Chapter 7

CHAPTER7

Flame ripples across the sword. It throws light across the looping, twisting body of the snake. It illuminates the Reaper from below, casting the rest of the barn into shadow.

I can’t move. Ashen’s beauty is equal parts devastating and terrifying. His skin is radiant in the light from his blade. His short, dark hair falls across his forehead. Smoke pools around his feet. His eyes burn with the darkest flame, boring into me like twisting knives. A muscle ticks in his clenched jaw as his gaze bounces between my eyes.

My heart surges against my bones. Lightning claws through my brain, striking at my skull.

Asshat Reaper Motherfucker. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have to suffer this constant pain. I wouldn’t have endured a month of torture. I wouldn’t be changing, maybe dying. I’d have fucking fingernails.

To add insult to injury, I’m now covered in gore and the Reaper looks pristine, as usual. The sleeves of his black shirt are rolled to his elbows. The edges of his tattoos peer out at me from his open collar. Not a spot of blood is visible on his tailored black pants and his polished brogues.

“Vampire-”

I bare my fangs in a silent hiss.

“Lu-” he tries again, taking a small step toward me.

I scramble back, my fingers still clutched around the handle of the dagger that impales the severed head of the snake. I draw it behind me and snap my arms forward in Ashen’s direction so that the head slides off the blade. He dodges the flying hunk of snake meat and I glare at him in disappointment. I cock my right arm back in a threat to throw the dagger.

“Angelwing,” he says, his voice thin with a note of urgency. I halt my hand before I let the blade loose. “Are you sure there’s not still poison on the blade?”

I glance at the dagger. Hmm. He might be right, though I suspect he wouldn’t leave such a risky, lethal poison to chance. I’m pretty confident he would have made sure it was clean before it found its way back to me. But just in case, I don’t think I’m ready to let go of such a valuable weapon. He’s fast, so there’s a good chance I might miss. And there is no fucking way I’m going back to the Shadow Realm.

The red gleam of rage in my pupils reflects across the silver-infused steel of my blade. I slide my gaze back to Ashen and narrow my eyes. The light within them brightens in a threat. And he’d better fucking get the gist of it from my super expressive face that I need to work on. I’m not saving the chance of poison on the dagger for his benefit, but for my own.

How did you find me? I ask, gesturing with my blade.

“I will always find you, vampire,” he says.

That is one promise I actually believe he will keep. Ashen leans a hint forward as though preparing to take a step. I point the tip of the kaiken toward him.

Stay the fuck away, I whisper, every word slow and purposeful so there can be no doubt what I said, even without a sound. Ninmen Elsal, I breathe, hoping each puff of air from my lungs is close enough to a whisper that it will manifest a summoning. A reckoning.

The Reaper tilts his head. I know he understands the translation of my ancient words, but he doesn’t know what they mean. I give him a vicious smile and a crease appears between his brows. “What are you doing out here?” he asks.

I blink in irritated confusion and gesture toward the twitching mass of dead snake behind him with the toe of my blade. Killing your little pet, you moron.

“I told you to stay inside.”

What the fuck are you talking about? I demand, this time backing up my soundless whisper with bits of sign language that I can manage around my kaiken. Even though I know he can’t understand the words I make with my hands, I’m confident he’ll get the point.

“My note.”

As if that makes any more sense to me. My fury ratchets to new heights as I watch Ashen’s brows draw together and his eyes skim over my body. I’m only wearing a thin white tank top that now clings to my torso with sweat and snake blood. My navy sleep shorts leave little to the imagination. My legs are coated with dirt and blood spatter, bruises and cuts. Ashen meets my hard stare again and I see a thin thread of rage brighten the flame in his eyes.

I rise up from the floor, holding my arms out wide. I harpoon the Reaper with my fiercest glare. My hands quake with anger. What is it, Ashen? I whisper. My silent breath spills through my sarcastic smile in a cloud. Don’t you like your masterpiece?

A flash of fury blazes across the Reaper’s face.

No? You don’t like what you made of me? Well, FUCK YOU, Reaper.

“Your journal…” he says, trailing off as his eyes cascade down my body and drop to the floor, scanning the space around us. He finds the book where I left it in the dust by the tires. Ashen pins me with a dark look and strides over to retrieve the journal from the floor. He flips through the pages and looks back to me. “Where is the note?” he asks, his voice low and quiet, as though the resignation I hear within it is weighing down the tone.

Where it belongs, I say, pointing to the door behind me with the dagger. In the fire.

“So... so that’s it? You would believe my sister? Ember, who threatened you? Who took Aglaope from you? Who brought Molpe to you in chains, and dragged her soul down the halls of House Urbigu? Who snatched you from the Living Realm and burnt Ediye’s house to the ground?”

I see the exact moment when all the colors of Ashen’s eyes seem to collapse into an abyss of despairing shadow. The flame in his pupils snuffs out for the instant before he blinks. It’s so fast that I almost doubt it even happened. As soon as his eyes are open again, the fire is back, an impenetrable heat that keeps his secrets safe.

“You never did trust me, did you. You were honest about that,” Ashen says, tossing the journal at my feet. His jaw hardens. “And so was I. It was the truth, Lu. Every word.” I hear his grip tighten across the handle of his sword. My gaze darts to the movement and I notice something new; tattoos across his fingers, black letters outlined with shimmering gold. They are the vertical lines and chevrons and triangles of an ancient language that very few of us still know. Sumerian. They’re dates. Two days ago, specifically. I meet his eyes again, my own narrowing to slits as I run through every idea of what they could possibly mean.

We stand in silence for a moment that feels as long as five thousand years, staring at one another. Between the snake and now this strained encounter with the Reaper, the stress is starting to erode my hold over my broken body. My heart thrums too quickly in my ears. The sweat rolls down my spine. I want him to leave before I can’t keep myself together anymore.

You’re sorry. Good for you. That means nothing to me. Now get the fuck out, I whisper, gesturing to the door again.

My skin feels like a film of fire over a pool of ice water, an impossible, uncomfortable clash of sensations. I resist the urge to press the fingers of my free hand to my temple as needles of pain scratch at my eyes. I don’t want to appear weak. But my palms are starting to numb. I can’t feel my toes. My left eye twitches. And none of this goes unnoticed beneath the veil of Ashen’s gaze.

“Regardless of what you think of me, you need my help,” Ashen says, his voice still low and quiet. He takes a small step forward and I take an unsteady one back. “I can take you now.”

You’re not fucking taking me anywhere, I whisper through pumping breaths. My vision starts to spin. I keep my eyes on Ashen as though he’s a shark circling in a raging surf. There’s no way I’ll be able to fight him off, not even with a blade of poison. Frustrated tears sting at my eyes. Ninmen Elsal, I breathe, trying to restrain the urge to weep.

“Vampire-”

My legs buckle and I fall to one knee, fighting with all my strength against the numbness that’s climbing up my calves. Ashen takes another step forward and I tilt my head back. I press my knife to my neck. Surprise ignites the flame in Ashen’s pupils as his gaze locks on my dagger.

I’m not going back, I mouth, shaking my head. I wish I could scream it. If these are my last words, they would split the night. They would carve the darkness in two and spill a final burst of furious light into the world.

I don’t try to hide the desperation on my face anymore. Tears flow across my cheeks. Ashen leans his weight into another tentative step but I press the dagger into my skin. I smell my blood, as I have so many times in these last days. I keep my eyes on the Reaper and drive the point of the kaiken harder into my flesh.

I know from the look on his face that Ashen cleaned the blade.

There is no Angelwing here. What a fucking master of deception he must think he is. But I am not going to convince myself into falling for lies anymore.

You asshole. I knew it. There is no poison.

“Lu, put it down.”

Go back to Davina. I will not go anywhere with you.

A flash of sparks burst in the flame within his eyes. “Christ, Lu. I am trying to-”

A crack cuts off his words. A pinpoint of light tears time and matter. Lightning crawls away from the center, slow and consuming. It eats through the darkness of the barn and leaves black space behind, as dark and cold as the center of the universe. Distant suns glitter, galaxies spin. Gravity tightens its grip around us. And from the heart of the dark steps Ediye, her eyes a pool of comets and stars. Her midnight skin glows and hums in rage.

“You owe me a promise. I said to bring her back unharmed, or I would come for you,” Ediye booms, her voice shaking the planks of wood and the broken tools around us in layers of sound. “Leave or I will see your debt fulfilled, Reaper.”

I look to Ashen. He stands as unyielding as a block of granite. But I think I see a swirl of sorrow deep within the fury that resides in his eyes.

“I am trying to help her,” he says, his voice low and measured. His sword is in his hand but there is only the dimmest flame on his blade and in his eyes, little more than a candle in a cold room.

“You’ve helped enough already.”

The demon and the witch stand unmoving, immobilized like pillars of stone. I force myself to cling to consciousness as my gaze darts between them. I already know that Ashen will not back down. But when his gaze hooks on mine and doesn’t let go, I know he won’t attack her either, even though he could. Despite Ediye’s power, he could still kill her. She doesn’t have the means to take his life for good.

But she does have the means to take it fornow.

“I’ll give you to the count of five,” Ediye says.

Ashen keeps his eyes on mine. I see the flame brighten in his pupils but he doesn’t move.

The stars behind Ediye stretch as though we are gravity and we bend their light to our will. They become blades of constellations in the night. Their points all fix to Ashen.

“One.”

“Lu, I-“

There is no number two.

There are only spears of light and the blood that coats them.

Ashen falls to his knees, pierced by two dozen shards of stars.

I drop my dagger. Tears pepper my cheeks with their sting as Ashen’s gaze leaves mine. His eyes fix to the blood that flows from his body. He turns to me once more, then falls unmoving to the floor.

You said you’d give him to five, I sign to Ediye as she comes to stand beside me. She picks up my blade and journal as we watch Ashen’s body turn to cinders and collapse into a heap of gray dust.

“He lied,” she says as she takes my hand and pulls me to my feet, gripping my shoulder as she guides us toward the black swath of night sky that stretches before us. “So did I.”