Ronen #3
The left side of his neck appeared unscathed.
The right remained hidden as he continued gazing at the horrifying blue sky.
But I’d seen the right side before. There had been nothing there.
Unless he’d hidden the bite with an Evanescent Rune using his archangel feather that he kept under lock and key.
His chair squeaked as he twisted around. Halfway through turning toward me, he stopped.
Moving. Breathing. Blinking.
Every inch of him reflected a stillness only the dead achieved. And his eyes took on the same faraway gaze Anya had worn.
A phantom hand drove into my back, gripped my spine, and wrenched, numbing every signal to my limbs.
A second later, he shook himself. Ice spread from his oxfords, shooting along the rug toward my boots, climbing the window blinds and walls, spiderwebbing the glass. He rose and smiled, the grin too wide.
“Guess our time’s up here, General. It was fun playing with you, though.”
His eyes pulsed, and the room exploded on a vicious snap. A shrieking gust swept up the shattered pieces, and ice came flying at me from all sides.
I surrounded myself with a sphere of shadows and switched to thermal vision. My protection held—until the hissing wind ripped open a gap on my left side. Ice shards raked across my face, leaving stinging lines of cuts.
He was using Veil Wind. Was this who Lucille saw in the forest?
I thickened my walls and ran through my options.
Lucifer was infected. Something—most likely the voice—controlled him. Which meant, unless I wanted to take out the King of Hell and Lucille’s father, my only option was non-lethal attacks.
Forming a thick shadowball in my hand, I tracked his red-and-yellow body. He circled me. Not panicked. Almost… assessing.
Ice hammered against my walls again, harder.
My shadows shuddered under the pressure, the structure groaning.
An icicle punched through a gap near my stomach.
I twisted, taking a graze across my ribs instead of a puncture to the gut.
Still hurt. Then I hurled my inky, whirling ball through the opening.
Lucifer sidestepped, and it struck the wall behind him.
Dammit!
I snaked a shadow toward him, low and fast. He blew it into wisps with the Veil Wind.
Fine. I gathered two more dense shadowballs into my hands and opened a section of my wall to throw. Ice shot through, and I dodged. I launched my power and discreetly sent out a strand of shadow, wrapping it around a paperweight on his desk.
He anticipated my first attack, moving aside. I raised the paperweight. He stood there, unaware. I brought it down—then a powerful force slammed into my mind, and the glass dropped and shattered.
Gritting my teeth, I clutched my head. Panic and concern registered, there and gone as Lucifer shoved harder, digging his claws into the membrane of my shadows and slowly shredding them.
I sank to my knees, my jaw locking against the pain.
He made it halfway through and wasn’t stopping, determined to trap me in a hallucination.
I pushed back as I filled the gaps he tore through. My shadows coiled around his mental hold, followed the connection back to him, and drove against his cold mental wall.
Lucifer grunted.
I did it again.
He hissed.
One more time.
I fell to all fours, the shadows surrounding me thinning as I focused everything on my mind. Ice shot through. Some punctured. Some grazed. Little stings and larger throbs.
I gathered my shadows, pulling them back, building, solidifying, and then attacked. But before my mental blow hit, he released me and retreated.
“Well.” His voice sounded almost amused. “I suppose that was wishful thinking on my part.”
The wind died. Ice crashed to the floorboards and thumped against the carpet.
He straightened his cuffs.
“I have other things to attend to.”
I pushed to one knee and lunged toward him, throwing out a rope of shadows. They grazed his heel as he fucking luscelered out his damn door.
I stumbled to the doorframe.
I stood there, head pounding, face stinging, arm throbbing.
“Ronen!” Alexei shouted from down the hall. His dappled wings jutted from his back and jostled with his jog. “I’ve been looking for your ass—” He scanned me up and down. “What the fuck happened?”
“Lucifer. I think he’s infected.”
“Fucking Hells,” Alexei breathed.
Yeah. Something like that.
“Tell me you have the Dreads trailing Lucille?”
He nodded. “They should be getting to the Eternal Forest now. We can blink there. Unless…” He checked my wounds. “You need a healer.”
“I’m—”
Acute, piercing pain speared through our bond. I breathed a hiss through my teeth, taking her agony secondhand.
I immediately tried to connect to Rune’s senses, feeling resistance. I tried again, pushing past my mind-numbing throbs. But nothing happened.
Her mind felt empty, like when she fell asleep. Or when she’d been knocked unconscious.
Shadows eclipsed my eyes as I pulled out, my infrared vision turning Alexei into a red-and-yellow silhouette.
“What?” Alexei demanded.
“They’ve been attacked.” My voice sounded cold, detached, calm, disguising the murderous threat beneath.
“Then let’s go roll some heads!” Alexei barked, his wings ruffling.
“Let’s.”
There was death to reap.