Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
This was the second time he had come this close. It made her body feel things she didn’t understand. His touch, his proximity, it was invigorating, like he was waking her from a cold, dead sleep.
She shouldn’t have hit him. It was reckless and impulsive, and the moment it happened, she regretted it.
Now, all she could focus on was her breathing as he pressed down on her throat with measured precision. Her vision began to blur and her mind fogged.
Stay conscious. Stay awake. She repeated the mental commands, willing herself to obey.
He held her steady against the wall. She balanced on the tips of her toes, flexing her calves to the point of aching.
Their eyes connected. “Call me a bastard again,” he baited.
She tried to speak. The sound that came out wasn’t far from the croak of a toad.
She tightened her own grip on his wrist while a faint wetness crested the corners of her eyes. She tried digging her nails into his skin as hard as she could, but they were brittle and chewed. She was doing no damage at all.
Stupid habit.
Then his strange mismatched eyes began to change, like someone had spilled a pot of ink inside them and the darkness was consuming everything in its wake until, finally, the eyes staring back at her were wholly and utterly black.
She couldn’t scream, she could only pitifully claw as his whole appearance altered before her eyes.
The color of his veins erupted to the surface of his skin, soaking up that inky blackness traveling from his face down to his neck and exposed arms. His human teeth grew into razor-sharp canines.
Claws flicked out from the beds of his fingernails.
Thick, dark horns stretched from his head toward the sky.
Wings of feathered black sprouted from his shoulder blades.
He leaned in close to her ear and whispered, “Go on. Say it. Call me a bastard.”
He eased his grip slightly, permitting her the chance to speak.
The resentful bitterness she harbored made her want to oblige him, but she decided on a safer reply. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was hoarse and lacking any genuine remorse, and her gaze was pure fire as she adjusted to the sight of him.
“Liar. You’ve attacked me, you’ve attacked my soldier. I wonder how you would fare if we treated you with the same courtesy?”
A billow of black smoke pooled around them, as if in answer to some hellish power.
His posture tensed, and his brows narrowed in confusion. He tilted his nostrils upward, sniffing her.
“What—what are you doing?”
The angle of his head gave her a more direct look at those animalistic teeth. The sight of him would keep her from sleeping for days. If she ever slept again.
“Very interesting,” he murmured.
This was it, life or death, she had to defend herself.
She lowered her hands behind her back and removed her bracelet. She focused her energy on one thing, one thought.
Get him off.
A gust of black, thready plumes joined his, springing forth from the rocks behind her.
Chaotic yet purposeful, they circled the demonic captain’s wrist in thin, flowing ribbons, bending and squeezing so he had no other choice than to let go.
He growled in surprise as his hand flexed in retreat.
Then the flow of black shadow shoved him away, forcing him to stagger backward.
She dropped to her knees, gasping for deeper breaths. She subtly slipped that bracelet back where it belonged.
He noticed. For a second she thought that demon was coming for her again as he took a step toward her.
What was she thinking, revealing her magic like that?
A voice from across the cavernous room stopped the captain in his second pursuit.
“We brought you here because we need you.” The leanest man glared at the grotesque monster, as if warning him to keep his hands off. The captain snarled back, deep breaths sounding through his nares like a bull ready to charge.
We need you.
She looked to the leanest man again, waiting for more explanation. He resembled what she thought angels might look like, the beautiful servants of the gods who welcomed dead souls into the ether.
“We are the Divine Allura, an army chosen by the gods to protect the mortal realm.”
Helaina tried to listen, but she couldn’t shake the sight of that demon morphing back into his human form. How could someone that impressively handsome house something so cruel within? The mental picture she had of that monster would not be easily erased.
He was a true nightmare.
The angelic man approached her, his light-golden hair that flowed past his ears reflecting the turquoise glow. He kneeled down to her level as her chest heaved.
“An army of what? Are you even mortal?” The question was foolish considering the power she continued to witness in their company. She immediately corrected herself. “. . . Are you gods?”
He cocked his head to the side.
“Not gods . . . but we are most certainly not mortal men.”
The captain joined him. She flinched at his movement, then marveled at the sight of him performing the same eerie trick he had before, his eyes succumbing to voids of black.
“And you,” the angelic man continued, “are just like us.”
Her eyes darted between her captors and the multiple tunnels throughout the chamber. She could think of only two things.
One, that he was lying, and two . . .
Escape.
“Don’t be a fool,” the brutish captain warned, his low tenor reverberating along every wall.
She didn’t listen.
She let the panic flood in her core and spread to every limb of her body, willing her to move.
She ran.