Darksoul (34 page)

No visible response from Ash.

“What’s he talking about?” I asked.

In
my mind:
Nothing
.

“I wonder if she realizes,” said Hunter,
examining the sleeping man’s face, “that you wear it on your ring finger now.”

“It’s just a stylistic choice,” Ash said coolly.

Hunter spared him a sidelong glance that wasn’t entirely unamused. “Oh?”

Ash remained silent.

But Hunter wasn’t done. “Does she know that it matches hers?”

Silence. I frowned.

“Ah,” Hunter said softly, and turned back toward the man, letting the topic end there. In a startlingly gentle motion, he brushed the hair off the lobe again.

And then he ripped the ear off.

The man woke with a scream that echoed mine. Blood sputtered out of the wound, trickling down his stubbly cheek. Hunter didn’t bat an eye. Neither did Ash.

“Where
—where am I?” the man asked, blinding looking about him. “Where’s my dog? What—”

Hunter
held up the bloody ear as if it were a piece of paper, turning it over and over between his fingers. The scars on his knuckles were lined with blood, making them stand out in sharp relief. Bile rose inside me. I wanted to cover my face. Look away. The man caught sight of the dismembered organ, and his screams pierced the base of my skull.

Suddenly
, I whirled toward Ash. “What’s he doing?” I asked, desperate. “Ash, make him stop! Please!”

There’s nothing
Hunter hates more than a person who abuses animals,
came his high-form voice.
This is his way of letting out his frustration.

“But can’
t he do it another way? Why doesn’t he get what he needs—”

He
will
. Ash’s gaze flicked toward me.
But he’s having a little fun first.

This? This is fun for him?

The man was wailing, sobbing unintelligible questions, struggling against the metal binds on his wrists.

“Stop him,” I begged Ash. “Stop
him!”

But Ash merely puffed on his cigarette, stoically staring at the man, who was now yelling and sobbing at him.

One time he burned a circus down, Hazel,
he said in my head.
He rounded up all the circus animals and healed them and then burned the fucking place down. With all the performers and the owner in it. What makes you think I could stop him now?

Hunter reached out and grabbed the man’s jaw, keeping his mouth open. Tears streamed
down his dirty cheeks as he begged for mercy.

“
Please.” The word was a half-whimper from me.

Hunter
held up the bloody ear, and the man’s eyes widened. He wildly shook his head and tried to turn his face. “No,” I said, realizing what Hunter was about to do. “No, no, no—”

He put the ear in
the man’s mouth and eased it shut. He gave a slight nod to the right, and the lips zipped up, taut and stiff and glimmering with tears and dried snot.

“You can chew it if you’d like,” said Hunter.

I wanted to curl into myself and die.

“
Remind me to not
piss you off,” said Ash. “Ever.”

Hunter
didn’t respond. He grabbed the clear bowl that had been sitting on the marble island and made his way back to the man, who looked as if he’d thrown up in his mouth. I stood frozen in place.

In my head.
Are you all right?

“
No,” I whispered.

Ice shards rippled down Hunter’s right arm
. The man’s eyes widened in alarm at the sight of Syizhael, and blood sputtered out of his sealed lips as he started to scream with newfound zeal. Frost replaced the liquid in my veins.

“If she’s watching
, I will kill you,” Hunter said in a quiet, even voice.

Ash remain
ed silent. The metal around the man’s wrists twisted to life, curling down and coiling itself around his arms, keeping him more firmly in place. Then silvery steel rose from the floor. Locked itself around his ankles. He couldn’t move and I wanted to cover my face and turn away. I wanted to never look back.

“I will kill you, Lucien,” said Hunter.

Ash lowered his eyes.

And then Hunter
took a step back, lifted Syizhael, and rammed it straight through the man’s chest.

The
sound of crushed bones was deafening, drowning the scream that burst out of me. The man gasped and the mangled ear tumbled out of his mouth. Then his eyes went dull, and Hunter’s arm morphed back to its inked normality inside the wound, his tattoos splattered with so much red that they didn’t look black anymore. That was all I saw, that was all I registered. His tattoos drawn in blood.

“I will kill you,”
Hunter said, and he ripped the man’s heart out.

In the me
mory, I saw Ash. It was Ash, and he was saying,
The human soul makes demons more powerful. The heart is simply a palatable meal.

The next coupl
e of moments were a blur. Hunter putting the heart in the bowl and handing it to Ash, who silently received it. Then: Hunter lifting his hand, letting it hover over the man’s mouth. In a gentle, graceful movement, he drew it away, and behind his fingertips trailed a light, formless substance that rose up and out of the man’s gaping lips. I felt faint. I didn’t have to ask anyone to know what it was.

His soul. It was his soul.

It wasn’t for Hunter. He didn’t look the least appetized by it.

The soul was for the Queen.

Feeling as if I were walking on jelly, I followed after Ash, who was now going over to the infamous marble island. I didn’t look at the bloody heart as he set it down. “Why aren’t you stopping him?” Desperately, I reached out to grab his arm, but my hand went through. Stupid
vaehn
marks. “Why didn’t you stop him?”

I don’t want to.

“I thought it was impossible for the soul to be taken out of a dead person. I thought—”

It should be clear by now that Hunter’s a very special half-demon
.

This was ridiculous.
“Wouldn’t it hurt some angels? Steal their abilities to fly?” I clenched my teeth to ward off the tears. “How can you not care?”

I don’t give a fuck about Sielae or the high and mighty angels that live within its borders. As long as it’s not hurting me, Hunter can do whatever he wants.
Ash looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
Besides, it’s part of Haelvia’s diplomatic agreement with Sielae. The Queen would wage war if we didn’t let her have her souls. So we let her. One demon eating extravagantly isn’t going to hurt Sielae in the whole.

“Dispose,” Hunter said.

Flinching, I turned just in time to see the metal uncoil from the man’s ankles. The white floor melted and curled back, revealing an empty hole under his hanging feet. His wrists were released and he fell in. Then the ground righted itself, going as smooth as polished glass.

“Burn,” Hunter said, coming over to the island. In his left hand, he cradled the soul, which had coiled into itself and was trembling as if it were alive.

The underside of the floor went up in flames. It was a strange, beautiful thing, blue and white unfurling under our feet, and I watched it blur in and out of sight through the film of my tears.

“…
will keep her at bay?” Ash was asking. I’d tuned him out, but now I turned to him again.

Hunte
r grabbed one of the jars he’d set out and twisted it open. “She should be satisfied,” he said, gently pouring the soul in.

Ash’s
face went cold. “Like she was supposed to be satisfied all the other times?”

After closing the lid, Hunter stepped past Ash and opened the cabinet
. I stared, stricken. Tens and tens of containers blinked back at me, their insides filled with the same light, smoky substance. At the sight of Hunter, the souls stirred.

“
Shh,” he whispered, adding the latest one to the collection. As if he couldn’t help himself, he reached up and brushed the back of his forefinger against the next jar. The soul edged toward his touch, as if looking for contact. No. It couldn’t be. Did it like him?

Ash
crossed his arms. “You don’t give her the souls, she hurts you. You give her the souls, she hurts you. I’m a hair away from snapping, Nikolai.”

“
How many people has he killed?” I asked quietly.

Ash was an expert at this. He didn’t even look at me. But his words still slipped inside my
mind:
He has to, Hazel. You saw what she does to him to keep him in line. To keep him working.

“Don’t worry about me,” said Hunter,
easing the door shut.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

Do I really have to?

“I’ll be fine,” Hunter said.

Ash looked gloriously bored. “Really.”

A pause.
“Willa will want to see you.”

“A
h,” Ash said, his tone softening.

Hunter grabbed the bowl with the dead heart
, and it squelched against the glass. I cringed. “After I feed her. Come in five. She’ll be ready then.”

I froze. After he…fed her?

Hunter walked out and shut the door behind him, leaving me and Ash alone. He leaned against the island, his hair cascading over his eyes.

“I wasn’t
going to tell it to you,” he said in a quiet voice. “You had to see for yourself.”

I had to see w
hat Hunter did. For the Queen of Haelvia. Collecting souls so that she, I assumed, could feed herself. Become infinitely more powerful. And with that power came the kind of insurmountable strength that made her no match for anyone. Not even Hunter. Probably not Ash, either.

“Well, I wish I hadn’t.” My hear
t felt like stone inside my chest. What happened between Ash and me didn’t matter anymore. That had been a stupid fight. This—this was—I didn’t even know what the hell this was. “I wish I hadn’t seen any of it.”

“You need to see one more thing.”

Dread gathered inside my stomach. “What?”

His eyes flicked up and met mine.

A second later I was following Hunter down the bright hallway, wondering why I was doing this out of my own accord. Ash hadn’t wanted to come. He wanted the show to be merely for me and me alone. I stared at the back of Hunter’s neck, at the silky blonde curls that huddled there. Hating myself for doing this, I trailed after him when he opened a seemingly random door and walked in.

Immediately, I recog
nized the place for what it was. A little girl’s room. I didn’t know Willa very well but I saw marks of her everywhere—from the overturned tea sets to the unmade bed in the corner, from the heap of stuffed animals to the twisted purple rug in the center of the room. The space was so wide that it almost looked like a ballet studio. She was nowhere to be seen.

“
Willa,” Hunter said, and his voice softened. “I have dinner for you.”

For a moment, there was silence.

And then the mountain of stuffed animals exploded with an earsplitting shriek. She clattered out and, in a clink of metal and ice, flew toward him. Her feet were shackled to the wall—as were her hands—and she stopped just short of his face, snapping at his nose and mouth as if to rip his skin off. His expression remained the same. Snarling, she struggled against the chains.

I stared, stricken.

Willa
didn’t look human. Didn’t look like herself. Gone was the little girl I’d seen a couple of weeks before. In her place was a creature carved in ice: her fingers and toes came to tapered points, and her skin was clear and glassy. She looked like some kind of Syivhail-Syizhael hybrid. Both lovely and terrifying.

I’d been too focused on her to notice that Hunter had
taken a step back and reached inside his glass container for the dead heart. He held it out to her. A small, startlingly human tongue flicked out of her lips.

Then she lunged forward.

And she dug in.

I watched, wide-eyed. She didn’t take the heart and scuttle back to her toys to hunch over the dead organ. She devoured it while it was in his palm, not taking care to not hurt him, her sharp teeth gnawing on the
meal as much as they gnawed on his fingers. It looked painful. Trails of blood dripped down the back of his hand. But Hunter didn’t flinch. Didn’t even wince.

His scars, I suddenly realized,
chest heaving. His scars. The ones that had always been there, the ones I’d always wondered about. This was what caused them. Breathlessly, I looked at Hunter. His lashes were lowered, caressing his cheekbones.

She won’t eat it unless he’s holding it
, came Ash’s quiet high-form voice.
He’s tried everything. Putting it on the floor, leaving it on a plate. But…

I wanted to turn away and not see this anymore. I’d just seen Hunter kill a man, rip out his heart, steal his soul and feed his abnormal little sister as if it were part of his everyday routine.

She’s one quarter demon
, said Ash. I wondered if he could see this through my eyes.
Because of the imbalanced blood in her system, she has less control over her demonic side, and when it comes out, the only thing that will appease it is a human heart. The organ becomes more a necessity than a good meal; it’s what helps her survive. It also helps her remain human.

I…What?

But then I understood.

Around her legs,
the ice folded away and strips of skin melted into view. I remained frozen. The planes of her face became softer, getting replaced with flushed cheeks and a very human mouth that still lapped around Hunter’s bloody palm in search of human tissue.

And then
Willa froze. Slowly, she pulled away from Hunter’s hand. Saw the mess she’d left behind. His fingers were, for a lack of a better word, shredded, and her wide green eyes watered.

Letting out a sob, she collapsed at his feet. “I’m sorry!
I’m s-s-sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

He crouched to unlock the shackles coiled around her ankles. “
Shh,” he said gently.

“I’m alw
ays bad, r-right?” she blubbered, watching as he morphed his unwounded index finger into a tapered wisp of ice. He drew a strange symbol over the metal and it burst away. “I’m always re-really, really bad.”

“Of course not.”

“But look at your hand!”
She picked up his bloodied fingers and cradled them to her, bursting into another crying fit. “I can make it better, Niko, I can—I can kiss it and make it better, okay?”

She landed a hundred wet pecks on his
palm, her cheeks stained with tears. I felt myself falter. No. I’d just seen him kill a man. I couldn’t be softening. Not right now.

Willa
had Hunter’s blood smeared across her mouth. “Is it better now?” she asked, her bottom lip trembling.

His eyes were soft as he reached up to smooth down her hair. “Yes. It’s much better now.”

A bathroom was connected to the main room and he helped her wash up. Through the open doors—they were wide and white and just as fanciful as the rest of the mansion—I saw him gently guide her hand so she could brush her teeth. I backed up and collapsed against the wall and dug the heels of my palms into my eyes. I didn’t understand. I should be mad. I should be hating him and his guts and everything that had to do with him. But he took the soul so he could survive. He took the heart so Willa could live. Do the ends really justify the means?