The Sweetest Burn Page 9
“We should be safe here for a while.”
Adrian’s voice was low, but it wasn’t the whisper he’d used before. That, combined with his words, eased the knot that had formed in my stomach since my otherworldly tattoo had begun to glow and burn. Then he looked around, leading me to a corner where only a tiny window interrupted the stone.
“This spot should have the least amount of wind, and the stone walls will still retain a little heat from before.”
He paused on the word before, and I took in a slow, choppy breath. Right, before, when this tower and everything around it was being warmed by a bright desert sun. Now, nothing in this place would ever see the sun again. Another gust of wind blew by, a plaintive noise echoing on it that might have been a coyote’s howl, and I closed my eyes in silent grief.
No sunlight meant that every living thing here would die of starvation, if the cold didn’t kill them first. I wanted to howl, too, at the horrible fate that had literally dropped onto this place and everything in it. Find something else to fight for, Costa had urged me just days ago, and as I looked around, I knew that I had. If I could stop even one more place from suffering the awful future that awaited this one, it would be well worth the fight, whatever it cost me.
In the meantime, though, I could do nothing. The realization was no less bitter for its roots in logic. The staff wasn’t here, so all I could do was survive this realm in order to live to fight demons another day. I leaned back against the wall, a small, inadvertent sound leaving me when my back was warmed by the faint heat in the stones that would soon be gone.
“Why’d we come here?” I asked after a long moment. “Why didn’t we go back to the car?”
Adrian slid down the wall until he was resting on his haunches next to me.
“When people are afraid, they tend to stay indoors,” he replied, his tone matter-of-fact. “Add in the dark and the cold, and you almost never find them in exposed places outside. That’s why the demons and minions who arrive here will first look for humans in houses when they do their initial round-up. Then they’ll search all the cars, and eventually, they’ll get around to other open-area places, like the top of this tower. That means we should have a day or two at least to sneak past them to get to the gateway.”
Again, his almost casual way of describing this bothered me on many levels, but I had to focus on getting out of here.
“What if I’m wrong?” My voice was soft in case I wasn’t, and supernatural ears might be close by. “What if there is no demon, and the only people in that castle are a bunch of terrified humans?”
Adrian took my right hand and slid the jacket farther up my arm. “Do you see anything?”
It was very dark, but with the residual glow from the nearby castle, I could make out enough to see that the slingshot had faded back to its normal brown color, not to mention that my arm no longer hurt. “No. Not anymore.”
He let me go, and I thought I glimpsed a small, tight smile. “Exactly. The slingshot was glowing and now it’s not. To me, that means the demon is no longer near enough to active it.”
Activate it. I glanced at my arm again. That was one way to describe what had happened. Then I looked back at Adrian. If I concentrated, his features become clearer.
“I think it, ah, activated before, when you first came back and took out Snake Hands,” I told him. “I didn’t see the glow because of my long sleeves, but I felt the same pain. Maybe the slingshot embedded itself in my arm as a sort of...demonic early-detection system?”
Adrian looked at my arm, and this time, I was sure I caught a glimpse of a smile. “Maybe. Figures Zach wouldn’t have given us a heads-up about that. He does love his surprises.”
I let out a watery laugh. “Archons, right?”
Adrian laughed, too, and a thread of hope wormed its way through my depression over this area’s future. I’d gladly take the pain that came with the tattoo’s “activation” if it was warning us that a demon was near. We needed all the help we could get when it came to fighting demons, and if we won, no other place would have to suffer this same fate.
Adrian began to rummage through his jacket pockets. After a moment, he handed me a plastic bottle and something rectangular.
“Water and a power bar,” he said, his tone turning wry. “Hardly the romantic dinner I’d planned to have with you, but the jackets only have room for necessities.”
I gratefully uncapped the bottle and took a long swallow, then paused before my next one. “Where’s yours?”
He waved a hand. “I don’t want any right now.”
I knew him well enough to recognize a deliberately vague answer, and I gave him a look that he should’ve had no trouble deciphering. “That’s not what I asked you.”
With an unintelligible mutter, he pulled out an identical water bottle. “See? Happy now?”
I waited, drumming my nails for emphasis. “And?”
This time, I made out what he said under his breath, and it was a Demonish curse word. “And what?” he finished with.
“And you don’t have any food, unlike what you tried to get me to believe,” I pointed out.
“No, I said I didn’t want any right now, with ‘any’ referring to my water. I can’t help it that you assumed I meant food, too,” he countered smoothly.
I gritted my teeth. Why couldn’t men just admit it when they were busted? “Lies of omission are still lies, Adrian.”
His look said that he disagreed, and I wanted to shake him. We were only talking about chocolate now, but if he still didn’t believe that lies of omission counted, what would he do when the stakes were higher? The same thing he’d done months ago when he’d hidden the truth of my real destiny from me? “Your chocolate is getting cold,” he added with infuriating glibness.
If we weren’t in a subzero realm with a demon possibly in the nearby castle, I would’ve given him a piece of my mind about the entire subject. But now wasn’t the time. So instead, I gave him an arch smile as I split the power bar in half. “No, our chocolate is getting cold.”
“Ivy,” he began.
“Oh, who’s assuming now?” I mocked. “You thought I wanted the whole thing, but I never said that, did I?”
Maybe my eyes were adjusting even more to the dark, because now I could see him glowering at me. “Don’t be stubborn.”
I laughed at that. “You of all people should talk.”
“There’s more in the car, I’ll get some later—”
“Then we’ll get some later,” I interrupted, quiet but firm. “If it comes to a demon fight, you’ll need your strength because you’re the only one who can take them down. My skills have improved, but minions are hard enough for me. I couldn’t win if I faced off against a demon, and we both know it.”
That sealed the deal. Adrian was trying to be chivalrous—an admittedly unfamiliar characteristic for him—but no one would know more than he about the importance of keeping himself at his lethal, fighting best.
“Fine,” he said, accepting half of the power bar.
I clicked the tip of mine with his. “Cheers.”
A smile hovered over his lips. “That’s usually reserved for drinks, so save it for one of the bottles of Cristal I intend to crack open as soon as we’re back on the bus.”
My eyes widened. “You brought champagne on a rel
ic-hunting trip where our best hope is to end up ass-deep in demon ash?”
His smile spread into a grin. “I’d break out every kind of liquor ever invented to celebrate being ass-deep in demon ash.”
“Good point,” I said, with a little laugh. “I really need to start looking at the bright side of things.”
His expression changed, that grin fading. When he spoke, his tone had changed, too, becoming darker and more luxuriant. “I had other motives behind the champagne. One of those bottles is just for us, and we’ll open it to celebrate what will happen after I fulfill my promise to you.”
I glanced away. Once again, he’d skipped the “chance” part of my conditions and gone right for the panty-dropping expectation. Given my reaction to him this afternoon, I couldn’t really blame him for being confident, but did I really want to risk my heart again? I’d agreed to give him another chance only because I thought it was impossible. Since then, he kept talking about it as if it were a sure thing. I’d brushed it off, but now, I had to deal with the possibility that he might pull it off. And if he did...
I looked back at him, asking the questions I’d been wondering about for the past several days. “Then what? Let’s say you do prove that you won’t betray me again, and I agree to celebrate with lots of sex and champagne. Is that all you want?”
It was as close to asking him if he still loved me as I dared, but the need to know burned as much as my tattoo had before. Adrian set down his half of the broken chocolate bar, then turned to face me fully.
“For longer than you can imagine, I thought I existed only to betray and to kill.” Not even his controlled tone could mask the fierce resonance in his words. “And I loved being the weapon that would save Demetrius and the rest of the demons. They had raised me, rescued me and my mother from the Archons, or so I thought. Then I found out that my mother had been murdered by Demetrius and he’d used his shape-shifting abilities for decades to fool me into believing that she was still alive. Everything Demetrius and the other demons had told me was a lie...well, everything except for my fate as the last Judian.”
He paused, a small, bitter smile curling his mouth. “After that, I couldn’t stand to think of the future, and I couldn’t stand to remember my past. The only thing that numbed my pain and rage was fighting the demons who’d once been my people, so I resigned myself to doing that for the rest of my life. Then, months ago, that same pain and rage compelled me to spend time with the one person I most wanted to avoid. The last Davidian.”
He took my hands, twining his fingers through mine, and when he spoke again, the harsh bleakness had left his tone.
“I didn’t want to know you, like you, need you, or most of all, love you, but I did. I still do. You are my destiny, Ivy, just not how everyone predicted. Now, when I think of the future, I think of spending it with you. The past still tears at me, but I can’t change it, and if I help you find the staff, then I’ll save more people than I’ve harmed. That’s what I’m fighting for, and as you can see, it’s a hell of a lot more than just champagne and sex.”
I stared at him, feeling as though every word had struck me right in the heart. Emotions I’d fought came roaring to the surface, making the words I love you, too, tremble on the edge of my lips.
But if I said them, I wouldn’t be able to hold anything back, and I had to. This was more than bad relationship timing: destiny said that we were supernaturally doomed as a couple. I might want to believe that Adrian could beat his fate, but how could I throw caution to the winds in the middle of a demon realm, let alone an apocalyptic war? If I couldn’t even wait until Adrian made good on his promise to prove that he wouldn’t betray me again, then I had no business resuming a relationship where the fallout could be far more serious than rebreaking my heart.
“I still care for you,” I said, my voice cracking from everything I wouldn’t allow myself to say. “And I want that chance to see if we’d work out. But right now... I can’t.”
His arms closed around me and he held me tight enough to almost force the air out of my lungs. I must’ve made a gasping sound because he released me, his hands gripping my shoulders instead. They kept flexing, as if he were having difficulty holding in his strength, and when he pressed his forehead against mine, his ragged breaths fell onto my cheeks.
“I know, but I’m not giving up, and you shouldn’t, either. Besides, love and lust aside, I don’t want to break my promise to you. I want you to know that you can trust me, both with your life, your sister’s and everyone else’s.”
If it were only my life at risk. But it wasn’t, and I was relieved that he understood that. Jasmine had been through too much for me to make that decision for her, and the same was true for everyone else. Still, I wanted him to know what his vow meant to me. I reached out, stroking his face. “Adrian, I—”
His hand clapped over my mouth with a suddenness that startled me. Then fear replaced my surprise when he rose and pulled me up with him, his heart hammering hard enough for me to feel the vibrations against my cheek.
“It can’t be,” he muttered in a barely audible whisper.
I pulled his hand away and turned around, looking at the only thing I could see in the darkness—the castle. Then I stared, my mind nearly going blank with disbelief.
How did Adrian know? was my first coherent thought. We’d been sitting well below the window, so he wouldn’t have been able to see the demon that now strode out from the castle and into the parking lot.
My next thought was a silent scream. How is he still alive? He should be ashes along with every other demon I’d killed in the Bennington realm!
But he wasn’t. I didn’t need to see the demon’s pale, pale skin or his long black hair to recognize him. The shadows emanating from him were horrifyingly familiar. They curled around the demon, haloing him with pure, impenetrable darkness that swallowed all the lights behind him.
Adrian yanked me down until we were both hidden beneath the window again. Speak of the devil and he shall appear ran through my mind. Adrian had just said how much he hated the demon who’d raised him, and now Demetrius was here. Alive. And looking as frightening and powerful as ever.
Both of us barely breathed as we waited to see if we’d been discovered. An agonizing few minutes later, the sounds of a car starting up and pulling away had Adrian peeking over the ledge.
“He’s gone,” he said with relief.
“How is he even alive?” I finally asked aloud, still reeling. “I should’ve killed Demetrius when I wiped out the Bennington realm!”
“I thought you did,” Adrian replied grimly. “But either he was too strong to be taken out by the slingshot, or he found a way out.”
Then he shook his head as if to clear it. When he looked back at me, his expression was harder than the stone walls that surrounded us. “We need to get through that gateway, Ivy. Now.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WE DIDN’T KNOW how soon Demetrius would return, so Adrian gave up any attempts to be stealthy. After checking my tattoo to make sure that it wasn’t glowing, he strode through the courtyard and up to the front of the house, flinging open the door as though he owned the place.
As expected, only the emergency lights were on, but compared to the tower, it was practically daylight inside. I followed Adrian, clutching the bag of grave dirt in my hand, as we entered the opulent castle.
A blazing fireplace lit up the large room, and under different circumstances, I would’ve loved to spend time there. As it was, I barely noticed the beauty around me. My quick, danger-evaluating glance registered that the walls were sand colored, the floor was Mexican tile and a huge chandelier hung between three balconies that overlooked the room. What held my full attention were the couches and chairs set up around the large fireplace, because none of them were empty.
“Who are you?” a wiry man wearing an early-nine
teenth-century costume demanded.
“Don’t worry, we’re not staying,” Adrian growled, catching my hand when I started to slow down. “Gateway, Ivy, remember?”
“There are at least a dozen people here,” I hissed. “We can’t leave them behind!”
“They might not be the only ones here,” he reminded me, his voice very low. “You want them close by if we find out that Demetrius didn’t come here alone?”
No, I didn’t. Costa had once been taken hostage by a demon. I didn’t want the same to happen to any of these people until we made sure that the gateway was here and it was demon-free.
“We’ll be back,” I told the crowd huddled by the fireplace, hurrying to keep up with Adrian’s strides. “Don’t anyone leave.”
As soon as I said it, I realized the brutal irony of my directive. They couldn’t leave. Not unless we helped them.
“You can’t go up there!” the costumed man called after us, but I didn’t stop. Neither did Adrian. He took the stairs two at a time once we reached the staircase, drawn to the second floor by a force I couldn’t sense or see. I kept glancing at my hand as I followed. No eerie golden glow, no pain. So far, so good.
The second-floor staircase landing opened into an even more gorgeous room, with stained glass windows and a curved ceiling decorated with row upon row of engraved wood. It had another fireplace, with more artfully arranged furniture in front of it. This time, no one was gathered around the fireplace, and Adrian went right for it, shoving the fancy couches and chairs out of his way. Then he held out his hand, and I was shocked to see it disappear as if rubbed out by a magic eraser.
“The gateway’s right here,” he said, drawing his hand back, which made it whole again. “But it’s so new, it doesn’t feel stable yet. Come here, Ivy. It could close up any minute.”
“I’m not going anywhere without those people,” I protested.
Adrian made it to me in two long strides. “I’ll come back for them,” he said through gritted teeth. “I can go through without you, but you can’t cross the gateway without me.”