The Sweetest Burn Read online

  “I left you behind in a demon realm once,” I snapped. “I’m never doing that again, so we can waste time arguing, or we can get those people and then all get out of here.”

  He muttered a particularly foul Demonish curse, but with a short nod, he gave up the fight. We were almost at the staircase when my arm suddenly flamed with pain, coinciding with a loud whooshing sound behind us.

  I didn’t need to turn around to know that we were no longer alone in the room.

  “Fuck,” Adrian hissed, shoving me toward the stairs. “Run!”

  I did, for the first few steps. Then I spun around, remembering that I had the hallowed grave dirt. I burst back into the room to see Adrian smash a grand piano over someone’s head. The wood from the piano immediately took on a pale, shiny glaze and then exploded outward, revealing an African-American man with white hair and eerie, albino-like eyes. Being brained by a baby grand didn’t seem to faze the demon, either. He grinned, saying something very fast in Demonish. I didn’t know what, but I recognized one word: Adrian’s name.

  “Oh shit,” I whispered.

  The demon knew who Adrian was. So much for Zach saying that Adrian wouldn’t need to be disguised with Archon glamour. Then again, who else would be strong enough to treat a piano like a baseball bat?

  The demon swung his gaze toward me next. Adrian took advantage of his distraction and hurled a fireplace poker at him. The poker sunk into the demon’s chest, impaling him. Adrian immediately chucked a chair, the other couch and the coffee table at him next. My right arm was throbbing with pain, but I got into the mix and flung a handful of grave dirt at the demon.

  To my surprise, nothing happened, and Adrian stopped his furniture assault to shove me back toward the staircase.

  “I told you, run!” he warned me. “He’s—!”

  That’s all Adrian got out before the furniture covering the demon exploded away. In the next moment, he had grabbed Adrian. Almost at once, a blue tinge covered Adrian’s skin, followed by a shiny white layer that resembled ice. Frostbite, I realized in horror, remembering the glazed sheen that had overtaken the wood from the piano. That’s why Adrian had been fighting this demon with furniture instead of his fists. Somehow, the demon must be able to freeze everything that he touched.

  And everything he’d touched had frozen so rapidly, it had ended up exploding.

  “No!” I screamed, grabbing the remaining grave dirt and throwing it at the demon.

  Not only did it fail to make the demon release Adrian, he grinned at me as if I’d amused him. His teeth were filed into icicle-like points, and those pale, white-on-white eyes seemed to burn into mine. A choking sound escaped Adrian and his arms began to flail in a jerky, uncoordinated way. Panic overwhelmed me, making the pain from my now golden tattoo feel almost blissful by comparison. The demon was killing Adrian right before my eyes, and the only weapon I had wasn’t working!

  It’s not your only weapon.

  The words whispered across my mind, so faint that I barely heard them. I don’t know why I looked down at my right hand, but I did. Even with my jacket covering me to the wrist, the tattoo of the ancient slingshot was glowing so brightly that it lit up the space around me. In fact, the incredible light radiating from it made the image of the rope that wrapped around my fingers and hand look almost...real.

  Without thought, I grasped a section and pulled. If I would’ve paused to consider what I was doing, I never would’ve done it, let alone kept pulling when I felt the unmistakable give of something tangible beneath my skin.

  The demon’s grin faded into a look of disbelief. I didn’t pull anymore; I yanked, agony searing up my arm as if I’d sliced it open to the bone. But when I glanced at my right arm, my skin was unbroken. And I now held a long, golden rope that was very, very real—and thrummed with enough supernatural power to make my teeth rattle.

  As if everything were happening in slow motion, I saw myself grab a fragment of wood and fit it into the sling’s loop. Saw the demon drop Adrian and charge toward me. Watched me dodge him and spin the rope, then snap it at him. Then felt the icy, paralyzing power of his abilities as the demon’s hands closed over my legs, but in moments, that grip loosened, then vanished.

  I fell to the floor, my legs feeling like they’d been turned into popsicles. The demon’s face was right next to mine as my head banged onto the tile, and I glimpsed a cut on his forehead. Before I could roll away from him in instinctive defense, his features began to splinter, crack and dissolve. By the time I’d hauled myself into a sitting position, he was nothing more than a pile of ashes on the ground next to me.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “WHAT IS HAPPENING?” a male voice demanded.

  I didn’t reply. I dragged myself over to Adrian, needing to use my upper body because my legs still wouldn’t work. He was curled into a ball, and the blue tinge clinging to his skin scared me so much, I almost burst into tears. When I reached him, I wrapped myself around him, trying to use my body to warm his. He was barely breathing, and his skin was so cold, it took only seconds to realize that he needed a lot more warmth. Now.

  I summoned all the strength I had to drag him over to the fireplace. The tiles in front of it were hot, and I laid him over them. Then I grabbed the poker from the demon’s ashes. It was so icy after being embedded in the demon’s body that it stuck to my hands, so I simultaneously froze and burned as I used it to stoke the fire higher. Once it was blazing, I threw myself on top of Adrian, hoping the trifecta of heat coming from all sides would reverse the awful effects of the demon’s touch.

  Nearby, demands for answers grew louder, but I kept ignoring them. All my attention was on Adrian, whose skin was slowly losing that terrifying bluish color. I barely noticed the agony shooting through me as the slingshot began to wind itself back into my right arm as if it were a snake returning to its home. I did notice Adrian wince when a section of the rope brushed across him, but I was so happy to see him coming back around that I didn’t pause to wonder why.

  “Adrian? Can you hear me?” I asked, lightly shaking him.

  He made a noise. More moan than a word, but it was a response. Then he tried again, and this time, I understood him.

  “That...hurt,” he croaked.

  Relief crashed into me with such force, I could no longer control my tears. They spilled from my eyes even as I laughed from the sheer, giddy joy of him being alive.

  “So much,” I agreed, climbing off him so he had room to maneuver. “I still can’t feel my legs.”

  That was true, but the slingshot was back to being twined around my finger, wrist and forearm as if it were no more than the tattoo it now resembled. If I wasn’t sitting next to a pile of demon ashes, I would’ve sworn that I’d imagined it reforming into the hallowed weapon, but the ash was there. So was the pain, and the last time I’d felt anything this excruciating was when I’d used the slingshot to wipe out Adrian’s former realm.

  Adrian looked at the ashes on the floor next to us, then at my right arm. His hand landed on my tattoo, which was still shimmering with that iridescent golden color. With a yelp, he let go and a red welt appeared on his palm.

  “Son of a bitch,” Adrian breathed. “It still works.”

  Tremors ran over me as the shock from the last several minutes faded enough for me to fully accept that.

  “Not like it used to.” My voice was shaky, yet even as I spoke, I began to pull myself together. “But enough.”

  More than enough. Having a weapon that could kill demons built-in to my arm was an incredible gift. So what if I was only able to kill them one at a time? That might not be as scary as how the slingshot had simultaneously wiped hundreds of them out the first time I had used it, but everyone had thought it was defunct after that, if you counted how it had resembled nothing more than a tattoo on my arm.

  Adrian sat u
p very slowly. Every movement was clearly painful for him, and seeing it made tears well in my eyes for a different reason this time.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I distracted you, that’s why he was able to grab you. I shouldn’t have gotten in your way.”

  He pulled me into his arms. His embrace was chilly, but it was still the best thing I’d ever felt. “It’s not your fault,” he murmured. “I couldn’t beat him. Oblivion was one of the oldest, deadliest demons in existence. Demetrius wasn’t playing when he brought him here as backup.”

  Costume Man picked that moment to lose his cool. “I demand to know what’s happening!” he snapped as he stomped over to us.

  Adrian let me go, then pushed himself off the floor and rose. His movements were far slower than normal, but the stare he leveled at Costume Man was full of warning.

  “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, and if you want to go home, you’ll shut up and do what we say.”

  “I’m a park ranger as well as the tour guide for Scotty’s Castle,” Costume Man said, recovering. “If you don’t want to get arrested, you’ll do what I say.”

  To punctuate his point, Costume Man, aka the park ranger, pulled out a gun. Before I could react, Adrian had knocked it out of his hand. Even in his weakened condition, he was far faster than a normal person.

  “Anyone else want to test me?” Adrian all but growled.

  The costumed ranger paled, and the people who’d come upstairs with him looked equally intimidated. I didn’t want them to be frightened of us, so I tried another way.

  “Sir, something awful has happened to this place. We’re going to help get everyone out of here, but we don’t have a lot of time to explain, so you’ll just need to—”

  “What are you?” a white-haired woman hissed, interrupting me. “You killed that man and turned him into, into nothing!”

  “He wasn’t a man,” I answered truthfully.

  “Don’t listen to her,” the ranger whispered to the older woman. “We just have to wait until the other man comes back. He said that he was getting help.”

  “You mean the man with the long black hair?” Adrian’s snort was derisive. “Oh, he’s getting help, all right, but not for you. He’s a demon, and he’s bringing more demons with him.”

  I sucked in a breath at his bluntness. So much for easing people into the truth about the supernatural!

  “I’m not going to listen to this,” the white-headed woman said. Then she wagged her cell phone at me. “As soon as I get a signal, I’m calling the police!”

  Either my legs had recovered from the demon’s freezing touch, or sheer frustration got me back on my feet. “Even if you could, the police can’t help you. I know it sounds incredible, but you’re not in the same world you were in before. You’re in a parallel realm, and yes, demons live on this side. That’s why we need to get everyone back to where they came from.”

  Perhaps not surprisingly, they didn’t listen. I’d seen glimpses of the realms all my life, and the first time I heard what they really were, I didn’t believe it, either. With several mutters and glances back at the pile of ashes, the people left.

  Adrian sighed. “No one believes the truth until it’s too late. That’s why Demetrius fed them that ‘getting help’ crap. He wants them docile until he’s done rounding everyone up.”

  I took a few steps, trying to force the debilitating iciness out of my legs. The warmth from the nearby fireplace beckoned me closer for many reasons. The gateway was right in front of it, and all I needed to do was let Adrian take me through, and we’d be safe. He was right; Demetrius or another demon could show up any minute. But how could I live with myself if I didn’t try harder to save the people downstairs, too?

  “I’m not giving up,” I told Adrian, and began heading for the staircase on my still-wobbly legs.

  He came after me and spun me around. “You think they’ll listen? You took out a demon in front of them, and they still don’t believe what’s going on. Speaking of that, you got lucky nailing the demon in the head without really aiming. You might not get that lucky again, which is why we need to go now.”

  I knew he was right, but Jasmine’s face flashed in my mind, as did my parents’. Maybe no one had been able to help them when they’d been in situations just like this, or maybe someone had, yet had chosen not to. How could I look my sister in the eye if I walked away from these people now? How could I stand to remember my parents if I showed the same apathy that minions had when they’d contributed to my parents’ deaths?

  “I have to try one more time,” I insisted, pulling away from Adrian.

  His jaw clenched, but he didn’t stop me as I hobbled past him. Maybe he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving these people behind, either. He might not be up to his full strength, but I was pretty sure he could still throw me over his shoulder and force me through the gateway, if he really wanted to.

  I made it down the stairs without tripping, which took a lot of effort. Then I carefully made my way into the grand entry room. The people who’d witnessed what had happened upstairs were huddled up with the rest of the group, and from the hostile glances my way, it wasn’t hard to guess what they’d been talking about.

  “Whatever you heard, all of you need to come with me if you want to get out of here.” Then I took a deep breath. There was no way to tell them what had happened without sounding crazy, so I just plowed ahead. “This place has been pulled into another realm and demons are coming to enslave you, but there’s a gateway upstairs that will send you back home.”

  The white-haired woman shook her finger at me. “Don’t listen to her! She’s crazy and she’s evil. I told you, she killed a man and turned him into dirt!”

  “He wasn’t a man, he was a demon, and there’s more where he came from,” Adrian retorted, coming up behind me. “If you want to live, you’ll let us get you out of here.”

  “This is ridiculous,” a bespectacled, well-dressed man sputtered. “I don’t know what sort of con you’re trying to pull, but that other man said there had been an unexpected eclipse. That’s all, and he left to get help—”

  “Look around,” I snapped, waving at the window. “Not only has it been pitch-black for hours, the desert is now frozen. No eclipse could do that, and no con artist could, either. I know it’s a lot to take in, but you need to accept that you’re in another realm so that you can get the hell on out of it!”

  “Demons? Realms? You expect us to believe that?” he muttered, to murmurs of agreement from the rest of them.

  I contemplated how long it would take to knock them all out, carry them upstairs and drag them one by one through the gateway. Too long, judging from how I could hardly walk, and Adrian looked better, but not by much.

  “You have another explanation for how a dark, freezing version of this world suddenly fell on you?” I countered, trying to force them past their denial. “If you don’t, you might want to start listening to the crazy one.”

  “You gave it your best shot, but they’re not listening, and we have to go,” Adrian muttered, tugging my arm.

  I planted my feet, going for one last argument. “I wish I could prove the existence of demons and other realms to you, but I don’t have time. You don’t trust me? Fine, trust your own eyes. Eclipses last minutes, not hours. They don’t shut off everything that isn’t battery-operated, knock out cell signals and freeze deserts. You know this, so if it’s not an eclipse, then it’s something that shouldn’t be possible, and yet it is. So please, come upstairs with us, and we’ll take you through the gateway and prove that we can get you home.”

  I put all of my desperation into those last few words, trying also to say with my eyes what I couldn’t seem to convey vocally. Glasses Guy turned away. So did the costumed ranger, the white-haired lady and most of the rest of them. But, with several hesitant glances, a family of f
our stepped forward.

  “We’ll come,” the father said, picking up his little girl.

  “Take them upstairs,” I told Adrian, fighting back a surge of tears. “Please, the rest of you, come with us. Like I said, we’ll prove to you that we can get you out of here.”

  They began to back away instead, egged on by the white-haired lady’s continual, muttered accusations and their own disbelief. Adrian led the family to the staircase and, after a few, long moments where I futilely hoped that at least one other person would change their mind, I followed them upstairs. I was almost at the top when a scream made me run the last few steps. I tripped, but made it into the trashed music room in time to see the two parents beating at the stone around the fireplace.

  “Wait!” the mother was crying, while the father stuck his hands in the flames as if trying to snatch something back.

  “It’s okay,” I reassured them, doing an odd hop-run into the room. “He’ll be right back, I promise!”

  No sooner did I say that than Adrian appeared, almost knocking the parents over with his sudden entry. He didn’t pause to explain, as I continued to do, but grabbed both of them in a bear hug and then lunged at the fireplace. They disappeared as if the flames had somehow swallowed them. I knew what was going on, but to be honest, it was still a little freaky looking.

  The costumed ranger picked that moment to run into the room. He had a candlestick in his hands, of all things, and he brandished it at me. “Where are they? What did you do to them?”

  “Nothing,” I began, but Adrian’s reappearance cut me off. He grasped me around the shoulders, and I noticed that he was breathing heavy and his color didn’t look good.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, worried enough to ignore the ranger’s sudden yell of “What the hell?”

  “Oblivion did a number on me, and crossing the realms is making it worse.” Adrian’s words were choppy between his labored breaths. “I’ve only got one more trip left in me, Ivy.”