But instead of the reaction I expected, he went quiet, thoughtful.
“Only the stupid ones,” he said, surprising me. “Before, you would have been dead by now. But the rules have changed with the Reaper Kings’ freedom. If you’re under their protection, word will travel fast. You may be safe.”
“May,” Grant said.
Rex finally looked at us like we were idiots. “The Reaper Kings ruled the demon army because they were strong—the very strongest, possessed with power that no other demon lord could match. They had no weakness. None.” He hesitated, meeting my gaze. “Until you.”
Dek and Mal twitched.
“They care about you,” Rex went on, watching them. “They call you their Queen. If you were like them,
strong
as them, that wouldn’t be a problem. But you’re
human
. Weak.” He waved a dismissive hand at the armor on my hand. “Even
that
won’t keep you safe.”
“You wanna bet?” The words slipped out before I could stop them. I should have felt like an idiot, but instead, hearing my challenge made me feel better. I sounded more like myself. I sounded as though I believed I had a chance.
Rex did not mock me. Instead, he gave me a peculiar, assessing look.
“Hunter,” he said quietly, “they’ll have to choose between you and power. Trust me . . . they’ll choose power. Because it’ll mean their survival.”
Mal hissed at him. Dek gripped my ear and growled. Rex took one step back, but with defiance still in his eyes.
“And yet, you’re still here,” I said.
“Where else would I go? I cut my ties to Blood Mama years ago. Maybe
you
don’t know what that means, but every other demon will. I have no clan.”
Grant leaned forward. “No clan?”
“Why do you think the others abandoned you? Clans are power within the demon army. If you’re part of a clan, you have
something
, even if it’s shit. But I don’t even have that. I’m an individual, now. I left my clan. I gave up my bonds. Which means I have even less protection than my brothers and sisters who are linked to Blood Mama. If I’m caught by any of the warriors in the veil . . .” Rex stopped, as though ill. “It would be better for one of you to kill me soon. In the next day or two, but no later. I doubt the prison veil will stand any longer than that.”
Grant and I stared at him, and his aura shrank and shriveled as though his demonic soul was sucking in its breath, and holding it.
“You’re that afraid?” I said.
Rex pointed at me. “You were the prison of the Reaper Kings, and that gave you power. Now that your bond is broken, you still
have
power, inside you. Others who don’t know you might not be able to taste it, but I can. You’re the Vessel of whatever godforsaken entity those Reaper Kings summoned, eons ago. But that means nothing because you won’t use that power. You’re afraid of it. Which makes you no better than any other human. Food, like the rest of us. All you can hope for is the mercy of a clean death.”
The demon possessing the caged woman had spoken almost the same words. True or not, I was getting tired of hearing that doomsday crap. I grabbed his finger, but didn’t jam it backward. Just steered his hand away from me.
“I don’t want mercy,” I said to him. “I don’t want a clean death. When I die, it’ll be fighting . . . right to the bitter end.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“She doesn’t give up,” Grant told him. “That doesn’t make her an idiot.”
“Then what does that make
you
?” Rex closed his eyes, sweating. “You,
Lightbringer
. Blood Mama didn’t want to possess you, all those years ago, just to control humans. She wanted you because she thought you’d be a weapon against the Demon lords.”
“Zee and the boys are beyond my power. What makes you think I’d be effective against any of the others?”
“Don’t play dumb. Even if you don’t know exactly what you’re capable of doing, you know damn well that you have power. You’re a member of a race that could have destroyed the Aetar . . . and the Aetar nearly destroyed us. That’s not something you waste here, on a bunch of drug addicts and assholes like me.” Rex leaned in, aura flaring, matching the wildness in his eyes. “You do something that matters even if you don’t have the stomach for it. You
fight
.”
Tension leapt across our bond. I slid my hand around Grant’s arm and felt the strain in his muscles—which I shared, in my gut, when he glanced down and I saw his eyes.
“You fucking deserve each other,” Rex whispered. “Both of you, unafraid of anyone but yourselves. You have power. You have the means. But you won’t take it because you think it’ll change you.
Of course
it will change you. But is that worse than dying?”
“I don’t know,” I said, speaking not to Rex, but to Grant—and I could see the same torn conflict in his eyes. We both knew it wasn’t a matter of change but of transformation. Losing ourselves. Maybe losing each other. Possibly becoming the very thing we were trying to fight. We’d had a taste of all that tremendous power . . . and it was not sweet.
Dek tilted his head, looking behind us. I tore my gaze from Grant and found Zee, Raw, and Aaz moving slowly from the stairwell to the roof. It was strange, seeing them in the light. Unreal, even. I had to force myself to breathe because looking at them when they should have been part of me made my chest constrict with longing and loneliness. My skin ached. I felt cold.
The sky brightened, just then: clouds thinning, burning silver. Seattle light, diffuse and shy. Moments later, though, the actual sun broke through and flooded the roof, hitting us all.
Zee and the boys hissed, their eyes glinting red. At first, I thought it was with pain, but their spines arched, and so did their backs, and their ears perked in pleasure. All of them, stretching, twisting, like stroked cats. I heard popping sounds, cracks—bone, muscle. Aaz threw back his head, closing his eyes as he rolled his shoulders in the light.
“Sun fed,” Zee whispered, as Dek and Mal writhed and twisted over Grant’s and my shoulders, exposing their sleek, silver-veined stomachs. I winced as small claws scratched my neck, leaving a trail of fire. It was an accident, but still surprising—the boys had never scratched me, not once, ever.
Something warm and wet trickled down my skin. Blood.
Dek stilled, and his purr died. A slow tremor rolled through him, followed by another sound that chilled me to the bone. I couldn’t believe it, at first.
“Maxine,” Grant said, staring at him. “Maxine, don’t move.”
I had already frozen. That low rumble rolling from Dek’s throat . . . was hunger.
Zee edged forward, hissing at the little demon. Mal did the same, half-sliding off Grant’s shoulders, his scales undulating in the silver sunlight. Dek, however, continued vibrating, and my blood kept flowing, and I felt his tongue rasp across my skin—drinking me in.
The sensation was so strange. It went deeper than physical, as though something drained from me, into him—a momentary spark, there and gone, too fast to be certain it was even real. It didn’t scare me, exactly. I trusted Dek.
But it didn’t feel right, either.
I never saw Zee move. One moment he was on the ground, and in the next his fist punched Dek off my shoulders, slamming him into Raw’s arms. I swayed, light-headed, and deep inside me—very deep—that dark entity stirred, its sly voice flowing soft through my soul.
Nothing is sacred,
it whispered.
What is holy will pass into darkness, and be lost. Gods live and die in memory.
So does the heart.
Grant caught me. I stared at Dek, who coiled into a ball within Raw’s arms, hiding his face and making quiet, desperate clicking sounds. All the boys stared at him—and then me, with startled, stunned expressions. I started to ask them what was wrong, besides the obvious, but my neck throbbed and I was suddenly too sick and sweaty with nausea to even think about opening my mouth.
“I told you,” Rex said, his voice low and hard with unease. “Nothing is sweeter than power.”
I didn’t know what power had to do with my blood. I heard a low, vibrating hum—Grant’s voice—and that cut began itching like hell. The pain eased, though. When I touched the cut, I found only smooth skin.
Grant sighed against my ear, his fingers loosening around my arms. “I hate this.”
“I know,” I murmured to him, then pulled away to kneel before Dek, who shuddered and mewled.
Zee gave him a hard look—far angrier than I would have expected, given that the others had been ripping people apart with their teeth and claws less than an hour before.
“It’s okay,” I said, though Zee grunted in disagreement, and a flare of irritation filled my bond with Grant.
I ignored them both and brushed Dek’s neck with my fingertips. I hummed a little Bon Jovi for him: “Born to Be My Baby.”
“Come on, baby,” I crooned, taking him from Raw. “Come on, sweetie.”
Dek was knotted up so tight, I wasn’t sure he’d ever come undone. I couldn’t see his face, but he shivered when I cradled him in my arms, stroking his sleek, muscled skin.
“Sun cut,” Zee whispered, and then: “Maxine.”
I didn’t look away from Dek. “Yes?”
Down below, at the bottom of the stairs, I heard the apartment door open and a muffled voice.
“Mr. Cooperon? It’s Detective—”
I didn’t hear the rest. Grant’s low curse drowned out the man’s voice. That, and Zee had slid his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. He laid one claw upon my armor, and all the boys—in a heartbeat—curled around us. Mal landed hard in my lap, licking Dek.
Outrage flickered over Grant’s face. “No, you don’t.”
“Must,” Zee said.
“Wait,” I argued. “Zee—”
Grant reached for us. “Take me with you.”
“You are a warrior,” Zee rasped to him, “and consort of the Queen. But you are no King.”
And with that, we slipped into the void.
CHAPTER 16
I
T was night on the other side of the world, in a desert filled with tumbled ruins broken in the sand and cracked rows of delicate columns that rose like pale fingers toward the stars. I stared, drinking in the stillness of the place and the endlessness of its stone remains, tumbled and fallen. It reminded me of a mass grave. I tried to imagine the city that had been here but could not. All I knew was that this was a burial ground for something that had been beautiful and that time had torn it down.
Even stars die,
whispered the darkness inside me.
We have tasted their last fire and burrowed through the veins of their fading hearts. Accept us, and we will do so again. We will hunt the stars for light, and you will be our Vessel.
Zee shivered and backed away from me. All the boys did, even Dek, unwinding with a hiss and slithering into the sand. My neck tingled. I touched where he had scratched me, but the skin was still smooth. I dropped the blanket, and the cool night air wrapped around my naked upper body.
“You should have warned me,” I said to Zee. “Why did you bring me with you?”
“Safer,” he rasped, as Raw and Aaz prowled, stone breaking beneath their claws. “For all of us.”
I thought about what Rex had told me and picked up the blanket again, throwing it around my shoulders. “And Grant? You should have let him come.”
Zee’s broad chest rose and fell. “No place for him. Not yet.”
I heard strain in his voice and something else that made me uneasy: resignation, perhaps even guilt. A terrible sinking sensation hit my gut.
I straightened, staring at him. “Why are we here, Zee?”
He did not answer. Aaz nudged me. I hadn’t felt him draw near. He pushed something soft into my hands: a long-sleeved crew-neck shirt, navy or black in color. I took it gratefully, pulling it over my head.
When I looked for Zee again, he was gone.
I found him a short distance away, bounding over the ruins like a slick shadow. Raw and Aaz joined him, also taking graceful, bounding leaps—skidding, almost dancing, with light, clawed steps over the uneven terrain. My wolves, in the night.
I felt light-headed watching them, a sense of déjà vu. I had never been here, but I felt as though I remembered this, somehow: some vision of them racing through a desert night, in the middle of a fallen city—faster, harder, with deeper purpose.
Dek hugged my ankle, and I scooped him up. I did the same with Mal, placing them on my shoulders as I followed the others across the ruins. I had to take a roundabout path, trailing my hands over fallen columns and carved rubble. I had seen similar ruins in books—these were Corinthian, perhaps.
A heavy hush surrounded us. I could have floated in that silence.
I found Zee and the others prowling around a towerlike structure that had four walls, a solid base, and a standing row of pillars in front of it. The stone was pale in the starlight, with no windows, and enough gaps and breaks in the fitted blocks to make the surface look pockmarked.
“Where are we?” I asked him.
“Old city. Been a city, always. Remember it, when.” Zee paced in front of the structure, his claws dragging through the sand. Raw and Aaz gave him uneasy looks that he ignored, glancing back at me, his red eyes glinting. “Trust us, Maxine? Trust us, with you?”
“Yes,” I said.
Zee looked away, and a growl rumbled from his chest, rolling through the night like thunder. Without warning, he reared back and slammed his fist into the ancient stone wall.
It sounded like an explosion. I stumbled back, stunned, as he tore through the rock. A priceless artifact, thousands of years old, standing against time. I almost screamed at him to stop.
Instead, I swallowed my voice, watching him tear and mangle those carved stone blocks, yanking, clawing through them and burrowing through that immense foundation into the ground itself, moving down, down, digging deep below the structure. Dust kicked up, making my eyes sting, my nostrils burn. I covered my mouth, coughing, watching him disappear into the hole while Raw and Aaz crowded close. Even Dek and Mal leaned off my shoulders, trembling.