by Amy Braun
“Tell me something useful, and I’ll end it,” I told him.
The Possessor made a noise between a rasp and a gurgle. It took me a moment to realize he was laughing.
“Not... long... now,” he choked out. “She’ll be... his... soon...”
He grinned, blood staining his teeth. I decided against the mercy killing. I slowly pushed myself up, ignoring the aches and pains in my body. I walked around the shop, looking through the cabinets and drawers to salvage anything I could. I found some packets of dried and canned food, as well as some bottles of lukewarm water. I never once looked back at the dying Possessor, knowing it couldn’t take me over since I had an anti-possession sigil tattooed over my heart.
Yet I couldn’t shake the foreboding words the Possessor had given me. As I walked out of the store and back into the dark, bloody streets, I recalled what Drake said.
See, I found something really, really special. It’s the last thing we need. But don’t worry, sweetheart. You’ll get introduced to it very, very soon.
There was only one reason Drake, Mateo, and Lucifer himself would target me.
They wanted to capture my sister.
Chapter 2
Nobody was in a good mood when we got back to our current “safe house.” It was a place where I’d once done a job during my time with the Espanis de Sangre– the Blood Thorns. I’d kicked in the door of the house, scaring the fuck out of the man and his family. I remembered the way his wife tried to defend him, raising a frying pan to hit me with. I’d stopped that by grabbing her hand in one fist and breaking her nose with the other. The children cried when I took their daddy away. That had been the worst part, because I knew their father was never going to come back.
I locked the door behind me and placed a chair under the doorknob. It was a pitiful form of defense against demons and psychotic drug lords, but now that Sephiel was human and unable to make protective wards, cheap solutions were all we had.
I turned around and looked at my friends. All of them were slumped in various positions across the living room. Sephiel stood vigilantly in the corner closest to me. He was dressed in his white leather trench coat, white shirt, white pants, and boots. His wavy auburn hair was flatter now, and I thought I saw hints of grey at his temples. His blue eyes were slowly losing their brightness. I noticed the bags underneath them.
Brooding in the left corner was a professional demon slayer, and my new lover, John Warrick. Broad shouldered and tall, Warrick was the definition of ruggedly handsome. His thick, dark oak hair was almost past his ears now. He was starting to grow some stubble around his mouth and cheeks. He wore dark blue jeans, a grey T-shirt, brown leather jacket, and black boots. Warrick’s arms were folded over his chest, and I started to wish they were around me instead. Then I caught a glimpse of the angry twist of his lips, and figured this might not be the best time for some cuddling.
Sitting on the patchy olive green sofa directly across from me sat Max, who was working on honing his psychic abilities. He was able to sense things about people, like emotions and intent, though it was more powerful when he touched them. He was trying to use his gifts to discover what the demons were planning, but they were much stronger than he was. He’d be turning nineteen soon, though he looked more like an unpolished sixteen year old. Like Warrick, the young psychic was growing a small goatee. His skin was a dull gold like mine, and his eyes were a gentle, dark brown. Max didn’t have much in the muscle department, but he focused on keeping us optimistic and looking out for Dro. He was the kind of person who didn’t need physical strength to be strong.
Max was nestled beside my sister, holding her pale hand in his bronze one. I wondered if his ability was on, if he could feel the emotions rushing through my sister.
I hoped not, because she wasn’t happy.
Dro stared at me with resentment, disappointment, and guilt. I wondered how much of it was directed at me, or if she was trapped with dark reflections of herself. In the nearly seventeen years since I had found her alone in the forest, crying in patch of scorched earth, Dro had rarely ever looked at me with disappointment this obvious. Sure, I had screwed things up for both of us, but she always found a way to forgive me.
This seemed like a last look, as if I was finally drying up all of the patience she once had for me. And if she directed all these dark emotions at herself...
I matched her stare. I’d told her over and over again that what was happening to us wasn’t her fault. Dro and I wanted nothing more than to live normal lives. We hadn’t asked to be tangled in a pissing contest between Heaven and Hell. Dro hadn’t asked to be the Key to unleashing it all. She had just been born.
Being alive shouldn’t have been a burden.
“So,” Max finally said, attempting to break the awkward silence. “Are we going to talk about what just happened?”
I marched through the room, taking out the slim pickings for food and placing them on the scarred coffee table.
“What’s there to say?” I muttered.
Max blinked at me. “Oh, gee, Constance, I don’t know. Maybe we can talk about how we walked into a trap with Drake fucking Talbot, and none of us knew it.”
I raised my eyes to Max’s. For whatever reason, he had never been very afraid of me. I respected that. I also respected his desire to see Drake’s head fall off his shoulders. Drake had killed Max’s father, Manny, in front of us because he’d been looking for me. Manny’s cruel murder was something I would never forgive myself for, even though Max held no blame over my head.
He did hang onto a lot of rage, however.
“If you’d known, you would have told us,” I said.
“Well, duh,” Max snarked, testing the limits of my patience. “But it was just a stupid convenience store. What the hell could he have been doing there?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, backing away. “I didn’t find out.”
“You should have let me chase him,” Warrick said from the corner. His voice was deep and rumbling, which usually made him sound sexy, but right now was making him sound dangerous. “I’d have found out why he was there and what he was taking.”
Of all of us, Warrick had the most cause to hate Drake. He’d raped and murdered Warrick’s sister because of money, and had been eluding Warrick ever since. He’d been furious when he was forced to abandon his fight with Drake and run from a full-scale battle between Heaven and Hell. His temper wasn’t getting any better now that I’d been openly threatened by his archenemy.
I looked at Warrick directly. “He would have expected that, and he would have killed you.”
Warrick’s head lifted, sharp green gaze locking onto my dark one. I hated seeing the bags under his eyes, illuminating the scar under his left eye that Drake had given him years ago. Warrick wouldn’t hurt me, but pushing his temper wasn’t going to win me points with him.
Which was bad, since pretty much everyone in the room was pissed off at me right now.
“You’re one to talk,” he snapped bitterly. “You charged a room full of armed thugs.”
“Who weren’t going to shoot me,” I pointed out.
“Really? I thought all the Blood Thorns hated you.”
Now I was the one who was getting pissed off. “They do.” My tone warned him to drop the subject.
“But you attacked them anyway.”
“I thought I could get Drake before he got out of the door,” I told Warrick. “I figured if everyone was focused on me, they wouldn’t try to kill the rest of you. Besides, you heard what Drake said. They aren’t going to kill me anymore than they will Dro.”
“That is what perplexes me,” Sephiel commented from behind me. I was grateful he intervened, because I liked arguing with Warrick about as much as I liked arguing with my sister.
“Why is it that they wish to draw you out, Constance? We have been moving through the city for weeks, staying in the shadows to keep safe and obtain information to close the Hell Gate, but what has prompted them to expose this
new plan now?” Sephiel’s eyes went dark. “Lucifer has not been seen since we entered the city, and he should be ecstatic at the return of his child.”
Warrick hated Drake with every fiber of his being, and even that hate paled in comparison to the fury Sephiel held for Lucifer. Their feud began when Lucifer kidnapped Everiel, the love of Sephiel’s life, and forced her to bear him a child in Hell.
That same child I had found in the forest sixteen years ago.
Sephiel might not hold any ill will toward Dro, but it was impossible to miss the sadness in his eyes when he saw the similarities between my sister and the woman he loved, but wasn’t able to save.
“He has a plan,” Dro muttered. We all looked at her.
She stared at the food on the table without seeing it, holding Max’s hand tightly in hers.
“I know he has a plan.”
A warning flag went up in my head. “How?”
She paused. “I just do.”
That flag started snapping in the wind. “Dro, did you...?”
My sister’s frosty blue eyes rose to mine. “Did I break my promise and use my powers to find him?” She heard the sarcasm in her tone, and dialed it back. “No. But we’ve been running in circles since we got here, Constance. We’re going to have to take the fight to Lucifer eventually.”
“Then we’ll find out what Drake stole for him and what they plan to do to me.”
She narrowed her eyes. “We’ve tried doing that for the Hell Gate. It hasn’t worked. No one is talking, because no one knows anything. Lucifer hasn’t been seen since the Heaven Gate was shut, and the Blood Thorns are loyal to Mateo. We’re running out of options.”
Dro wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t just options we were running out of. It was places to hide. I knew this city like the back of my hand, but so did Mateo. He was born and raised in Ciudad Juárez, the son of the most powerful drug lord in all of Mexico. As leaders of the Blood Thorns, Mateo and his father Emilio were untouchable.
Then I came around. I entered the gang, stupidly fell in love with Mateo, learned of their plan to betray me and Dro, was tortured by them both, only to finally escape and kill Emilio right in front of his son’s eyes. As a result, Mateo was hunting me to the ends of the earth, and he would find me eventually.
All of us were involved in some sort of revenge scheme that just wouldn’t go away. But that was no excuse to walk into the hand of the Devil himself.
“Then we’ll just have to wait until we’ve got absolutely nothing left,” I stated. “That means Max is still the only one who uses his powers.”
I sounded like a scolding parent, and Dro reacted like the accused child.
“They don’t always work,” she shot back, regardless of Max’s hurt expression. “We’ve already figured out that Lucifer is blocking him on purpose, only letting Max see what he wants him to see. That’s why we walked into that trap today. You think he won’t set up another trap if he can?”
“Dro, you lost some of your powers when we shut the Heaven Gate. Whenever you push them, you damage yourself. You don’t know how far you can go, and it’s too risky to try.”
She yanked her hand from Max’s and got to her feet. Her fists were balled at her sides. I couldn’t remember her being this angry with me before.
“Then I better go get some sleep so I can take a watch,” she bit off. “It’s the only useful thing you’re going to let me do.”
I blinked, unable to think of anything to say, or to stop the hurt digging into my heart. I tried to tell her that she was useful, that I just didn’t want her to get herself killed, but Dro was already storming for the stairs. Nothing I could say now would bring her back. For the first time in my life, I didn’t understand my sister. I didn’t know what to say or do to make her believe in me again.
That hurt me worse than the punches I had taken tonight.
No one dared say anything to me. Max slowly got up from his seat on the couch. If my sister hadn’t left in such a dark mood, maybe he would have cracked a joke. Something about having to clean up my mess again, that he had to literally play kiss-and-make-up, or that if I kept fighting with Dro, he would get more time alone with her.
Max wasn’t afraid of me, but he knew when to stay back.
“I’ll talk to her,” was the only thing he whispered as he passed.
I didn’t even nod. I imagined they would have their own making up to do. I wasn’t worried about them. Max nearly always took Dro’s side, so it was hard for her to stay mad at him for long.
I was less easy to forgive.
“I shall remain on watch,” Sephiel said gently. “You are tired, Constance. You need to rest.”
More words I didn’t want to hear. Being scorned by Dro made me want to do something to prove that we weren’t stuck in quicksand, with every little problem leading us to one giant suffocation.
Hearing Sephiel say I was tired actually made me feel the exhaustion in my body. I didn’t sleep more than four or five hours, barely ate, and was constantly running or fighting. It had been weeks since I relaxed, but it felt like years.
I nodded to Sephiel, then stalked out of the room. I had lost my appetite. I didn’t expect anyone to follow me, though I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear footsteps at my back. I stopped at the staircase and turned around.
Warrick was standing behind me, sharp green eyes watching me with patience.
“What?” I breathed. I really wasn’t in the mood for another tirade.
Instead of berating me, Warrick slipped onto the staircase with me and opened his arms. I stayed in place, but let him curl his arms around my back and pull me against his chest. The moment I felt the warmth of his body and inhaled his musky pine scent, I began to relax. I started to feel safe, comfortable, loved.
In the three weeks we had been together, Warrick had shown me more kindness and compassion than Mateo had done in two years. Clearly my choice in men had improved.
“Don’t do that again,” he whispered into my hair. “You scared the shit out of me.”
I curved my arms around his back and hugged him tighter. It was better if I didn’t respond. That way I wouldn’t have to lie to him.
“I’m sorry for lashing out at you,” he went on, stroking the short, black strands of my hair. “I just saw him, heard him say those things to you, watched him get away again, and...”
He sighed instead of saying the rest. But he didn’t have to.
“I know,” I mumbled into his chest. “Guess I need to think before I act, huh?”
Warrick stifled a laugh, the rich sound sliding through my ears until it warmed my chest. He gently rubbed my back, and I melted even more.
“That would be a relief.”
I wanted to smile, but my heart and mind weren’t in it. Staying in Warrick’s arms was easier than facing my problems. He loosened his hold for a second, until he realized that I wasn’t letting go. He put his hands and my shoulders and slowly pushed me back so I could look at him. All his anger and impatience was now pushed down somewhere. It wasn’t gone, but at least he was trying with me.
Not everyone was.
As if he was sensing my thoughts, Warrick cupped the bottom of my chin and lifted my head. There was so much tenderness on his face it broke my heart. I didn’t deserve any of it.
“It’s going to be okay,” he promised. “You and Dro will get through it. You always do.”
I didn’t tell him that it was different this time. Something dark was growing inside my sister, and I had no idea how to stop it. If I even could.
Warrick stalled my thoughts by pressing his lips to mine. It took me half a second to respond. I was still reminding myself that Warrick could be trusted, that he’d saved my life and my sister’s life without hesitation. He wasn’t going to turn on me or torture me. He wanted to protect me, because he knew I wouldn’t protect myself.
I stood there and absorbed him, enjoying his smell and the sweet saltiness of his kiss. When Warrick pulled back, I nearly pouted
. He smiled and stroked my face with the backs of his fingers.
I don’t know what he saw in me. I wasn’t that pretty, certainly not on the scale Dro was. I was slim with an athletic build and almost no curves. My dirty hair was black, razor straight, and chopped just below my chin. My dark gold skin was almost always covered in blood, and my dark brown eyes nearly always matched my mood. Yet Warrick looked at me like I was a queen.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Let’s get some sleep.”
This time I did pout a bit. “But I’m not tired now.”
