“We have to keep going,” I said.
She nodded, then thrust her chin toward her feet. “Shoes,” she panted. “I need them off.” I knelt at her feet and ripped the tall heels to shreds. My rage was beginning to slip. We didn’t have time for this.
She was just starting to move past me when something in my periphery caught my attention. A rustle. A slight shift in the shadows.
I swallowed down the bile rising in my throat.
The scents of blood and sex drifted over me.
“There’s a doorway just at the end of this street,” Nathalie said. When I didn’t get up, she paused mid-stride and turned. “Piper?”
“It’s too late,” I said softly. “He’s here.”
25
Ronan
Luci claimed he was not the same angel after all these years. That he had changed. But from where I stood, ten thousand years passed in the blink of an eye and he was still running.
No, that’s not right. Chasing. Her. My atma.
He ran from Aeshma when she rejected him. Lucifer tore a rift between our world and this one, then jumped through it. He couldn’t handle the sting of her rejection, or that he became a pariah afterward. So he came to this plane and painted himself in a new light.
The Morningstar. The Devil. The Ruler of Hell.
That last one made me chuckle, and the supernaturals surrounding me took notice. Unease swept through the crowd as I began rolling up my sleeves.
This was my favorite suit. It would be a shame to ruin it.
“I realize that you are all blood-bonded to my miserable little brother, but if any of you believe you can fight it, then kneel now, and you will be spared.”
No one moved.
Not one single inch.
I sighed.
This was going to get messy. Lucifer had already taken off, stepping through the light to chase after Piper. I needed to get her before he ruined everything.
I didn’t care what he said. Piper was not his anything. She was mine.
And he wouldn’t take her from me.
A quick sweep of the club told me there were hundreds of souls, all prepared to be a barrier between us.
But my brother underestimated me. While he’d spent the last ten thousand years running, hiding, and lying through his teeth—I became the Harvester.
Hundreds of souls were nothing to me.
And I proved it with a snap of my fingers.
26
A laugh echoed through the empty alley, equal parts mad and flirtatious.
I turned in circles, but it was all brick walls and boarded-up windows. A shitty metal stairwell went up one building on the left side of the street. The only source of light apart from the moon was a broken lamp flickering in and out. It reflected off the shallow puddles and the slivers of glass that peeked through the boards blocking the windows.
“We can still run,” Nathalie said. “We can make it—”
“If we run, he catches you too. The crash is coming, Nat. I’m going down. Running for the doorway was my choice, let me pay for it. Leave me.” The words came out in broken fragments. My rage may have been fading, but I still had some fight in me yet.
I wouldn’t be taken.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t my only option.
If I could escape Ronan twice, I could escape Lucifer.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said, standing her ground at my side.
“Then you’re a fucking idiot because if I didn’t know he’d get me anyway, I’d leave you.”
Hurt crossed her face before she buried it under anger.
“You don’t mean that,” she said. “You’re such an asshole, and ever since I met you, I question my own sanity, but I see you, Piper. I see who you really are, and I’m not leaving you here to get taken. We either make it out together, or not at all.”
I wanted to rip my own hair out. She was infuriating.
Why couldn’t she just take the easy way? Why did she have to force my hand?
“Goddamnit Nat, why can’t you just—”
A soft tsking brought my words to a grinding halt.
Lucifer walked out of thin air. Literally. Blood smudged his white suit and neck, but he didn’t look any worse for wear beyond that. How was that possible?
“Where’s Ronan?” I asked.
The pleasant mask turned brittle under his anger. “Fun fact about being a demon on earth. Nothing has magic unless you give it magic. I was the first demon here, ten thousand years ago. The first to learn. One drop of my blood and they change into a supernatural. That I own. My club was filled with them. They’re keeping the Harvester busy.”
The way none of them tried to stop me suddenly made sense.
He’d already sicced them on Ronan.
“Nathalie, I need you to leave.”
“No—”
Lucifer laughed, temper cooling once more. His mood swings were giving me whiplash. “You’re a conundrum, Piper. You don’t trust her to even know what you are, yet you openly discuss killing me with my own people.”
“What’s he talking about?” Nathalie asked.
“Nothing,” I replied in a hard voice. Lucifer grinned.
“Your hatred of magic has blinded you. It was all too easy for the pussy cats to give you a sad story and gain your trust, yet you won’t give it to her. I find this fascinating.”
“Nathalie—”
“I’m. Not. Leaving,” she said in a punctuated voice. “Even if you’re a dick. We’ll be talking about this later.” Her unyielding sense of loyalty was going to get us killed if I didn’t buckle.
I didn’t want to do this with her present.
I’d already come to grips with the fact that I wouldn’t kill her. I couldn’t. I might be an asshole, and prejudiced, and downright mean sometimes, but I wasn’t the kind of person that killed someone who stuck their neck out for me.
Our strange partnership started as a kidnapping, but the only reason it became more was because she chose to trust me. To help me. To save me.
I wouldn’t kill her, but she’d die all the same if I did nothing. We both would.
“Come,” Lucifer said, beckoning me forward. In this state I was so much more susceptible to that honeyed voice. I let the magic urge me on and used it to fuel me.
To fuel my rage. My magic.
A decade of festering hate rose to the surface as I walked across broken concrete.
“I’m going to let you both walk out of here tonight. Alone.”
“You must really think I’m stupid if you think I’ll fall for that,” I snapped. He reached out and brushed the back of his fingers over my cheek.
“Actually, I think you’re quite smart. Enough so to know this won’t end well if I try to take you. My supernaturals are holding off the Harvester, but it won’t be long before he joins us. Once he catches up, there will be a fight. One of us will win, and that person will never let you out of their sight again.”
I jerked my head back, and he didn’t seem bothered by it.
“I’m not a bird to be caged.”
“I know. That’s why I’m going to set you free. For now.” He leaned in and ran the tip of his thumb over my bottom lip. “But first, I’m going to bite you.”
Lucifer grabbed my arm before I could react. He spun me around, pressing my back to his chest. I felt his lips and saw Nathalie’s wide-eyed surprise.
Then he sank his teeth into my neck.
At first it hurt. But the pain was only a small prick compared to the lust that filled me. My core turned aching. My legs became heavy. My skin was hot, then cold. Goosebumps broke out across my flesh.
Ice trailed down my stomach and between my legs, filling me with dark desire.
Lucifer groaned, his arms tightening around my waist. I felt him, his magic, his blood, his soul. I felt it all answer to me.
And I loved it. This power. This strength. This desire.
But that didn’t stop me from burning it all.
I looked Nathalie in the eye as I made my choice. Ronan said another blood-exchange would kill me. I’m not sure if it would or not, but I was taking him down either way.
White fire erupted.
It started at my shoulders and travelled down to my hands. I clamped them down on his arms that held me. The fire covered my chest and was just starting down my abdomen when he pulled back and tried to pull away. Blood dripped from my neck, and the thin dress went up in flames, showing my body for what it was.
For what I was.
A demon.
I was made, not born, but a demon all the same.
My brands glowed red-hot as I funneled all my rage and resentment with thoughts of my sister. Of the way she looked when I stumbled home from the summoning all those years ago. I’d just consumed Aeshma, and the witches were after me. I had nowhere to go. Bree thought I was stupid. She was so, so angry that I would risk myself—my family—for magic.
We had to run, but we didn’t get far.
The witches found us within hours.
They killed my parents first.
Two spells. One for each. Their bodies caught fire, and they burned alive, like the witches of old. When my parents’ screams died down and the smell of burnt flesh had filled the air, they turned to me.
Except whatever spell they used to try to kill me missed and hit Bree instead.
She went down. I’ll never forget the way her eyes went blank. They closed mid-fall. The sound of her body hitting the ground was the last thing I remembered.
I lost myself to the rage for the first time.
When the red cleared, all that remained was blood and body parts and an unconscious sister who never woke up. She wasn’t dead. But she wasn’t living either.
I thought of her and my family and the life I should have had. The life she should have had, had it not been for my actions.
I’d been told that resentment was anger at another for how they had wronged you, and I had a lot of that aimed at the witches.
But guilt is being angry with yourself. Rage that festers inside you, eating at you like a parasite, an everlasting reminder of what you had done.
For the last decade I ran from it, and from myself.
While it might have been what drove me forward, I never acknowledged it. I certainly didn’t think about why it was there. I never let myself feel it because it was too painful.
My guilt, my resentment, my own rage had been eating me alive for a decade.
And now, I gave in to it.
I felt it all.
And it burned.
From a place so deep inside that I didn’t even know it existed; these horrible feelings drew out every last bit of fire. Every flicker of flame. Every spark. Every ember.
Until I couldn’t burn anymore.
I let go of Lucifer, or what remained of him, and stumbled forward into the cold, naked as the day I was born. There was no sound in this place outside of the roaring in my ears. My body and my mind detached from each other as I floated in an abyss of pain, even as I kept moving.
I half expected Nathalie to run from me, but she didn’t. God this girl, she ran to me. She put one arm around my waist and held up half my weight.
We didn’t say anything to each other. We just kept walking. Kept moving. It wasn’t even until I was at the end of the street that I turned and looked back.
A chill ran through me.
There was a spot in the street that was black and charred. Ashes drifted in the cold wind.
Lucifer wasn’t there, but not even for a second did I let myself think he was dead.
It was never that easy. The Devil might be injured and have crawled back to the pit he came from, but he’d be back for his pound of flesh. I was sure of it.
And one way or another, I would be ready.
27
We stepped out of the Underworld. The first flakes of snowfall descended on us. I shivered, and Nathalie held me tighter.
The crash was coming. I felt it deep in my bones, my magic, my soul.
“I won’t make it to the car,” I said. My words tasted like ash on my tongue.
“I guess it’s a good thing we’re not going to the car,” she replied.
My teeth chattered, preventing me from protesting as Nathalie dragged me halfway down the street. She stopped in front of a thrift store and eased herself away from me. Without looking either way down the road, she brought her elbow up and smashed it into the window.
The glass fractured, breaking apart instantly.
I wrapped my arms around myself as she ripped off her skimpy shirt. She pinched the fabric on either side of the hem and pulled it apart, watching as it unraveled at the crease. She tossed the piece of fabric on the other side before carefully lifting her leg through the window, avoiding the sharp edges. A hiss of pain slipped from between her lips, but she gritted her teeth and kept going. It felt like the longest minutes of my life when she disappeared into the shadows. She came back wearing Crocs and some sort of long skirt over her previous thong-clad ass. In her arms, she carried a bundle of clothing.
“Put your hands on my shoulders,” she said, holding out a pair of sweats to help dress me like a child. Normally, I would have complained. I didn’t have it in me.
She shucked them up each of my legs and then rolled them at my waist. When she seemed convinced her handiwork would hold, she slipped soft house shoes over my feet. Then she lifted my arms and tugged an oversized hoodie down my top half.
I was still freezing, but at least I wouldn’t attract attention as she dragged me through the dark streets of New Chicago. Even in my depleted state, I could tell we were going in the opposite direction of the human neighborhoods where I’d parked the car.
“If you’re kidnapping me, I’ll shoot you,” I mumbled.
Nathalie snorted. “Even after all this you’re still talking about shooting me. Why am I not surprised?”
“‘Cause I’m an asshole,” I said, my words starting to slur. They were broken up with the chattering of teeth as my jaw spasmed from the cold.
“You’re not going to hear any disagreement from me,” she muttered. She didn’t see the faint grin I gave in the dark, but it was there. “It’s right around the corner. Can you hold on that long?”
“Can try,” I grunted.
“That’s all I’m asking for.”
Spots danced in my vision. I made it through a door, but everything was hazy. Images faded in and out. Colors danced. My legs shook, locking up every other step.
I fell. But for once, I wasn’t terrified of where I’d wake up.
Not that I would tell her that even if I could.
I was an asshole, after all.
I waited there, alone in the dark. For the first time, my memories didn’t assault me. Perhaps that’s because I’d finally acknowledged them and their existence. Or perhaps, I was just batshit.
They both seemed probable.
It wasn’t long before the presence appeared at my back. I didn’t see him, but I felt him. His power. His pull. His very existence demanded my attention. I was the ocean, scrambling to get away from the moon, only to be ripped back every time.
When I didn’t turn to face him, he chuckled.
That dark, deep, and lovely sound washed over me. I wished it were like nails on a chalkboard to my ears. But that would make me even more of a liar than I already was.
And I was so damn tired of the lying.
“What do you want, Ronan?”
The chuckle stopped. I felt the predator in him shift at my tone. “Why do you ask me questions you know the answer to?” he mused. “I am not the one that lies. I have been straightforward with you since the very beginning—when you called me out of my world and into this one.”
I sighed. “You can’t have me. I’m not a bone for you and Lucifer to fight over.”
“No, you’re not,” he agreed. “You’re my atma. In your world, shifters have mates, and humans have spouses, vampires have brides, and wi
tches have psychic partners. You are more than all of them to me. Those are simply watered-down imitations of what it means to have an atma.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, turning to face him instead of being the coward I wanted to be. “Being someone’s spouse is a choice. Mates and brides and psychic partners don’t have that, but wives? Husbands? They choose. That is more than any bond that forces itself on people.”
Ronan assessed me carefully.
“Choice,” he murmured. “That’s what you value.”
“Yes, and it’s what you have not given me.”
“If I gave you a choice, you wouldn’t even consider it. You’d turn me away because of your prejudice,” he pointed out. I shrugged, not denying it.
“I guess it sucks to be you. But chasing me like this? Hounding me like a dog in heat—it won’t win me, Ronan. I might not be human anymore, but I was born one. I am human in the ways that matter.”
Winter skies and steel shone in his eyes as he considered my words. He was shirtless again, this time in slacks. Smudges of blood smeared on his skin. His brands seemed to pulsate in my presence. As if calling to me.
“Perhaps,” he murmured again. “I need to find another way to win you.”
“That wasn’t an invitation—”
“But it was,” he said, smiling with that cruel beauty. “You may not realize it yet, but you’re playing this game. I just need to turn the tables.”
I stepped forward, opening my mouth to ask him what that meant.
But Ronan disappeared. His body fragmented into shadows and faded into the darkness of my mind. I sensed his power leaving.
Those parting words, full of promise, unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
He was planning something. I had no doubt I’d soon know what.
28
A soft warmth spread through me. I rolled, burying my face deeper into the cool pillow. It smelled like jasmine tea and lilac. I inhaled deeply and then sighed softly.
Touched by Fire: Magic Wars (Demons of New Chicago Book 1) Page 18
