“Gem.” He tugged me onto wobbling legs. “C’mon.”
I blinked into sunlight, somehow numb but at the same time hyper-alert. Something fundamental had shifted. I was me—but not me.
Fairhaven loomed high above, casting its shadow far across the rubble-strewn street. I shook my head, trying to clear the confusion, and staggered after Torrent. A glance back, and my gaze snagged on the vast blown-out hole in the side of the hotel. Sunlight glinted off fragments of glass.
“What…happened?” I stumbled.
Torrent scooped me up before I could fall. “No time. They’re here.”
“What? Who?”
“Institute.”
Fear slammed through my gut. I fell again, taking Torrent with me this time. We fell in a tangle, just in time to see the demon emerge from Fairhaven’s gaping hole. He spread his broken wings wide, stretching their skeletal frame at least fifty feet from tip to tip and lifted his face to the sunlight.
“Are you seeing this?” I whispered. Of course Torrent was seeing this. The whole city could see if they turned their gazes. Air rippled about the demon’s body, contorting light and reality, making the image of him throb with power. He gave his wings a flick and rolled his shoulders, dislodging dust, and tore what remained of the chains from his wrists with a snarl.
What have we done?
He turned his gaze on the city, narrowed his eyes, and laughed. The sound of that laughter rolled over me and fed deep into my soul, where it snagged on a connection that hadn’t existed before.
The Prince of Pride was free.
Torrent tugged on my arm, called my name, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away. Pride turned his clouded gaze on me, and the sense of wrongness pulled tighter still. Then, in a rush of air and smoke and shadow, he was gone.
Torrent finally dragged me to my feet. “Move!” He shoved me forward and snarled in a deep bass growl.
A black van swept around the corner. Followed by another.
Institute. Engines roared behind us.
I ran, veering across a parking lot after Torrent, faster and faster. My heart pumped harder, and my element pulled tight, twitching close to the surface. But it was too close, like I was already demon, like I’d turned, but that couldn’t be. I was still in my vulnerable, pink human skin and clothes. I wasn’t demon, so why did I feel demon?
We skidded down into a parking garage where Torrent tried car doors, tugging in the hope they’d open.
If this was happening to me, did my brother feel the same? Were we all connected? “Where’s Del?”
“Don’t know,” Torrent growled, skirting around another car to try the door.
“Allard?”
“The—whatever that was—blew half of Fairhaven to bits and scattered us all.”
It went wrong, horribly wrong. I knew it in my gut the same as I knew my brother was free. I could feel him, but not just him, the very real background strum of chaos calling.
A car rumbled down into the garage, rolled past us, and maneuvered to park near the exit ramp. From one stride to the next, Torrent had shrugged off all pretense of being human and flicked his wings wide open with a leathery crack. He yanked the terrified driver out, dropped his demon appearance, and was sliding into the front seat behind the wheel when I opened the door and jumped inside.
“What was that?” I belted up in the passenger seat. I’d barely gotten the door closed before he planted his foot to the floor and lurched out of the parking garage, leaving the terrified owner probably already calling the cops.
“What?” he snarled.
“Going demon on that guy?”
“Do you want to be caught by the Institute? I sure don’t. Again.”
When he looked at me, the ocean swirled in Torrent’s eyes, and power swelled like the incoming tide. I let it go, relieved when he focused on driving and not me. We drove in silence.
Tension rippled off Torrent in waves. He clutched the steering wheel, knuckles bleached white. This wasn’t good. The ascension had gone wrong. It wasn’t meant to be like this. Or was it? I’d welcomed the power, embraced it, let it sweep me up and lead my demon by the hand. And now I was a hair’s breadth away from being demon. She was behind my gaze, inside my thoughts, under my skin, closer than ever before.
We dumped the car outside a McDonalds and walked a few blocks in yet more silence. I watched Torrent carefully. If he was feeling the same things I was, I wasn’t sure how long this silence would last. An invisible thread pulled tight between us, demon or imagined. It hadn’t been there before. Neither had the sensation of being dumped back into a human body that had shrunk around me like a prison. It felt odd, uncomfortable, wrong. I wanted to spread my wings wide and call to the ice—no matter the cost.
We marched on into neighborhoods I had no idea existed, where dumpsters overflowed and air conditioning units hummed. The sun was fast disappearing, and the breeze had picked up, bringing with it a cool evening chill. Or it might have been my element.
“Something’s very wrong,” Torrent finally said.
We came to a halt outside a closed Starbucks. A few cars rumbled by, and every time I checked over my shoulder, expecting to see the Institute. Across the street a ROOMS VACANT sign blinked over a panel door.
“Yeah, I know.” I flicked a demon tingling from my fingers, but the sensation clung on.
“What the hell happened back there?” He paced. Two steps forward, two steps back again.
He was asking me? “No idea.”
Threading his fingers into his hair, he knotted them there, and said carefully, “I feel like I want to crawl out of my skin.”
“We should get out of sight.” I started across the street, heading for the rooms vacant sign.
“This place?” He gave the flickering sign and black door an unimpressed scowl.
“We need to get off the street.” I pushed inside and had my doubts when the guy behind the desk flicked his gaze between the two of us, clearly making an assumption. I wasn’t sure what we were walking in to, but they had rooms, and we needed one. At least the Institute weren’t likely to come looking here.
“Eight bucks an hour. Cash only,” the guy grunted, watery eyes returning to the TV on his desk.
Torrent tossed the cash onto the desk and received a key in return. An hour would be fine. Any longer and we risked being discovered. Our room smelled like damp and other bodily excretions. I’d slept in more sanitary street corners, but holing up here would give us time to think.
Torrent went straight for the washroom, leaving the door open. He splashed water onto his face, hissed in through his teeth, and clamped his hands along the rim of the sink. He glared at this reflection like it was that guy’s fault. I knew that look, having often sneered at my demon in the mirror.
Not sure where I was supposed to look or what to do with the restless energy snapping beneath my skin, I toured the room, all fifteen steps of it.
“You feel it?” he asked.
I felt a lot of things, had a lot of thoughts too, thoughts that were barbed and dangerous. I chewed on my lip and didn’t answer.
“I went into that room fighting.” He peered closer at his reflection in the dirty mirror. “And then I stopped caring, like I was empty, and the power Allard had would fill me up.” His arms trembled, muscles taunt beneath his shirt. He growled a deeply demon sound. “I wanted it.”
I knew that feeling too.
I strayed to the window and parted the stiff drapes. The street outside was quiet. For now. One of us would have to stand watch. If the Institute released my photo to the media, hiding would be a whole lot harder.
Streetlights blinked on, and I wondered where my brother was. Fear licked down my spine, sprinkling a trickle of my element behind it. I watched Torrent’s reflection hover in the filthy windowpane. He dried his hands on a towel, and those green eyes tracked down my back. I felt that a little too keenly.
“At least we’re alive.”
“Maybe it’ll we
ar off,” he added, clearly talking about whatever was happening to the both of us.
“What were those rocks?” Those rocks were the root of the power. Like the coronam, they had flooded the room with enough energy to drive our demons wild.
Torrent lowered himself to the edge of the bed, abruptly stood up again, and started to pace. Fifteen steps one way…fifteen steps back again. “Fragments of the King of Hell’s sanctuary.”
I turned, questions clear on my face. He stopped pacing. The seconds ticked on. LA’s city noises leaked in through the window.
When he looked up, doubt and maybe even a touch of fear touched his eyes. “Allard told me the same forces that shattered the veil destroyed the King of Hell’s sanctuary, which, as far as I can tell, was a stone fortress of some kind. Bits of it were thrown here. The power those fragments threw off attracted demons, who hid the stones away. Allard’s been looking for them. That was his puzzle.”
“Allard told you all that?”
Torrent’s throat moved as he swallowed. He sent me a sideways glare, not the submissive glances of before, but those that challenged, daring me to question him. “It’s the wings,” he said, like that explained everything. “The wings, they’re impressive by demon standards, and I think it’s the…me from before.”
“Before?” Oh, before. The demon who’d killed hundreds of people and cut a firefighters throat. That before. I dipped my fingers into my back pocket. The photo of Torrent was still there, damp, probably torn, but intact. “I thought you didn’t know who you were before.”
“I don’t, but I…” He stalled. “I have these feelings, like knowing”—he touched his chest and closed his fingers into a fist— “burned into my soul. I can’t see them, the memories, but I feel them. Allard knows or maybe suspects what I was. I mean, I came from the netherworld, right? I’m not exactly going to be good, am I?”
I considered the scars on his body, the weight of his power, the spread of his wings. Blood in the gutter. The demon standing proud over his kill. No, whoever he was before, he wasn’t good.
“Like I said.” Torrent shrugged and released his fist from over his heart. “I give Allard what he wants.”
But was it more than submitting to a higher demon, I realized as Torrent started his fifteen-step pacing again. Did he feel for Allard? There were other ways to feel. You could hate and admire, love and despise. When it came to Torrent, Allard clearly had a weakness. Vanessa too. Torrent was right. He might not recall who he was, but the two higher demons clearly did.
We were hunted, both of us, running a maze with no end in sight. But running blindly through a maze was a mistake. We couldn’t run from this. From them.
“Are you good?” he asked. I hadn’t realized he’d stopped again. His sudden gaze and the question I’d never been able to answer brought all my thoughts to an abrupt halt. I blinked, all at once afraid to answer.
“I saw you charged up. All that ice and the light…”
My heart sank while my demon gave a little contented purr. I knew what he saw: a beast aglow, made of dazzling light and jagged edges, the kind that might have once been worshiped as something heavenly. There was nothing good in my demon. I could have killed all the Institute soldiers outside of the precinct. I’d wanted to. Worse than that, I lusted after death in ways that weren’t ever good or right.
“Now the Institute know I’m here.” I blatantly ignored his question and what it meant. “They won’t stop looking for me or my brother. They can’t afford to.”
Del… I could still taste his chaos, his devouring black. Any longer in that maelstrom and he’d have shredded all our souls. Now he was out, and if he was experiencing the same reckless demon urges I was, he wouldn’t hold back for long.
“I have to stop my brother,” I whispered.
“I thought we were saving him?”
It’s the same.
“We need a plan.” Torrent came around the bed and sank onto the edge. His knee jumped. “And we need to know what Allard did to us.” His glittering demon eyes caught mine. “Before we do anything else.”
That was easier said than done. I was having a hard time separating my exhausted human thoughts from my amped-up demon needs. Half of me wanted to lie down, pull the filthy sheets over my head, and hide. The demon though, she wanted to head out onto the street, spread her wings, and summon all the ice. More ice than ever. Not since the Fall had I felt such power slumbering so close or its siren call as intoxicating.
“I could go back,” Torrent said.
“What? Why?” Allard had torn his wings to ribbons. There was no knowing what the demon dealer would do now.
“He’ll punish me, but I’ll heal. The answers are at Fairhaven.”
Go back to Allard with my tail between my legs? That wasn’t happening. I was more likely to lash out and find myself in the white room all over again.
Torrent clearly recognized the anger on my face. Bowing his head, he looked at his hands, curling his fingers into his palms. “This feeling is… it’s dangerous.”
Dangerous is not understanding our demons. Del’s words drifted through broken thoughts. “I’m not going back to Allard. I can’t. Every time I look at him, I lose my mind a little. I want to kill him, Torrent. I want to…” I trailed off, clenching my teeth. I wanted Allard on his knees, exposing his throat to me. I didn’t understand it, but I felt it, and that was real enough. We’d kill each other. And with the power I had now, the thrill of this new freedom, I’d do something stupid, something reckless, something demon. “I was created to kill demons. What you saw outside the precinct, that was nothing. My demon, it’s… It’s not normal, even for demons. I kill. It’s what I do. They taught me to kill before I was five years old. I’ve had PC-Thirty-Four keeping it under control, but that’s gone, and now Allard and his ascension… I don’t know if I can stop the killing once I start.” It felt like holding my finger over a big red button that said “Do Not Touch.” I knew if I let her go, the worst would happen. But that button, that release, was so tempting. “It’s like having a crazy person whispering in my ear. She’s getting louder and louder. I can’t ignore her for much longer.”
Torrent listened, head bowed. “The ascension did something to our demons.”
“It made us more demon.” I wasn’t sure how or why, but I was changed, changed in a way that went right down to my soul. It terrified me, and I liked it.
Torrent rubbed at his forehead. “Sit beside me.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Just… I just want to try this.”
“I’ll hurt you.”
“You won’t. I want to try something. I’ve done it before. It’s demon, but...” He paused, noticing my frown cutting deeper. “Back at Fairhaven, in that room, all the elements combined, and I feel them now, between us. You do too.” He paused, waiting for me to agree. I couldn’t deny it, but I stayed quiet. “Just…” He hesitated, reaching for the right words. “I’m not asking for anything. Just sit next to me. It will help. Trust me.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t try anything. It won’t end well.”
A smile pulled on the corner of his mouth. “I’m not going to bite.” There were promises in his eyes that said otherwise.
“No.” I wanted to. I knew what he meant about the elements, about feeling the pull between us. The ascension had tangled us together in ways I didn’t understand, ways I didn’t yet want to understand.
He pushed off the bed and lifted his hands when I uncrossed my arms and straightened, shoring up for a fight. “Easy, Icy…” Walking in a wide arc out of my reach, he settled against the wall an arm’s length from me. I glared, feeling ice pinch my fingertips.
He dropped his head back and closed his eyes, trusting that I wouldn’t lash out. Trust. It went both ways, didn’t it? I’d only ever trusted Del.
I settled back against the wall again but kept my hands free at my sides. A few minutes passed, and in that time, Torrent’s smooth elemental touch reached
out to mine. I recoiled a little, my element bristling in response, but there was something else in that touch keeping me from crossing the room and putting fifteen steps between us: a demon familiarity. He tried again, coiling the lick of intangible power around my ankle, and when I didn’t push back, he roamed it higher.
“Torrent.” His name sounded like a warning.
“Relax, Gem,” he said, eyes still closed. “Quit trying to control what shouldn’t be controlled.”
I closed my eyes, letting my focus drill down to the way his touch wove over me, through mine until my heart rate slowed, and the madness loosened. Maybe I didn’t want to kill him, ruck him, and eat him—probably in that order. Maybe being demon didn’t only mean kill or be killed as I’d had drilled into me since before I could remember. His touch encircled mine, and I sent mine roaming over him into the recesses of the demon inside his human skin, finding his spirit bright and clean and smooth. It was deeply intimate in a way that spoke of trust, nothing more, nothing less. I let out a tight little sigh, finding myself relaxing for the first time since escaping the ascension, maybe since before then. When his hand found mine, I laced my fingers with his. The restless tension eased off and smoothed out.
“There.”
I blinked, surprised to find us still in the grubby hotel room and not sitting together on a beach somewhere, listening to the waves lap against the shore. His hand slipped from mine, and I found both halves of myself—demon and human—aching to have it back.
He headed for the door. I didn’t want him to go, didn’t want to be alone. I almost voiced my fear and begged him to stay, but if he knew how deeply the last few moments had affected me, he might use the weakness against me. I crossed my arms to stop my hands from reaching and denied the silly human needs. Let him leave. Let him think this means nothing. Survival means never giving anyone weapons to use against me. Caring is a weakness. Don’t let him be mine.
Chaos Rises: A Veil World Urban Fantasy Page 19
