I felt sick and coughed, then winced as my chest burned. “I think I’m broken.”
“Come.” He wrapped his huge hand around my upper arm and drew me against his chest. He shivered. A low purr resonated through him and tugged on the trailing strings of my lust. He folded his wings around us both. The air pressure pulled tight and snapped. He was taking me away from the epicenter of madness; peeling apart reality so we could step through to another place. I didn’t last more than a few minutes and collapsed unconscious in his embrace. My dreams filled with the sights and sounds of bubbling heat and searing flesh and then nothing but the dark and the quiet.
“
D
amien’s still alive
.” Akil’s voice was human once more. “He fled prior to your pyrotechnic display, likely sensing your intent through the infusion.” He snarled something in another language and then spat. “Coward.”
I was listening to Akil, filtering the frustration from his words, but his voice drifted. I lay on my back, sprawled motionless beside a campfire, but my head floated elsewhere, drifting as though I could close my eyes and slip off into a dream. I watched the stars blink silently to one another and then realized they weren’t stars at all, I was looking at the glow from tiny demon eyes. Sprites flitted above the clearing. I remembered where I was. This wasn’t Boston. It was Hell.
“I thought I’d killed you.” My dreamy, dislocated voice bobbed untethered about my thoughts.
He made a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “Quite the opposite.”
“Damien’s smarter than I remember.” Was this my conversation, or was I listening to someone else?
“He has something worth fighting for.”
I turned my head and admired Akil seated beside the campfire. He had one leg drawn up. Brittle leaves clung to his creased suit-trousers. In the dance of firelight, his silhouette held me spellbound. He sat too still to be human, of course, but that didn’t stop me from losing my thoughts in him. His dark eyes absorbed the firelight so that nothing reflected in his irises. Shadows played across his face, lending his expression a grim severity. A dangerous smile teased the corners of his lips. My muddled thoughts plucked random scenes from my past and tossed them in front of my conscious thoughts.
I clung to the incongruous memory of the time Akil had introduced me to metalworking. We knew I had an affinity for metal, but when I’d tagged along on a visit to a local blacksmith Akil had hired to craft some gates for his house on the outskirts of Boston, I’d taken more than a passing interest in the harmony between metal and the sweltering temperatures of the forge. A fifteen minute visit turned into three hours while the blacksmith showed me his trade. Akil’s presence blended into the background, but he didn’t once take his eyes off me. In three hours, I learned more than most students could in weeks. The blacksmith was impressed. He asked Akil, who was masquerading as my uncle at the time, if I’d like to become an apprentice.
What was my subconscious trying to tell me? Why were my thoughts corralling warm and fuzzy memories?
I tore my gaze away from Akil and sighed, then flinched and hissed at a jab of pain. I reached for the tender area down my right side. Something thick and clammy clung to me. I looked down at myself. Wadded leaves plastered against my skin. I peeled them back. A viscous substance tried to pull the padding back into place.
“I’d leave those on a little longer,” Akil advised.
“What is it?” The slimy leaves slipped from my hand and sprang back into place, molding themselves snugly against my flesh.
“Leaves from the riegen plant. They’re poisonous, but they also secrete a powerful healing agent.”
“Poisonous?” My vision blurred, and my head seemed packed with cotton.
“Just a little.” His lips ticked. “You’ll be fine.”
I should have cared that he’d drugged me. For all I knew, he was deliberately weakening me for his own malicious purposes, but I couldn’t have cared less. Disjointed memories swam through my mind, scenes of fire and flame accompanied by unending demon screams. Some of those screams were mine. Closing my eyes, I tried to find the important image, the one where I reached for the veil prior to incinerating a crowd of demons, but my aching head and inability to concentrate conspired against me. At least the madness—and ecstasy—I’d experienced while trying to protect myself had gone for now.
A rickety hiss rose up from the undergrowth. I jolted upright and nearly fell onto my face. Akil didn’t turn. He barely even flinched. His element pooled around him. Then he growled a bubbling growl that sounded wrong rumbling from his mortal lips. The sound of it triggered the memory of an aroused Mammon striding toward me. I shivered.
Whatever loitered at the edges of the firelight must have decided against attacking because a new quiet settled over the forest. Akil relaxed the flow of his element, letting it fizzle back into the earth.
Yukki Onna and I had fought off an attack, and while it hadn’t been difficult, it certainly hadn’t been a walk in the park either. Akil had deterred whatever lurked in the undergrowth with a single growl. Lowering myself back onto the bed of leaves, I propped up my head and stared at him. Something fundamental in him had shifted. I couldn’t place exactly what looked or felt different. Perhaps the touch of his element had altered, but he wasn’t the same demon I’d lived with in Boston. “What happened to you?”
His gaze checked mine, and then settled again on the firelight. “Demon’s aren’t born Princes. We earn the title.” He paused. The fire spat and hissed. “When Stefan trapped me here, I was weak.”
I had to fight my own guilty conscience not to look away. His weakened state had been my fault. I’d drained him of his power, gobbled it all up. The high I’d experienced while draining him had been euphoric. Perverse pleasure assailed my body, spiked my heart rate, and shortened my breaths. I wanted to experience that again. I closed my eyes and drove the sensations away.
Still half-human… Still have control… But for how long…
“Within seconds, they were on us. Stefan... fought with exceptional control. He got away. I, on the other hand, did not.” Shadows gathered across his handsome face and twisted his expression into something dark and menacing. “They take great pleasure in ripping a Prince off his throne.”
An apology fought its way up my throat, but I gulped it back down. I had nothing to apologize for. Akil got what was coming to him. Perhaps that was the change I sensed in him: a humbling. Akil met my gaze. In the amber firelight, I couldn’t quite read his expression, but I sensed a flicker of power reaching out to me. He stood and ambled over to sit behind me. Drawing my wing against me, I rolled onto my back and looked up at him. My focus blurred, head light, and thoughts adrift.
“Too much time in the human realm weakened the power I had here.” His gaze roamed over me. I felt the heat in those eyes fall against my demon skin and might have purred. Damned demon attraction.
He stroked the trailing edge of my wing with his fingertips. “I’ve been working on getting my title back.”
How exactly you worked on becoming a Prince of Hell I had no idea, and I didn’t want to know. I rested my head on his thigh. He ran his fingers lightly over my shoulder. Where his touch eased across my skin, a comfortable heat pooled. The memory of Damien tried to muscle its way into my thoughts, but it soon floated away, like everything else drifting in my head.
“I would have killed Damien had he not been infused with you,” he said. “I could end his meager existence quite easily.”
I wished he had. A rude, stabbing sensation in my chest reminded me of my unfortunate predicament. “If Damien dies and I’m still tied to him, what happens?”
“His essence would find a home inside you,” Akil replied without hesitation.
I’d already tried to lever the touch of him out of my insides with painful results. What would it feel like to have all of that hideous misshapen darkness at my core?
I focused on Akil’s light-fingered touch. In my drug-induced state, I imagined everything was going to be okay. If I closed my eyes, I could will the horror away and pretend we were back in Boston until an ache pounded my side, and a throb of something darker beat inside me. “How is it done? I mean, how will you get him out of me?”
“There are two means by which one can reverse a soul-lock. The first is extremely painful and would likely result in your death.”
I lifted my gaze and saw from the slight frown on his face that he was about as keen on that option as I was. “The other?”
He cast his focus back to the fire. “The second is…less painful.”
The second option didn’t sound like a bag of laughs either. Whatever it was, it would have to be done. I couldn’t live with Damien’s seed inside me. Option One would be preferable to that. “How is it the Princes are the only ones who can reverse a soul-lock?”
“Only those with unwavering control ultimately claim the title of Prince. Control is what will be required to unravel the threads of Damien from inside you. It is… delicate.”
“So, you’re a Prince again?” I asked with a little too much enthusiasm. Mentioning Damien’s name was enough to make me nauseous.
“Yes, but I’m weaker now than I have been in… a very long time. They will continue to challenge me.”
“Like sharks?” I asked. He frowned a little, forcing me to explain. “You keep swimming or you die.”
“Not all sharks...” Akil danced his fingertips down my arm, smiling a knowing smile. “What you did, Muse...” He settled his hand on my chest, over my heart, and for a few moments, I let him sink his ethereal touch through my skin. “It was glorious.” Admiration gleamed in his eyes.
That was where he and I disagreed. I plucked his hand away. “No. What I did was out of control.”
“It was necessary.”
Maybe. “What if that happens in Boston? What if I’m cornered, and I react like that again? I could kill hundreds of people and not even know I’d done it...until afterward.”
From the confusion in his eyes, I realized he wasn’t capable of understanding why such a thing would concern me. All he saw was a demon brimming over with power. Demons don’t concern themselves with collateral damage. In fact, they thrive off it. Chaos. I was under no illusions. Akil wanted my demon. He wanted the reservoir of power dammed up inside me. We both knew it. It wasn’t a secret, not any more. He looked at me, his eyes devouring my demon. He’d always wanted her, probably from the first time he’d seen me all those years ago, cowering on my knees in front of Damien, a bruised and battered thing.
Like a butterfly crumpled in the hand of a child,
he’d once told me.
I turned my head away and lost my thoughts in the firelight. Akil trailed his hand over my shoulder, down my arm, leaving sensuous threads of power behind. The lure of sleep cushioned my fears and chased away the conflicting needs and truths, but not before I clung onto the one fact Akil couldn’t refute. “You killed Sam… I hate you, Akil. I need you to free me of Damien…” I didn’t finish with, “that’s all,” but he heard it.
“I know.” There was a knowing downward tilt at the end of his words, and I wondered again if it was sadness. I couldn’t kid myself about Akil. I wasn’t that woman. Not anymore.
“I’m so tired...” I whispered.
“Rest. Heal. You will need to be well if we’re to subdue Stefan. He will not come easily.”
Stefan... Had he lost control the way I had? Was that why the elements crowded the sky above his cave? If he had, I wondered what would be left of him should we manage to get him back where he belonged. What if nothing of the man remained? If I got him back, could I control him? What if I was clinging onto a hopeless, dangerous dream, just as Nica had said?
It was time to let go.
“Sleep,” Akil whispered, fingers swirling across my skin. “You are safe.”
T
wo demon ‘days
’ passed before I could move without gasping in pain, but it was probably no more than a few hours back in Boston. Time works differently in the netherworld, night and day are not fixed points. While resting and healing, I began to realize how little I’d known about Akil. He taught me how to be human. It seemed ludicrous at that moment, especially considering how I considered myself human first and foremost, but when I arrived in Boston, I barely knew how to cross a road without getting mowed down by traffic.
Those early days were a blur of disjointed memories. Not only was I coming to terms with murdering my owner—a crime for which the demons could have executed me—but I was learning to be human in a strange new world. I had looked up to Akil. Hell, I’d virtually idolized him. He taught me how to channel surf on a TV, how to hail a cab, how to eat with cutlery. I was the proverbial child raised by wolves, only my wolves were demons. Wolves would have been kinder.
Akil had power. He had influence in a world that rewarded such things. It was a strange realm where people cared for one another, where someone might take the time to ask how your day was and listen to the answer, where communities came together. We took it for granted, but the human spirit is unique and fascinating. I began to learn just what it meant to be half-human. I thrived. I embraced humanity and its quirky idiosyncrasies. I grew into a human female, a woman. But while I reveled in the joy of newfound freedom, Akil began to lament what I’d become. He lusted after my demon, and I’d shut her away alongside the memories of the life I’d left behind.
Now, as I stole moments to watch Akil, to really listen to him, I realized with reluctance how wrong I’d been. He was only ever a demon. He could only be demon. I had expected him to play by human rules, but that was never going to happen. You don’t blame a predator for killing its prey. It’s the natural order of things. Considering the destruction and utter devastation he was capable of, Akil had showed consistent restraint until he’d snapped and tried to get back the demon he’d lost.
He wasn’t to blame. I was. I’d been too human to see the truth.
A
kil could have transported
us into Stefan’s territory, but we agreed Stefan might not react well to a sudden attack. So we approached through the dead forest. Ahead, in the distance, through the naked branches, the writhing aurora of power rippled in the late evening sky.
“How do you feel?” Akil glanced back at me. The air was still, and although he’d kept his voice low, his words echoed through the skeletal trees.
“I’m okay.” My ribs still ached, and an occasional twinge of pain jabbed rudely at my chest where Damien’s metaphysical soul-lock sat heavily on my heart, but otherwise I felt rested and raring to snag Stefan and get the hell out of Dodge. I also had countless questions burning on the tip of my tongue. In the two days I’d spent healing, I’d been trying to wrap my head around where I was and who I was with.
I studied how Akil stalked through the trees ahead. He moved with purpose, weaving around flayed trees and ducking below low-hanging branches. He had a liquid grace, as though he could adapt his body to any environment, even dressed in a tired suit. It felt at odds with how I remembered him: a professional businessman, surrounded by modern trappings, the epitome of charm and success. Here, he had a gritty edge and a hint of wildness. It took me a day of quiet watching to realize why. He was home. This was where he belonged. Despite spending my early years in the netherworld, it would never be my home. He’d spent a hundred years in the human realm, give or take few decades, but the rest of his eternal existence had played out in the netherworld. Could I really say I knew him at all? What’s a hundred years to an immortal being? A blink? What had he done in those years? What kind of creature was he, really? I’d never asked, never needed to. That was about to change.
“Is there a King?” Of all the questions I could have asked, such as ‘do you still intend to separate my demon from my flesh?’ I could guarantee he didn’t expect that one.
Start easy.
Once I had him talking, I planned to pounce on the other more pertinent questions. Besides, I had a vague memory of him explaining the netherworld hierarchy long ago, but had pushed much of those early years to the back of my mind.
“Mm…” He shoved a branch away.
“What does that mean? Mm?”
“You’re awfully talkative.”
I glared at his back. “You think one question is talkative? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Damien didn’t like to hear me talk. Then I was with you in Boston, and I wanted to forget about the netherworld. So I didn’t ask quest—”
“Wisely so.” He covered ground in one step that took me two.
He brushed a branch aside, stepped around it, and released it. I got a face full of twigs as it smacked me in the head and chest. I spat out a curse and wrestled free. “The Institute doesn’t know anything about the hierarchy, just myths and rumors. There are seven Princes… So, is there a King?”
He snapped the next bough off at the junction with the trunk. “Do you think any one of those Princes, me included, would answer to a King?”
“How would I know? You’ve never told me anything about the Princes.” I waited, hoping he might elaborate. He didn’t. “You haven’t answered my question.”
He stopped, straightened, and glanced over his shoulder, shooting me an expression of curious amusement. “Observant, aren’t you.”
I pulled up short. “Is there a King?” I hadn’t really cared for the answer, but now he was being evasive, and I wanted to know why. Did he just not like me asking questions, or was it the subject I’d chosen?
“Sometimes.”
I frowned. “Sometimes?” What was this, a lesson in vagueness?
He angled his body to face me, giving me all his attention. The feather-light touch of a smile flicked across his lips. “Why do you want to know now?”
“I’ve been kept in the dark all my life. I intend to change that, and I’m starting now, so why don’t you just give me a straight answer?” Was he playing with me? His expression seemed to say so, but as always with Akil, there was the threat of something darker lurking behind his relaxed posture.
“There was a King.” He watched me closely, assessing, waiting. “I did explain this to you once-”
“What happened to him?” I eyed Akil warily, the same way he observed me.
“The Queen killed him.”
“There was a Queen?”
He laughed. The delicious sound of it wove through the trees before the silence gobbled it up. “There
was
a Queen.”
“Wait, don’t tell me…I remember this… The Princes killed her?”
He inclined his head and arched an eyebrow. “Now you are thinking like a demon.” A purr rumbled beneath his words. Was it the memory of the Queen’s death sparking delight in his eyes?
I swallowed, aware I was poking a sleeping tiger. I wanted answers… “So, how come there’s
sometimes
a King?”
“The netherworld is changing.” He turned away, allowing me to heave out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“Meaning?” I sensed the candid moment slipping through my fingers. I fell into step behind him again, dodging wayward branches springing in his wake.
“I will explain everything once we’ve returned to Boston.” His clipped tone shut me down. End of discussion.
At least I got some answers out of him. It was a start. So there had been a King, and a Queen. Both now dead, leaving behind Seven Princes. As the Princes don’t inherit their titles, I assumed it was the same with the King and Queen. They must have earned their ‘crowns’. It was a sobering thought. The Princes had disturbing reputations. Just how bad did you have to be to sit at the top? The netherworld was a cauldron of chaos. I only knew about a fraction of what must exist on that side of the veil, but I intended to change that. I meant what I’d said to Akil. I needed answers.
Spindly branches tugged at my wing. “Something big went down here...” I yanked my wing free.
“Yes it did.” No hesitation.
“Was this you?”
A few more steps and he said, “Partially.”
I assessed the dead forest with renewed interest. “You’ve tried to get Stefan out before, haven’t you?”
Akil stopped and faced me. His hair wisped about his dark eyes as he drew them across the devastation. “It’s best you go in first. Wear him down, distract him, do whatever you must to exhaust him, but don’t rile him up so much that he draws from the veil...” The rest didn’t need to be said. It also went without saying that I was to keep a lid on my own little party trick for fear I might kill us all. Happy thoughts.
“The last time I was here, he created an ice beast...”
“I’ll deal with those.” He blinked slowly. “Keep him focused on you at all times. He’s unlikely to kill you. Me...” An eyebrow twitched. “He’ll try to kill me.” No ifs, buts, or maybes.
Akil moved to turn away, but I caught his wrist. “What if Damien shows up?”
He smiled down at me and caught himself reaching out to touch my face. “He has no need to. He knows exactly where you are.” He lowered his hand, placing it over my heart. “He’ll wait until we are separated.” He tensed to pull away when I tightened my grip again. This time, his smile faltered. “What is it?”
It was insane, it went against all of my better judgment and my gut feelings, but I didn’t want Akil to get hurt. How do you stop yourself from loving someone even when you know they’re incapable of loving you back? No matter how many times I reminded myself of the monster inside him, it made no difference. What is it they say, love is blind? In my case, it wasn’t just blind. It was oblivious, foolhardy, and outright suicidal. Maybe this need wasn’t as neat as love. Perhaps I was so thoroughly ruined that Akil looked like a reasonable alternative to the horrors cohabiting in my life. Love was an excuse. Love was tidy. Neat. I didn’t love Akil. What I felt for him was messy and confused, slippery and self-serving. My guardian, my killer. It wasn’t love.
“Just be careful.” I released him. “If Stefan snaps the way I did at the fountain, I’m not sure either of us will survive.”
Akil clasped my face in his warm hands. He was suddenly so close that I breathed him in and gasped. His element bloomed around his hands, through my cheeks and cascaded down my neck, over my shoulders. I instinctively cast my element around us. The warm liquid touch of his power caressed my demon skin. I could drink him in, let our elements blend together as one. I knew it would be maddeningly pleasurable. But as those old desires and needs vied for control, the specter of Damien’s abuse lingered. I bit into my lip, tasted blood, and held back. Fear doused the fire in my veins. The spark of need snuffed out as quickly as it had come.
Akil’s nostrils flared. He eased back, dark eyes narrowing. “Stefan won’t hurt you. He loves you.”
He released me and turned away in time to miss the grimace on my face. For a few seconds between breaths, I’d wanted to meet Akil’s lips with mine, to melt against him and taste the exotic spiciness of him on my tongue. Had it been a test? Was he trying to reel me back in, or had he withdrawn to protect me? The lust I’d felt had been real, even if it had only lasted a few fleeting moments before fear had pushed it out. He would have sensed my need when I’d thrown my element around him.
Stefan loves you…
I felt wretched; as though, in wanting Akil, I’d betrayed a part of me and somehow soiled Stefan’s memory. Trudging behind Akil, I shivered and pulled my wing around me. It had to be my demon that caused these despicable feelings toward Akil. She never had been able to resist him. In fact, everything he’d done, the betrayal, the threats, all it did was remind her how thoroughly demon he was and how much she liked it. He could have lured us in, but he hadn’t. What did that mean?
The sooner we escaped the netherworld, the sooner I could be free of my demon’s desires. And of Damien and Akil.