The Brightest Embers

by Jeaniene Frost

  “So, you’re determined to resume your search of the spearhead to keep it from falling into demon hands?”

  Adrian asked the question as if the answer didn’t mean much to him, but from the tight set of his shoulders and the muscle ticking in his jaw, he was struggling to remain calm.

  “Yes,” I said, waiting to see if he mentioned the countdown. When he didn’t, I clenched my fists but kept walking. Demetrius might not be interested in killing me at the moment, but he was fully capable of doing something awful to Jasmine or Costa to incentivize me, and if he knew where I was, he knew where they were. “I still don’t intend to use it, but I need to make sure it’s safe from any demons who are hunting for it. That way, they can’t use it to reopen the gateways, or rally the other demons to kill you.”

  “They already want to kill me,” Adrian said with a grunt.

  “Demetrius doesn’t, and he’s powerful enough to keep a lot of the rest of them from trying it,” I said shortly. “But for many reasons, we can’t let a demon end up controlling all the realm gateways through the spearhead.”

  “Is that all Demetrius said to you during your chat?”

  My lips thinned. Only someone with something to hide would wonder what else Demetrius had told me.

  “No,” I said, and left it at that.

  Adrian tugged on my hand when we reached the villa. “What else?” he asked, sounding wary.

  I’d give him a tidbit, but I’d save the meal for later. “He knows you’re the ‘map’ for the hallowed weapons.” At Adrian’s shocked expression, I shrugged. “Guess their being found at two of your former homes in this world tipped him off. You told me yourself that he kept chasing you when you’d sneak out to go to this world, so if any demon would be able to figure that out, Demetrius should. That’s why he suggested that we resume our search for the spearhead in places where you used to live.”

  Then I squared my shoulders as I stared at Adrian.

  “But you’ve never lived in Vatican City, Hofburg Palace or the Mother See campus in Armenia, so why did we start our search for the spearhead there?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SOMETHING SKIPPED ACROSS Adrian’s features. Then his face became blank as a new sheet of paper and he gave a nonchalant shrug.

  “Like I said, I doubted the spearhead would be in any of the places that claimed to have possession of it, but we had to rule them out just in case.”

  A plausible response, but now I doubted it was true. Could he be hiding something else from me? Demetrius had said I had no idea how deep Adrian’s darkness ran. Even Obsidiana had hinted that there was a lot I still didn’t know about him, and Adrian had nearly died making sure she couldn’t say anything else. Then he’d insisted that I finish her off before he even found out if the manna would heal him. Last but not least, he’d just admitted in a roundabout way that he still held things back from me, even if he knew he shouldn’t.

  No, I hadn’t been imagining the unspoken tension between us or the feeling that something was off. Adrian had been lying to me again, either outright or by omission. Despite all his promises, here we were again. Now all that was left was to find out how many different things he’d been lying about.

  “You weren’t surprised to hear that Demetrius was on this side of the realms,” I said, giving him a chance to tell me the truth on his own about that, at least. “Why not?”

  Adrian opened his mouth—and Costa flung the front door open so hard, it almost hit us. It did hit the side of the villa, the knob knocking off a chunk of plaster from the impact.

  “Time to go!” Costa said, hauling a suitcase through the door. “Jasmine’s almost packed. You two need to hurry.”

  Adrian pulled me behind him, putting the villa at my back while he blocked my front. “What’s wrong?”

  “Fucking minion made a house call,” Costa snapped, gesturing to a pile of ashes near the entryway that I’d assumed was dirt from the nearby garden. “He just showed up and told me they knew where we were. Didn’t even fight back or try to run when I jumped him, either. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the fucker let me snap his neck!”

  That had to be one of Demetrius’s minions. How he’d gotten him to go on a suicide mission, I didn’t know, but it more than underscored how serious Demetrius was about my restarting the search. He must be really worried that another demon would beat us to it. Then again, since Demetrius had figured out that Adrian was “the map” to the hallowed weapons, maybe other demons had, too. Since Demetrius had found us weeks ago, it wasn’t hard to imagine that other demons might have found us, too.

  “Wish that was the craziest thing I’ve heard today,” Adrian muttered, grabbing my hand and pulling me into the house.

  Costa gave him a startled look as he popped the trunk of our rental car and threw his suitcase into it. “If it isn’t, what kind of day have you two had?”

  “Tell you when we’re out of here,” Adrian said, giving me a light push toward our bedroom. “Start getting us packed. I’ll wake Brutus. He’ll have to fly to follow us.”

  I looked at the sunlight, imagining Brutus’s horror when he found out that he’d be flying in this. Yeah, I’d much rather pack than be the one who broke that news to him.

  * * *

  I THOUGHT WE’D take a train out of Italy, but Adrian nixed that idea. “Too easy to track,” he’d said, adding, “Sending his people to check out the different train stops after the attack in Yerevan might be how Demetrius found us in the first place.”

  Since I had no intentions of summoning the demon to ask, I’d have to leave it at that. Flying was out for the same reason, not to mention it would mean leaving Brutus behind, and for so many reasons, I wasn’t prepared to do that. I thought we’d end up in another remodeled tour bus or an RV big enough to fit four people and a gargoyle, but Adrian had a different plan.

  “Careful!” he said to Brutus when night fell and the gargoyle finally came out from beneath the deck. “Remember, do not go to the left or the right. Walk straight down the middle.”

  “We’re all gonna die,” Costa muttered as he watched the gargoyle attempt to tippy-toe down the center of the boat.

  I trusted Brutus, but I could also understand why Costa was nervous. At two tons, if Brutus suddenly lurched to one side of the boat, we stood a good chance of tipping over too far and capsizing. If it weren’t a sturdy commercial fishing trawler built for dragging and storing heavy cargos of fish, we probably wouldn’t have made it off the dock with Brutus.

  But, after driving across the Italian peninsula to the opposite end of the country, Adrian had negotiated our passage with a local trawler owner. Their entire conversation had been in Italian, which meant I didn’t understand what was being said. For once, I was glad. Knowing how much Adrian had paid to bribe the trawler owner to give up fishing for the next few days and ferry us around instead would probably keep me up at night.

  Still, this was smart. Even if we had been followed by minions—and Adrian had done some pretty impressive driving to prevent that—we were now out in the middle of the Adriatic Sea. Minions and demons would have a hard time finding us here.

  The only downside was that the trawler, not surprisingly, reeked of fish. The four of us were breathing out of our mouths to avoid it, but Brutus loved it, proving that even stink was relative depending on the sniffer.

  Jasmine came up from below deck next. She’d been upset since hearing that I was going after the spearhead again, but I’d explained why—and more important, that I wasn’t planning to use it—so I knew she’d come around. Still, I was relieved to feel her thread her fingers through mine before she rested her chin on my shoulder. She used to do that a lot when we were kids. It had been her way of saying that things were still okay between us after a fight. Feeling it now was like a balm to my frazzled emotions, and I closed my finger
s over hers.

  “Where are we headed to this time?” she asked.

  “Montenegro,” I said, repeating what Adrian had told the boat’s captain. “The Adriatic is narrow as far as seas go, and Montenegro is on the other side of it. Apparently, there’s a church in the Bay of Kotor that Adrian used to hang out at.”

  That was the reason he’d given me for suggesting that we start our new search there. I had my doubts about his honesty, but we were in very tight quarters with Costa, Jasmine or one of the boat’s crew members constantly over our shoulders. I’d wait until we were alone to confront Adrian. Patience wasn’t my strong suit, but I’d been forced to practice it a lot lately.

  “Gently,” Adrian told Brutus when the gargoyle flapped his wings to begin his ascent into the air. Now that it was night, Brutus would want to fish. The boat might reek of them, but there weren’t any on it, much to Brutus’s disappointment.

  The brown-haired crewman whose name escaped me gave Adrian a startled look. “Not afraid your little bird will get lost?” he asked with a heavy Italian accent.

  Brutus chuffed and spread his wings to their full length, as if to say, Who you calling little? I coughed to hide my laugh as the crewman shook his head, seeing only a squawking, puffed-up seagull instead of a magnificent gargoyle with a wingspan that exceeded the width of the boat.

  “This bird won’t get lost,” Adrian told him, then said, “Tarate!” to Brutus.

  He took off after one last annoyed look at the crewman, who almost fell over from the sudden, fierce gust of wind from Brutus’s wings that the gargoyle had aimed right at him.

  “What’s that language?” the crewman stuttered, trying to cover up the fact that he’d lost his footing for no apparent reason. I hid my smile. He’d gotten off lucky. He didn’t want to know what Brutus could do when he was really mad.

  Adrian grunted. “Nothing you’d know, trust me.”

  Then Adrian came over to me, caressing my arm and frowning when I moved away. I pretended not to notice, occupying myself with helping Jasmine control her wildly whipping hair. Mine was already in a ponytail, but she’d forgotten to pin hers back before coming up. Now the wind caused it to attack Jasmine’s face as if her locks had been replaced with Medusa’s snakes.

  “You’re not going to win this,” I told her, nudging her back toward the opening in the deck. “Come on. I have another scrunchie in my cabin, and there’s food in the galley, too.”

  I walked away, pretending I didn’t feel Adrian’s sharp gaze on me as I went. Unlike Adrian, I couldn’t put on a convincing enough act to hide what I was feeling. And call it the new “darkness” in me, but I didn’t mind him stewing over things for a while. After all, I hadn’t been able to think much past what I knew he’d been hiding for the past several hours.

  That was why I took my time below with Jasmine, first French braiding her hair, then eating some of the rations the boat was stocked with. They were hardly the yummy fare that vacation cruise lines were famed for, but this wasn’t a vacation and I wasn’t that hungry anyway. I was only eating to keep my lingering queasiness at bay.

  “You don’t look so great, Ivy,” Jasmine said when we came back to my cabin, which was a generous term for the tiny room containing two hammocks and a toilet. We sat on the lower hammock, and Jasmine felt my forehead.

  “No fever,” she said with relief.

  “It’s not that,” I said. “I’m just nauseous.”

  Her eyes bugged. “Could you be pregnant?”

  “Not possible,” I said at once.

  She snorted. “We’ve lived in the same small villa for over a month, and while I don’t eavesdrop at night, I’m not deaf. That’s how I know it’s entirely possible.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I said, getting up to shut the door even though with it closed, the tiny quarters made me feel claustrophobic. “Adrian told me that several years ago he had a vasectomy.”

  Jasmine’s brows went up. “Why?”

  He hadn’t told me the next part. Like too many other things, I’d had to figure it out for myself. “So he stays the last Judian. Otherwise, he’d be passing this awful legacy on to any child he had, and he refuses to do that.”

  “Wow,” Jasmine said softly. “I suppose I get why he did it. But since you’re with him, that means no more Davidians, too.”

  No, there wouldn’t be. My hands went to my lower stomach, where I’d never feel life growing. An odd pang of loss hit me. Before I’d found out about my destiny, I’d thought that I’d have kids someday. Now I knew I wouldn’t, and despite that feeling of loss, I was glad. I couldn’t bear to do what my bio mom had done by abandoning me for my own good. Yet if I had had a child, I might have been forced to do that, too.

  “It’s not such a bad thing,” I said steadily, letting my hands fall away. “If I had children, I’d be passing my legacy on to them, too. Being Davidians would make them prime targets for demons, and I couldn’t stand that. So...it’s better this way.”

  Jasmine took my hand, her gaze brimming with sadness. “You don’t get to choose much in your life, do you?”

  I blinked away the tears that rose unexpectedly. No, not much, and the choices I had made, I was now second-guessing.

  “That’s life,” I said, my voice husky. “We have to try to make the best of it. Besides,” I forced my tone to brighten, “we can always change our mind on the choices we do have, right?”

  “Right,” she said softly, but her eyes were still sad.

  I didn’t want her worrying about me. She’d had too much worry, stress and pain in her life as it was. “Speaking of choices,” I said, still in that fake light tone. “When are you going to admit that you and Costa are a couple?”

  Her eyes widened to almost comical degrees. “How did you know?” she asked with a gasp.

  Now it was my turn to snort and point out the obvious. “Because you’re not the only one who hears things at night.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I HADN’T INTENDED to fall asleep in the hammock with Jasmine, but we’d ended up talking for hours, and at some point, we’d put our heads down to be more comfortable. A lot more comfortable, as it turned out.

  While we slept, someone had opened the door and left it open, allowing fresh air to come into the stuffy quarters. Having the door open also kept my claustrophobia at bay, and when I looked across the hallway and saw Costa sleeping in one of his room’s two hammocks while the other was empty, I knew who’d done it. Adrian.

  I got up, taking care not to jostle Jasmine so I didn’t wake her. Not that I should have worried. She just rolled into the middle of the hammock with a nasally snore once I’d extricated myself. I smiled at how contented she looked, then my smile faded as I left the room.

  Battle time.

  Adrian was at the front of the boat. It was still dark out, but a hint of orange showed where the water and the horizon met, so sunrise was on its way. The constant sea spray combined with the wind made me wish I’d grabbed a jacket before coming up, yet I wasn’t turning around. Aside from a crew member in the glass-enclosed steering room, we were finally alone.

  I went over to stand next to him. Without a word, he took off his coat and put it around me. It was still warm from his body heat, and his height meant that it fell to my knees.

  “Thanks,” I said as I put it on. Then I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to open with We need to talk or Isn’t there something you want to tell me? We were way past that.

  “You’ve been lying to me again, Adrian,” I said, still staring at that faint orange light on the horizon. “Don’t make it worse by denying it. I think I already know most of what it is, but you’re either going to tell me the rest of it, or no matter how much I love you, I am going to leave you.”

  He swung me around to face him, the fading moonlight high
lighting the shock on his features. “What?”

  I pushed his hands from my shoulders, glaring at him through a sudden surge of tears. “I said, I will leave you if you don’t spill right now everything you’ve been hiding and lying about. As Jasmine noted earlier, I don’t have a choice about much, but I can damn well choose not to keep searching for the spearhead with someone who keeps lying to me and undermining my every step. Yes, your bloodline and your upbringing mean that lying’s second nature to you, but you still have free will. Whatever you do now, it will be your choice, so don’t blame anyone but yourself if you don’t like the consequences.”

  I was breathing hard by the time I was finished, as if I’d been running. In some ways, I had. I’d been running from this moment by dismissing or ignoring all the warnings that had led up to it. Adrian was breathing harder, too, and the silver rings around his eyes were almost glittering in the moonlight.

  “You don’t get it, Ivy. If I tell you everything, you’ll leave me anyway.”

  “Then I’ll do it with the truth you should have told me in the first place,” I said, clenching my fists in an attempt to keep my trembling from showing. The thought of leaving him, even temporarily to continue this quest without him, hurt so much that I was shaking, but I wasn’t bluffing. I’d had enough of excuses, lies and rationalizations. Now I wanted the truth, all of it. “You owe me that, Adrian.”

  He muttered a foul curse in Demonish and turned away. I waited several moments, but he didn’t speak or turn around.

  I took in a shuddering breath, feeling a tightness in my chest that rose to clog my throat. Even now, he still couldn’t do it. I’d warned him of what would happen, and I’d meant it.

  I spun around on legs that felt like they’d buckle, but they were still strong enough to carry me away from him. “If you have nothing to say, then this is goodbye—”