by C. G. Blaine
“Not a you person,” I shoot back, keeping him in sight while I move to the coffee.
“That’s for Nyx.”
“Is it?”
He nods, so I make sure to maintain eye contact while I take a long drink. As I finish the lukewarm latte, the tent rustles behind me.
Hex’s attention moves to the sound, and he grins. “There’s my goddess.”
Nyx steps beside me, her eyes slowly rising to mine. “Please untie me.”
I pull apart the knotted straps until her bra falls to the ground. She rubs her wrist, rolling her shoulders a few times as she crosses the campsite. Hex smiles as she rounds the ashes. Then she walks straight up to him and slaps him across the face.
So, they’ve fucked.
He winces, his lips in a tight line. “I suppose I deserved that.”
“You deserve so much more,” she says. “I didn’t think I could hate you any more than after you killed Nyla in Paris, but you’ve pulled it off.”
“Love,” he starts, only for her to slap the shit out of him again.
This time, the demon responds like a demon. He growls, catching her wrist before she pulls away, and he towers over her, lowering his furious face to hers.
“Watch it, Descended. That tattoo was looking a little worn the last time I saw it. I’d hate to be the one to make it disappear.”
When she jerks away, he releases her and adjusts the cuffs of his jacket.
“Since you seem uninterested in playing nice”—he waves his palm off to the side of them—“we’ll just get straight to resetting the game.”
Nyx glances over her shoulder at me, concern etched on her face. I see the portal open, but before either of us can do anything, Hex grabs her shoulders and shoves her toward the rippling air. I take an instinctive step before she stumbles through, and then it’s just the Upper and me.
I figure I’m up next for the portal ride, so I coolly dip down for the clothes on the log. “Chicks, huh?” But really, I’m scanning the area in the light. A cliff in the distance and a possible water tower on the horizon.
Hex teleports to my side, cocking his head while he studies me. “Keep your hands to yourself, Watcher. We wouldn’t want for her to get attached to a mortal with a ticking clock.”
I shake my head and back away from him. “Trust me, Hexagon…”
The cooler still has a few waters inside, and I swipe it on my way to the portal, not sure where it leads. Even so, I’d rather go through on my own than to be manhandled by a guy dressed like he might actually sell life insurance. I pause in front of the portal and look over my shoulder. “It’s not my hands you should worry about.”
His nostrils flare, and a flame appears in his palm right before I step through.
Uppers. So fucking touchy.
I pop out on the other side, bracing for … who the hell knows what? But it’s more of the same. Sand, dried-up bushes, sun, and Nyx with a flash of relief at the sight of me. And at her feet is my hoodie she left behind yesterday, ripped to shreds from an animal.
Fuck. He really did reset us.
I start walking toward the sun, not quite in the same direction as yesterday. With more daylight, maybe I can get to some sort of civilization. A town, a highway, or hell, a dude in a dune buggy. I’m not picky.
As I pass, I shove the clothes at Nyx. “Gift from your boyfriend.”
“Not my boyfriend,” she bites back.
“Right,” I call over my shoulder. “I’m sure you two are just feeling it out.”
She lets out a frustrated groan from behind me.
By the time she reappears at my side, she’s changed. She screws with the cooler, pulling the sunblock out and putting in her clothes from last night. After she finishes treating me like a packhorse carrying her fucking purse, we walk through the desert. And walk. And walk.
The sun looms overhead and stretches to the other side. We’ve both reapplied sunscreen a few times and drained the last of the water. Nyx keeps up for the most part. Every now and then, the sound of her feet dragging behind me slows and fades. Proving myself a real stand-up dude, I check back after a minute or so to see if she’s unconscious on the ground. I don’t know why I bother; she’ll pop the fuck back up.
The Others—or Descended. They might not have gotten their angelic powers, but they did pretty well for themselves, apparently. The Fallen tracked them over the years, but they must have gone underground to make it look like they’d died off when they should have. We kept our distance, so if they pulled anything, we wouldn’t get lumped in and screwed over.
Joke’s on me with that one.
Nyx is right on my heels when I see it. I drop the cooler, coming to an abrupt stop, and then so does she when she slams right into my back.
“Ow, what the—” she cuts off, and I imagine she notices what my gaze is glued to ahead of us.
A fucking cooler.
Sure enough, when we get over there, we repeat yesterday. Four bottles of water and sunscreen.
“Shit!” I kick the cooler over, the bottles rolling out onto the sand, and Nyx flinches.
Before I take my Donny rage out on her, I put some distance between us, flexing my hands as I go. A habit—but unlike the other times, there’s no glow from my palms or fingertips. With the lack of heat, they feel empty. Cold.
“You think there’s a tent waiting for us too?” Nyx’s voice is quiet behind me, like she’s afraid to rattle my cage any more.
I put my hands on the back of my head and turn around to look at her. “Probably.”
And hours later, probably turns into definitely.
The same tent. Same blankets. A note for Nyx.
She throws it straight into the fire without reading it and sorts through the new cooler left for us.
I wander away from the campsite to see if any lights stand out in the night. If we were close to anything, we could keep going. If I weren’t mortal, we would keep going regardless, but I’d rather not meet my demise because I stepped in a hole and fell face-first on a rattlesnake or some shit.
Nothing but sky and stars. Cass would be hard over this view.
I pull out my palm stone, Avery side up, and adjust the image to see the rest of the living room around her. Just as planned, Ros showed up last night. We’d come up with a code word, so the twins would take off their necklaces, and his light would work on them. He’s not there now, but Cass and Hannah are—scrolls spread out over their feet and a torqued off look in Cass’s eyes.
If this were a charge, he could use their blood to locate them. No vials of my blood lying around though. So, they’ll have to figure out where the hell I am in a different way.
Come find me, brother.
After we eat, Nyx disappears into the tent with her change of clothes. I hang by the fire a little longer. The chill in the air bothers me more tonight. By the time I crawl in, she’s lying under the blankets. I sit down and lean forward to fish her bra out from under her jeans in the corner.
“Seriously?” she says. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m on your side here.”
“Cool. But I’d rather you be on your side, hands behind your back so I can tie your ass up and go to sleep.” I circle my finger in the air, and she huffs, but then she rolls away from me, her hands sliding behind her.
Her pouting lasts a few hours before her need for body heat wins out. She moves closer and sighs. Then a little closer. Another sigh, followed by another inch. Since we both know where this will end up, I pull her the rest of the way to me. With her back against my chest, her hands push into my stomach. Any lower, and we’d be in an entirely different situation.
At some point, she flips over and nuzzles into my chest, like last night. That’s how we wake up too. Her encircled in my arms. My leg hooked over hers. And the demon who told me not to touch her staring down at us.
“The fuck?” I shout, sitting up.
Nyx jerks awake, panicked until she sees Hex leering at us from the tent opening. The flap fall
s down as he walks away, and she buries her face in the pillow. She yells something about him, but the obscenities are lost in the feathers.
Hex has a bored look on his face when we crawl out. He hands her the coffee today, not chancing any interception. Then he waves his little palm to open the portal. This time, we both walk through of our own accord, taking Nyx’s change of clothes and the cooler with us.
And we’re back at the damn sweatshirt.
I start in the direction we went the first day, thinking about the water tower.
Nyx almost has to run to keep up with my fast stride. “Why are we bothering to walk if he’s just going to find us again?”
“The better question is, how is he finding us? A demon’s not going to hang around all day, watching us traipse around the desert.”
She looks up at me. “He’s tracking us somehow.”
I nod, trying to figure out how, but a few seconds later, her steps fall behind.
“Shit,” she says when I turn around. She’s taking the cuff out of her cartilage, and then she holds it out for me. “Could he be using this?”
I pick the earring out of her palm. “He gave this to you?”
She bites her lip, averting her gaze. And once I see the crystal embedded in the gold, I know why.
Sonofabitch.
“This is why my light wasn’t working on you,” I say through clenched teeth.
Nyx nods, but it wasn’t a question. Slap a spell on it, and the earring works exactly like Samy’s amulet, the gold diverting light into the crystal. My light never affected her because it never reached her brain. The bar, Kai’s kitchen, the hallway, at the racetrack. She bullshitted her way through it all.
Impressive if I wasn’t the one fucked in the end.
“Would Hex have—”
“The diversion spell would have overridden any other spell cast,” I tell her. “So, unless he got his paws on it between you lying at the racetrack and lying in my car…”
“No,” she says. “I haven’t taken it out since I met you at the bar.”
I nod and drop the earring back into her hand. “Well, he’s not using it to track us then. And you blew your secret for nothing.”
She has an apology in her eyes when I look up. Before she decides to voice it and I have to tell her to fuck off, I shrug off a chill working down my arm and unload the cooler. I’m already sick of carrying it.
“Demons have a trick where they can sense mortal heartbeats.” I give her a water, the sunblock, and her clothes. “With no one else around, he’s probably scanning the desert until he picks up ours.”
“So, what do we do?” she asks as I walk away, abandoning the cooler. And her—but only one will stay where I left it.
“We get somewhere with more than the two of us.” Because of her little boyfriend, but also I just need to be away from her. Every time I look at her, the absence of light throbs within me. No heat, light, or life, but a cold ache.
Nyx must sense she needs to give me space, or maybe she’s just as desperate to get away from me. Either way, we have little to do with each other until afternoon—when we run across the cooler we both knew would be waiting for us.
I take my shirt off before snagging a water. She grabs one, too, but doesn’t drink it right away. I tip my bottle back and watch her, holding the water in her arm and twisting at the sunscreen in her hands. By the time I spin the lid back on my bottle, she’s walking over with a determined look to her.
Not in the mood, I start to walk again.
“Do we have an actual plan?” she asks. “Because I’m done wandering in the desert like what’s his name.”
Moses, but I don’t supply the answer.
When it becomes clear I’m not coming back, she shouts, “When are you going to forgive me?”
She can’t be fucking serious with that question. But when I look, she’s standing there, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know,” I say, facing her. “You plan on forgiving your boyfriend for killing your sister anytime soon? Because I’ll fit you in a century after that.”
She shakes her head, glaring. “Ex-boyfriend. And you won’t fucking be here in a century.”
I growl, my hands flexing on my first step toward her. “Because of you!”
Nyx’s eyes widen, lips parting with a quick breath. “Chaz…”
“No.” I stalk toward her, my chest heaving and the rest of me seething. “I’ve been nice, considering the part you played. You’re the reason we’re here. You and your fucking—”
“Chaz!” She stumbles backward, the bottles falling to the ground while she tries to get away from me. “Stop, stop, stop,” she begs. “Please!”
The shrieked plea brings me to a stop, real fear in her eyes. I might be twice her size and pissed off, but her response seems dramatic. She’s taking short breaths, staring at my hands. And that’s when I see the shadows escaping from my palms. Swirls of darkness are circling my wrists and going back into the skin, where more appear.
Oh, fuck me.
“What did you do?” Chaz whispers the words, but they sound thunderous in the silence around us. Then he repeats them, his eyes shifting to me. “What the fuck did you do to me?”
I swallow, watching the black fade until it’s just his hands again. “Nothing. I bound your life force with Abaddon’s—”
“What exactly does that mean?” His tone stays calm, but I have a feeling he’s anything but below the surface. “Life force.”
“It’s hard to explain. A lot goes into life, but it’s sort of like an essence tied to your soul.”
“O-kay,” he says slowly, a little more edge to his voice. “But a demon doesn’t have a soul. The darkness smothers it out and takes its place. Darkness is what keeps a demon alive.”
My breath stops, my entire body numbing. “Oh.”
“So, that would mean…” His jaw tenses, the control slipping. The shadows return for a second until he closes his eyes. They dissipate, and he takes a few more breaths before looking at me again. “I have darkness inside of me.”
“You shouldn’t. Only one life force can exist at once. There shouldn’t be room for anything else.”
“Except I’m not whole,” he says. “I lost my light, Nyx. A rather important part of the angel equation, which means there’s a massive void.” He stretches out his hands and lets the shadows flow from his fingertips. “Or there was. It looks like your little stunt gave the darkness an opening to move the fuck in.” He practically growls the last few words, and I fold my arms across my chest.
“How was I supposed to know any of that?” I ask. “In case you missed it, my ancestors were more worried about bitching than giving us useful information, like what powers a demon.”
Chaz storms toward me, his temper flaring along with the darkness. “So you shouldn’t have been screwing with what you didn’t understand.”
I backpedal, and I’m pretty sure I just reached his breaking point and am about to wake up in my spirit form.
But then his shoes skid as he stops in front of me. His eyebrows shoot up, and out of nowhere, he smirks down at me. “What powers a demon? Or what powers a demon has?”
“Both? I knew nothing about them until I met Hex during my first life.”
“Well, lucky for us,” he says, holding out his hands, “I’ve known everything there is to know about them since my beginning.”
I’m about to ask what the hell he’s talking about when he waves his palm off to the side of us. At first, nothing happens, but then I notice the air. A slight ripple, like a mirage, except right beside me and not from the heat. My eyes snap up to Chaz, and he shrugs right before he sidesteps and disappears.
I suck in a breath, my head taking a second to wrap around what just happened. And then the air returns to normal, and my shock flips to irritation. He did not just create a demon portal and leave me here.
“Hey,” he says from behind me.
I jump, grabbing my chest as I whip around to
face him a few feet away. “Jesus. I thought you’d left me.”
He picks up the cooler and my clothes. “Wouldn’t do me any good to abandon my hostage.”
“Hostage?” I say.
He nods and open another portal. “Plus, there seems to be a small caveat with the portals.”
“And what’s that?”
“It seems that since I only have some darkness in me”—he vanishes through the portal, and in a blink, he reappears so far ahead that I have to squint to see him cupping his hands around his mouth—“they have a limit.” He steps out in front of me again. “But we should be able to track down some extra heartbeats before your boyfriend checks in.”
“Ex-boy—” I drop the last part of the word because he’s already gone.
I blow out a breath and gather the waters and sunscreen from the ground, and then I follow my captor through.
Because what the hell else am I going to do?
Chaz notices the outline first, set low on the horizon.
I’ve been gripping his bicep for a while, trying to keep up as we portal-hop. He closes one, opens another, drags me through. Wash, rinse, repeat. But once we see the building, he pulls on his shirt and tosses the cooler behind a bush. He crouches down in front of me. I don’t hesitate to climb on, and he hikes me up as my legs wrap around his midsection. For only being a few hours into demon powers, he’s got this part down. One hand opens while the other closes. We blink our way across the desert until the shack takes shape.
The last portal brings us out behind the building. Wooden siding and shingles in the middle of nowhere, but none of that matters because music is beating through the shabby, spring-loaded screen door. I slide off him, and Chaz grabs my hand, bringing me with him. He leans around the corner, and the tension melts out of his shoulders. When he spins around and half-smiles, I peek to see what has him sliding down the wall.
Motorcycles. Parked in a long line that extends past where I can see. And behind them are cars and trucks and a four-wheeler.
“Thank God,” I say.
“Nah, baby. God didn’t carry your ass here.” He climbs off the ground and hooks his head toward the corner. “Let’s go.”
