Drowning In The Dark: #4 The Veil Series (7 page)

I
didn’t go in
. I wasn’t ready to face him, not like that. Sabine showed me to the cafeteria, and I sat, nursing thick, black coffee while the world continued around me as though nothing had happened. I’d seen Mammon sprawled virtually comatose once, and that was wrong, but this was worse. This was abhorrent.

Sixteen years ago, Akil—or rather his true form Mammon—had plucked me out of obscurity in the netherworld. I’d caught his eye after the Institute failed to purchase me, rousing my brother’s wrath in the process. Intrigued, Mammon wanted me, but he couldn’t challenge my owner, not directly. The laws forbade it, so he’d borrowed me for three nights and planted seeds of hope in my young, pliable mind. He’d taught me how to call my fire and spoken of a world where people lived in steel and glass towers. He’d given me the true gift of freedom. I bested my owner and escaped the netherworld with Akil. He taught me how to be human. How to live in this world. He was my first love, the first to hear my laughter, the first man to summon desire in me, to make me feel like a human woman. He’d shielded me when the demons wanted me dead simply for being a half blood. He’d protected me when the Institute planted a spy in my bed. He’d done all of that, and I’d walked away from him. I’d washed my hands of him and all things demon. He’d promptly tried to get me back in the only way a Prince of Hell knew. He’d set me up, tested me, roused the demon within, and tried to get back what he’d lost. I turned on him, drained him of power, and shoved him back through the veil, where the netherworld hadn’t wasted any time in stripping him of his title and probably more. He’d even protected me from myself when I’d lost control and almost killed innocent people.

When he’d believed me dead, he’d grieved, not like a demon who laments that which they could have possessed, but like a man, who’d lost the only thing he truly needed in life. I only knew that because he’d let his guard down and begged me to love him like a man, not a demon. He didn’t understand it. Neither did I, not really.

And now he thought I’d turned on him again, lured him into that alley with promises. I’d asked him to free me of Damien, and he believed my words were a web of lies spun to trap him.

Now he was in that room, chained up like a rabid beast, not demon, not man… Something locked partway between the two. God, what was I going to do? Even if I did somehow get him free of this facility, I couldn’t stop him from destroying the Institute at a time when we needed them. Yet, we needed Akil too. He wasn’t technically on anyone’s side but his own, but he had been helping us, and if Val was coming, bringing half bloods with him, I wanted Akil by my side. Nobody could deny the two of us together made a formidable weapon. We’d beaten back a Larkwrari demon over the skies of Boston. Together, we could take on anything the netherworld threw at us.

I had to convince the Institute to let him go: a seemingly impossible task. Adam would never release his prize catch. Sabine might. Could I somehow convince her that freeing Akil now was the only logical solution? Free him and pray he doesn’t turn around and burn them all. It might already be too late. What if PC34 had a lasting effect on him? What if by subduing Mammon, it altered his human vessel? What if Akil was changed?

I had to see him, talk to him. Surely, there was still hope he was in there and could be reasoned with. Jerry had said it might be possible to burn PC34 out of our veins. He’d also said it shouldn’t have any effect on Akil. I could hope it was all a ruse, right? If not, he might kill me the second I stepped inside that cell.

The darkness crushing my heart gave a painful squeeze. I winced, clenching my hand around my coffee, and tried to ride it out. Then there was that little issue. Without Akil to undo my soul-lock, I was effectively the Mother of Destruction in waiting.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
My time was up. I needed Akil to do whatever it took to get the sick bastard poisoning my soul, out of me, or I was as good as lost.

“How deep does your relationship go?”

I looked up at Sabine beside me. I’d not heard her return and didn’t feel quite up to fake smiles and biting my tongue. “Deep.” I bowed my head and lost my gaze in my coffee. “So damn deep I can’t see the bottom.”

“I have a theory about demons. They are not so unlike us. I think, perhaps once, we were the same. Wherever we came from, evolution, or cosmic intervention, we share too much with them. Look at you, a half blood… An impossible combination of human and demon. Humans and demons are connected.” She moved around the canteen table and sat opposite me. “Most demons are driven by basic needs. They want, they achieve. Simple. But a select few are different. I don’t know a great deal about the princes, Muse. None of us do. There are demons coming through the veil we’ve never seen before. I suspect some demons have more in common with us than they allow themselves to believe.”

She wouldn’t say that if she’d seen the netherworld with her own eyes. “I don’t think so.”

“Then how do you account for the vehemence with which he speaks of you?” I winced and gulped my coffee, and she continued. “If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t waste the effort of harboring hatred. You know as well as I do, they waste nothing.”

If she was trying to make me feel better, it really wasn’t working. “You need to let him go.” I shook my head and licked coffee from my lips. “This isn’t right.”

“You grew up with him, didn’t you?”

“Here, yes. I matured in the netherworld. But he brought me here and made me human.”

“Why would he do that?”

Because he was playing the long game, crafting me, not unlike my old owner had done. Damien molded me into his ruined work of abused art. Akil was sharpening me the same way I’d once crafted swords, hammering out the imperfections, driving the stubborn metal into the shape I desired. Or so I suspected. He’d admitted I was his weapon. “His reasons are his own.”

“Could it be that he genuinely cares?”

He’d said as much, but what Akil said and what Akil meant were two very different things. “No. He’s demon.”

“Right now, he’s not.”

I blinked over my coffee cup. “What do you mean?”

“He’s as close to human now as he’s ever going to be. Don’t you think that’s why he’s reacting like he is? With such passion. Demons are not passionate, Muse.”

“He’s just fighting for freedom. He’ll say and do anything.”

She nodded. “Talk with him. We’ll further this discussion once you have. It’s fascinating, don’t you think?” She beamed and left me alone with my cold coffee and muddled expression. Fascinating? No. Insane? Yes.

T
he door
to Akil’s cell opened with an audible hiss like an exhaled breath. Arms straight at my sides, hands clenched into fists, and throat dry, I cleared my thoughts and drove courage into my limbs, willing them forward. It wasn’t exactly fear holding me back, but the vestiges of denial. I didn’t want this to be real. And yet, as I stepped through the doorway and swept my gaze immediately toward the seething mass of man chained to the wall, fear tingled across my flesh. Something like a whisper caressed the back of my neck, raising the fine hairs. The door hissed shut. Silence descended. My feet wouldn’t carry me forward. My body had its own ideas of self-preservation. I stared, barely blinking, and he stared right back. He was strung up by the wrists, and the chains had retracted, dragging him with them, so he had no choice but to stand with his back against the wall, arms spread, muscles tight. He didn’t move. Not even a quiver. Mannequin still. But as I stepped forward, breaking out of my icy cage, his eyes mercilessly tracked me, dark eyes, their centers black, edges kissed by burnt amber. With each step, his stare whittled away my resolve. By the time I’d walked around so that the mirrored-glass was at my back, fear twitched through my fingers and sprinkled perspiration in my hairline. It seemed stifling in that brightly lit room, but the heat didn’t come from Akil. The usual crawl of his element was utterly absent. Was it mine? I swept a hand through my hair, gathered it back in a lose bunch, trying to cool my skin. Behind the glass, Adam and half a dozen armed guards waited. Sabine was there too. We had an audience, but I only had eyes for Akil.

They’d at least given him sweats to wear, although in a way, it only further humanized him. When, as Mammon, he’d first revealed his human vessel to me, Akil had emerged naked and all the more bedazzling for the swathe of bronze skin. Demons didn’t care for clothing. He’d rather be strung up naked.

Damn, what was he doing here? How had this happened?

A snarl quivered his top lip, followed by a growl bubbling up his throat. “Do not pity me.” His voice, always so smooth, had gained a saw-toothed edge. He’d been quite vocal, or so I’d been told, especially when my name was mentioned.

I dipped my chin and lifted my gaze through my lashes. “I don’t. I see the Prince of Lies at work.”

He breathed in, for the first time it seemed. His chest expanded, and his body came alive, rippling with human twitches and nonsensical micro-movements. As a demon, he’d had perfect control over his flesh and never wasted a gesture or a glance. His every breath, every touch, had held purpose. Now, he was animated in that complex and intricately human way.

“You must stop this now, before it goes too far.”

A chuckle tumbled from his lips and quickly swelled to lascivious laughter. “You think I’m here by choice?” The laughter cut off, and the quiet rushed back in, but his eyes spoke volumes.

“You allowed Levi to torture you…” I didn’t want to say too much, knowing who our audience consisted off.

Akil shifted on his bare feet and rattled the chains. “Indeed, I did. But Leviathan had limitations, rules. He did not dare attempt to sunder my two physical states. No prince—no demon would do such a thing.” His gaze flicked over my shoulder and back to me, a cursory glance in which he no doubt saw them all. “Only the Institute believe themselves above the natural order of things.” He ground his teeth, jaw clenching, so that the muscles in his face twitched. The jugular vein in his neck pulsed. “They will get nothing from me.” He pulled again on the chains, clinking the links together. “And you, my dear Muse…” His tongue flicked across cracked lips, before he peered at me through half-shuttered lashes. “For you, I reserve a special place in this weak, wretched mind. I find my thirst for revenge quite maddening. Human emotions really are delightfully arousing.”

I opened my mouth to deny what he believed, but he lunged and spat a string of ancient words at me. I flinched, not needing to understand them to feel their sting. He snarled and snapped, straining against his bonds, every inch of muscle quivering with his desire to be free. I weathered the storm, standing stock-still and numb from head to toe as he raged mere feet from my face.

“Treat me like an animal,” he growled, his knees almost buckling before he caught himself and staggered back, “and I will behave like one.” His body heaved with each labored breath.

Light-headed, I blinked back at him while mentally clinging to my reserves of calm. Without my demon, I didn’t have her internal conflict to contend with, but I had fear in swaths. “What do you want?”

“Unchain me. I will not hurt you. But for them, I make no such guarantees.” A glance at the glass again, this time with a corner-snarl to drive home his point. “I will talk with you, and only you. If another of their technicians enters my personal space, I will kill him. I killed the last quickly. I will not be so merciful again.” He turned his hands, showing me his palms. “I do not need my hands freed to kill.” His smile was pure predator. Seeing him like that, all man, primal and wild, I wondered how much of the Akil I knew I’d attributed to his true demon form. Too much, perhaps. Human men and women could be just as bloodthirsty as demons, if not more so.

“You give me your word? You won’t harm me?” I moistened my lips and gulped back the acidic burn of fear.

“Why would I harm my investment? It has not yet come to fruition.” He curled me a sly smile and bumped back against the wall.

I internally cursed. Akil had just dropped the Institute a little breadcrumb on which they could fixate about me. Almost immediately, Adam’s voice came over a speaker. “We will release the chains, if you agree to reattach them when ordered.”

Akil made a disgusted noise at the back of his throat. “Ordered? No. Ask with due respect, and I may oblige.”

The wrist shackles burst open and fell away from his arms to clatter against the wall. I had a second to think, ‘Oh shit’ before he plowed into me, slamming me back against the glass. He locked his hand around my throat, driving my chin up so I had no choice but to witness the wicked slash of a grin on his lips. “Do you think they could spill into this room before I broke your neck?” A single dark eyebrow arched high. “They do not believe so. Hence they do nothing.” He leaned all of his weight into me, crushing my body beneath the weight of his. Slick muscles rippled beneath my hands trapped between us. A visceral heat smothered me, not elemental, purely masculine. I didn’t move, didn’t flinch. If I fought him now, he could indeed snap my neck. Without my demon, I was easy prey, even if he too was elementally restrained.

He bowed his head low and skirted my lips with his. “They listen,” he barely spoke the words, just a fleeting breath, whispered so lightly they were almost thoughts in my mind.

My brow pinched, and I once again parted my lips to speak when he planted a salty finger on them to shush me. He searched my face, and his wicked smile softened. “You should not be here. They poison your body…” Sliding a hand down my arm, he caught my hand and turned it over, lifting my wrist to his lips. “And subdue your demon at a time when she is needed the most.”

“And you? We need you topside, Akil. Not here like this. No good can come from whatever this is.”

He released my hand and splayed his on the glass beside my head, then curled his fingers into a fist and bared his teeth, but the snarl wasn’t meant for me, despite his eyes never leaving mine. “You don’t need me, Muse. This is your time. You must choose.” He shoved off of me, peeling his warmth away, leaving me cold and aching to have him back. “Human or demon?” His voice lifted, and he cocked his head. “I find myself in much the same alarming predicament.”

“Is that what you are?” I rubbed at my throat. “Human?”

He stalked back. His keen eyes darted, reading the room, looking for weaknesses. “No. I am somewhere between the two. Somewhere—some
thing
I should not be.”

There, I caught a glimmer of concern beneath the mask. That was real. He rebuilt his defenses as his gaze settled on me once more, but I’d seen it. Whatever this was, it wasn’t entirely in his control, but nor was it out of his control either. He cut his dark-eyed gaze to the mirror. “Go to them. They have questions. I guarantee no answers.”

I turned and headed for the door, hating that I couldn’t speak freely with him.

“Muse…”

I knocked on the door and glanced back. He stood, arms crossed over his chest, head tilted a degree, his eyes studying me.

“Do not let them take your strength from you.”

The door opened, and I left Akil alone, unchained, but locked away, pacing his cell like the exotic feral animal he was.