Darkest Heart Page 16

  “How can you do that if you won’t take us there and you say we can’t even get inside without raising the alarm?”

  She glanced between us, studying me carefully from the tips of my wings down to my sheathed daggers. “There may be a better way. A way that might get you in and out of her castle with Uriel intact. But it’s a gamble.”

  Dommiel snorted. “My whole life is a gamble. Tell us.”

  Nadya nodded. “There’s a demon den in Moscow called Odin Shans.”

  “One chance?” Dommiel sneered. “One chance for what?”

  Nadya went on.

  “It’s one of many dens run by Vladek’s top men. And this one in particular is run by a friend of mine, a high demon named Skaal.”

  “Do you know him?” I asked Dommiel.

  He shook his head.

  “I could get you into Odin Shans to take part in their main attraction. The fighting pits. What is especially fortunate about this particular pit is that it is only for the greatest of warriors. And the winners are presented to Vladek’s number one concubine for her own personal entertainment.”

  “Lisabette,” I whispered.

  Nadya smiled, but it held more wickedness than benevolence. “Lisabette,” she repeated. “Who happens to like to pit great warriors against her own hellhounds.”

  “So,” Dommiel exhaled heavily. “I’ll have to beat the top warrior in Odin Shans’s fighting pit, then if I’m lucky I’ll be taken to Lisabette and will have to beat her beasts in order to gain a boon, which in our case will be the release of Uriel. Sounds easy enough.”

  “No.” Nadya shook her head. “You will not be fighting.” Her gaze flicked to me. “She will.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dommiel

  “No.” A demonic growl rumbled from my chest, a fierce lash in the quiet room.

  Nadya spoke calmly. “The pits at Odin Shans are for female fighters only.”

  “Then take us to another one,” I demanded, feeling flames lick up inside and around my heart at the thought of Anya in one of those fucking fight pits. I’d seen them. I’d seen the losers mutilated into tiny pieces and burned for the bloodthirsty crowd. I’d seen the winners hobble out, mutilated.

  The witch shook her head. “I only have one contact I can trust. And he runs Odin Shans. I’m not even sure he can get us into the arena, but he’s our one and only chance.”

  “Then contact him and set it up,” said Anya, stepping closer, the fire framing the edges of her wings.

  I imagined a blade slicing through to the bone, severing it and spilling her precious blood. I imaged her beautiful face being cut until it was unrecognizable. I imagined imploding into dark despair at the sight of her body being set aflame.

  “No,” I grated out a second time.

  Anya’s shocked gaze swiveled to me. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

  “I mean exactly what I said. You’re not fighting in a demon pit.”

  Her hands went to her hips. “What? You don’t think I can handle myself?”

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  She rolled her eyes—yes, rolled her fucking, gorgeous eyes at me—then turned back to Nadya.

  “Set it up. I’ll fight.”

  Launching off the couch because I couldn’t control the blaze scorching my insides, I grabbed her by the arm. “I said no, Anya,” I grated low and menacing. I knew I sounded like an overbearing prick, but I didn’t give a fuck. “It’s not happening.”

  “And I said, yes. It is.” Completely unafraid of my tyrannical nonsense. “I was one of Maximus’s elite warriors. I fought and killed three dragons the night of the Blood Moon. One with a little help. Trust me. I’m good at this, Dommiel. Especially in single combat.” She sighed and muttered, “And when I don’t have a collar and chain around my neck hindering me.”

  “Doesn’t matter what you say. Genevieve and her crew hired me to be in charge in my realm. And I’m telling you it’s not going to happen.”

  She laughed. “That’s not what they hired you for.” She went to jerk her arm free of me, but I couldn’t let go. “I’m doing it and that’s final.”

  I shifted my gaze to the witch, whose crystal gaze studied our heated exchange in steady silence.

  “Think of another way.”

  “You heard her say there was no other way,” cut in Anya, pushing my shoulder, then keeping her hand there to get my attention. “So I’m going to fight at Odin Shans.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  Her typically calm exterior shook with anger, stirring my own to furious heights.

  “Because I’d fucking die if I had to stand there and watch you get hurt!”

  My bellowing words died as both women stared at me. Anya’s wide eyes held something akin to shock before rolling into something softer. Sweeter. The crackling of the fire permeated the silence. I let Anya go and turned for the door, storming outside.

  Gulping a deep lungful of the frigid air, thankful for the sting, I pulled out a cigarette, lighting it in quick, sharp movements.

  I glanced up at the wispy clouds, a crescent moon grinning down in mockery.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, sucking in a long drag till my lungs burned. Pleasantly.

  Anya and Nadya’s voices were muffled through the wall, but my heightened hearing picked up on their back-and-forth conversation, a calm exchange of indecipherable mumbles. I leaned my back against a tree, trying to dim the persistent fire flickering in my chest.

  I was so angry. Raging. Furious. With myself.

  What had happened to me? When did I come to give a good goddamn about what happened to anyone else? And why her?

  It must’ve been twenty minutes of me stewing in my own miserable state before the door clicked open. Nadya stepped out first, her white cloak on and hood up. She glanced back at Anya coming out behind her before she disappeared into the woods.

  I flicked the butt of my cigarette into the snow at my feet and crushed it, tucking my hands into the front of my jeans, watching Anya draw closer on tentative steps. She leaned her back against the tree trunk next to me, gazing upward. I couldn’t help but notice the arch of her slender neck. Her skin was so luminous, so perfect, I wanted to touch and taste and devour. She called to my most base self, my most carnal needs. My most vulnerable place inside that tried to wall her out. Futilely.

  I’d been alive a long fucking time and had indulged in some seriously sexual and erotic events. But this was something different. This was a need that called to me beyond my body, beyond my mind. Maybe she’d somehow captured what part of my soul remained and kept it in her pocket so that every time she drew near I yearned to get closer, needing to reunite with that part of myself she’d stolen from me.

  “I haven’t seen the moon in ages,” she said, still gazing upward.

  The constant gray pall kept the sky hidden from those on earth.

  “Is she going to meet her contact?”

  “Yes. Well, she’s going to contact him by cell phone actually.”

  “Out here? There’s reception in these mountains?”

  “No.” She laughed. “Actually, she has a friend in the village, the waitress at the tavern. She uses her computer to contact those she needs to.”

  I waited for her to confront me about my abrupt and embarrassing confession. She didn’t. Following her gaze up to the night sky, I spied a glitter between thin clouds.

  “I miss the stars the most,” I admitted, more to myself than to her.

  I felt her stare. “The stars?”

  I pressed a hand to my abdomen where the ink of the constellations lay beneath. The stars had always been a guide for me, an unearthly beauty beyond the mortal world where heaven and hell waged their constant war.

  “Why the stars?” she asked with such a sweet voice I wanted to pin her to the tree and devour that sound with my mouth and tongue. Take it from her and keep it for myself. She stirred something so violent inside me now, I h
ad to force it down and school my features. Focusing on her question, I relaxed.

  “They’re thousands of miles away. But just a fraction of their light breaks apart the darkness. No matter what hell is waging on earth or even in the otherworld, they just continue to shine with benign indifference.”

  “Is there such a thing as benign indifference?”

  “Yes.” I watched her now.

  “Explain.”

  “They give off their light, completely unaware or heedless of the life and death taking place beneath them. It doesn’t matter to them whether the angels win this war. Or the demons. Whether the whole world burns. In the end, they’ll still be there. Constant and true.”

  Her eyes pooled with tears. Unsure what had caused them, I went to her anyway, incapable of having benign indifference where she was concerned. I knew that now.

  “What’s this about?”

  I trailed a finger on her cheek, catching and wiping away a tear as it slipped.

  “The darkness cannot win,” she whispered.

  “No.” I shook my head. “And do you think I want it to?”

  “Of course not. You believe in the beauty of the stars.” She smiled with a sad tilt of her brow. Then she looked up. “Do you want to see them?”

  “Them who?” I traced my finger down over her high cheekbone to the sculpted hollow toward her jaw.

  “The stars.”

  I caught on that, frowning at her.

  “How?”

  She laughed and shifted forward off the tree trunk, spreading her wings and beating them once in place. The snow spun on the ground in a tornadic whirl, effectively showing the strength of her wings.

  She wanted to take me up to the stars with her. She wanted to give me something I longed for. The thought punched me in the solar plexus, leaving me breathless. Finally, I shook my head.

  “I’m too heavy, even for your wings.”

  She laughed and stepped right up to me, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I can sift us most of the way and hold us aloft with my wings.” She tilted her head like she did when she was trying to puzzle something out. “You don’t think I’m strong enough?”

  “I know you’re strong enough.”

  I wrapped my arms around her, pressing her body to mine. She gasped.

  “I’m just wondering if this might be your way of trying to get rid of me.” I glanced up. “That’s a long fall.”

  She laughed again, most of the sound remaining in her chest. “I’d never drop you.” Her mouth flattened as she gripped me even tighter. “I’d never let you go.”

  She swallowed hard, her violet eyes full of an emotion that put me on edge, even as I wanted her to look at me like that for the rest of my fucking life.

  “Then take me to the stars, baby.”

  She locked her arms tight and beat her wings, staring upward. It took everything in me not to dip my head forward and taste her milk-white skin, but the last thing I wanted was for her focus to waver. We bent our legs and just as we lifted off the ground, she pulled us into the Void.

  A swift slip into the gray, no more than two blinks, and she snapped us out, beating her strong wings hard. They were indeed strong enough to hold us both as she pulled us higher through the damp, cold vapor of clouds, up until it was like we were standing on a sheet of white.

  “Look!”

  She stared up. She was in awe. Just like I was. Yes, the stars were surreal and amazing from this height. They solidified my belief that even in the apocalypse, all was right with the world. They didn’t just look closer from here, they felt closer. And so did she.

  While the impact of thousands of stars and that sliver of a moon surrounded us with cosmic delight, I was drawn to her light. The one so much more brilliant than anything the stars could manage. The one that kept calling to me, over and over again, reminding me what I’d been missing all my immortal life.

  She gasped, her eyes still searching the heavens, her wings beating in a steady rhythm, keeping us aloft. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “Yes,” I rumbled low. “So fucking beautiful.” My eye wasn’t on the stars.

  Her gaze lowered to mine, studying my face, particularly my mouth. I was rock hard in an instant, and my brain hazed over with words I knew would reveal more of my weaknesses. More of the true heart of me. Was she a witch? Capable of dragging out this softer side of myself, this vulnerable part I’d hid behind a shield of debauchery and violence for so long.

  “‘Arise fair sun’—my Anya.” I nuzzled into her hair close to her ear. “‘And kill the envious moon, who is sick and pale with grief.’” I dipped lower and licked the sweet spot below her ear. “‘That thou art far more fair than she.’”

  “Dommiel,” she said on a whispered breath, shivering in my arms, the wind lifting her hair away from her face.

  I couldn’t keep my mouth off her anymore, slanting mine over hers and delving deep. I needed to touch more of her, but I couldn’t move my hands without loosening my grip on her and plummeting to the ground.

  I pulled back, suddenly frustrated by my immobility. By my lack of control. Terrified by it.

  “Take us down.”

  She tensed, holding me tighter, but she eased up with her wings, slowing the tempo of their beats. We slipped down below the cloud cover, falling through the white vapor. She didn’t sift us down, holding me close, letting gravity pull us on a slow descent back to earth. It was a heady feeling, the sensation of falling, wrapped around Anya.

  I wasn’t such an idiot that I didn’t recognize that this mirrored what was happening to me. I’d fallen from a great height before. I’d lost the battle, the rebellion against the heavens, against my own brother, had lost my wings and fallen so far, so low. Only the darkness and loneliness to keep me company. And somehow, that didn’t even compare to the loss I’d feel if I’d lost Anya.

  Panic took root in my chest, quickening my pulse as we lowered to the height of the mountains of Elzeberge.

  “I’ve got you,” she whispered as treetops came into view.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Her knowing gaze sparked bright as we slowed, Nadya’s cottage coming into view, the plume of gray wood smoke unfurling above the treetops. Anya beat her wings more fiercely, maneuvering our landing to right outside her door. By now, we were both breathless, still holding on to one another.

  She loosened her hold, stepped back, then took my hand—my metal one—squeezing it as if it were real, and tugged me toward the cottage door. The idea that she reached for my metal hand, my deformation, cut another piece into my flesh, through my rib cage, stinging the sensitive organ beneath.

  She walked backward, holding my gaze, pulling me into the cabin. I didn’t care if she was a siren pulling me toward my own destruction, luring me to dark, watery depths where I’d breathe my last. Fine. Take my fucking breath. Take it all. As long as I got one last taste, I didn’t give a good goddamn. I needed her beyond reason or sanity or anything as mundane as air in my lungs. Nothing else mattered but the razor-sharp urge slicing away every part of my life that didn’t end with her.

  Once, I lost my soul when I battled my brother, falling from the favor of Elysium. My pride was lost when I switched allegiances and was branded a traitor to my own kind. And now, here I was, losing my pitiful black heart to an angel. No. Not just losing. Offering it on an altar, handing her the dagger, and willingly waiting for the killing cut. For there was no way where this ended well. Where I ended whole. I was sure of it as I was sure demons danced in hell. And they did.

  After this was over, whether we got Uriel out or not, there was no future where an angel like her walked side by side with a fiend like me. Fairy tales ended with a knight and his maiden finding their happily ever after. Snow White ran off with the prince, not the dragon. There were no tales where the villain won the maiden.

  Unless you consider Hades and Persephone. Hmm. Even then, he had to trick her, force her into captivity, and hold her hostage. T
he thought of binding Anya to me, feeding her my essence and keeping her bound to me flitted through my mind. That possessive impulse to take her and keep her rose its fierce head. The temptation to do what my demon instincts told me to do were strong, prominent, demanding. Why I wouldn’t listen, I had no fucking idea. Maybe because I didn’t want those angelic eyes to turn on me with hatred, revulsion, regret. The thought made something go cold inside of me, that little light she’d sparked since the day I saw her on Dartmoor—wind-tousled, stoic, and fiercely defiant.

  Making our way through the living area, she kept her guileless eyes on me, pulling me toward a bedroom.

  “Nadya said we could rest in this room for the night. She may be gone a while.”

  “Rest?” I arched a brow.

  Hades wasn’t such a bad guy. After all, he did let his queen go back home for six months of the year. I could do that. Could let her go for a while, take a little holiday now and then. As long as she came back to me. Would she?

  She let go of my hand and removed her jacket, then reached her arms around, unclasping the buttons beneath her wings. She pulled off her shirt, then her bra, letting them fall somewhere. I didn’t care where. Sitting on the bed, she unzipped her boots and shuffled them off, then stood and pulled off her pants. Her panties.

  I might spontaneously combust at the sight of my angel tearing her clothes off as fast as she could. And when did she become my angel? When had my subconscious inserted that little possessive pronoun?

  Hades was a fool. No fucking way could I let her go for six months. Not even a damn day.

  She stood before me. Naked. Beautiful. Mine.

  I shouldered out of my jacket but remained where I was. She stepped toward me, lithe and perfect. Then she dropped to her knees and reached for my belt buckle.

  “What are you doing, Anya?” Because if she was doing what I thought she was doing, I was definitely going to combust.

  “I’m not sure of the mechanics,” she said nervously, her fingers shaking, “but I want to do this for you.” Her angel eyes drifted up. “For me.”