Chapter 8

Leviathan kept glancing at me,making me feel weird.

Finally, he asked. "What was that?"

Where was the flirty tone when you needed it? Ugh.

"It's none of your business." I reached into my bag and grabbed the damn potion. Yup, I had forgotten the last dose and I was now paying for it.

I drank it, knowing it would instantly cut off my aura and the angels wouldn't be able to find me.

For now.

"Angels were after you, sweetheart. They came after me. That is my business. What did you do? Steal something from them? A magical book? A powerful weapon?"

I glared at him. "Just shut it." The sting in my arm increased and I bit my tongue not to cry out.

"You're hurt," Leviathan said, casting more glances my way. It wasn't a question.

"I'm fine," I said, my voice shaking. "It'll heal." It hurt like hell, and if he could feel that, then great.

He had fought alongside me just now, no questions asked. It was probably the bond and the fact that if they hurt me, he would hurt too, but that was okay.

At least both of us had escaped.

Now, if only I had something for the pain.

"Sweetheart, how bad is it?"

"Not bad, it just stings." I settled low on the seat, resting my head back. The fight must have exhausted my stamina, because suddenly, all I wanted was to sleep. "I'll close my eyes for a moment …"

I could have sworn I had blinked, but suddenly, Leviathan was on the other side of the car, picking me up in his arms.

"Shit, sweetheart," he muttered. "This doesn't look good."

I opened my mouth to interject, but my tongue was heavy, and I couldn't speak. My head swam and it hurt when Leviathan moved me, taking the steps to … somewhere.

I couldn't keep my eyes open, but I got a peek of a shoddy staircase and a door with some random number. Then Leviathan deposited me on a soft mattress.

"Let me take a look, sweetheart." He reached for me and stripped off my jacket. A string of curses flew from his lips. "I can feel the pain, Ariella, but this is much worse than I thought."

"I …" I tried speaking. I didn't even know what I would say.

Ignoring him, I turned on my side, and curled into a ball. My body shook, my arm throbbed, but I was too tired to do anything about it. All I wanted was to sleep.

"I need help," Leviathan said. When I peeked again, he was on the phone. "Use one of your coins and open a portal. Now or she'll die, and I'll die with her!"

He lowered the phone, extended his right hand, and closed his eyes. A moment later, a shimmering black light formed around his fingertips. It grew and spread, forming a thin, oval veil.

A woman stepped through it.

The veil poofed away and the woman hovered over me. "What happened?" she asked.

I tried asking her who she was, what she was doing, tell her that I didn't like strangers touching me, but no words came out. Only some grunts and groans, and then a scream when the pain suddenly stung too much.

"She was attacked by angels," Leviathan said through gritted teeth. "I think the blade they use to cut her was poisoned."

The woman stuck her finger on my wound and I screamed again. She then took her finger to her mouth and licked it. "It is poison, but I believe it was to make her lose consciousness, to immobilize, not to kill."

"They wanted her alive, not dead," Leviathan observed. The woman nodded. "Can you do something about it?"

She offered him a smug half-grin. Where had I seen that before. "You wouldn't have called me if you thought I couldn't."

The woman pressed her hand on top of my wound, closed her eyes, and started humming. Dark red and black lights shone from between her palm and my skin. At first, the sting hurt more and I even heard Leviathan's grunt as he endured the pain. I was too far gone to care.

But as she healed me, I felt more aware, more awake, and the pain stung like a bitch. Smoke drifted away from her hand to the ceiling.

"That's the poison," she said. "Now we need to heal this cut." A dark red light shone and I could feel my skin stretching and closing.

I bit down on my tongue not to scream.

Suddenly, too aware, I sat up.

"Easy there, sweetheart," Leviathan said. I glanced at him, seated beside me on the bed. He looked terrible.

I stared at the woman standing beside the bed. She was a lot younger than I first thought. "You're healing me."

She nodded. "I'm not done yet." She showed me her hands. "May I?"

I hesitated. Before, I had been barely conscious, but now? Should I trust her? Well, if she or Leviathan wanted me dead, they had missed a fantastic opportunity.

I glanced at my arm—my skin was bloody, so was my jacket and the bedsheets. Even Levi's hands were smeared with my blood, but there was only a thick, red line cutting the side of my bicep, a good three inches.

I nodded.

She rested a hand over the wound and infused it with more of her magic. "I don't think I'll be able to make it disappear completely, but it'll look like an old, thin scar."

She stared at me with bright blue eyes. I knew these. They looked just like Leviathan's. I glanced between them. The woman had the same black hair, but she wore it long, to the middle of her back, the same fair skin, the same straight nose.

"You're related," I said.

"I'm Lacey, Levi's little sister."

"Levi?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's what I call him." She leaned closer and half whispered, "He doesn't really like it, not since we were kids. I call him that mostly to irritate him."

"Maybe I should call him that too," I joked. He irritated me with sweetheart. Now it was my turn.

"You definitely should," she said with a small smile. "Now, I'm almost done. Once I take my magic away, the adrenaline will fade almost instantly and the exhaustion will win. Don't fight it. You need to rest to completely heal."

I didn't like the idea of passing out with two strangers, but why go through all the trouble of healing me if they wanted to kill me? It made no sense.

True to her word, Lacey withdrew her hand and a wave of dizziness fell over me. I felt the bed sway under me, and a big hand cradle my head to the pillows.

I blinked, fighting it, but there was no winning.

"Rest, sweetheart," was the last thing I heard before drifting to sleep.

* * *

"I shouldn't have told you."

"No, I'm glad you did, Levi … even if it took hours to make you spill."

I came to and recognized Leviathan and Lacey's voices. I peeked from under my lashes, but all I saw was the heavy curtain over the window and faint light streaming from underneath. Was it still the same afternoon, or the next morning?

Leviathan groaned. "You're so annoying."

"If I were, you wouldn't care," Lacey said.

They were somewhere behind me. I kept my breathing slow, lest they knew I had woken up. For some reason, I didn't want them to know yet.

"All right then. You're my favorite sister."

"I'm the only one you have!"

"That we know of. Do you really believe father doesn't have offspring out in the wild? Most higher demons can't keep their junk in their pants."

"You can."

He scoffed. "I don't, actually. I'm just careful not to get anyone pregnant. Can you imagine me as a father? I'll be worse than our old man."

A pause. "I doubt that."

"Enough." Leviathan sounded upset. "About this damn bond, can you break it?"

Shit, he was trying to get rid of me. If he did, he probably wouldn't help me get my wings back. I could always call my friends, I knew that, but I felt so embarrassed. They were all powerful, and I was nothing more than an ordinary human now.

No, I would rather a stranger see this side of me.

Another pause. "With my magic, I can feel the bond. Just a faint string pulling you to her."

"It's anything but faint. Can you break it?" he asked again, his tone impatient.

"I think so, but I will take a proper ritual," Lacey said. "I would have to go back to the coven and prepare and?—"

I stirred then, interrupting their conversation. If she was going to explain to him how to get rid of me, I would rather he didn't hear it.

I turned in bed, with a fake yawn, and faced them. Levi and Lacey were seated on the second bed, a bag from Dunkin' Donuts among them.

"Good morning, sweetheart," Leviathan said, flipping the charming switch. "Hope you had a good night"s sleep."

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. "Is it morning?"

Lacey nodded. "We took turns watching over you, but I think you're all healed."

I looked at my arm. A thin, barely-there line cut across the side of my biceps, looking more like an old scar than a recent poisoned wound.

"Thank you," I told her.

"Don't thank me." She smiled. "Thank this knucklehead. If Levi had taken another ten minutes to call me, I'm not sure I could have extracted the poison and reversed its effects."

I looked at Leviathan. He stared at me for a second, and when I opened my mouth to thank him, he cut me off. "Here." He lowered his to-go coffee cup, grabbed another one from the nightstand and offered it to me. "You like black coffee, don't you, sweetheart?"

I almost cringed at the sweetheart thing. He had been so serious talking to Lacey just now, and before when he was saving me, and yet, he was right back to being a charming jerk.

I took the cup from him. "Thanks, Levi, but I prefer it with plenty of sugar."

Leviathan narrowed his eyes at me, visibly irritated. "Don't call me that."

"Why? Does it bother you? Then don't call me sweetheart."

"I"ll call you what I want, sweetheart."

"Then get used to it, Levi."

He groaned, and stifling a chuckle, Lacey cut him off before he could say anything else. "I have sweetener." She lifted a couple of packets from inside the bag.

"That will work." I got them from her.

A tense silence stretched between us while I drank my coffee, got one of the donuts from the bag, and we finished our breakfast. Thankfully, they didn't ask about the angels and why they were after me, and since I didn't want to answer anything, it was only fair I didn't ask anything either.

Even though I wanted to ask a lot of things.

Who was their father? Was he as bad as they made him sound? I mean, they mentioned he was a higher demon, like Leviathan—no, Levi—and all demons were terrible, but maybe evil beings weren't so evil to their children?

I remembered something about a coin and portal and …

All right, there was something I wanted to know. "So, you're a witch?"

Lacey took a sip of her coffee and nodded. "Half demon, half witch."

"What coven?"

"A very old, and reclusive coven that doesn't like to get mixed up with the rest of the supernatural world."

I frowned. "But here you are, helping an angel."

"Well, they don't need to know everything I do, or don't do." She winked at me, flashing me a wide, bright smile. Damn, she was as beautiful as her brother. Seeing the two side-by-side was unsettling.

The fact that she didn't tell me which coven she was from didn't escape me. These reclusive witches didn't want to be found.

"I don't think I've heard of many witches with healing gifts," I said.

"It's rare, especially in my coven," she said, looking uncomfortable. Averting her gaze, she stood and threw her empty cup in the trash can under the desk. "So, what's the plan now?"

"You're going back to your coven, and we'll continue our road trip." Levi stood up too and grabbed the empty food packets from the bed.

"I left a letter to my mentor. I told her I won't be back for a few days. I can tag along for now."

Levi shook his head. "No way in hell."

I frowned. What was so bad about her joining us? A half demon, half witch going after my wings with us? Another magical being on our side. Because, really, with me so powerless, our odds of defeating whoever was holding my wings was meager.

I stood. "Why not? You should come."

Lacey beamed, looking younger. If I was twenty-three, Levi looked like twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight, she had to be nineteen, at most. I had been through a lot by the time I was nineteen, and I knew many impressive fae, witches, and whatnot who at nineteen led supernaturals through war.

I glanced from a happy Lacey to a miserable Levi. His hands were clean, and his clothes crisp. I was sure he had taken a shower and changed sometime during the night.

I wanted to be clean too.

I found my duffel bag on the desk. "But before we go, I want a shower and to change into clean clothes."