Chapter 43
Iris
Iturn. Before Noah can grab me, Kaiden’s fist meets his jaw in a vicious uppercut that sends him skidding back.
Gasps resound around us. Who the hell would have thought this was the same charity gala Noah had invited me to?
I mean, what were the chances? He never mentioned a date or the cause they were raising money for.
“You’re lucky there are so many people here.
Mark my words, demon, this is not over,” Noah spews, wiping off the blood trickling down his chin from his split lip.
“Iris, come here. That’s Kaiden Black you’re so cozy with—the head of the fucking Obsidian Conclave.
” Vitriol laces his words as he cuts a death stare toward Kaiden.
His hate is more than the usual lightborn repugnance toward demons.
It goes further than loathing or abhorrence.
I scoff. Who the fuck does he think he is to order me like that? I’m not his lapdog. “I’m not coming anywhere near you.”
“You heard her. Fuck off before you make an even bigger fool of yourself,” Kaiden clips out in a glacier tone.
There’s newfound scrutiny in Noah’s mercurial gaze as it jumps from me to Kaiden.
His mouth opens. Closes. Undisguised rage contorts the planes of his face when realization dawns.
He shakes his head in disbelief. “You—you know each other. Are you fucking kidding me?” A manic laugh belts out of him.
“This is him, right, the Kaiden from that voice message? He’s also the one who was watching you in that video.
I was sick with worry because you disappeared for a month.
A. Month. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.
I’m so stupid. How did I not see this? You whored yourself to a fucking Elite demon?
You ruined everything, you dumb bitch.” The words are venomous.
And just like that, the mask he’s been wearing since he came back is off. This is the real Noah.
His true colors remind me that I don’t have to be worried about being seen in public, by the Order, on Kaiden’s arm. Because I’m not one of them, and they can’t control me anymore.
Kaiden’s fury flows through me with the scorching power of a thousand suns. “Watch your fucking mouth,” he growls. The lights flicker for a fraction of a second.
Considering we’ve become the center of attention, I place a hand on his chest to stop him from charging at Noah. Suddenly, it’s hard to breathe—as if something is sucking out all the oxygen around us. The onyx stone is a hot poker against my skin. “Something is wro—”
Noah cuts me off. “Or what? What are you going to do, demon? Kill me like you killed—”
“What is that?” a woman screams.
We jerk our heads collectively to look behind Noah. There’s a jagged, onyx line cutting through the air, right in the middle of the dance floor. It expands at the speed of light, transforming into an abysmal hole.
Kaiden swears sharply under his breath. “A Hell portal.”
“Sam and Malik. We need to warn them,” I say, then shout, “Everybody, RUN!”
Kaiden clasps my hand in his big one. We dash toward the French doors, Noah hot on our heels, then fly down the marble steps and take one of the pebbled paths that lead into the sprawling garden.
A blood-curdling shriek slices through the air.
“What is happening?” Sam asks, out of breath, while sprinting toward us. Malik is close behind.
Glass explodes.
Over fifty draconic ravengers crash through the windows to reach us.
They pound over the gravel, their horned heads and leathery reptilian skin on bodies that look like a cross between a hellhound and a panther, muscular limbs and deadly claws.
The ground shakes under their stomping, as if we’re in the middle of an earthquake.
I unsheathe the three daggers strapped to my thigh, darting to take a defensive stance in front of Sam. But Malik has already beaten me to it.
Power detonates from Kaiden.
Hellfire engulfs the demons. They crumble to ashes before I can blink.
The disgusting smell of charred sulfurous meat spreads like a deadly mist that burns holes in my nose and brain.
Shrieking men and women spill from the open doors and bolt toward the parking lot.
Some even leap through the shattered windows to escape what I presume are more demons.
I can’t be sure because an inky haze has taken over the ballroom.
However, in the next second, we catch glimpses of draconic ravengers and voidstalkers feasting on human flesh while ghouls suck their souls out of their twitching bodies, which are lying in pools of blood.
“Holy Hecate!” Sam mutters under her breath, then gags.
“C’mon, we have to go!” Kaiden tells me as he grabs my hand and pulls.
I dig my heels in. “What?!? No! We can’t let those demons get into the city. Who knows how many more will come through the portal? And we need to save these people. Give them a chance to flee.”
A muscle jumps in his granite jaw. “I don’t give a flying fuck about them. Your safety is my only concern.”
“Well, I do. You can go if you want, but I’m staying,” I retort as I throw off my high-heeled sandals.
Kaiden sucks on his teeth. “Fine,” he snaps, popping off.
Shit. I didn’t think he would actually leave.
I whirl toward a slack-jawed Noah. Kaiden’s disappearance must have rattled him. “Call this in to the Order.”
He levels me with a stony glare.
“Seriously? Can you push your fucking ego aside until we make it out?” I bark.
He puffs out a breath through flared nostrils but nods, fishing out his phone from his suit jacket.
I almost jump out of my skin when Kaiden materializes back, holding a few of the weapons I already packed.
I take the whip and sword from his outstretched hand.
Then, surprisingly, he throws my spare sword to Noah.
He catches it in mid-air while giving Grayson a quick rundown of the situation.
It takes me a few seconds to remember that demons, Elite or not, shouldn’t be able to touch blessed weapons. I shove this information in a corner of my mind to pull out later.
“What did Grayson say?” I ask Noah.
“Thirty minutes,” he responds.
“All right. We just need to hold the demons back until the hellseekers get here.”
Kaiden flicks his gaze to Malik. “Can you shut down the portal?”
“I don’t know. I would need to get close to it.”
“Then we’ll clear a path for you,” I say. Sheathing back the daggers, I tilt my chin in Sam’s direction. “We need to find your car first.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’re leaving.”
She huffs. “No, I’m not. I’m staying to help.”
“In a demon fight? Are you crazy?”
“I can hold my own. I’m a witch, remember?” She punctuates her words by waving a hand when two voidstalkers rush at us, all snapping teeth and gaping maws. A huge Venus flytrap sprouts from the ground. It swallows them whole. “See?”
“Okay. But don’t you dare leave my side,” I grit out. We don’t have time to argue, and Sam’s as stubborn as a mule. “Let’s—”
Souldrakes—too many to count—fly at us at warp speed from all available exits.
Fuck.
“Kaiden!” Malik bellows.
Kaiden hesitates for exactly two heartbeats, then declares “On it.”
The ground starts shaking again. Clouds roll in.
Burnished gold floods Kaiden’s crimson irises while his black-as-night scleras turn white.
Obsidian wings explode from his back. He launches into the sky with swift flaps to meet the spiked, vulture-like demons.
When he lifts his hands, bolts of blinding light strike down in a downpour over the horde.
The souldrakes screech as they burst into blueish, almost transparent flames that are too bright to watch.
Is that illum?
I’m equally as dumbstruck as Noah and Sam while gawking at the unfolding scene.
Given the color of his blood and how the national park looked in the aftermath of the umbra attack, I should have expected this, but it seemed impossible an Elite demon could wield divine light.
It’s unheard of. I knew I saw his wings that night he saved me, but the excruciating pain had me thinking it was nothing more than a hallucination.
He must have angel blood. There’s no other explanation.
The outside wall of the mansion collapses under Kaiden’s power.
A thick plume of dust joins the blanket of ashes akin to sooty snow flurries that start falling from the sky.
If I thought hellfire was destructive, the illum is that times infinity.
It pulverizes the crimson-winged creatures in milliseconds.
Fuck me. He’s spectacular.
But no matter how many souldrakes Kaiden kills, others replace them in the blink of an eye. They keep coming. And coming. Ravengers and voidstalkers soon join them on the ground, charging at us.
“Heads up! Kaiden can’t strike down here because he’ll incinerate us,” Malik bellows over the shrill cries. He opens his palms wide to send a blast of dark magic that takes the form of a giant, atramentous boomerang. More than half of their beastly heads fall.
Sam glows a bright green from beside me.
A hedge wall shoots up at the flick of her fingers.
The remaining demons tear through it one by one.
Still, it served its purpose of slowing their momentum.
My head swivels from Sam to the incoming beasts.
I feel as though I’m trapped between a rock and a hard place because I don’t want to leave her side, but I can’t let the demons get closer, either.
“I got her,” Malik tells me, stepping in front of Sam.
I nod. Noah and I throw ourselves into the fray, our moves mirroring each other’s as if we’re dancing to the same tune.
“I don’t need your protection,” she snaps at him as she shackles ten voidstalkers with stocky vines that are full of thorns.
“You’re using a lot of power. How much longer until you run out?” I ask Kaiden through our mental link as I whirl on the balls of my feet to slice the horned head of the ravenger I trapped in my whip.
“Worried about me, angel?”
I careen to the side, avoiding the spray of ichor, then trace a wide arc to decapitate another. “Answer the damn question!”
“To your right!” Kaiden booms, voice steeped in panic.
I feint just in time to dodge a voidstalker’s poisonous scorpion tail aimed at my chest. Its hideous heads, made of two gaping maws lined by razor-sharp teeth, smack the ground after I thrust my blade through the beast’s necks. “Thanks,” I shoot back.
“Concentrate on the fight!” He pushes me out of our connection.
“How much longer until Kaiden runs out of power?” I yell at Malik, since I didn’t get an answer from Kaiden.
“I’m not sure. But he’s probably going to burn out soon,” he answers.
Shit.
Even though we keep fighting with everything we’ve got, we’ve barely made a dent in their numbers.
They obliterated every wall Sam put up while pushing us back.
We’re almost at the maze’s entrance. I can’t help but notice how differently these demons act compared to the ones that came for me the night Adrianna died.
Sweat plasters my dress to my body as I slash and maim.
I chance a glance up. Kaiden’s strikes have become less and less frequent, but there’s only a handful of souldrakes left.
Hurried footfalls resound. Hellseekers have joined the fight. Thank God.
My relief is short-lived, though, because a sulking figure stalks out of the mansion.
Adramelech.
One hand’s holding a crossbow, the other a chain. He points the crossbow skyward.
Nonononononononononononono.
“KAIDEN! DUCK!” I shout through our mental link.
He veers to the side. Too late. The arrow pierces his right wing. Adramelech shoots another. It impales the left wing. Kaiden yells, then starts freefalling.
My heart stops.
Time slows to a crawl.
I forge ahead, tapping into every ounce of speed I possess to get to him. In the next second, though, white-hot pain obliterates my nerve endings, making me double over—not mine, but Kaiden’s. He crashes to the ground. Abject terror drags its icy claw down the ladder of my spine.
“KAIDEN!”
Nothing.
I try again and again.
There’s only silence.
“Malik! Do something!” I scream.
“I fucking can’t. I’m almost tapped out.”
Adramelech wraps the chain around Kaiden’s wrists and pulls him back toward the mansion.
I demand the darkness inside me to take over and save him as I slash through the throng of demons.
But I only hit a wall. At the same time, though, the buzz beneath my skin intensifies to a roar.
Sound warps and muddles. On instinct, I hit my knees, then answer the call from beneath by slapping my palms against the grass.
As if I’m a ghost magnet, orbs of light slam into me.
I push the newfound energy into the earth in pulsing waves.
The ground trembles. Almost three hundred dead bodies claw their way out of the ichor-stained soil. They jump the demons, their efforts unrelenting while clearing a path for me. Not wasting a second, I bolt.
The edges of the portal shrink at the speed of light as Adramelech hauls an unconscious Kaiden through the void.
“Iris! NO!”
I ignore Sam’s desperate plea. Copper coats my tongue, and broken glass impales my bare feet as they slap the marble floor of the ballroom. But I don’t care. I push my screaming muscles further than I ever have.
Then jump.
I cannot express enough gratitude for every single reader who took a chance on my book.
Everything I write is for you.