I drew in a breath and gathered the Institute’s residual heat. It came willingly, funneled up my legs, and devoured me. I shone with the will and desire of fire.
A living inferno reflected in Damien’s eyes. “You are weak.” He spat the words between us. “I know you…” He reached out his good hand and pointed a claw-tipped finger at my chest. “I. Am. Inside. You.”
“You don’t know me. If you did, you’d run.” My demon spoke through me, for me. “You see me, I know you do. But you fail to recognize me. That wretched half-blood girl you abused for years, she’s still here. She lives in me. She’s a part of me, and I’m stronger because of her. I killed you once. I know what I am, and you’re about to find out.” I flung my arm out and cast a jet of liquid fire.
He dropped his stance low and summoned up a gust of air that diverted the jet of heat away from him. It splashed against the wall behind him and exploded outward. The wind whipped around us, scooped up my fire, and whisked into a firestorm. Books tumbled from shelves and were swiftly devoured by fire. Flames licked across the floor.
An alarm shrilled somewhere in my mind, behind all the rage and revenge. It was only when rain hissed and vaporized around me that I came back to myself. The sprinklers. I glanced up but could only see fire and ash spiraling above me. I had to stop this. The fire alone could destroy the Institute. I closed my eyes, just for a second, and re-called the fire into me. As I did, Damien dismissed the torrent of wind. The firestorm vanished as quickly as it had come.
High pitched alarms thumped inside my head while the sprinklers rained water over me.
Nica wheezed.
She’s alive!
I kept my gaze trained on Damien. He cradled his right hand against his chest and returned my heated glare with his own, lip raised in a silent snarl.
“Muse...” Nica coughed. She wheezed a few words that I didn’t understand. Then she lifted her head. I stole a glance and saw her tear streaked face and the welts around her throat. She mouthed, “I’m sorry.”
Damien took a step toward us. She flinched and tried to pull herself away, using the bookcase behind us as leverage. I stepped in front him and spread my wing, hiding Nica behind me. “You don’t touch her,” I growled.
“She’s weak of body.” He hissed at me through sharp teeth. His dull gray eyes held no emotion. He was empty. “A pathetic creature. She thought to control me. I controlled her. She will die easily.”
Nica controlled him?
Nica
controlled him!
Damien saw me falter. Maybe I gave it away in my stance, or something in my eyes betrayed my surprise. He laughed that horrible gut-churning laughter, and I lunged at him. He snatched my right wrist and tugged me clean off my feet. I pooled fire into my arm, flailing wildly in the air. I needed the veil… and reached out with my mind. His fist smacked into my jaw like a sledgehammer. I hit the floor hard and instantly blacked out. I wasn’t out for long. Seconds—a few breaths. A mind-numbing throb thrummed across my face. Something was likely broken. I didn’t have time to wonder what. He stamped on my back and clutched at my right wing, jerking it back hard enough to grind the bones. I screamed.
He crouched over me, leaning all of his weight into my spine, and hissed over my shoulder. “Defy me again, whore, and I take this wing.” As if to prove his point, he curled his fingers around the bridge of my wing and tore it back. Bone splintered, and a pain exploded inside my skull with enough force to bury me in unconsciousness again. When I came around, Damien straddled Nica. His good hand locked around her throat. She’d fallen limp, her mouth open, eyes wide.
“Don’t...” I tried to summon my element, but a combination of water from the sprinklers and pain muddling my thoughts robbed me of the clear intent I needed to call the heat. I shoved up off the floor onto quivering forearms. “Please, Damien...” What could I say to stop him? He’d already killed half a dozen Enforcers. He wasn’t going to hesitate to kill Nica.
He slid cold eyes to me, and he loosened his grip on Nica. She sucked in a heaving breath.
“You have me.” My teeth chattered. “You d-don’t need to k-kill her.”
He smiled, “So fragile... these humans.” He dropped her body and bowed over her. He studied how she struggled to fill her lungs and observed the tears streaming from her eyes. He felt nothing for her. “Flawed.” He breathed her scent, wings flexing behind him with a quiver of excitement. “She believes you killed her kin.” He dragged his claws down her face. “I recognize revenge.”
The weight of emotional baggage crushed me. “Damien...” I begged, trying to distract him from his lust for the kill. “Let her go. Do what you want with me. It’s why you’re here. You want revenge for what I did. I burned you. I tried to kill you. Let her go.”
He made a purring sound, and I tasted bile at the familiarity of that noise. Sliding his good hand into Nica’s hair, he locked it there and twisted. She wailed. He yanked her head to one side and bowed toward her neck.
“Don’t!” I tried to get off my front and onto my feet, but my limbs refused to obey. I fell forward, hearing the gunshot from behind me. A hole punched through one of Damien’s wings, close to the shoulder joint. He tore his head up, teeth, mouth and chin glistening with Nica’s blood.
Adam stood at the end of the aisle, gun planted in both hands. He fired again. Damien roared, leaning back and calling his power. The ground beneath us rumbled, rattling the bookshelves, and then the wind thundered through the library like a bomb blast.
I saw Damien rise up but had to duck my head against the hurricane force winds buffering me. If Adam knew what was good for him, he’d run. I heard a few hollow gunshots bounce around me—the wind played with the sound—but I couldn’t see anything beyond my own torn wing membrane.
Nica
. Hunkered low, I crawled across the floor, hugging my broken wing against me to try to stop the wind from tearing it open. It hurt enough that every strong gust sent a wave of pain though me. Jaw clamped, head down, I crawled on until my hands sank in the warm pool of blood. She’d been bleeding before, but not like this. Half her shoulder was gone… a chunk of her neck too. She saw me. Her pretty face twisted in agony. Her wide blue eyes locked unblinking on mine.
I stretched my broken wing over her, shielding us both beneath the torn membrane as best as I could.
She sobbed and mumbled incoherently. Fresh tears streamed down her face. She mumbled my name, mixed with apologies.
“It’s okay.” I pressed my cheek against hers. “It’s going to be okay.”
She snatched each breath, as though they fled from her. “I... was wrong,” she hissed, “I let him in, he said... he knew Stefan. That he’d tell me... about my brother.” She clutched my arm, her grip cold against my flushed demon skin. “I thought... you were dangerous. I... thought... he would control you. I didn’t...” Her words trailed off. “I didn’t know he was… evil.”
I gulped back a sob and draped my arm over her. I wanted to pull her against me and hold her close, but I was afraid I’d hurt her. “Stefan’s alive... You have to fight this, Nica. Hold on. Listen to me... You brother is back. I brought him home.”
Her grip on my arm tightened. She heard me. She knew. It would be okay, Stefan was back. Her brother was home. She would see him again. We’d survive this. We’d survived Akil together. We would win. But her hand fell away from my arm, and her breaths stopped snatching. I waited for another breath, for a whispered word, but nothing came. I pulled back a little and looked into her unfocused eyes.
“Nica?”
The gale force winds were fading. I felt the spider-crawl of Damien’s gaze and knew he was watching, waiting for me. I barely registered the gunshots and screams from beyond the library. It all seemed so cursory, so needless. I locked my painful jaw closed and summoned the fire. It was nothing like the amount of power I was capable of, but it was enough to throw him back.
I lifted my head and growled out a warning. Stefan looked down at me, his face frozen behind a guarded mask of disbelief. Adam stood slumped by a hole in the wall that had once been a doorway, gun loose in his hand. There was no sign of Damien, but from the sounds of gunfire I knew this wasn’t over. I still felt his pulsating darkness inside me.
“Stefan... I...” I wanted to tell him I’d tried to stop Damien, but he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze, so cold, fell on Nica’s motionless body. A fracture appeared in his expression, a crack through which I saw a lightning flicker of rage. He turned and strode toward the door.
“Stefan...” Adam straightened. Stefan shoved his father aside. He threw me a concerned glance and went after his son. I could see enough of the hall to watch as Adam managed to catch Stefan by the shoulder. Stefan swung around, gathered Adam up by the shirt, and pinned his father back against the wall with a snarl. I held my breath. The two of them didn’t move. Stefan’s snarling face was inches from his father’s. My hatred of Adam paled in comparison to the revulsion on Stefan’s eyes. Would he kill his own father?
Stefan shoved off of Adam and strode out of sight down the hall.
“Stefan?” Adam stumbled after him. “Don’t do this… I can’t protect you.”
I didn’t know what Adam’s words meant and didn’t care. I might have curled up next to Nica and let the Enforcers deal with Damien, but the throb of his poison wouldn’t allow it. I gave Nica one last look. Where had it all gone so wrong? She was so sweet, bright, and alive. She had the kind of unwavering courage I aspired to. Why had I not seen the hatred in her eyes when she looked at me? Why had nobody noticed her cry for help? How had it come to this? I dragged my hand down her face and closed her eyes.
My muscles burned as I heaved my weary body onto unsteady legs.
Damien’s touch throbbed in my chest. Maybe they’d cornered him by now. I hoped so. Then it occurred to me: if they killed him, I’d never get his claws out of me. His putrid touch would rot inside me until the day I died.
I growled, and with a shake, shoved my demon back behind mental barriers. She didn’t go easily and spat her desire for revenge inside my mind, but walking through the Institute all demoned-up was a quick way to get myself executed. Back in my human body, the pain of my broken wing had reduced to an ache in my shoulder, but the throb in my jaw continued to blaze across the side of my face.
My soaked and bloody clothes clung to me. Tremors locked my muscles tight. I clamped my teeth together, wincing at the pain in my face. My sense of self felt distant and detached. I was shutting down, going into shock. I couldn’t afford to step back, not for one second, not while Damien roamed the Institute. I had to end this. I left the library and followed the sounds of rapid gunfire. I would end this—whatever the cost.
D
amien hadn’t been
shy about throwing his weight around. He was little more than a moth compared to Mammon, but he had strength, and he’d used that muscle to rip a path of destruction through the heart of the building. I followed the devastation, sidestepping around islands of fallen ceiling, crumbling walls, and wading through drifts of papers and documents. He’d simply torn through anything in his way, including people. There was nothing I could do for the fallen, but I could stop him. He thought he was the biggest, baddest thing in this building. He was wrong.
I broke into a run, swerving to avoid a dangling strip light, and veered around people running away from the chaos raging ahead. If you’ve ever crouched in a storm shelter while waiting for the tornado to pass, you’ve heard the howling that accompanies the beast. It’s a harrowing wail, as though the storm is a thing alive, and it’s hungry. That noise drowned out the alarms as I drew closer to the conference hall where Damien was unleashing a tornado. The wind rushed from behind me and sucked through the corridor toward the double doors.
I stumbled through the doors. My hair whipped about my face, stinging my cheeks. I leaned back against the weight of the wind, seeking to funnel me toward the swirling vortex of debris at the center. Somebody shoved by me and escaped. Others clung to tables, fighting to hold on. Enforcers fired bullets into the maelstrom with no hope of hitting anything. Some were spray-painting symbols on the walls. It wouldn’t be enough. A room of that size would need more protective wards than they could muster.
The ceiling let out a groan and collapsed. The funnel of wind gobbled up the falling tiles and metal framework, exposing the steel beams and underside of the roof. The tornado pulsed and swelled, then burst apart like a bomb. A mangled mass of debris slammed into me.
My skull buzzed. My ears rang. What the hell? I’d been standing near the doorway and found myself on the floor against the wall, with no memory of moving. I lifted my hand to prop myself up. My arm twitched. My hand didn’t respond. A twisted fragment of steel protruded from my right shoulder. I had a few surreal seconds to wonder how that got there, before the accompanying pain fired off the appropriate nerve endings, and a garbled scream burst free. I curled my left hand around the shard, trembling so hard I couldn’t get a grip. I wrapped my fingers around the serrated edges, tugged, and nearly threw up. The shard was stuck fast. I barely had enough strength left to stay conscious, let alone pull it out.
Damien did a slow turn in the center of the destruction, admiring his achievement. His cold dead eyes caught sight of me. My breaths stuttered. My heart pounded. I couldn’t clear my head, couldn’t pin down my thoughts into actions. My body wouldn’t work. I floated somewhere outside my skin. If I passed out, he’d win. I had to stop him. There was no other option. It must end.
He spread his wings wide. Their span almost reached across the entire width of the room. He smiled and walked toward me. His swollen muscles quivered. I knew that look, the leering snarl, the raw expression of need. Clearly aroused, physically and mentally, he was high on the devastation he’d wrought. Had it been any other demon, I might have thought they meant to finish me, but Damien wouldn’t kill me. Death was too final.
I tried to get my legs under me but only managed a few kicking scuffs against the floor before he wrapped his claw-tipped fingers around the steel shard and lifted me in front of him. Muscles and flesh tore in my shoulder. A mangled cry shot from the back of my throat. I didn’t kick, didn’t fight. I couldn’t. The pain was too much. It took all my strength not to give in to the looming threat of unconsciousness.
He ground out the words through his misshapen demon mouth. “I. Like. To. Hear. You. Scream.”
I had hold of the steel shard and tried to lift my own weight to ease the pain. He grinned and gave the shard a twist. A scream lodged in my throat. My vision bloomed red, my skull threatening to burst. I yelled inside for my demon to come, but she didn’t answer. She’d never refused before. She was there. I could feel her writhing around in the darkness at the bottom of my consciousness, but she hid.
Everyone in the room was either dead or dying, and nobody had ventured through the doors. I was alone, skewered by Damien with no means of escape. I tried to think of something to say, some spark of genius that would make Damien drop me, giving me time to coax my demon back into my skin, but pain blinded all reason.
Damien gave the shard another twist. I jolted, back arched, jaw clamped shut, but the cry still squeezed through my teeth.
How much pain can the human body endure?
He grinned. His leathery slate-gray face filled my vision. “They will all die,” he purred. “Every. Last. One.” His black tongue lapped at his lips. Glee widened his dull eyes. “You will watch.”
His torso did a little hiccup and, the smile died on his lips. The glee in his eyes turned to puzzlement. I blinked rapidly.
He dropped me. I landed in a heap on my side, and another cry of pain escaped me. I twisted into a ball, drawing my knees up. I thrust my thoughts aside and dove inside my soul. My demon cowered. I raged at her, hooked metaphysical hands around her, and dragged her sorry ass out of hiding. She fought, but I had her by the scruff of the neck and threw her into my flesh. Fire washed over me. The pain in my shoulder faded away. I snatched the shard free and tossed it aside. The wound twitched and hissed as it cauterized. Only when I had all my relevant pieces in the right place, mentally and physically, did I look up.
Stefan had his demon back and wore it like a coat of ice-spiked armor. Frosted-wings fanned out on either side of him. He carried a spear of ice twice his height, and considering that Damien appeared to be bleeding from a neat puncture wound in his back, I took a stab at guessing Stefan had been the reason Damien had dropped me.
Damien snarled. “You.” He pointed a finger at Stefan and lunged.
I gasped, expecting Damien to crush Stefan. He looked so fragile against Damien’s heaving bulk of muscles, but I’d forgotten how fast Stefan was. He darted right, and twisted the spear into Damien’s side, circling around as Damien reared up and roared.
Stefan backed up toward me. The temperature plummeted. The weight of his power had my demon shirking back. She’d had enough, but giving up wasn’t an option.
Damien’s lips twisted in disgust. “Worthless half-bloods.”
When Stefan laughed, there was nothing jovial in its tone. His laughter chilled. It was cold. Empty. Even though I carried a coat of fire, I shivered at the sound. Stefan lifted his left hand and opened the veil a few feet above us. He gathered a swirling mass of azure power to him. It wove around his body, surging through him. He shone from within. A brilliant blue light writhed beneath his glacial flesh. He became a creature of ice. And madness.
I knew that lust. I’d let the power flood through me only a few hours before, when I’d drowned Akil in it. Pure surrender. A wonderful release. Nothing matters, just the element as it dances to your tune. Damien stumbled back. His wings bowed behind him as he watched Stefan call the energy from the netherworld into his soul.
Damien had good reason to be concerned. He eyed Stefan warily. “Kill me? Muse will be my eternal prisoner.”
Stefan inclined his head. Chaos writhed in his arctic eyes. “I’m not going to kill you
.
” Stefan’s demon brogue sent shivers skittering through me. His words doubled, echoed, and reiterated. They hurt to hear. He flung the spear at Damien, who easily knocked it aside, but in doing so, Damien had missed the dozen or so daggers of ice that manifested in the air around him. They plunged into Damien from all sides. My owner twitched and bucked. He twisted in search of the deadly daggers. His wings fluttered, membranes torn apart. Crimson blood dribbled across his dull skin.
While we’d been engrossed in our battle, the Enforcers had piled into the room. They opened fire but didn’t stop to consider who they were shooting at. They saw three demons. Never mind that two were technically on their side. A bullet punched into Stefan. He buckled, staggered, and went down. An arctic shockwave punched the air from my lungs and flash-froze my flesh. In a blink, the world turned icy-blue before releasing us all. The Enforcers fell back, shaking ice from their clothes.
Stefan wasn’t moving. His wings had curled around him, cocooning him in ice. The veil stitched itself closed above us. Stefan had called enough power to bring about a mid-summers ice-age, but with no outlet, no focus, that power would devour him from the inside out. It would kill him.
I heard the Enforcers barking orders. A bullet slapped against the floor beside me. A numb acceptance smothered me in a comforting embrace. I got to my feet, snatched up the jagged piece of steel, and ran full force at Damien. In the confusion, the muddle of gunshots, shouts, and with the tumultuous power spiraling around the room, Damien didn’t see me rushing him until the last second. By then it was too late. His eyes widened. He hadn’t believed I’d do it. He thought himself invincible. I barreled into him and punched the shard into his neck. The bellow that boiled up from my insides poured out of me in a thundering roar. We toppled together.
There’s a time for careful deliberation, for considering the consequences, but this wasn’t it. I had him pinned beneath my tiny frame. In seconds, he’d knock me off him. I didn’t hesitate. He must have seen the naked rage in my eyes, but even then he didn’t fear me. I don’t think he had it in him to be afraid. Hand clenched around the shard embedded in his neck, I leaned in, smiled, and cut his throat open. His lips parted in a silent howl.
I plunged the shard into his chest where his black heart beat. I drove that sucker home until every inch of the metal burrowed inside the wound. Blood bubbled over his chest, my hands, down my legs. His huge bulk twitched beneath me, but with his throat cut, he couldn’t speak a word, which was why the laughter, when it wormed its way into my head, almost stole my killing-ecstasy. The bastard was smiling. I’d cut his throat and stabbed him, and he was smiling at me? The bubbling laughter rumbled through the fog of murderous rage. It hooked claws into my doubts and tried to undermine my resolve. But I wasn’t giving in. Placing both hands on his chest, spreading my fingers wide, I thrust a wave of heat into him. This wasn’t a conscious assault on my part. I was beyond that. I wanted him to feel pain like he’d dealt me, to wish his own life would end just to be free of the agony. I drove my element into him, filling him up with fire. Even as the embers devoured him from the inside out, as they crawled across his flesh, turning it to ash, I didn’t stop. And still his laughter clawed at my skull.
I knew the exact moment he died. I felt the stab of his death like a gunshot to the chest. I jerked back as though struck. A crushing embrace closed around my heart. I could barely breathe. I slumped over and fell off Damien’s smoldering body. I clawed at the floor, trying to reach clear air. He was dead. How could he be doing this to me? Something cold caught my ankle. I tugged, but the touch coiled up my leg.
I almost wished I hadn’t glanced behind. A heaving cloud of darkness pulsated above the flames devouring Damien’s body, and from that malevolent cloud, threads of power thrashed and writhed. As soon as I saw them, they rose up in one rippling tangled mass. I was looking at his soul. It plunged into my chest. I heard screams—my own—and fell back. The river of darkness flowed out of Damien and poured over me. Viscous poison streamed into my mouth, my eyes, my ears. It wrapped around me and seeped through my flesh, sinking into my bones. I drowned in his dark.
An Enforcer could have put a bullet in my head, and I would have welcomed it. Sometimes, I wish they had. Damien’s infusion invaded all of me. The violence of its attack went beyond anything he could have done while alive. Imagine the blood in your veins replaced by acid. Imagine the comfort of your own thoughts torn from the safety of your consciousness and ripped to shreds before your eyes. His soul, or whatever it was, sliced me open, sunk its claws in, and tore out my center, quickly curling into a ball of rancid power, and made itself a new home.
R
yder’s voice
. He was telling someone to get back, threatening them, and from the desperation tightening his words, I knew his threats were real. I’d not heard fear in his voice before, but I heard it then. I blinked. He was beside me, my name on his lips. He couldn’t touch me, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to realize I was still demon. I looked up at him and wondered why he wore a thick winter coat and why it was snowing. The snowflakes didn’t last long as they twirled and danced in the air around Ryder. As soon as they came close to me, the flakes fizzled to nothing. I would have liked to watch them swirl hypnotically in the air. They were calm and kept the screams in my head away. Of course, as soon as I thought that, the pain returned with a vengeance. Broken wing, bruised or broken jaw, puncture wound in my shoulder, and the thing throbbing dark and hungry in my chest.
I locked onto Ryder’s face and stared at the smudge of blood across his cheek. Lines of reality sharpened into focus.
“...have to get up... Please, Muse...They’re gonna kill him.”
I blinked. Ryder’s words drifted through the fog of shock. He continued to say something about needing me, but the snow distracted me. It was everywhere. I turned my head and frowned at the blanket of white softening the edges of the debris. Then I saw the hole in the roof and how the snow poured inside like a waterfall of white noise.
“Get up, Muse, goddammit!” Ryder snapped.
I closed my eyes and very carefully sealed the horrible darkness inside away behind tentative mental barriers, poking at it with minimal contact, as though my subconscious might catch evil from it.
With a shiver, I opened my eyes and dismissed my demon. The pain in my shoulder blazed and tugged a reluctant whimper from me. Ryder’s eyes widened. I must have looked as bad as I felt because Ryder paled, and swore under his breath. He held out a hand.