The Sweetest Burn Read online

  For now. I rubbed my right hand where the outline of a braided rope ran from my finger all the way up to my elbow. The remains of the ancient, hallowed slingshot no longer burned in that odd way, but touching it was a tangible reminder that Adrian and I had destinies to fulfill: me to possibly save those trapped in the demon realms, and him to probably betray me.

  “All right, well, minions are dead, the demon’s gone, Brutus should be back any second and I’m almost home, so you can leave. Now,” I added.

  A scoff preceded his response and the silver rings around his dark blue eyes seemed to gleam.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Ivy. Ready or not, I’m back in your life and I’m here to stay.”

  “But I don’t want you to,” I said, fighting the urge to thump him over the head so the words would sink in.

  He only smiled, dazzling and so arrogant that I spun around so I didn’t have to look at him anymore. “Yes, I heard you, but while you might not want me—yet—you do need me.”

  Then, with his lightning quickness, he appeared in front of me, shoving a small box into my hands. “Speaking of things I didn’t get to do before, happy birthday, although one day late.”

  Shock made me stand still and stare at the box. Twenty-one was a milestone, but no one else had remembered. Not my sister, who was also my best friend, or Costa, my roommate who’d become as close as a brother to me, or Zach, the Archon who sorta mentored me and had supernatural knowledge of just about everything. Only Adrian, and I’d never told him when it was.

  I couldn’t stop myself from opening the unexpected gift. Then I let out a little gasp when I saw the round stone suspended at the end of a long gold chain. The jewel reflected the first rays of sunlight back at me in a rainbow of colors that were so bright, I had to squint while looking at it. Unless it was the most sparkly piece of glass ever, Adrian had just given me a diamond the size of a large marble.

  “There’s no way I can accept this,” I almost stuttered, adding, “Did you steal it?” because how else could he have gotten something that cost as much as several high-end cars?

  Hints of darkness colored his laughter. “Former demon prince, remember? I might have left all that behind me, but I didn’t leave empty-handed.”

  “You’re not a demon, you were just raised by them,” I muttered.

  He shrugged. “Honorary demon prince, then. Either way, I can afford it. Besides, you lost your other necklace because of me, so don’t say you can’t accept this one to replace it.”

  The necklace was so beautiful, a shallow part of me wanted nothing more than to put it on and run to the nearest mirror. I couldn’t, of course. For starters, I hadn’t looked into a mirror since the night I found out the hard way that some demons use mirrors as portals into our world. Plus...

  “This feels like a bribe,” I said, holding the necklace out to him. “And you can’t make up for everything that’s happened with a shiny, expensive gift. Things aren’t good between us, Adrian. Not even close, and if I accepted this, I’d be implying that they were.”

  He crossed his arms, his posture taking on a very familiar stubbornness. “I’m not trying to bribe you, I’m giving you a birthday gift. Throw it into the surf if you want, but it’s yours, so I am not taking it back.”

  My jaw clenched. He might have been raised in an environment where money was no object, but I could no more toss this diamond into the ocean than I could burn a stack of hundred-dollar bills for warmth, and from the challenging curl to his mouth, he knew that. Still, that didn’t mean he was getting his way.

  I folded the necklace into my hand and resumed walking. It didn’t take my enhanced peripheral vision to see Adrian’s smirk as he followed. He thought he’d won this round. Think again, I silently told him.

  “So, if you’re rich, why did we only stay in crappy motels when we first met?” I asked as I kept walking toward Costa’s house.

  He let out a laugh that managed to combine the lure of ecstasy along with the dangers of addiction.

  “Because I was doing everything I could to kill the mood, not that it worked. Even in the ugliest surroundings, I wanted you so much that it almost killed me not to take you in every dingy room those crappy motels had to offer.”

  “Stop it,” I muttered. Thankfully, Brutus picked that moment to fly past us and land in the tallest section of beach shrubs. I ran after the gargoyle, trying to soothe him as he attempted to cover himself with beach brush to avoid the sun.

  “It’s okay,” I was saying when Adrian said, “Carparata!” loud enough to snap Brutus’s head up.

  The Demonish word turned Brutus from a cringing creature into his usual, formidable self. The gargoyle might be my pet now, but to the bone, he still belonged to Adrian. After all, Adrian was the one who’d given Brutus to me as my protector. The fact that he’d done so when Adrian had thought he was sacrificing his life to save mine was yet another reason why he was so hard to evict from my heart.

  Still, I wasn’t about to give up trying. “Here you go, my good Brutus,” I said, pulling out the necklace and latching it around his leathery wrist. Because of his size, it fit like a bracelet. “Something shiny for you.”

  The gargoyle held up his arm, looking at the diamond next to his grayish-blue skin. Then he chuffed as if in approval.

  “See?” I said, with a wide grin at Adrian. “He loves it.”

  The glare Adrian gave me was priceless. Then, with a smile that was far too confident for my liking, he waved in the direction of Costa’s house.

  “You can give my gift to Brutus and you can keep stomping off to Costa’s, but no matter what, I’m coming with you. Realm cracks are appearing and demons and minions are on the move again. You might have killed Demetrius, giving me the vengeance I’d wanted for years, but that didn’t take me out of the fight. I still live to kick demon ass, so I wouldn’t sit this out for the world, and if you know anything about me, you should know that. Besides, Zach’s probably aware of all this and waiting back at Costa’s for us. As you might recall, Archons may be nearly immortal, but they’re not very patient.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  COSTA’S HOUSE WAS a former church, hence the hallowed ground it rested on that demons were unable to cross. The sight of its tall, slanted roof with the cross that Costa hadn’t bothered to take down filled me with a mixture of relief and sadness. I couldn’t say that I’d been happy here, but I’d felt safe, and that counted for a lot in this world. Now, it was time to leave, and I didn’t know if I’d ever see this place again.

  Adrian was right; more people were at the house than when I’d left it an hour ago. My sister, Jasmine, seemed startled to see Adrian, but it didn’t escape my notice that Costa didn’t look surprised. I stifled my snort as we came into the kitchen. Had Adrian been in contact with Costa this whole time, too? Was I literally the only person he’d avoided these past couple months?

  As I approached the table, Adrian pulled a chair out for me, but I ignored that. “I’ll stand.”

  “Are you two fighting again?” Costa cast a knowing glance between us. “Situation normal, then.”

  The other person I hadn’t seen in the past two months was Zach, but as Adrian had predicated, the Archon now sat at the kitchen table as casually as if he’d dropped by for breakfast. As with minions and demons, at first glance, you wouldn’t know there was anything unusual about Zach. His jeans and faded-blue hoodie matched his college-age appearance, and his dark brows, closely cropped hair and mocha-colored skin were a great frame for his deep, walnut-brown eyes.

  One look into those eyes, however, and I couldn’t imagine anyone not realizing that there was something otherworldly about Zach. His gaze seemed to reach right into your soul, and if he chose to reveal his true nature, the room would be filled with exploding light and deafeningly beautiful voices. The one time Zach had dropped his huma
n disguise to show me that, I’d unwittingly fallen to my knees with tears streaming down my face. You never realized how insignificant you were until confronted with a creature filled with the power and glories of eternity.

  Archons—angels—were such creatures, so you’d think I’d be glad to see Zach. Instead, I felt a mildly growing sense of dread. Unlike their Hallmark Channel representations, Archons weren’t cuddly beings who spent their time sprinkling happy dust onto humanity. Instead, they were fearsome warriors who’d been relegated to the sidelines during the most important battle of the ages, so they were ready to fight no matter how that turned out for mankind. They were also our only allies against demons, so that made them indispensable to us regardless of their seeming indifference toward the fate of my race.

  “I’m out of time, aren’t I?” I said in lieu of a hello.

  Zach didn’t take offense. He’d probably invented the custom of not saying hello. “Yes. As the realm walls continue to weaken, new fissures are formed, allowing greater access between the dark worlds and this one. It is only a matter of time until those fissures rupture and parts of the demon world spills out into your realm.”

  “I found that out the hard way,” I said with a sigh. “Three minions and a demon tried to nab me on the beach.”

  Jasmine’s face paled and she ran over to me. “Are you okay? How did you get away? Did they know who you were?”

  I gave my younger sister a reassuring squeeze, a pang hitting me as I looked at her. She’d always had my adoptive mother’s blond hair, but sometime during her hellish captivity, she’d grown a long white streak down the center of her head. Her pale blue eyes were the same color as my adoptive father’s, and seeing them reminded me of him so much, I had to blink back a sudden surge of tears.

  Oh, how I missed my parents! They hadn’t deserved to die at the hands of minions and demons just because they’d been investigating Jasmine’s disappearance. Then again, no one deserved to die at the hands of demons and minions for any reason.

  “I’m fine,” I reassured Jaz. “I got the first one, Adrian and Brutus took care of the rest. And they didn’t know who I was, at first. They were just looking for new slaves.”

  Zach inclined his head in agreement. “The demons grow bolder as they gain more access to this world.”

  Maybe it was the fresh wave of grief I’d felt over my parents’ death, maybe it was my fear over what I knew I had to do. Either way, I couldn’t hold back my brusque reply.

  “Remind me again why Archons would allow terrible things to happen to innocent people when they have the power to stop it?”

  The gaze Zach turned on me was hard. “A better reason than why your race would rather assign blame to others than work on looking for solutions yourselves.”

  Yes, humanity had its flaws, but that didn’t mean we weren’t worth saving, dammit! And I still couldn’t figure out if Zach even wanted us to be saved. Some days, he acted as if he did, yet other days, the Archon seemed just as happy to let humanity burn if it meant finally ending the war between Archons and demons.

  “If you truly believe your race is worth saving, then you’ll be eager to get started,” Zach replied, using his mind-reading abilities. How could I forget about those?

  I glowered at him. It sucked being reminded that in this case, “somebody” doing something really meant “me.”

  “I’m ready,” I said, which was the biggest lie in the world, but what else could I say? We’re all gonna die! seemed too defeatist, even if it was probably true.

  Zach rose with his usual grace, then cast a sideways glance at Brutus, who was in the darkest corner of the kitchen. He’d be in his room, if he wasn’t waiting for his breakfast of raw meat.

  “Would someone explain why that gargoyle is wearing the stone of Solomon around his wrist?” Zach asked.

  “The what of who?” Jasmine said.

  I wondered the same thing, but Adrian replied to Jasmine before I could ask. “Ivy didn’t like her birthday present, so she gave it to Brutus,” he told my sister.

  “Birthday? Oh crap, Ivy, I forgot your birthday!” Jasmine said with a gasp. Costa seemed shocked for a different reason.

  “You gave a three-thousand-year-old diamond with famed mystic qualities to Brutus?” he asked me.

  Zach also gave me a look that seemed to question my sanity. I shifted defensively even as this news rocked me. “I just thought it was a normal diamond,” I mumbled.

  “It isn’t,” Adrian said, his arched brow implying that I should have given him a chance to say this earlier. “King Solomon stole this diamond from Asmodeus, a demon king, because it was said to shield its wearer from harm. After Solomon’s death, Asmodeus stole it back, and when I was a child, it was given to me because demons wanted to protect the last Judian.”

  I was openmouthed discovering the diamond’s history, not to mention its protective qualities. Adrian hadn’t just been trying to buy my forgiveness with an expensive trinket. He’d given me the same talisman he’d had since he was a child. Damn him for making it harder to stay angry with him, I thought, my emotions wrestling anew at this.

  “Very well,” Zach replied, although he would have overheard my inner battle. “Ivy, you will leave at once. Adrian and Costa will accompany you on your search for the staff of Moses.”

  “Not Adrian,” I burst out.

  “Yes, Adrian,” Zach said in his best don’t-argue-with-an-angelic-being tone. “Without him, you won’t discover the map.”

  “There’s a map that leads to the staff?” That was a surprise. “One of those would’ve been helpful when we were trying to find the first hallowed weapon.”

  Zach shrugged. “It’s a map of sorts, and perhaps if you would have looked closer, you would have discovered it when you were searching for the slingshot, too.”

  Archons and their cryptic-speak, not to mention their lack of initiative that bordered on apathy. Figures there had been a map back then and Zach hadn’t told me. For all I knew, he had another map in his pocket now, yet couldn’t be bothered to mention that, either. “Or, why don’t you just tell me where the staff is, if you know?” I said to cut through all the crap.

  “Because this is your task to succeed or fail at, Davidian,” was Zach’s inexorable reply.

  Don’t hit the Archon, I reminded myself while clenching my fists. We still needed him.

  Zach’s mouth twitched, as if he found my impotent rage amusing. “Adrian is coming with you, Ivy. Don’t bother to list all the reasons why you don’t want him to. The fact remains that he must or you will not only fail, you won’t survive. That’s why I rescinded his ban from seeing you earlier today.”

  My gaze swung to Adrian. “What do you mean, he rescinded your ban from seeing me?”

  A low, almost growling sound left Adrian. “Zach put a supernatural restraining order on me. I couldn’t get within a mile of you without suddenly becoming paralyzed, Costa supernaturally forgot every message I tried to send you through him, and if I attempted to call, text or email you, my phone would blow up.”

  “Really?” Costa looked bewildered. “You and I have talked several times since then, and I don’t remember that.”

  Adrian grunted. “Exactly.”

  “Cock-blocked by an angel,” Costa muttered. “That’s new.”

  I ignored Costa’s comment in favor of giving Zach a disbelieving look. “First you supernaturally prevent Adrian from so much as texting me, then you insist that he come along on the search for the staff. What kind of game are you playing?”

  Zach’s dark brown eyes gave nothing away. “No game. Only fate.”

  Fate. My teeth ground. I really hated that word.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this on the beach?” I asked Adrian, giving up on getting a more definitive answer out of Zach.

  Adrian’s
coloring was darker than normal, and when I caught the look he flashed Zach’s way, I realized why. Pride. He’d rather let me think that he was a total jerk than admit that Zach had shut him down so effectively, he’d been helpless. Yes, for longer than I cared to remember, Adrian had had both minions and demons scurrying to do his bidding. Plus, with his incredible strength, speed and fighting skills, almost no one had been able to stop Adrian from doing something he’d set his mind to. In that light, his bruised-ego silence about the way Zach had shut him down was almost understandable.

  Almost. Adrian should have told me why he’d abandoned me when I needed him the most. The fact that he hadn’t only highlighted that he was thinking more about himself than me. Plus, if he couldn’t admit something so small to me, how could I trust him with the really big things, like our fates?

  And Zach. He got the other end of my stink eye. He could have said something before now, too. Men. They were the same whether they were Archons, humans or Judians.

  Something else occurred to me. “Zach lifted his restraining order on you the same day I came across the first minions and demon I’ve seen in months?” It couldn’t be a coincidence...

  “It isn’t,” Zach said, using his intrusive skills again.

  My irritation died away. His inconsideration paled next to making sure that I was still alive.

  “Thank you,” I said, hoping for the hundredth time that Archons were more invested in the fate of humanity than they let on. Aside from my bloodline, I wasn’t anyone special, yet Zach had saved me more than a few times. I just wished I understood why so many other people had to suffer and die.

  Zach inclined his head, which was his version of “you’re welcome.” “Preparations have been made. You are to start your search for the staff at once.”

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” I pointed out. “We have no idea where Moses’s staff might be. This is a big world, and that’s not even counting all the demon realms in it, too.”