my head throbbed. “Where’s Ryder? Is he okay?”

  “He’s here. The idiot came around in the car and refused to let me take him to a hospital. Then the veil fell…and I lost myself for a while.” He met my weary eyes.

  And Stefan came back for me. “Thanks.” That one little word didn’t do the depth of my feelings justice. Thanks didn’t cut it, but at that moment, it was all I could offer.

  Stefan cocked his head and looked at me, into me. I might have thought it a predatory expression on his face if not for the slight widening of his eyes. “Don’t thank me. I came back as pure demon, looking for you. When the veil fell, I lost my mind. But when I found you on that street, draped in fire, I couldn’t lose you. You’re all I have left.” He smiled down at me with more in the hard lines of his face than any words could convey. “And you owe me a date.”

  I blinked, words failing me. A demon brushed by, then another, bounding toward the gaping maw of the netherworld. Others galloped past us. Were they retreating? Some fought on the hardened lava field, attacking their own kind, and then I saw the reason why. On the edge of the lava field where the netherworld met Boston, stood a man. Even with his back to me, I’d recognize the proud figure he cut: Akil, arms outstretched. The demons closed ranks around him, hundreds of them, spilling in from all directions to bolster his line of defense. Beside him, stood a second man, bigger, broader, built like a wrestler, but not human. What had once been a second skin of tattoos danced around him like a shroud of moths. Those marks pulsed in time with the throb of power emanating from the netherworld. I’d felt that power before. From Dawn. Raw chaos. But from him, it was smooth, calm, like a cooling salve. Jerry turned and scanned the battlefield until he found Stefan and me. He offered up a salute, and then his human-guise burst apart. Muscles bulged, a double pair of demon wings spread far and wide, beating up a storm of dust, and a scaled tail lashed at the opposing demons, knocking them aside like bowling pins. He was beastlike. Primal. Devastating. Those elements were all I could see of him before the swell of his power demanded I look away from the King of Hell.

  Stefan had pulled me close. His grip around my waist tightened. “I need to be there.”

  “Go.” I nodded when he checked my expression. “I’ll be fine in a minute. Go. They need you. We need you.”

  He pulled me against him, slanting his mouth over mine, drawing me into a desperate kiss. Already weakened, my legs buckled, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the very real taste of him, the feel of his body against mine, his arms around me. I didn’t want it to end. I clutched at his shirt and kissed him back, harder, hungrier, relishing the tingle of power and his clean, crisp scent. Like all good things, the embrace ended too soon. He swept my hair back, his gaze soft, lips softer. “Thank you,” he breathed, “for reminding me who I am.”

  I bit into my quivering lip, afraid I might burst into tears. I couldn’t break down. Not yet. There would be time and space for tears later. He clasped his hands over mine and eased them open, peeling my fingers apart, forcing me to let him go. His eyes said it would be okay, but as I watched him turn and walk away, a bitter wind tore across the ruined park, carrying with it the cries from countless demons, and a sense that worse was yet to come. I pulled his coat tighter around me, gathering it in my hands as I had his shirt, and breathed in the leathery smell.

  A punch from behind knocked the breath from my lungs. I arched away, or tried to, but my body seemed inexplicably snagged. A silent cry whooshed from my throat. My brother hooked his arm around my throat and dragged me back against his chest. “I have wanted to sink my blade through your flesh since I first laid eyes on you.” He hissed the words into my hair, so damn close it felt grossly intimate. I clutched at the cool slim thing protruding from my chest and looked down. Bright red blood dripped from the point of his sword. Obscenely calm thoughts said, Oh, he stabbed me. That’s not right. I saw Akil and Jerry, too far away to call out to. Stefan was a blur, slaying demons in his path as he made for the front line. He wouldn’t hear me even if I could cry out.

  “Sweet sister.” Val shifted, just a little, but the pressure on the rapier burned through my body. “If you reinforce a belief often enough, it becomes reality. Do you believe you are destruction made of flesh, half-blood whore? Do you consider yourself my equal?”

  “No.” I spluttered blood. The touch of his lips curled against my neck. He could tear my throat out if he wished or reduce me to a quivering lust-crazed wraith. “We are not equal.”

  “No, we are not. I am immortal. I have lived a thousand of your finite lives, killed countless of your kind. Killed half bloods as babes when I foresaw undesirable futures in their innocent eyes. The elements breathe through my divine flesh. Your feeble human mind cannot begin to comprehend what it means to be demon. The Mother of Destruction would not die by the point of my sword. Perhaps, you are not the glorious creature I foresaw. Perhaps, you are the nothing I will make of you when I shred your mind.”

  “Have you finished—” I coughed. Blood spluttered from my lips. “—stroking your ego?” More dribbled down my chin. “We are not equal because I am better.” My voice thr
eated to abandon me, but not yet. “I am human and stronger than you will ever be because of it.” I tugged on his fiery soul, having latched onto it while he wallowed in self-admiration. He really was made of the elements. One in particular. I wrenched the fire out of him with one vicious, metaphysical swipe. He stumbled us both forward. In one step, I was demon. I turned, let out an inhuman cry, and diverted all nearby lesser demons to my cause. They came because they knew me, feared me. As Val spluttered and wheezed—wings down, sword arm limp at his side—the lessers pounced and buried his beautiful body beneath a heaving mound of demon flesh. You will die under tooth and claw, brother-mine. I will see to it they shred your body and mind until nothing remains, nothing but your ragged, immortal soul. I fed on his heat, like I had on Akil’s all those months ago. It wouldn’t kill Val, but it’d screw him up for a few hours, days if I was lucky.

  I wobbled and reached out to grab a scorched tree trunk. Coughing up blood was never a good sign. As demon, I healed most wounds, but internal damage wasn’t as easy to dismiss. I needed time to rest and recuperate. The tree held me up as the world began to tip and skew. If I went down here, surrounded by demons, they’d probably eat me.

  Val spread his wings. One moment, I was trying to stay upright, and the next he filled my blurred vision, glowing white hot, framed by wings as black and beautiful as perfect darkness. “You’re like the villain who doesn’t know when to quit with the evil comebacks.” I had all his fire, but there was no use using it against him. He was weak, his wings sagged, and his color had paled to a deathly gray, but he still had goddamn immortality on his side.

  “To live, you must forfeit your freedom and your foolish love. You are incapable of losing either. Therefore, you will die, as you should have perished by my hand as a newborn abomination.” His wings loomed, large and surreal. I almost welcomed their embrace. So tired, so wrung out, I wasn’t even sure I had it in me to stand on my own two feet, but I shoved off from the tree anyway. I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “Bring it, brother-mine.” I swayed, and it took me a few seconds to realize he wasn’t moving. Blinking, refocusing, I saw why. Writhing tendrils of liquid chaos energy wove around him, knotting around the milky whiteness of his limbs, holding him rigid. He didn’t see me. Head thrown back, eyes wide, and hair failing, he was beyond seeing. Chaos had him in her grasp and was plucking him apart one piece of flesh at a time. Lashings of dark hooked into his skin and tore him to pieces. His wings dissolved, picked apart by ravenous eels of power. I blinked again and watched my brother cease to exist. Gone. Body and immortal soul, undone in a matter of seconds—an immortal chaos demon turned into memories.

  There was only one being I knew who could pick apart an immortal. She stood in front of an armored personnel carrier, a little colt-like thing, all spindly arms and legs inside a monstrous heaving cloud of undiluted chaos. Our gazes met, and pure chaos tried to flood my mind. She might have succeeded had Adam not touched her lightly on the shoulder. The dark peeled apart, and Dawn stood looking at me. Tight ringlets framed her innocent oval face. A pink and white Hello Kitty dress hung from skinny shoulders. She blinked at me, gaze flat, peering right through me. What did she see?

  The pair of them strode over, weaving around fallen demon and human bodies.

  My demon slunk off, leaving me propped against the tree, sick and shivering.

  “Are you hurt?” Adam’s flat tone relayed just how much he didn’t care about my answer.

  “Pretty much.” I wiped blood from my lips and grimaced at the splash of scarlet on the back of my pale hand.

  Adam reached for me. I instinctively recoiled and then froze as he pinched the collar of Stefan’s coat and rubbed it almost lovingly between his finger and thumb. “Where is he?” His puppy-dog eyes almost gave the impression he cared for his son.

  “At the front line, trying to do what’s right. Not that you’d know what that was.” I dropped my gaze to Dawn. She watched the battle or at least stared in that general direction. “Hey, remember me?” She didn’t reply. Her distant glassy gaze wavered. What the hell had Adam done to her? I lifted my gaze and set it squarely on him. “They call me destruction, but they call you monster.”

  Adam ignored me and searched the chaos for Stefan. From our position at the back, all we could see was the panoramic view of the netherworld where Boston had been less than an hour before. I should have been at the front. Wasn’t that what the Mother of Destruction was about? So much for becoming what I was meant to be. “I really need to sit down.” I dropped to my ass among the tree roots. “Just a little rest, and I’ll be okay.”

  Adam whispered something to Dawn. Crouched down at her eye-level, he gripped her shoulders and muttered. I might have understood had I not been fighting to stay conscious. I caught Stefan’s name and Akil’s. “What are you d-doing?” I slurred. Tears swam in my raw eyes.

  He straightened and marshaled Dawn in front of him, his big hands locked on her boney shoulders. “It ends here. All of it. There will be no demons left this side of the veil. None.”

  Dawn stared through me. She’d do it. She’d kill them all. “Wait, no… Adam, please…” I reached for Dawn, but she was too far away. “You can’t kill them. Not Stefan, please. Not Akil. They don’t deserve to die.” I blinked, trying to battle the fog of unconsciousness. Adam had gone. I swung my head around and saw him guiding Dawn through the body-strewn battlefield, her little hand clasped in his. Dammit. She’d tear them apart as she had Val. Adam had his perfect weapon right there. Nothing would stop him, not with Dawn by his side. All demons would die. Even the good ones.

  Maybe I could find my feet, somehow stumble across the cooled lava field, around the bodies and craters, and get to Stefan before Adam. I hauled my sorry ass onto leaden legs, teeth gritted against the pain radiating from my middle. I dared not look down at the wound. Somehow, seeing the blood would make it all the more real. Clasping Stefan’s coat close, I sucked in a deep, smoke-filled breath and fell into Coleman’s arms.

  “Easy, I got you,” he muttered, scooping an arm around my waist and supporting me as we hobbled in the wrong direction.

  “Wait. Akil… I need to get to the front…”

  “Muse, you’ve lost a lot of blood. You’re in no state to go marching off to save a demon who’s immortal, right?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I’m sure he can look after himself.”

  Not if he didn’t know she was there. Who would Adam go for first, his own son, or Akil? Maybe he wouldn’t kill them. Maybe he’d concentrate his efforts on helping them, using them, until he saw his chance. That sounded like an Adam thing to do. It would give me time.

  * * *

  I might have blacked out because the walk from the burned tree to the militia camp was a blank. I woke to a pair of soft brown eyes scowling at me. Ryder looked about as beaten up as I felt. “Hey, aren’t you meant to be wounded?” I grumbled.

  He chuckled and slammed me on the shoulder in some sort of macho display of affection. “Says the lil’ firecracker with a hole in her side. I got a new scar. A crazy kid once told me scars are like armor. Get your lazy ass out of bed. We need you.”

  Someone had patched me up while I was out. Bandages hugged my chest. They’d pumped me full of painkillers that would burn out of my veins the moment I called the fire. Without the healing properties of my demon, I wouldn’t have made it off the battlefield. Judging from the supply of body bags, many wouldn’t. “Shit, Ryder,” I groaned. “Adam has Dawn.”

  “I know. With her help, he’s sweeping the demons back. Guess she’s making up for the people she killed.”

  I sat up in a makeshift cot and waited for my head to stop spinning. The sounds of battle still boomed outside the tent. “He’s going after Stefan.”

  Ryder’s lips twisted. “We got a city full of demons and netherworld scenery popping up all over the place. Stefan’s on his own.”

  “He was your friend, Ryder. He still is. You were
right. He’s still Stefan. He got me out of trouble tonight. Without him, I’d be on the side of the demons right now, probably laying waste to all of you. I could have killed him. I almost did, but he showed me what I needed to see. He’s Stefan. He’s back. And Adam’s going to kill him. You can’t let that happen. We can’t let that happen.”

  Ryder closed his eyes and rubbed a hand across his forehead. He glanced at the people around us as they busied themselves with the wounded. “Muse, I can’t stop Adam. You know why. My kid…”

  “So you’re going to let a good man—a friend—die? Can you live with that?”

  His scowl burned when he settled it on me. “Fuck. No. I can’t.”

  “Good, neither can I. Get me to the front line.”

  He ground his teeth, twitching a muscle in his cheek. “We’ve got Humvees if you can get us through the lessers.”

  I shoved to my feet, grimacing as my stomach pitched. “Not a problem. I’m the freakin’ Mother of Destruction. Those bitches will get in line or die.” I wobbled, and Ryder grabbed my arm to steady me.

  He grinned. “Let’s go raise your kinda hell.”

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Every bump, dip, or ditch the Humvee trundled over just about rattled my teeth out of skull. The field was littered with half-buried debris. Jaw clenched against the throbbing pain, I clung onto the light rack over the Humvee’s flatbed and directed sharp, mental jabs at anything lesser, combusting them on sight. I was back in my demon skin and feeling better for it. As we drew closer to what had once been a shoreline and was now a battlefront, the number of demons surged, but they weren’t attacking us. They swarmed around the three blazing demon-figures ahead: Akil in his true form as Mammon, Jerry as the devastating demon king, and Stefan, the Winter King. Holy hell. If the fact Stefan wasn’t trying to kill Akil was miracle enough, they appeared to be fighting as a united effort, seeing off the wave of demons spilling through the gaping maw of the netherworld. Fire and ice flashed blue and red, while Jerry’s chaos tendrils plucked demons from the sea of creatures and flung them back into the netherworld. As Ryder drove the Humvee closer, I could just about make out Wrath’s hideous bulk among the lessers. Stefan launched a barrage of ice at the ex-prince, freezing him mid-motion.