Chapter 20
T oo many things happened at once for Neela’s mind to make sense of. Whatever heat that had still been swirling around her skin was quickly shown the door by a cloud of acrid black fumes.
There was no time to interpret anything about her situation other than to make sure her lungs were still pumping in the good stuff, which was quickly dwindling in supply.
Before she could even sit up, a heavy cloth was draped over her and Rhode’s arms were beneath her knees and upper back, lifting her lax limbs from the precarious position they’d yet to rise from. Her world became impossibly darker and ten times more confusing as her body fought for air.
“Where . . . What . . . I can’t?—”
Labored breaths and deep grunts were the only answers to the questions she struggled to force out. The smoke was thick but not so engulfing that it had a perpetual source. Though Neela couldn’t see much beyond the small fragments of light peeking through the bottom of whatever Rhode had draped her in—the curtain from the photo booth, she realized—she knew enough of the arcade’s layout to know they were going in the opposite direction of the main entrance.
Seconds later, Rhode shifted her weight and barreled through a separate door. When asphalt finally kissed her knees, she whipped the curtain off her head and sank back against the side of the building. A lone smoking canister was rolling around on the ground outside of where they’d originally entered, sputtering its last clouds of black-to-gray-to-finally-fading-to-white smoke like a windup toy on its concluding rotation.
“A smoke bomb. Not fire,” she coughed out. Her mental gears clicked into place before she even had time to explain. She’d watched enough myth testing to know exactly how long a smoke bomb lasted and why it was used.
It was the decoy before detainment and lasted two minutes max.
Rhode was already on his feet, blue flames bursting brighter and higher along every inch of him. Startlingly white metal swirled behind eyes she almost failed to recognize. His power was stronger, hotter, and infinitely more menacing than what she’d seen of it before.
The flames licked around his body like silent sentinels shifting into attack formation. Except no flames were firing back at them, which meant?—
“It’s not magic,” she cried. “It’s just a smoke grenade. Nothing’s burning!”
“Not yet.”
The growled warning was all she heard before a line of angel fire punched out from his taut arms and slingshotted off his fists toward two bodies draped in black tactical gear who had leaped out of a stowed ride vehicle.
She hadn’t even noticed them. Shit, where had they come from?
Then the blood in her veins froze as she took in their appearances. Black skull caps protected pale bald heads. Facial tattoos that, from that distance, could easily be mistaken for eye black. But the gold irises flashing high and hard in her direction? Those gazes were as familiar as her own.
Charmers.
What wasn’t familiar, though, was what the men carried. Mortal artillery weapons. Not magical ones.
Charcoal-gray clouds drifted overhead, smudging the darkening sky and casting final swathes of shadows over the concrete walkways and alabaster signage.
The sun had just about gone down enough for the demons to risk an appearance in the last wisps of daylight. Neela mentally tried to tabulate just how much time she and Rhode had lost by indulging in fanciful fun and racing hearts in the arcade. Too much. The demons had found them.
Found her , judging by their choice of weapons.
“Rhode!”
Her cries were lost to screams as one charmer took Rhode’s flames right in his shoulder, while the second one threw himself behind a metal garbage can, leveraged a gun she’d never seen before over the lid, and fired.
Neela was barely to her feet when Rhode shifted his stance and reared back so his chin was facing the sky. In the most amazing deadly dance, the flames coating his massive chest rose even higher and snatched the fired red and white circular pellet out of the air, incinerating it instantly like the world’s most efficient bug zapper.
The resulting cloud singed her nose for a brief moment but didn’t affect Rhode in the slightest as his fire protected him from the residue.
When the tickling in her nose finally subsided, she realized why Rhode wasn’t affected by whatever they’d fired at him. The bullet didn’t contain dark magic. It was a nonlethal projectile filled with pepper spray and meant entirely for her.
Shit, she needed a weapon. Something. Anything . They were in literal demon territory, throwing a dance party on Cyro’s roof, and it was only a matter of time before backup was called in the form of corrosion bombs, acid attacks, and chemical warfare specifically designed to destroy the angels in their metallic forms.
Rhode had blades, but they were back in the arcade with their coats. Should she risk running back in? The charmers obviously weren’t prepared for him, only her.
“Hide,” Rhode barked. “I have them.”
“The hell you do! They’re not after you. They’re after me!”
“They’re not after anything except their own ends. Now, run!”
“They can’t kill me, remember?”
But his battle cry ate up her words in a trail of fire as his wings spread wide and he bolted for the charmer still firing pepper bullets. Neela risked a glance at the other demon and immediately went queasy when nothing remained of him except a pile of steaming ash.
Then a low ominous hum drowned out the jovial music pumping out through the arcade, creating the singular soundtrack of her nightmares.
A portal.
Neela threw herself behind a bench and watched in horror as three more charmers poured out of the blazing circle of magic. Their gaits were slow, smooth, prowling, as if they were late to a party that had been on their calendars for weeks. Two had gold bands hugging their necks, while the third one, the largest, had three.
Two elite charmers. One apex.
“Shit,” she whispered through gritted teeth. Rhode had sensed the same party guests joining them, apparently. When he turned from the other charmer, who was still screaming with his lips stretched wide and eyelids peeled back as blue angel fire licked up half his body, no more fire adorned the angel’s frame.
But there were wings—wings and metal. Rhodium armor coated every inch of his body.
The apex was the first to charge forward, followed by the two elite.
No!
Decision made, Neela waited for the distracting sounds of their boots hitting the pavement before she scurried through the back door into the arcade. Thankfully, most of the smoke had cleared out, and after a few stumbling strides, she located the air hockey table where their coats hung limply over the edge. She tossed her white puffer aside and rooted around Rhode’s wool trench for any bladed and bulleted thing, all of which were infused with his angel fire. When she came away with a haul of things she’d never heard of but never wanted to know intimately, she filled her arms and ran back to the door.
The sight that awaited her was one she’d never forget.
Rhode’s chest, still gleaming the silvery-white of his metal, was a horrific cross-hatching of brutal slashes. His fine silk shirt had been shredded from his body. Blood oozed from intersecting angles as his muscles strained with each press and release of strength. As before in the mechanic’s parking lot, his wings whipped violently in circling arcs, slashing at the two elite charmers who continued to get their blades into Rhode’s sides, despite taking hits of their own.
The apex, for all his eager arrogance, stood by and watched, arms folded across his barrel chest, golden eyes tracking all three players.
It was almost as if he was . . . No, that couldn’t be right. Was he . . . bored? Like the dude was waiting for the table before him to finish their meal so he could enjoy the seats they’d kept warm?
Or so he could pick off the parts that only the butcher knew were the best cuts of meat.
“Fuck. That.” Neela dropped the weapons at her feet, picked the closest one, a small pistol of some kind, and started firing off shots.
Not at the charmers Rhode was actively battling—she wasn’t that skilled or stupid—but at the apex. For all the bastard’s magic, he was just as susceptible to angel fire as the rest of them. Fatally so.
The flaming bullet sank into his thigh. The apex grunted with the impact, then started to growl and drew the attention of the other two.
Her distraction worked. Good thing, too, because that was about all the excitement she had in her.
Neela crouched beneath the failing strength of her adrenaline, and her palms hit the blacktop. “Rhode! Now!”
Flaming opal eyes whipped to hers, and a shadow of recognition passed between the two of them. His metal was brittle, but his waning fire wasn’t.
Rhode’s chest heaved with a great roar. Blood trickled down the sides of his armored face where new slashes had penetrated his metal. Then a surging blast of blue flames skated over the tips of his wings, and he whirled. With a swift spin, his wings sliced through the necks of each elite, leaving his angel fire to incinerate the rest of the trembling bodies as they fell to the ground in spasming heaps.
Hot tears pricked her eyes as they connected with Rhode’s. Through the smoke stiffening her cheeks and the ash permeating the cooler air, she smiled stupidly wide. So wide it hurt.
Rhode didn’t reciprocate, but neither did he look away. His flames had sputtered out, and his rhodium armor faded to flesh, but God, he was a mess, streaked with blood and sweat and charred stuff she didn’t want to think about too closely. Great heavy breaths filled his full chest and inflated his lower abdominals, forcing the muscles into sharper angles to contrast the deep grooves at his hips and weeping gashes at his sides.
But he was still breathing and staring at her as if, at any moment, she would peter out like the very flames that had just saved them. Like, if he didn’t get to her, there would be no hope of resuscitation.
A final slice of sunlight caught Neela in the eye before taking the rest of the rays with it as the star sank below the horizon. She slowly sat back on her heels, shifting a bit when her knee hit something sharp, and held her arms out to Rhode in invitation. “We did it.”
Just as the corner of his lips started to lift in a relieved smile, they fell back into their familiar grim line. Then a frown. Then opened with a roar. Opal flames seemed to light his eyes, but that couldn’t be. He’d just spent all his angel fire. Why would?—
A creeping pain crawled up her knee, scraping a trail of gnawing agony along the only part of her leg uncovered by her dress or boots.
“Neela!” Rhode ate up the ground separating them. When he reached her, he gripped her shoulders and settled her onto his lap while he grabbed the pistol she’d dropped and aimed it in the direction of the apex. One shot went off, then another. A grunt, followed by the familiar crackle of combusting flames.
But that couldn’t be. She’d already shot the guy with an angel fire bullet. He should be dead, if not close to it.
“Hold still, Neela. Hold still— Fuck!”
“Wh-what? What’s happening?” The pain answered her question, though, causing her leg to shake and spasm.
“The apex,” Rhode growled out.
Then those gears from earlier, the ones that she thought had already clicked so solidly into place, stalled out and shut down her whole mind machine. Apex didn’t use mortal weapons, only ones of dark magic. Wasn’t he dead, though?
I thought . . . I thought . . .
The demon had been alive enough to strike her with his magic.
And for the first time in her life, it had wounded her.