Soul Thief (Dark Souls) (17 page)

“I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.”

“Then climb up. Take my hand. Let me help you.”
Something precious inside him broke, then struggled to piece itself back together.
“I need you, Angie.”
Emotion scratched at his throat.
“I love you.”

These words were the last he’d ever expected to hear himself say, but he meant them from the depths of the soul Kyros stood determined to destroy.

To his surprise, Angie took a cautious step back.

“That’s it. Come to me.”

She turned around and pressed the front of her body to the fence. As soon as Adrian realized he’d broken Kyros’s hold on her, he sprang forth, slamming into his uncle and sending him flying across the narrow platform. Kyros landed on the pavement with Adrian on top of him. They rolled across the cold concrete, Adrian fighting to subdue his uncle while keeping his eyes trained on Angie.

Kyros wrestled free from Adrian’s grasp and stumbled to his feet. Noticing Angie’s desperate climb to freedom, he willed the fence into motion. A terrified scream issued from her throat as she fought to hold on to the quaking structure.

With a furious growl, Adrian lunged again, this time sending Kyros crashing into the opposite railing. Metal screeched and collapsed under the impact. Losing his balance, Kyros fell back, disappearing beyond the walkway.

Adrian didn’t stop to check if his uncle had plummeted into the river. He was too desperate to get to Angie and pull her to safety. He rushed to her side and tore the fence open with his bare hands. She sidled sideways, intending to squeeze through the opening he’d made for her, her fingers reaching for his.

Just as Adrian was about to grab hold of her hand, Kyros clambered back onto the walkway and focused his gaze on the bridge above, where traffic roared.

Shit, no.

Before Adrian could react, a red pickup truck flew over the railing, rocketing toward them. The ground beneath Adrian’s feet rumbled, and he stumbled back. When he regained his balance, the tall barrier was gone…and so was Angie.

With an outraged cry, he raced to the jagged void the truck had carved into the night. The sight of twisted metal and broken concrete greeted him, but there was no sign of Angie. The river had taken her.

Kyros leaned over the broken railing, waiting for Angie’s soul to rise from the deadly expanse of water so that he could swallow it. Greed twisted his features into an ugly grimace Adrian recognized all too well.

He couldn’t let his uncle win. Couldn’t let Angie die. He’d promised he’d protect her, and he had every intention of keeping that promise, even if he had to brave the river to do so. Water paralyzed him, but not as much as the thought of losing Angie.

Turning his back on a gloating Kyros, Adrian dove headfirst into the icy river.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Frigid tongues licked his flesh as the East River pulled him deeper into its churning belly. Adrian moved his arms and legs, scanning the river’s depths for a glimpse of Angie. Darkness enfolded him, thick and impenetrable. Normally, he could see exceptionally well in the dark, but it seemed his special night vision didn’t extend to water.

He had the power to transform air into matter, will subway cars into flight, leap tall buildings in a single bound, but the one thing he’d never attempted to do was swim. He’d thought once he dove in, he’d figure it out. How hard could it be?

He struggled to surface, found it damn near impossible. How the hell did humans do it? Worse yet was that they enjoyed it, even called it a sport.

Several feet below, a flash of red caught his eye.

The pickup truck.

Letting the water drag him down—he discovered it was much easier to sink than it was to rise—Adrian floated toward the vehicle and ripped the door off its hinges, freeing the driver. With a grateful nod, the man beat his arms like wings and speared from the sinking truck toward the beam of glittering light that cleaved the river’s surface.

Adrian wished he could do the same. His lungs began to ache, as did every joint in his body. The pain was excruciating, confirming a well-known fact: His kind wasn’t meant to swim. If he hadn’t been convinced before, he was now.

A mirthless chuckle shook his chest. His name meant “man of the seacoast”, which was pretty damn ironic since water was designed to kill him. He’d have to thank his mother someday for her twisted sense of humor, assuming he came out of this alive.

Blackness fringed the edges of his vision, struggled to close in on him, but Adrian pushed it back. He couldn’t succumb to it, couldn’t let the river take him just yet. Not before he found Angie. She could be hurt or knocked out cold. Once he located her and ensured she was safe, he’d surrender to the water, let it wash away his sins and cleanse him of the darkness that owned him.

But for now, he had to keep fighting.

The current was more powerful than he’d expected. It was swift, determined to pull him out to sea. Adrian beat his arms and legs harder, the way he’d seen the driver do. He was stronger than the average human, and the action had the desired effect. He began to sluice through the water.

The longer he stayed down here, the more his eyes adjusted to the blackness. Several feet below, he caught sight of the fence. Angie was trapped beneath it. She wrestled against it but couldn’t get free.

Adrian’s heart kicked his ribs. Ignoring the pain in his limbs, fighting wave after wave of weakness, he swam toward her, hooked his fingers in the metal mesh and yanked the heavy structure off her.

Angie gratefully sprang free from the metal trap, her hair undulating around her pale face, her eyes deep and troubled as she gazed toward the distant surface.

A gasp trickled from her lips, and air bubbled around her. She’d never make it out. She was too far down. Considering how long she’d been underwater, whatever oxygen she’d stored inside her was probably depleted.

But Adrian wasn’t human, and that gave him an advantage. He needed only a fraction of the oxygen she did and could hold his breath much longer. Bracketing her face, he covered her mouth with his and expelled his last puff of air into her lungs.

Angie’s eyes rounded in surprise as Adrian released her. The current greedily swept in and yanked him back. He no longer had the strength to fight it. Darkness rolled over him, sucked him into its familiar depths. Holding on to the image of Angie’s face, hoping to take it with him to the grave, he surrendered himself to the irresistible call of the river.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Kyros waited upon the ruined pedestrian walkway for Angelica Paxton’s soul to rise from the dark bowels of the East River, his gut clenched with anticipation. His nephew’s life-force had already escaped him once. There was no way he’d allow it to escape him again. This time, he would obliterate it.

Too bad Adrian wouldn’t be around to witness the act. Kyros would’ve liked nothing better than to see the devastation on his nephew’s face, but the fool boy had gone and thrown himself into the river. He shook his head in bafflement. A Hybrid’s ability to form bonds so powerful as to willingly bring forth one’s own destruction never failed to mystify him.

He thanked the fates he was soulless. Only cold, rational intellect ruled him. Never would he sacrifice his existence for the sake of another. That wasn’t how he was made.

What was taking so long? The woman should be dead by now. The steel fence should’ve pinned her to the ground at the bottom of the river. Not only that, but these currents were wild, impossible to navigate. Or so he’d heard. A thread of concern unwound within him. Adrian couldn’t have saved her. The water would’ve incapacitated him upon impact. Frigid paralysis should’ve set in and drowned him.

Why then was the girl’s soul not rising from the river?

Familiar energy closed in around him, and Kyros’s back stiffened in response. Someone was coming. A Watcher. He’d tussled with Cal’s dogs often enough to recognize the subtle shift in the atmosphere when one of them approached.

Kyros spat out a string of foul oaths. What business did a Watcher have here? Cal couldn’t have heard of the accident on the bridge already. News traveled fast in this city, but not that fast.

One thing was certain—he couldn’t stick around and wait to be discovered. Not with one of his enemies so near, armed with lethal angel’s blood and driven by the desire to kill. He had to get out of here. Fast.

Gazing longingly at the raging waters below, he accepted the miserable truth that—despite his best efforts—his nephew’s soul had slipped from his grasp a second time.

Epilogue

The townhouse in Spokane, Washington, was nothing like her penthouse in New York, but Angie had never felt more at home. Sheer curtains covered the wide expanse of windows, a large fireplace with a limestone mantelpiece graced the sparsely furnished living room, and warm, honey-colored hardwood floors stretched beneath her bare feet.

She gazed out the window at the vastness that surrounded her. Besides the few even rows of identical townhouses that made up the development, there wasn’t another home for miles. What a change from the busy streets of Manhattan, where a person could barely turn without bumping into someone.

The rest of the townhouses were vacant, and as far as she could tell Adrian intended to keep them that way. She’d never met anyone who valued his privacy more. For that reason, he’d purchased the entire development by selling all the priceless antiques he’d collected over the years.

Powerful arms unexpectedly slipped around her middle, and she smiled. “I thought you were out taking a walk.” He loved to explore the wild, wooded area that hemmed them in, to absorb the tranquility the forest offered. For the first time since she’d known him, Adrian was at peace.

“You know I can’t stay away from you for long.”

Pivoting on her heels, she turned into his embrace. She touched his rough cheek, gazed into eyes as deep blue as the ocean at midnight. Three months had passed since their dip in the East River, and she still couldn’t forget how close she’d come to losing him.

He’d sacrificed everything to save her, including his last breath of air. Angie had taken his final gift and used it to pull them both to the surface. Every day since, she thanked her parents for all the swimming lessons they’d forced on her. The East River could be wild, the current swift enough to pull an inexperienced swimmer out to sea in no time flat. A handful of people drowned in those waters every year.

She wasn’t sure what had helped her propel them both up—adrenaline, fear or some higher power—but whatever it was, she was grateful for it. When she’d broken through the river’s glassy surface, she’d quickly realized there weren’t all that many places in the channel where one could climb out, and there was only so far she could swim with her arm hooked around an unconscious Adrian. Then there was the risk of hypothermia. Winter frost had given way to spring, the waters warming some in anticipation of summer, but that hadn’t changed the fact that the river had been ice cold.

When she’d seen a man standing on the bridge, she’d frantically waved to him, trying to signal him from below. At the time, she’d had no idea that the man in question was Adrian’s father, Marcus. She’d known only that he wasn’t Kyros.

Marcus had called the Coast Guard, who’d come within minutes and fished her, Adrian and the pickup-truck driver from the river. The Watcher had then erased both the Coast Guard’s and the motorist’s memory with nothing more than a concentrated thought, determined to ensure that the incident be kept secret. Kyros could never learn they’d survived. As far as the world was concerned, Angie and Adrian had died that night.

Only Marcus, the Watcher’s leader, Cal, and Angie’s mother knew the truth. It hadn’t been easy to convince Tina to let her daughter move clear across the continent, but ultimately she’d come around. She’d had no choice.

“My mother called,” Angie told Adrian. “Both she and the baby are doing fine.”
 

He cupped her head, buried his fingers in her hair and lifted it so he could plant a kiss on the side of her neck. His lips felt smooth and warm and so familiar her heart squeezed. “That’s great news,” he whispered. “In a few months, the wait will finally be over.”

The amnio had confirmed that the baby was indeed a match, which meant the infant’s stem cells had the potential to cure Angie. Her mother had been right all along, her blind hope justified. Now all Angie had to do was stay healthy until her sister came into the world.

She inched closer to Adrian, resting her cheek against his wide chest. His hands glided down her back to settle at her waist. When she angled her face up to look at him, he swooped down and captured her lips in a blazing-hot kiss. She tasted the pine-scented air on his tongue, an enticing blend of nature and man. His skin smelled of the earth and carried a hint of wildness. She filled her lungs with the soothing scent of him as she drank deeply from his mouth. When he kissed her this way, it made her believe anything was possible, that this moment could go on forever.

It took the unexpected chime of the doorbell to snap her out of her trance. Adrian jerked back, and she intuitively knew he was tunneling his vision to see who stood on the other side of the door. It still amazed her how he could do that.

“I don’t believe it.” His brows furrowed in either surprise or confusion. “How did he find us?”