by C. G. Blaine
She moves my hand under her shirt and flattens my palm over her stomach. Shifting to my side, I let the shadows out against her skin and watch her. The more I expel, the cooler our skin becomes, and the more she squirms under my hand. And she’s right. We’re both fucked up because I could get hard again at how she responds to it alone.
But our darkness-play ends when my phone vibrates on the nightstand at the exact moment the pounding on my apartment door begins.
Nyx sits up. “Who’s that?”
“You really don’t want to know.”
I untie her and grab the amulet off the nightstand and a shirt on my way out of the bedroom. Both are on a minute later when I walk into the kitchen to get the blocker bag out of the cupboard, the amulet giving off a faint glow concealed by the fabric.
“Chazaqiel,” Lydia says outside the door. “I can hear you walking around in there.”
Before I pull out a crystal and disengage the spell, I take a deep breath. Here’s to the amulet hiding my dark side.
The crystal plinks onto the counter.
“Come in,” I call, my tone lighter than a goddamn balloon.
Lydia drops into my living room, and I walk past her as dismissively as ever. She doesn’t immediately strike me dead with a bolt of light. A good sign.
“And to what do I owe the pleasure?” I ask. “Here to beg me to help you relive the best night of your existence?”
“Ew. No.” She straightens her shoulders, her cheeks pink. “I told you I’d be checking in more frequently. I need to make sure you three aren’t trying to—”
“Serve out our punishments in peace? Job well done, gorgeous. But I think Armaros might be a little too comfortable up in Seattle at that swanky house his charge owns. You might want to send a few locusts and nip that shit in the bud.”
“You are quite possibly the most annoying being ever created.”
I splay a hand over my heart. “Touched.”
Something moves behind her, and Nyx peeks out from the hallway. Fucking hostages. Never staying where you leave them. Lydia follows my line of sight and then turns back slowly.
“Who the fuck is that?” she whisper-yells at me.
I shrug. “You expect me to remember her name?”
I nonchalantly walk over to Nyx and hook my arm around her, pulling her into the living room. She looks just-fucked and like she’s second-guessing her decision to snoop. Completely understandable, given the death glare beamed at her.
“Great.” Lydia shifts her look to me. “Hurry up and report on your charges, so I can clean up your mess.”
“Kai and Avery Benson,” I say. “They’re asleep, but I can grab them if you want to meet them too.”
“No, I think we’ve had enough mortals listening to our conversation for one night.” She takes a step toward Nyx, holding out her hands like she’s approaching a skittish forest animal. “What’s your name?”
Nyx glances up at me as I step away from them, waiting until I’m out of Lydia’s line of sight to shake my head. She looks back to Lydia, who is lifting a hand to her cheek. Nyx’s eyes widen, but the second the light touches her skin, she falls into character. Pliable, innocent, defenseless. Everything she’s not.
“What’s your name?” Lydia asks again, her voice almost sickly sweet.
“Corey.” Nyx sounds dazed, hypnotized.
I stand there, witnessing two venomous snakes trying to convince each other they’re as dangerous as baby bunnies.
“Corey”—Lydia tips her head to the side, condescending as shit—“you won’t remember seeing me or anything you might have heard, okay?”
Nyx nods slowly.
“After I leave, you’re going to go home and never come back. You can do better than someone who can’t remember your name after leaving bite marks on your shoulder.”
My eyes dip to where Nyx’s shirt has slipped down, her skin red. Then I quickly mutter the amulet’s spell under my breath again for good measure and step forward. “Such a cockblock. Anything else you want to interfere with while you’re here? Maybe hit up the rest of the women in Colorado?”
Lydia’s hands fall to her sides, and she turns around to face me. “Mortals are beneath even you, Chazaqiel. I’ll be back, so don’t get comfortable.”
The second she drops, Nyx reaches for the gold cuff. She almost rips the earring out, her ear pink where it touched. “Why did it burn so much? Usually, the gold just heats up.”
Fucking Lydia. She used too much.
Once I reengage the spell bag, I take off the amulet and go back to rub my thumb over the hot spot. “Good thing you had something to divert the light.”
“Why?” she asks, dagger vision aimed where Lydia was standing.
“Instead of your ear burning, she could have melted your brain.” A problem we learned the hard way when we first arrived. The line between using enough light to shape the human mind and straight-up lighting it on fire could, without a doubt, be wider.
The shadows have lowered the temperature of her skin, and I leave Nyx with a panicked look on her face, flipping off the light as I go to the bedroom. Then I pick up the tie for whenever she recovers and follows me in.
After almost having my brain melted by a gorgeous—and totally in love with Chaz—angel, the days start to run together. In the mornings, Rosdan stops by to work with the blade before he has to nanny his charges. Sometimes, he stays in the living room. The rest of the time, he goes across the hall. In the evening, Cass is around.
I try to stay out of their way. Partly because I still feel like a little girl playing make-believe when in a room with more than Chaz. Mostly though, it’s less awkward for everyone when I lie low. Even though he took me to my apartment and saved me from demons, Rosdan is still cautious around me. Most of the time, he looks like I might attack him at any moment, and then there’s Cass giving off major vibes that he might attack me. So, not only am I stuck in Chaz’s apartment, but I also spend a lot of the time strictly in the bedroom.
A week after escaping the desert, I wake up to the groan I have most mornings. Chaz gets out of bed and isn’t even gone a minute before he shuts the door and crashes onto the mattress beside me, landing on his stomach.
“Rosdan.” His voice is raspy and tired, and he drags his pillow under his arms to lie on. He’s softer when he’s only half-awake. Not just his features, but him in general.
I nudge him before he falls back asleep. “Hands?”
He barely cracks open his eyes as he unfastens the knot and tosses the tie to the end of the bed.
I get up and sort through my bag. I’m almost to the bottom and grab the last top. My knuckles touch metal. Thinking I must have forgotten to unpack something the last time I used the bag, I pull it out.
And then everything stops for a second.
I cover my mouth to hide a gasp when I see the picture that should be hanging in the hallway of my apartment. A black-and-white of Nyla and me from the fifties a few years after her last resurrection. The last time we were in our twenties together. Chaz must have taken it when he went for my body wash and shampoo.
When I look back, his head is buried under his pillow. I go to his side and kneel on the floor, shaking his shoulder. He grunts and tips the pillow up, so I can see him.
“You brought this from my apartment?”
Heavy-lidded eyes search my face before they move to the frame in my hand. “It was probably Ros.”
Then he lifts his head, turning it the other way and putting the pillow down. But I know it was him. Rosdan never left my room.
By the time I’ve showered and dressed, Chaz is still sleeping, so I reluctantly go to the living room. Rosdan glances up from where he’s sitting on the floor with the Dimming Blade. He’s wearing work gloves, refusing to touch the metal. I give an awkward wave to let him know I mean no harm, and he gives a halfhearted smile before lowering his head again.
I think he’s the most different from what Nyla and I imagined. His hair is darker, and his eyes are o
nly a few shades from black. Not as close to the color as Cass’s, and his dimples aren’t as pronounced either.
He adjusts as I move toward the couch, so his back isn’t to me. I’d like to believe it’s to be polite, but I know better. I understand why, but it still bothers me, considering I’ve spent all my lives thinking he and his brothers would adore me from the get-go.
I curl up on the cushion and watch him sift through some of the scrolls he brought with him. From what I’ve overheard while walking to the kitchen or hovering at the bedroom doorway, they’ve figured out how to activate the blade without a human sacrifice. As a previous sacrifice, I am grateful. The problem seems to be getting the light out of the blade. And as the person who dies when they do, I am again grateful.
“Chaz told me about the desert,” Rosdan says after a few minutes. “That you gave him life to heal his stab wound.”
He keeps reading, and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to respond since he didn’t ask a question. But then he glances up, and I nod.
“How does it work? I can’t find records of The Descended or any mention of a race that can influence another being’s soul or whatever.”
I hesitate to answer him. Papa drilled into our heads that, if anyone found out what we could do, they would use it to their advantage. Hex proved him right. First, by killing Nyla when she told me to dump his demon ass, and then again with Abaddon. But if I can help Rosdan find a spell or anything else that can unbind Chaz and Abaddon, they won’t need to kill me.
“Life force.” I sit up and pull my knees to my chest. “Think of it as energy. It can be manipulated and transferred. In my case, it can be generated from the essence in my blood.”
“Can you take it then? Someone’s life?” His interest drifts to my hands, and I tuck them under my legs.
“No. Or maybe in my spiritual form.”
“That’s when the soul leaves the body?” he asks, and I tip my head in question. “I’m an angel, Nyx. I know some shit.”
I give him a small smile. “I’m stronger then, but I’ve never tried.”
Usually, I’m more interested in getting back into my body before anything happens—last time excluded. Then again, until Abaddon, no one had murdered me in cold blood. Other than the guy who ran me over with his car, but he was long gone by the time I flashed through eight years of memories.
Rosdan considers me for another moment, and then his focus returns to the knife. “So, what could you do to me right now?”
I ignore his phrasing, an unconscious reminder that he views me as a threat. “I can sense your life force if I focus hard enough—feel the essence of it. But most of what I can do involves my own life. If you were mortal, I could transfer part of mine into you and then manipulate it like I did to heal Chaz, but I’m not sure how it would work on an immortal.”
“And it wouldn’t work with your sister?” When I don’t answer right away, he adds, “Sorry. I’m sure if you could—”
“It would just prolong her suffering.”
He wants to ask more. I can tell by the way he opens his mouth to say something, but he turns it into an, “Ah.”
“The second generation tried it,” I tell him, fully betraying my ancestors. But really, I’ve always kind of thought they sucked. “After the original Descended started dying off, they realized we could only resurrect so many times. They found ways to determine that limit and then forced their offspring to transfer life into them. Except the spell infused with our blood resets us after death, so they stayed old and decrepit. When their extended lives ended, their souls lost hold like they were supposed to, and they couldn’t return to their bodies.”
“I’m sorry,” he says again, to which I shrug.
I watch his glove run along the sharp edge like he’s searching for a hidden message. “Our lore says there’s a possible workaround. Supposedly, by injecting more Essence of Creation, like in the original spell, we can reset while still alive. There hasn’t been any pure essence since right after creation though. And as I’ve recently learned, there’s no way to create more dust.”
Rosdan’s hand has stopped moving over the blade. When I look up, he’s staring at me. His eyebrows draw in, but the line between them smooths out just as fast, and he looks away. “I wish I could help. But like I said, my scrolls mention nothing about life force and infusion spells or anything to help…”
“Nyla.”
“Nyla,” he repeats, and I smile, hearing him say her name.
I know she has always been a Samyaza fan, but I think she might be Team Armaros if she met him.
I think about Nyla the rest of the day, staring at our picture that I set up on the dresser. She’s safe, which is what truly matters, but I’m starting to worry she won’t be here when I finally can go see her again.
After my shower that night, I’m combing through my hair when Chaz creaks open the bathroom door. We haven’t been in the same room for more than a few minutes all day. My eyes meet his in the mirror, and he crosses his arms, leaning in the doorway. He stays there until I finish.
“What?” I ask, finally turning around.
“You enjoy your little heart-to-heart with Rosdan this morning?”
“You enjoy eavesdropping on it?”
“My damn apartment,” he says. “Plus, you left the door open, and the two of you were loud as fuck.”
I’m about to push past him when he unfolds his arms and holds up a clear orb. “You’ll have to learn a spell or two to work it on your own.”
He sets it in my hand, and my heart almost stops as I look down at an image of Nyla. It’s like what he uses to see Kai and Avery. His fingers wrap over mine, and more of her room at the farm comes into view. The ugly white nightgown, one of her nurses adjusting her IV. After Chaz mumbles something under his breath, I hear the record they have playing by her bedside. Something from the jazz age shortly after we came to the States.
I’m shaking my head when I look up to see him watching me. The picture and now a way to see her anytime. It feels like a glimpse of my Chazaqiel. The one a little girl dreamed up in her head. And I want to believe it’s him, not a twisted version of the warden offering the death row inmate their last meal.
“Why are you giving me this?” My pulse picks up the longer he studies my face, and then his eyes lower.
“I don’t know, Nyx,” he says. “But now, you have it.”
“Yeah,” I say as he backs away.
And I still have no idea what it means.
Two weeks. I’ve been stuck in my apartment for two weeks straight. Fourteen days with the chick who, three weeks ago, I was doing everything to avoid. It’s gone about as well as expected. I’ve fucked her most nights, given her shit, spent an afternoon chanting over a fucking crystal ball for her, watched her—fuck, have I watched her.
Like tonight. I have the palm stone out to watchdog Kai and Avery across the hall. The twins are on their own until Cassannah gets here later, and I prefer to have eyes on them until then. But while I switch channels from one charge to another, there’s substantial Nyx interference to tone out.
She’s draped over my couch with her crystal ball. My attention follows as she rolls it back and forth on her stomach. Along the edge of her shirt and above the inch of skin between the hem and her jeans.
I force myself to quit looking, solely focusing on the stone. I have mild success until jazz fills the room, coming from the couch. They only play one record in her sister’s room, and after the first few times through, I started to regret showing her the spell to listen through the orb.
“Cut the sound,” I say.
But she ignores me.
I’m about to tell her again when she jerks upright.
“Nyla,” she whispers.
The crystal ball starts emitting another sound then. Hard and labored breathing. And then gasps for air.
“She can’t breathe.” Nyx looks up at me, her face morphing from alarmed to downright terrified in a split second. “Chaz,” she
says, her voice breaking. “She can’t—”
A loud beeping comes from her hands, and her eyes shoot back to the orb. I move to her as she stands, and I take the crystal. I manipulate the image, pulling back. Two nurses rush into the room, and Nyx is gripping my shirtsleeve.
And then she bolts for the door.
“Damn it, Nyx!”
All I do is think about going after her, and I’m across the room. She slams into my chest, shocked by the unexpected collision.
“Did you just…”
“Teleport,” I finish.
But I can’t worry about that with Nyx trying for the door again. I catch her in my arms, pulling her farther into the apartment.
“No!” She struggles against me with every step. “Chaz, please! I need to go. I have to be there in case she—”
All the fight from her stops, both of us knowing what she was about to say. In case she dies.
I let her go in the center of the living room and move back to give her space. Nyx follows the orb in my hand, and after I quiet the beeping, she swallows hard and blinks up at me. We stay locked on each other, her chest rising in short, shallow breaths. No more attempts to run. No pleas or threats. Just sad fucking eyes on mine until she says, “She’s all I have.”
Her voice trembles at the end, but it doesn’t matter. I knew I was going to find a way to get her there the moment it broke on my name.
When we portal in on the porch of the farmhouse, Nyx dashes inside.
“Where’s the bag?” she asks over her shoulder.
“Try the top shelf in the kitchen cupboards.”
She passes the windows, and I track her to the last one. The thin white curtains are transparent enough that I see her climb on the counter. She stands on her knees, rifling through one cupboard and another. I’m about to doubt Cass’s predictability when I see her pull out the black pouch.
By the time she pulls a crystal to disengage the spell, I’m back at the doorway. I cross the threshold without any problems and shut the door behind me. Not that it will protect us from anything other than the wind chimes blowing outside.
I’m well aware that the last fucking thing I should have done was trek ten miles away from the safety of my apartment without backup, but I wasn’t exactly drowning in options. Rosdan’s been skittish about Nyx’s sister since their little chat, and I still owe Cass for bringing what I needed for the crystal ball.
