17. Cassandra

CASSANDRA

You’re going to be okay,” I promise Ashe, wringing my hands as I wait for Kasar and Ambrose to help settle him on the back of one of the SUVs after Malachi opens the hatch. He looks awful. He was only in the archangel’s clutches for half a day, but the damage is extensive. I’m terrified that I may lose him yet.

I step up to him the moment the other vampires move away, looking him over and trying to triage his wounds. My mouth is dry and I’m cursing my lack of preparation. I knew he’d be hurt, but I never expected it to be this bad.

Ashe tugs me between his legs, suppressing a wince. Before I can protest, he runs a shaky hand down my hair and cups the back of my neck.

“I’m okay, mate,” he murmurs. His golden eyes are clear and bright. “He didn’t want me dead.”

I swallow, the lump in my throat painful. “Still. You’re badly hurt.”

Ashe smiles and rests his forehead to mine. “Nothing time and a good feeding won’t cure,” he promises. “Now, how the hell is Eris here? That is her, right?”

I hesitate, wanting him healed and rested before telling him anything, but the other vampires are returning and Ambrose is watching us. Another black SUV pulls up, the headlights turning off along with the engine. Josephine steps out, a large duffle slung over her shoulder.

“Yes. It’s her,” I answer, and gesture for Josephine to bring the supplies over. “I’ll tell you more if you let us look over you.”

Ashe sighs, dropping his head to my shoulder before limply waving a hand. “Go ahead and fuss, then.”

“Foolish boys, the lot of them,” Josephine says and we share an affectionate and aggravated look. “None of them like to think they’re hurt and could do with some help.”

The ground rumbles and Ashe slides from his position, standing and trying to put himself between me and the barn. He’s shaking, his arm already lowering towards his body as what little strength he has slips from him.

“Sit,” I tell him, trying to coax him to do my bidding. I cast an uncertain look at the barn, where Ambrose stands in front of the door. Malachi, Kasar, Lan, and the other vampires have joined him, forming a line between us and the two battling it out.

With a grunt, Ashe slumps back into sitting. When I raise a brow pointedly, he offers a sheepish grin.

“All right,” Ashe concedes, “some fussing may be necessary.”

Josephine sets the duffle next to him in the back of the SUV and opens it, the picture of serenity. As if the sounds coming from the barn are not growing more thunderous, the ground shaking as if giants are river dancing fifty feet from us.

“So, Eris?” Ashe asks, weakly grasping my fingers. I tangle our fingers together, desperate for the grounding he provides.

“Right.” I swallow and shoot another look at the barn. “According to her, the blade I’d used to try to kill the soul is meant to sever bonds and magical ties. It released her from the soul, and me, if I understand correctly. It also severed her possession of me, allowing her to materialize in a body of her own. She’s the one who found me after I fled—” my sob takes me by surprise. I fling my arms around his shoulders, squeezing him tight. He grunts but doesn’t protest. Instead, he wraps his arms around me, holding me as tightly as he can.

A metallic, coppery scent hits me and I freeze. “I’m hurting you,” I protest as I try to pull away.

“Cassandra,” Ashe growls my name, squeezing me tighter. “If you try to move, I will turn you over my knee and spank your ass.”

Blood rushes to my cheeks even as heat builds in my core. Embarrassment wins when Josephine’s snort preludes her speaking.

“You won’t be spanking her anytime soon unless you let us stop some of this bleeding. What in the blazes did the male think you were? A colander?”

Ashe reluctantly lets me go, giving me a crooked smile before turning the look onto Josephine. Despite his face being mottled with bruises, blood trickling from a split lip, his nose, and a gash above his left eyebrow, he’s still the most handsome male I’ve ever seen. His sandy-brown hair is unruly and has lumps of dried blood in it. His chest is bare, revealing more dark purple bruises across his muscular chest and abdomen. My own heart aches for my husband as unnatural protrusions suggest multiple broken bones. I also see what Josephine means.

He’s covered with multiple puncture wounds, some of them larger than others. Some of them have already stopped bleeding, but others still have blood sluggishly running down them.

“Oh, my love,” I breathe out, horrified all over again that I left him with Aeternaphiel.

Josephine motions me aside and begins wiping the worst of the blood away from him, muttering underneath her breath.

“I should never have left you,” I say, bringing his hand to my lips and pressing a kiss against his swollen fingers.

He growls, and I meet his fierce golden eyes. “I didn’t want you to stay. I could endure it, knowing you were safe.” Then those eyes soften, love and understanding replaces the determination. “I get it now, Cassandra. I know why you made the bargain.”

I bite back the tears, giving him a wobbly smile that is more painful than humorous. “And I understand just how badly I hurt you. Goddess, what you had to go through for a hundred and fifty years. I only had to endure the pain for hours. I don’t understand how you don’t hate me.”

Ashe chuckles before cutting off with a grunt as Josephine presses a sterile pad over a slice on his bicep. He shrugs her off, to her exasperation, but she primly sets the bandages down and leaves us to join the rest of the Nightshades.

“I could never hate you, not truly,” he assures me, gathering me close. “I hated the choice you made. Because I was selfish. I only thought about my pain. Not what you’d have to endure watching me suffer before dying.”

He brings my arm up to his lips, running them over my inner wrist and kissing my racing pulse. I press my wrist closer. “Feed, my love,” I urge. “You need it.”

It’s a testament to his injuries that Ashe doesn’t hesitate. He pulls his lips back, sinking his elongated fangs into my flesh with a tear-inducing tenderness. As he takes my blood, I reach for him through our bond. No longer am I met with a solid wall, but with his own soul reaching for mine. I take him into me even as he takes my blood into himself.

It’s bliss, a kind of love that is impossible to understand, only experience.

He pulls away after only a few swallows, licking once against the puncture wounds. The sight of his tongue traveling along my skin sets me on fire. He meets my eyes, his own pupils blown wide with matching desire.

“Later,” he promises me, beating my insistence that he drink more. We both know he needs more to heal. He eases me back, standing on his feet more easily than he had minutes before. His vitality is already returning. “We need to help Eris, if we can.”

I slide my hand around his back, satisfying my own need to support and embrace him. He drapes his arm over my shoulders, holding me tight. He’s steady as we walk to the line of vampires.

Malachi twists towards us; he’d found the time to clean his face of blood, the facial wound already healed.

A crash of unnatural thunder implodes the barn in front of us. I turn, hiding my face in Ashe’s chest as he bends over me, arm up to block potential debris from slamming into his face. Many of the other vampires have jolted backwards, crouching from the unexpected blast. The air is full of dust when we straighten.

Ambrose and Kasar had not flinched away, though they lower their arms to see better. I can’t see through the thick haze, the only light now coming from the partial moon above us and one SUV’s headlights.

I want to ask Ashe what he sees, but a moment later I don’t need to.

“Holy shit,” Ashe breathes, and I follow his gaze upwards, staring in awe at the figures rising above the destruction. “When did Eris get wings?”

To my shock, she does have wings. Blacker than the night sky beyond her, black whip-like tendrils have spawned from her back and undulate in the air. She’s larger than before, a deep red aura surrounding her. My hindbrain, the part of every living soul, recognizes the absolute danger she is, urging me to flee, hide, and hope she never sets sight on me.

Aeternaphiel is her opposite, wings of prismatic white feathers beat behind him. The golden sword he wields is almost too blinding to look at.

He bears down on Eris, aiming for her neck, but she parries his strike with her arm, the tip slicing deeply.

I can’t tear my eyes away. Fear builds in my chest. Not of the two celestial beings, but for her.

“Eris was holding back on us,” Malachi mutters, almost in awe.

A shudder goes through me as I picture Eris using this power while possessing my body.

“If she’s devoured his soul,” Lan begins, drawing my attention. He’s still watching the two fighting, a puzzled expression on his face. “How does she expect to kill him? Wouldn’t she need to return the soul to his body first?”

I blink, confused, and turn my attention back to them. My mind races, working through everything I knew about demons before I was possessed and what I learned from Eris.

“A demon in possession of a mortal’s soul binds them together,” I say in a measured tone, trying to work out what will happen. “If the demon dies, so do any mortals bound to them. If the mortal dies, they’re sent to the underworld.”

“So, another angel in hell?” Kasar asks, looking at me. I shrug.

“He wasn’t mortal, originally,” I remind him. “I have no idea what will happen if Eris kills him.”

The figures clash against one another, the crack of lightning rending the sky. Each blow sends a gust of wind towards us, buffeting us with dust.

“She’s losing,” Ashe states, voice urgent. “Look at her.”

I do, and I realize he’s right. Eris is slower, her strikes weaker. She’s taken multiple blows from Aeternaphiel’s celestial weapon, slices and cuts marring her arms and torso.

“Is she, though?” Lan’s voice is cool. “Or is she playing him?”

We’re a captive audience to the fight above us. All we can do is watch and speculate.

“She’s baiting him,” Malachi agrees. “She’s stronger than she’s letting him believe.”

“But not strong enough,” Ashe growls, the arm around my shoulders tightening. “She’s getting weaker.”

My gut churns, conflicted. Aeternaphiel swings his sword, the movement too fast to see. Eris blocks it, but only barely. Aeternaphiel’s sneer is visible as he leans in and shouts words I can’t hear. Eris shouts something back, using a language I can’t understand or recognize.

Whatever she’s said to him sends him reeling back, retreating out of arm’s reach. He looks horrified for a moment, stunned at whatever she told him. She laughs, the cackling sound belonging in the worst of nightmares. It snaps him from his daze, but Aeternaphiel is too late.

Eris launches herself forward. I slap my hands over my mouth, a scream trapped in the back of my throat as she arrows herself directly at the archangel. He manages to raise his blade in time. She doesn’t slow, even as the blade pierces her body and bursts from her back. She grasps him in her talons, the black tendrils wrapping themselves around Aeternaphiel, binding him to her.

He struggles against her hold, his wings hampered and unable to move. They begin to plummet from the sky.

“She never planned to survive,” I whisper, my hands sinking from my face as understanding dawns.

As if the wind carries my words to her, Eris turns her head towards me. Aeternaphiel still struggles against her hold. I swear our eyes meet across the distance. That second of time stretches into eternity.

Then, before they slam into the devastation of the barn, a burgundy light explodes from them. It barrels towards us, the wind so intense it pushes us backwards. I’d have fallen had Ashe not braced me against him. Even Kasar is forced to a knee to stay upright. Scorching heat and sulfur envelops us when the light reaches us. Echoes of hellhounds and tortured screams blend with the rush of the wind.

As quickly as it appeared, the light is gone. The sounds have disappeared, the silence left being ear-piercing. Multicolored spots float across my vision and a primal, animalistic part of me sighs in relief. Whatever that was, that part of me is grateful to have avoided that fate. Even the once noisy insects have quieted, unwilling to emerge from hiding for now.

“They’re gone.”

Ambrose’s voice is quiet, more unsteady than I’ve ever heard from the vampire king. I blink rapidly, trying to peer through my spotty vision to where I’d seen Eris and Aeternaphiel last.

All of us stare at the ruined barn, the world finally settling around us. Slowly, one cricket begins their performance, others quickly following. Collectively, we seem to take a breath and collect ourselves.

Distant sirens wail, growing closer. We turn back towards the front of the estate, the house now swallowed up by violent flames. Any trace of magical fire is gone, leaving the house and all of its treasures to be devoured by the blaze.

Ashe leans heavier against me, and I catch him around the waist. “Ashe?” Concern replaces everything else.

He gives me a pained smile. “Nothing a bit of rest won’t take care of.”

Ambrose waves Kasar and Josephine towards us. “Get back to the house,” he orders us, the strong, stoic vampire king of the Barrows once more. “Malachi and I will handle the authorities. Have Deidre ready to manage the newspapers. Lan, monitor the police lines and chatter. We need to know who, if anyone, knew that William Egress was an archangel. We need to be ready for any fallout with those justicars.”

“Oh, what fun,” Lan drawls but Ambrose ignores him. He shifts his attention to me.

“Heal your mate. Then I want you to record everything you know about demons and what may have occurred tonight. I need to know if there will be potential consequences of Eris’s and Aeternaphiel’s disappearances and presumed deaths.”

I manage to jerk my head in an approximation of a nod, my mind already oscillating between caring for Ashe and deliberating over what Eris’s fate is. My mate distracts me when his breath tickles the shell of my ear just before he speaks.

“You can solve that mystery tomorrow. I know exactly what I need from you to heal.” His words are warm and smooth, promising pleasure.

I turn my head towards him, our faces inches apart. “Behave,” I chide him before prompting him to walk towards the SUV Kasar has started. Josephine sits in the front passenger seat, watching us with amusement.

“Why?” Ashe’s question is thick with humor. “It’s so much more fun to tease you.”

Something about his words breaks something tense inside of me. Relief and understanding that it’s finally over, that I’m finally free and we’re both alive, has me tossing my head back and laughing bright. I feel so light, so much happiness, I swear Ashe is the only thing keeping my feet on the ground.

I reach to open the backdoor for us and peck a kiss against his smiling lips. “If you be good for me, I promise you’ll like the reward.”

“Well then,” Ashe says, suddenly completely serious. He releases me and gets into the back seat on his own. He reaches forward between the seats, slapping Kasar on the shoulder. “Let’s get going, brother. I’ve got to prove that I can be the perfect patient to my mate.”

Rolling my eyes, I get in the other side. Kasar meets my gaze in the rearview mirror as he pulls out. Amusement and camaraderie fill them, and I grin before buckling in and looking at my mate.

Goddess, I’m so glad to have tripped over my own feet in front of this male so many years ago.