Chase the Dark (28 page)

“Piper, I—”

He flew back so fast he seemed to vanish. Then he crashed into the bar, and Ash was standing in front of him, a hand fisted in the front of the incubus’s shirt, the black dragon mask once again hiding his expression. Piper stood there, gaping, her mind scrambled into incoherency.

“If you touch her again,” Ash snarled, pressing his fist into Micah’s throat, “if you so much as
look
at her, I will rip off your balls and feed them to you. Do you understand?”

Micah gasped and choked, half-suffocated. He gave a jerky nod.

Ash, the air around him sizzling with power, released the incubus and stepped back. Micah slowly pushed himself up, looking from Ash to Piper to a spot directly beside her. Lyre stepped into her peripheral vision, hovering protectively at her side.

Micah straightened. His chin lifted and that satisfied, cat-like smile claimed his lips, cold and uncaring. He slid a look between Piper and Lyre and cocked his head, his expression scathing.

“He won’t be as good as me,” he mocked.

Ash lunged for him. Micah barely managed to slide out of range, his derisive laughter ringing behind him as he ducked onto the dance floor and vanished in the writhing crowd.

“Fuck, I hate him,” Lyre growled. “Sleazy maggot.” He turned to Piper. “Whatever he said, Piper, ignore it. The guy is a freaking slime ball. A really well-disguised slime ball.”

“Is—is he?” she forced out. Her insides burned with everything she was feeling.

“Yeah,” Lyre said, glaring at the spot where Micah had vanished. “Sex isn’t good enough for the little prick. For a few years now, he’s been trolling around looking for the
greatest challenges
.” His voice went high with contempt for the last bit. “He’s all about the conquest now, trying to find women no other incubus can score and seducing them.”

She swallowed hard and wondered what kind of expression was on her face. Ash was watching her. His mask hid his expression, but there was a sad, knowing look in his eyes.

“And the sick bastard,” Lyre went on obliviously, “he gets off on dumping them as painfully as possible once he makes his score. Micah has a streak of cruelty a mile wide, but of course, being an incubus, humans can’t tell.”

Well, that explained a lot. Micah had gone after her because, as the sheltered virgin daughter of the Head Consul, she’d been a challenge worthy of his efforts. She stared at nothing, reeling from the emotional blows. So nothing about their three months together had been real. Nothing at all.

“So whatever sweet talk he was making,” Lyre told her, finally turning toward her, “forget about it. He’s not worth a second of your time, and . . . Piper, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice too high-pitched.

“You’re wound tighter than a—uh, you don’t want to hear that analogy,” he corrected quickly. “You’re really tense. What’s wrong?”

“N-nothing.”

Lyre looked at Ash then back at Piper. “What did Micah say to you? Whatever it was, he was lying, you know.”

Her throat worked. “I know.”

“So then what . . .” He pushed his mask up and gave her a very long look. Horror slowly traced itself across his face. “Piper . . . no way. Micah was . . .?”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. Humiliation turned her insides to ash.

Lyre looked at her a moment longer, then turned to Ash. “Let’s kill him.”

“Planning on it.”

“Now?”

“We have to deal with the Sahar first.”

Lyre swore. His expression was darker than a thundercloud. His eyes were nearly black. Ash’s arms kept flexing like he could barely restrain himself. She wondered dully when he’d put his black skull shirt back on.

“Did Lilith come through for us?” she asked.

“Yes,” Lyre said. “We have the address.”

“Are we doing it now?”

“That’s the plan.”

Ash nodded and headed toward the exit. Lyre turned to follow but Piper hesitated. As her roiling emotions began to settle, soothed by Ash and Lyre’s fury on her behalf—gratifyingly homicidal fury—she wondered why Micah had sought her out. He’d obviously recognized her even with the mask. Had he seen her fighting in the ring? Why would he come talk to her, pretending heartbroken remorse? To toy with her emotions? To see how much more pain he could wring out of her? Maybe re-seducing a girl he’d already broken was his latest brand of challenge. She pressed a hand against her chest where his had rested, wondering if he’d been imagining breaking her heart again even as he felt its beat.

She pressed her hand a little harder. Then she dipped her fingers into the top of her shirt.

Terror seized her.

“Ash,” she screamed. At her cry, he whipped around so fast he was a blur of motion. “He took it!
That lying bastard stole it from me!
”

Ash spun and charged into the crowd before the last word was out of her mouth.

She unlocked her muscles and sprinted after him. Lyre’s shocked expression shattered into frightened fury and he ran after her. She followed the path Ash had bulldozed through the mass of people, leaping over fallen dancers without slowing. The draconian moved without hesitation and, in half a minute, the mob was forcing an opening to let him through. Piper and Lyre ran after him, struggling to keep up as the gap in the crowd closed like breaking waves.

Ash led them back into the posh sitting room where they’d first met Lilith, but he didn’t stop. He ran right through the room and down the hall behind it. Piper sprang over the coffee table, her heart slamming into her ribs. If Micah got away . . . She couldn’t even consider the possibility. She might as well write her life off as totaled. Complete high-speed, head-on-collision totaled.

At the other end of a long hall, Ash slammed through a door and charged up a flight of metal stairs. She had no idea how he knew where to go—up? Why would Micah go up? She ran after Ash, too breathless to shout a question. The stairs were followed by another flight, and Ash drew ahead, too fast to match. Piper careened upward, Lyre on her heels. Another door slammed open above them.

When she reached the landing, the threshold framed the flat roof of the warehouse, fifty yards from end to end. She ran out into the cool night, terrified and bewildered.

Ash stood at the far edge of the roof, staring upward.

“What are you doing?” Piper gasped as she and Lyre rushed up to him. “Where’s Micah? Where next?”

Ash didn’t look at her, merely stared upward, face hidden by that damn mask. He slowly raised an arm and pointed to the sky. Piper stared at the velvet black night. Then she saw it: blinking white and red lights in the sky, hundreds of yards away. A helicopter.

“No,” she choked. “Micah is—?”

“The trail ends here,” Ash said.

Lyre swore, his voice low and intense.

“But—but—” She whirled on Ash and grabbed the front of his shirt, forcing him to face her. “You can fly, can’t you? Use your bloody wings and get the Sahar back.
Get it back!
”

“I can’t out-fly a helicopter.”

“Try!”

“I know I can’t.”

“Do something!” she screamed in his face.

He jerked away with a snarl. He ripped the dragon mask off, giving her a brief glimpse of his eyes, black with rage and desolation, before he smashed the delicate ornament on the cement roof at his feet. He turned away from her, motions jerky with suppressed violence. The air crackled with power. Piper backed away, teeth clenched with desperation even as she gave him room to regain control. The blinking lights of the helicopter shrank in the distance—too far to chase, too fast to catch, impossible to track.

“It’s gone,” she whispered. She looked at her hands, knuckles bruised from her fights. All for nothing.

The Sahar was gone.

CHAPTER 12

T
HEY
stood on the roof in silence. There was nothing to say.

She was a fool. An idiot. A stupid girl blinded by a handsome face and charming smile. Micah, that lying bastard, had gotten the better of her twice. If only she hadn’t let herself hope. If only she’d walked away as soon as she’d recognized him, told him to take his apology and shove it. Instead, she’d clung to the insecure, naïve hope that maybe he’d cared about her after all.

She swallowed a bitter laugh. Cared about her? Never. He’d just been a wolf hunting the most well-guarded lamb.

“Someone must’ve hired him,” Lyre muttered. Piper started—it had been silent for so long. Ash didn’t move, standing a few feet away, his back to them, his shoulders rigid with tension. Every few seconds, he would flex them like a weight was crushing him and he couldn’t find a bearable way to hold it.

“What?” she asked dully.

“Someone must’ve known about your past with him, so they hired him to find you. Who better to track you down than someone who knew you and could get close to you?” He laughed bitterly. “And the last person anyone would expect to be hiring out. Fucking mercenary.”

She choked on the tearful apology trying to claw out of her throat. Apologizing wouldn’t fix anything, and if she were Lyre, she would never forgive such a stupid mistake. No point in asking.

“Someone with money,” Lyre went on, scrubbing a hand through his hair with unnecessary force. “Not just anyone can hire a helicopter. Must be one of the warlords.”

Piper grimaced.
Warlord
was another term for the heads of the ruling daemon families.

Lyre was silent for a moment. “We’re fucked.”

Giving up on composure, Piper sank to a crouch and pressed her face against her knees. The tears finally broke through her self-control, streaming silently down her face. They would be fugitives for the rest of their lives, and those lives would be short. Ambitious daemons had barely had a chance to start hunting them. Soon, they wouldn’t be able to walk down a street without being targeted by Stone-hunting daemons. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the prefects. If caught, they would be thrown in prison and left to rot. Without the Sahar, there was no way to clear their names.

An arm settled over her shoulders.

“Shh,” Lyre whispered. “Come on, Piper, it’s not over yet. We can still track down those Gaian bastards and get your dad back. He’ll be able to help us.”

She shook her head. Yes, they could save her father—only to condemn him to the same fate as her. The whole world would think he was a mass-murderer. She couldn’t clear his name either. His whole career, his entire life’s work, was nothing but ashes now.

“It’s all my fault,” she whimpered. “I’m so sorry.”

“Shh, no, it’s all our faults, Piper,” Lyre said gently. “Me and Ash were right there and didn’t notice anything. Micah is a slippery bastard.”

A tiny sob scraped her throat. She swallowed it convulsively and tried to wipe her tears. They kept falling, as ceaseless as rain. Everything ruined. Everything gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. How could she have screwed it all up so badly?

Black boots appeared in front of her. Knowing her daemon companions could tell she was crying anyway, she looked up. Ash stood in front of her, cloaked in shadows. He was unnaturally still, his expression blank as stone. Her breath caught as she waited for him to move, speak, something.

His hands clenched. Unclenched. Then, to her bewilderment, he began yanking at the braid on the side of his head where the red tie was woven. He pulled at his hair until the silk strip came free. He held it in one fist, hand balled up tight, then extended it toward her. Automatically she held out her hand, palm up.

With a flick of his wrist, he let the silk fall from his hand, one end still tangled in his fingers. The other end dropped and landed with a solid little thump in her palm. The end of it was rolled around something small and heavy. Ash pulled the tie up and the hidden object slid out with a sibilant whisper.

As soon as it hit her palm, Piper knew what it was.

The Sahar.

The
real
Sahar.

And in that same moment, she realized it had been a long time since she’d held the real Sahar.

It was too heavy for its size as though something much larger had been compacted down into that tiny silver oval. It shimmered, lit from within, magnetic and entrancing. As she felt its strangeness radiating into her skin, she knew she’d only touched the real Sahar once before, the very first time she’d taken it out of the ring box in her bedroom.

She stared for so long that by the time she looked up, Ash was almost finished braiding the red silk back into his hair. Beneath her numb shock, emotion was beginning to stir. But not happiness. Not relief, not even surprise. She would feel all those things later.

Right now, it was horror building inside her—horror that was slowly crystallizing into fury.

The draconian didn’t meet her stare. His face in shadow, he looked above her head, his features stiff and cold. Defensive.

“You gave me a fake.” She didn’t recognize her own voice, the soft, sliding tones lined in ice. “When did you switch them?” she asked slowly. “The first day,” she answered herself. After their narrow escape from the prefects and long morning driving through the city, the ring box hadn’t quite been tucked in her shirt when she awoke. Ash had re-braided his hair—after hiding the real Sahar, close and safe where no one could steal it short of scalping him.