Hellhound (28 page)

Demetrius glanced at me when the sentries took him to
the stone cot that resembled a sacrificial platform. He laid down flat on his
back quite willingly. I silently called to the crescent, and its glow faltered,
indicating that the teeth retracted from Demetrius’s flesh and prepared for
removal.

Though he gestured that he wouldn’t need restraints,
the sub sentries knew better and tied him down at the wrists and ankles.

Claudius disappeared, and Danther skulked away,
slipping through the doors behind him. We gathered around the body. Everyone
maintained a distance. I stood by Demetrius’s torso and looked down at him. His
shimmering green eyes never left me.

“This will hurt,” I told him, indicating that I was
about to begin, anxious for emancipation.

There was a charming ruefulness on his face. He nodded
at me once and watched me with wistful eyes as I proceeded. My clawed fingers
touched his forehead. Anticipation mauled me. Anxiety crept up inside of me.
I’d never been this nervous, this befuddled by warring emotions. This wasn’t the
time to relapse into former sentiments.

Demetrius hinted a half smirk on the corner of his
mouth closest to me, throwing me further off my game. In that last second, I
contrived a reckless plan to scour his brain. I wanted to believe him, despite
my better judgment, because sometimes emotions carried stronger than physical
evidence.

I never attempted digging into someone’s mind, flying
straight to the incident in question, and read their thoughts without fully
absorbing memories, and without muddling the brain into unusable mush. There
was a first try for everything. What was the worst that could happen, since
Demetrius was a dead man regardless of my attempt?

He remained perfectly still and closed his eyes as I
pressed down into his skin, turning it into a viscous material. He clenched his
eyes, trying to remain immobile. I breathed heavily, and closed my eyes to help
my concentration; fishing through his memories once I moved past his gelatinous
skull and pried through his frontal lobe.

I couldn’t fully regulate my breathing when I entered
the sea of memories because my body fought against not absorbing everything. I
quickly swam through the present situation, bombarded by his feelings of love
for me and regret that this thing ever transpired, along with rage against the
guilty. Those were emotions that could be conjured up by any crazy person, so I
dismissed them.

Then I moved further back, leaping through days,
weeks, until I slowed down to that morning when we made love before the
ceremony. I skidded in right there, unexpectedly into a love scene that played
over and over in his head many times. It was surreal to view myself through his
eyes, but I didn’t have time to relish in that. I skipped forward just a little
and played memories in fast forward.

We arrived at the domicile and hadn’t been apart, so I
ruled out him having killed before that morning. Also, the sub sentries and
minions were in and out of these halls. It would have been extremely difficult
and idiotic to kill two men of great power at that time in addition to leaving
the bodies undiscovered all night.

He watched me dress. Feelings of uneasiness, warning,
and yearning hit me. He didn’t like to face the fact that he could, and
probably would, lose me one day to Nathanial. I left. He showered and dressed.
He waited for a little while, feeling something was wrong.

Danther asked about my whereabouts. He turned him away
with an annoyed shrug.

He went to see his sister, Damares, but she wasn’t in
her apartment. He scavenged around for me, anticipating that I was on the Elders’
floor, but he wouldn’t venture there knowing that my parents despised him for
leading me astray. He wasn’t hungry, so he didn’t consider going through the
cafeteria where he would have found me.

I kicked myself then. One little turn of his heel
could have prevented this hunt by giving him an infallible alibi.

Instead, Demetrius decided to go down to sub level
five to wait for me in the throne room, away from the throngs of people, to
avoid the rush.

I slowed down, trying not to move my fingers through
this imperative scene so I would know if he had done this to me.

The elevator took a while because, though there were
three main elevators, only one went down to the sub levels. He looked up at the
numbers above the locked door. The elevator came up from sub level five and
then stopped at the fifth floor, just one floor above his floor. Someone went
up to the fifth floor where the undertakers lived.

He emerged from the elevator, eerily aware that no one
greeted him. The halls were dim. The lights weren’t fully turned up yet but
would be in a short while to announce the day.

He walked calmly through the curved hall. His ears
perked up at the sound of muffled noises and moaning. With a quickened pace, he
followed the calamity to the brilliant metal throne room doors. The right one
was slightly opened just enough for him to peer inside.

He gasped at the sight. Two bodies were slain on the
floor in an ever-growing puddle of thick, black blood. He looked around
frantically, but couldn’t find a soul in sight. He pushed the door just a
little. Silence surrounded him, and he slipped in and glanced around. He
neither saw nor smelt another person in the room.

Walking to the bodies, he glanced down. One was
apparently an Elder, but he couldn’t see his face. The Elder’s body had turned
a ghastly shade of paleness, and his skin tightened until a thinning layer
hugged the bones.

Demetrius’s gaze briefly wandered over the murder
weapon that was left in the wake, not noticing that it was
his
dagger.
Then he settled on the moaning man with the spastic chest. Nathanial breathed
fast and shallow.

Nathanial was on his back. His hand clutched the wound
at his throat. A major artery had been sliced. Nathanial was as good as dead.

Demetrius bent down, careful not to step in the
puddle. Nathanial opened his eyes, stared up at the ceiling in pain, then moved
to see Demetrius hovering over him.

“What happened? Who did this?” Demetrius asked in a
gruff voice.

Nathanial panted, cringed.

“Tell me now, before you die. Your wounds are severe.”

“Why did you kill me? The sentries are after you now.”

“What?” I felt his perplexity over the words. “I
didn’t do this.”

Nathanial chortled and winced. “At least you’ll be
blamed for it, tracker, and Selene will never be yours again. Curse you,
Demetrius. You will never ascend to a throne or marry Selene. Release her from
the shackles of your inferiority.”

Demetrius growled. With a sudden onslaught of anger,
he pressed his clawed fingers into Nathanial’s chest, probed into his rapidly
beating heart, and squeezed. He couldn’t turn bone and flesh into fluid like I
could, but he could rip through the matter.

By stealing his essence, his powers, Demetrius ended
Nathanial’s life sooner than later, though death was imminent.

He stood once the transfer of powers was complete and
stumbled back at the sudden rush of abilities as his body made room for
assimilation. He stepped away from the bodies, knowing that something awful
would change the course of his future once they were found. Fearing for my
safety, and the possibility of being taken from me, he fled through the halls
and took the elevator to the ground floor.

Demetrius couldn’t find me, but overheard sentries
exclaiming about the kill order against him. Someone not only tipped them off
about the murders, but someone in authority gave the rare stop or kill order. Mother’s
explanation of this order had been skewed.

He searched the floors, and finally retreated back to
my apartment. He hoped to find me, but when he didn’t, he began packing. Then
he stopped and removed the screen from my bedroom window. Looking down, he
figured that he could make it out with me on his back. The sun was high in the
sky, so he couldn’t fly, much less with me.

He thought of ways to get us both out of there when he
resumed to packing. Several minutes later, I returned. I knew the story from
there.

I heaved and carefully removed my hand before opening
my eyes, fighting the need to absorb everything, damaging his brain further. A
groan escaped my throat when I released the synaptic bond between us.

Demetrius went through spasms. I panicked. Looking
down at him frantically, my hands moved across his head, his chest.

“Can you hear me?” I asked, leaning over him as the Council
muttered and shuffled around me.

He jerked and heaved. His eyes rolled into the back of
his head until only the whites remained.

“No!” I cried out. Tears blurred my vision as I
attempted to do anything that I could, which wasn’t much.

Serph pulled me away, but I fought him, pushed him
aside, and landed over Demetrius.

“Demetrius!” I cried.

When the minions tried to strip me off, I snapped at
them. My fangs were out and my eyes clouded over. They backed away in a hurry.

Serph came to my side. “I know this must be difficult,
but you did the right thing, Selene, the only thing.”

“No!” I collapsed onto Demetrius’s body. “He didn’t do
it! He was innocent!”

“What? Show us,” another Elder demanded proof.

“First, what can I do to save him?”

Serph checked Demetrius’s vital signs, then his eyes
and breathing. He placed his hands over his head and finally pulled away.
“Selene, he’s alive, but he’s brain dead. The memory retrieval cannot be done
while sparing the man.”

I breathed loudly through a gaped mouth, clutching
onto Demetrius’s shirt. He’d been right all along. He never lied to me, but I
wouldn’t believe him. This was the price that I paid, the ultimate price. I not
only killed an innocent man, but I killed my lover. My soul quivered on the
verge of reprisal, draining darkness from every source of light.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The world shifted on its axis, and every person that I
thought I knew became a stranger, a suspect. This crime was far from being
solved, but we cleared one good man’s name. Too bad it was too late.

I felt grief and horror a hundredfold after the
realization. Demetrius had not killed them, was not the one intended to die by
my hands. What had I done? I trembled and leaned down, grabbing him by the
temples, calling him to come back to me. I leaned down and pressed my lips to
his and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

The minions were ordered to attach Demetrius’s body to
ventilators. I followed closely while they transferred him to a smaller room at
the end of the hall. The minions worked fiercely, but the Elders would not make
a real effort to help him until I gave them proof of his innocence.

“Return with us to the throne room, and show us his
memories,” an Elder instructed me. “If he’s innocent, the less time that we
waste, the better.”

“I need your word that you will not harm him or kill
him.”

This demand upset them a great deal.

“I need to know this.” I looked at the sub sentry by
the door. “Fetch Carter.”

“But today is his day off,” he argued, not fully
understanding the dire situation.

“Tell him that Selene calls him. He’ll come, now
hurry.”

With a grunt, and a nod of approval from Serph, the
sub sentry took off toward the tunnels.

“I won’t leave until Carter is here to guard his body.
If anything happens to him, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Elder Balai asked.

“I just might go crazy,” I growled.

He narrowed his eyes at me.

“Nothing will happen to him,” Serph reassured me. “We’ll
wait for the subterranean sentry with a promise that nothing will be issued
against the renounced one until we see his memories.”

“What will you do, knowing that he’s innocent?”

“Admit him back into the clan, clear his name, and try
everything that we can to revive him. You must understand that his memories
must be clear in showing us that he wasn’t responsible. This has never
occurred. No one has been committed of a crime, hunted, and then redeemed.”

Carter appeared in the doorway within a few minutes,
having sprinted through the labyrinth. I considered few to be trustworthy in
the clan, but Carter was counted among them.

The room wasn’t big enough for everyone. The majority
of the Elders and minions waited in the throne room. Only Serph, Balai, and my
mother remained. When Carter pushed through, only Serph remained.

“What is it Selene?” he asked, not even out of breath
from his sprint.

“I need you to guard this body with your life until I
return.”

He peered over me at the man. “The renounced one?” He
raised a brow.

“He’s innocent, but I need to reveal his memories
before they attempt to revive him. I don’t trust that people will leave him
alone in my absence. Will you watch him?”

Carter grunted. “Anything for you, Selene.”