Chapter 59
JUDE
“Of course, Scooby brought all his friends,” I muttered.
My mind raced through useless options. If I ran, maybe they’d chase me.
Give Angel a chance to… to what? He was shivering, the aftermath of that terrifying shadow-form clearly leaching the strength from his body.
My experience with his leopard was useless here.
The library didn’t exactly stock half a cow for supernatural recovery.
And what was that? That creature of liquid night and fury? How had he… become that?
The circle of hellhounds tightened, a slow, predatory creep that left molten pockmarks on the stone.
A few scattered books caught fire at the edges, their pages curling into black ash.
Nat was going to murder me a second time over the state of his library.
The lead beast, a monster of swirling ember and shadow, locked its furnace-coal gaze on Angel.
Oh, hell no. He was mine. Not some supernatural dog chow.
“Hey! Shit-for-breath!” I yelled. I spread my arms wide in a blatant, stupid challenge between Angel and the advancing pack. “The living guy is off the menu. It’s me you want, right? The demon spawn? At least that’s what my parents always insisted.”
“Jude, don’t!” Angel protested, reaching for me as if to keep me behind him, but his hands went right through me.
The lead monster’s head swiveled. Its molten jaws unhinged with a wet, grinding sound like boulders being crushed deep in the earth. A promise-filled snarl vibrated through the floor; its full, annihilating attention now locked on me.
I couldn’t even begin to fathom how to fight—
It launched. A silent blur of dripping fang and condensed fury, aimed straight for my spectral throat.
I let out a scream more of rage than fear, the bond between Angel and me tightening as if my shield around him activated. The world froze.
For a single beat I thought somehow I’d stopped them as time and movement suspended.
The hounds hung in the air around us, a dozen snarling statues of violence and terror.
Drops of molten saliva hovered in a lethal constellation, each one an inch from burning through my spectral form.
The crackle of burning books vanished, but Angel’s ragged, exhausted breaths continued to heave at my back, the only sound in the silence.
Then, a single bolt of neon-blue lightning snapped into existence before us, not striking the ground but holding in the air. From the heart of that blaze, he slid into being, as if stepping through a tear in reality itself.
What he was, I could only process as other.
A god? A furious guardian of this archive, finally come to evict the unruly trespassers?
His presence blanketed the space with a chilling, immense weight that felt like the end of every argument, the final word on every page.
For several long seconds, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
All I could do was stare, utterly and completely stunned.
He was beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with Angel’s warm, human vitality. Angel’s beauty was home, solid and real.
This entity possessed the lethally elegant, cold perfection of a masterwork sword in a museum.
Breathtaking and utterly untouchable like some ancient fae prince, or otherworldly vampire god of seducers.
His features, sharp and symmetrical enough to border on androgyny, were saved from delicacy by the subtle, powerful lines of a jaw that hinted at coiled strength, and by a gaze as dark and assessing as a starless sky.
His hair was a waterfall of ink-black, save for a single, dramatic silver braid swept to the side, revealing an ear adorned with an intricate collection of piercings and dangling, dark gemstones.
He wore a robe the color of a starless midnight.
The style was something out of the most opulent danmei covers with layers of dark fabric cinched at a trim waist, and falling from shoulders that promised strength and battle experience.
It all culminated in tall, black boots dusted with tiny, glittering gems like captured stardust.
He towered over Angel and me, not as massive as Xavier, but with a presence that filled the library. He was handsome in the way a lightning strike is beautiful. A sight that inspires awe right before it incinerates everything you hold dear.
Those obsidian eyes swept over me, cool and calculating. A faint, unnerving smile touched his lips, acknowledging my existence the way a scientist might note a particularly disruptive bacterium in a petri dish.
“Ah,” he crooned, his voice a low, resonant tenor that seemed to vibrate in the silence itself. “The little thread that insists on fraying all the patterns. The chaos knot.”
“Uh, hi?” I said, the word feeling absurd. Could he even hear me when Angel couldn’t? Good guy or bad guy? The sheer power radiating from him screamed bad. It usually did. Fuck.
I spread my hands, a gesture of empty, spectral surrender. “Please. Don’t kill my boyfriend. I’ve already given everything to keep him breathing.”
The man lifted a single finger, no more effort than pointing out a smudge on a window. The hellhounds unraveled from existence. Wisp shadows flickered into the air, and the entire library shimmered back to its former perfection, untouched by fire or chaos.
Yeah, a god. Totally a god. Fuck my afterlife.
Angel threw his arms up in front of me. “Don’t hurt him, please.”
“Sorry about the mess,” I continued, the apology absurd. “I can explain…” I trailed off. I couldn’t. I had no idea what the fuck was happening. But I’d happily ramble nonsense if it bought us a second.
“He doesn’t belong here.” Angel’s voice cut through, rough but clear, directed at the entity.
He took a half-step forward, putting himself even more squarely in the line of fire.
“He needs to be in our world. He’s got a little brother who needs him.
He’s got… he’s got cats. Two of them, though one is sort of a weird book-toting fae-dragon.
” His jaw tightened, and the last admission came out low, pleading, “And he’s got me. I need him.”
And I needed him too.
We were ridiculous. Two lovers, one dead, one alive, each trying to be the other’s shield against a force that could unmake reality with a thought, silently begging for the other’s life while being unable to touch or hear each other.
He watched this silent, frantic drama. That faint, unnerving smile returned, not with cruelty, but with something like amusement.
“Many would be amused by your chaos.” He paused, raising a single hand in a motion that made both Angel and me flinch. “I, however, am not.”
The world dissolved into a swirl of monochrome silk and the scent of cold stone. The library melted away, a circular chamber reforming around us.
Angel was suddenly beside me, still solid, still breathing hard.
A prison carved from elegance, the walls, floor, and a high, domed ceiling all hewn from the same seamless, dark grey stone, polished to a dull gleam.
No doors. No windows. Only faint, silvery veins in the rock pulsed with a dim, captive light.
Great. From one cell to another. I was not enjoying my subscription to the afterlife so far. Could I cancel?
A throne shimmered into existence against the far wall, simple and severe, carved from obsidian. Across from it, a long couch of what looked like stretched onyx velvet appeared, studded with dark, glittering gems.
“Sit, little chaos,” the man commanded, settling into the throne with the grace of a predator claiming its perch.
“We will discuss the consequences of the red thread you have looped so… messily… through the weave. I have severed threads for much lesser offenses. But I have waited a long time for an anomaly of your magnitude.”