Chapter 32
N eela couldn’t figure out whether the stress headache currently digging its talons into her temples was due to cramming her hair into the knit hat she’d been encouraged to wear or due to the reason she had to wear the thing in the first place. The hood to her white puffer coat was calling her name, its faux-fur trim hanging off her shoulders in a mournful beggar’s pose as she itched to throw it over her head.
But the hood, however preferable for her comfort, wouldn’t have made her the identifiable target she needed to be. She could hardly find fault in the argument, especially as she was crowded among the far too many joyful kids and their huddled-together parents beneath the pseudo-snowstorm-turned-preemptive-snow-day. All over a few inches of snow that, according to Chrome, any decent set of snow tires could have handled.
And she’d thought New Englanders weren’t so scared away by the white stuff that school districts had to call a snow day the night before.
Tourist towns were a different breed, apparently.
The sudden school closures had turned into the perfect opportunity, however, to try and draw Cyro out of hiding. The municipal park complex in Aurora was a massive space that housed everything from hiking trails to a dozen sports fields to playgrounds and, most delightedly for the kiddos, the most kick-ass hill that sported the additional benefit of being well-lit at night due to its proximity to the high school soccer team’s practice field. It doubly served as the perfect spot for parents to go and sit on nearby bleachers while their kids went sledding and the adults got to have precious private moments with their travel mugs full of hot toddies—or coffee, if anyone inquired as to what was actually in the tumblers.
Bonus points for the town’s rec workers, who figured out how to blast music through the speakers to mark the occasion of Aurora’s first snow day of the season (which, again, hadn’t actually happened yet).
The employees had no idea they were also scoring the soundtrack to the demon ruler’s potential arrival on stage, otherwise known as Neela’s personal panic attack.
No matter how many conversations she’d had with the sentinels or how many times Rhode had held her hands and assured her that no harm would come to any of the mortals on the field, she had a hard time absorbing the potential outcome. She was nothing if not a seeing is believing type of person. Otherwise, who the hell would decide to grow a damn greenhouse underground if they hadn’t seen it already on YouTube?
Sane people wouldn’t. Only desperate people.
So, she’d needed some convincing on that front even though the logic, however much of a high-priced gamble it seemed, made sense. The more public the area, the less possibility that things could erupt into a battle that would head south real fast. Cyro wanted the general population of mortals to know about demons as much as he wanted to give up his quest to destroy the Empyrean.
It was a safety-in-numbers game, which meant Neela’s most identifiable feature, her hair, had to be visible enough for the charmers to find her but also be hidden enough to blend in.
All that she could get behind, but that had been before Rhode had welcomed her into the safety of that brand-new vehicle, plunked the key into her hand, and effectively stitched together all the broken bits inside her. For the first time in her life, she could actually feel what it meant to belong to someone, to have someone belong to her. There was a magnetism to it that no Internet video or role-playing game could have ever portrayed the truth of. She realized that now. That sensation was so brilliantly vital, it was a wonder how she ever thought there was safety behind avatars in the first place.
And she was itching to get back to that life. But first, she had to make sure her previous life didn’t follow her there.
Neela sat on the cold bleachers and pretended to watch the children play. While her face remained pinned toward the hill, the shadows around the complex drew the bulk of her attention.
All the angels were there, spread out and armed to impossible lengths—lengths she seriously wished they could avoid. While the charmers loved the flare of battle, Cyro loved the flare of a different sort of battle: one with words and far too much exposition to be an efficient use of time. But that was what happened when an immortal ruler had a captive audience and enjoyed the sound of his voice almost as much as the screams of others.
By design, Neela didn’t know where any of the angels were located, including Rhode, only that they were closer than she could imagine. Her soul bond had assured her that she’d be out of there as soon as Cyro surfaced.
It’s not your fight, little demon. And I’ll never allow it to be. Never again.
Rhode had offered her no shortage of assurances that they had a plan for every possible outcome, with tricks up their sleeves Cyro couldn’t possibly know about.
Neela breathed out and momentarily let the cloud of her breath distract her from the mental acrobatics she couldn’t seem to keep her mind from.
“It’ll be over soon,” she whispered to herself as she huddled farther into her coat. “Not much longer.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
The nearby serpentine voice slithered down the side of her neck and jerked Neela’s head to the right. A woman with long blond hair sporting a fashionable lavender fleece ear band and matching winter coat pursed her lips over the rim of a travel mug, but no breath fogged around her. When she inhaled again, she smiled at Neela, and gold irises flashed a different sort of welcome. Hunkered in the shadows at the corner of the bleachers, her tall muscular form began to change shape. Limbs thickened to masculine proportions, and hair shimmered out of sight to reveal the charmer’s familiar gold and teal tattoos, along with the two gold bands around his throat.
Elite, not mystic.
Neela schooled her features so the relief wouldn’t show. If Cyro sent warrior charmers to claim her, then he still didn’t know that magic could harm her there. Just like Rhode suspected.
Neela pinned her shoulders back and prepared to dive into the script she and Rhode had come up with. “I know why you’re here, and if Cyro wants?—”
“You have no idea what he wants,” the elite fired back.
Neela stumbled a moment, surprised by the interruption but not the harshness, then quickly gathered her thoughts again. “What I was saying, asshole, was that if Cyro wants me at all, I’ll come willingly.”
The charmer’s eyes squinted, but that time, he held his tongue.
Yeah, that’s right. This is my playbook we’re running. I’m not the wallflower you remember.
“I’ll meet with him and do so without restraint, if that’s what he wants, but it can’t be here. It’s got to be on the other side of the park, away from all these people. No scene on my end if there’ll be no scene on his.”
“The mortals have changed you,” the thing mused. “Someone somewhere made the mistake of letting you think you have any say in what happens to you.”
“And someone somewhere doesn’t give a shit because you’ve been ordered to bring me to Cyro.” Neela leaned forward. “So you’ll do it because while my choices may be limited at the moment, they definitely have an impact on what he’ll do to you if you don’t deliver. Funny,” she said, resting her knuckles under her chin. “I guess that means I’m the one who has a say in what happens to you .”
The charmer lunged for her, snapping his teeth, but she just put her hand up. “I can’t be harmed, remember? So save the aggression for someone who will be impressed by it and let’s get this over with.”
As Neela was escorted to the far, far, far side of the park by the elite and two more charmers who slid out from the crowd to join the party, she kept checking in with her racing heart, giving it all the pep talks needed to keep powering her through whatever bravery it had mistakenly blessed her with.
In no world had she ever stood up for herself against her kind, let alone rap them across the knuckles with her newfound take-no-shit temperament.
Which, unfortunately, also had a time limit. She had, at best, another ten minutes of bravado left in her before the cracks in her facade would start to show, and she’d have no choice but to bow out and let Rhode and the sentinels take over.
And she really didn’t want to do that. She’d just found her home, her family. Did she want them to think she couldn’t pull her own weight, especially with her sire?
She could do this. She had to.
They reached the end of the unused field, which was far enough away from the meat of the park that the music had become a faint suggestion among the snowflakes. There was no one to greet them at first. Just mounds of untrodden snow piling around thick tree trunks.
Then the snow around one of the trees began to shimmer and move, until it was pulled into the tall shape of a man with broad shoulders, no hair, and the sunken face of the person who’d had a starring role in so many of her nightmares.
“Neela.” Her name on his lips drew fresh score marks down her skin. “So nice of you to meet me. I’ve missed you.”
She didn’t say anything, only nodded her acknowledgment while she frantically scanned the fit of his black three-piece suit for any bulges or asymmetrical folds that might indicate the hidden relic.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
That caught her off guard. “For what?”
“For forsaking the life I gave you in favor of some mortal existence we both know you could never truly survive in.”
“I’ve been surviving just fine.” C’mon, Neela, look! Where is it? Where would he keep it?
His slacks were freshly pressed and tailored perfectly to his muscular frame, as they always were, with not even the front leg crease out of alignment. The overcoat he wore was open but not particularly bulky. Nothing to indicate stuffed pockets.
“Oh, I highly doubt that. You know, of all the beings ever created on this rock, mortal humans are the least welcoming. Did you know that? And yet, for some reason, they insist otherwise, even going so far as to applaud other species for accepting those not like them into their packs. Those asinine tales of golden retrievers becoming mothers to cheetahs or some abandoned marmoset being adopted by capuchin monkeys and raised as their own. It’s always the mammals, mind you, never the sharks or the scorpions. Ever wonder why that is?”
“Couldn’t say.” Neela squinted against the meager moonlight as Cyro shifted into his usual pacing. She tried to catch a glimpse inside his overcoat, to see whether there was a pocket she’d missed or some sort of necklace.
Nothing. He wore nothing to indicate he had anything on him other than an abundance of arrogance.
Her stomach began twisting into knots. Please be there. Please.
“Because true predators know that even creatures born from your own body wouldn’t hesitate to turn their back on you if it so suited them, let alone ones you adopt as your own.” Cyro drew closer to her, and his expression faltered from that familiar haughtiness to an almost stilted sadness. “You were the closest thing to true kin I ever had.”
“And you tried to kill me. Like, a lot .”
Then his brows drew down, and a mask of quiet fury settled into place. “Do you know what it’s like to live in darkness for so long? To be the first of your kind, the only of your kind, but relegated to depths only as deep as the shadows would allow? As they would allow?” He cast a finger toward the sky, his chest heaving, puffing out to a size that no calm thought ever followed. “And then I created you.” He drew his arms out toward her as though she was some prized showpiece. “Born from my body, crafted from my magic, but elementally committed to hijacking the source of the very beings who dared to put creatures like you and me in a box in the first place.” A remnant of something flashed in his golden eyes, something so similar to the longing she’d seen on Rhode’s face and the faces of everyone she’d met since.
It was the look of hope right before the cold wave of disappointment snuffed it out.
“You were supposed to be the answer to my sentence. The one being who could infiltrate the Empyrean and dismantle it so you and I and all the other charmers who came after you could finally live freely in a world without light.” Then his face fell and, with it, his arms. “I was that golden retriever offering you a life unlike any other, and instead of embracing it, you abandoned me.”
A flash of something smooth and white peeked out from his wrist as he lowered his arm, and she sucked in a breath. The relic! I was right!
Neela’s mind spun as she tugged on her ear and tried to keep him talking. “I wouldn’t call it abandonment. You had no use for me. I didn’t have any powers. I couldn’t do what you wanted.”
“I wanted to live!” he screamed at her. “I wanted to live with someone like me, beside me, born of me, who could do what I could not. But instead, all you did, day in and day out, was remind me of every single thing you could not do. How your existence, the existence I gave you, was better suited for anything other than what I could provide for you. A cheetah who preferred the open spaces of the Savannah instead of the canary I needed in the coal mines.” His gaze darkened. “But I don’t like my pets escaping, no matter how damaged they are, and I have built a far better cage for you than the one you remember. Enough of this nonsense. It’s time to return where you belong.”
The rope appeared around her neck before Neela had a chance to scream. Cyro pulled hard, and the breath from her lungs squeezed out of her in raspy ribbons. A portal flashed behind him, and a dozen or so charmers walked out, each carrying more of those cargo net guns, in addition to several other firearms she didn’t recognize.
What she did recognize was the relic, white, fang-like, and curving around Cyro’s wrist like a crescent-moon bangle.
Neela curled her fingers around the rope and fought for purchase against the smooth nylon fibers, finding no give whatsoever. In front of her, a firing squad of charmers aimed their guns at her and held the funnels of their launchers in stacked positions to ensure maximum coverage, all saying the same message.
If she tried to run, they’d find her.
Cyro tugged on the rope while holding his other hand high and squeezing it into a fist. “Now.”
Neela braced for the telltale clicks of triggers, the yank on her neck?—
A sharp whine cut through the night, and the rope at her neck went lax. Air rushed into her lungs as she chased the track of the sound. On the ground, a gleaming titanium arrow staked the severed tactical rope to the snow-packed earth.
The sky erupted after that.
Several sets of metallic wings dive-bombed through the snow and let loose a hail of angel fire into the demons charging toward her. The fiery bullets and projectiles lit up the flailing bodies like the grand finale of a fireworks celebration. Those who weren’t thrashing from the fire had dropped to the snow, wasting time while they tried to pull out weapons that would work on the angels.
Meanwhile, a certain set of wings had yet to materialize. Neela assessed the arrow at her feet again and smiled. Despite the metal, she’d recognize the fire engulfing the arrowhead anywhere. Its heat was something that would never harm her.
Then Rhode’s boots hit the snow at her side. He threw the bow he’d been holding over his back and urgently grabbed her to his chest. “Are you all right?”
“I am now. But Cyro has the relic. It’s on his?—”
A bolt of green magic speared through the clearing and sliced across the ground where Neela and Rhode stood, spraying snow everywhere and sending them both flying in different directions.
Neela’s back hit a tree, and her head scraped against the frozen bark. When she landed in the snow, she tried to move her body, but it was like dragging her limbs through sand. Once she finally got her knees under her, she managed to sit back and winced.
Crimson drops began to dapple the snow around her knees. Neela’s hand flew to the back of her head where her neck met her scalp, and she let out a withered groan. A small patch of bare skin greeted her fingers where hair should be. When she pulled her hand away, blood came with it.
“Now that is quite an interesting development.”
Neela screamed as Cyro grabbed her by the hair and lifted her to her feet.
In front of her, Rhode sprang up, kamas already in hand, rhodium armor rippling over his tense body. “Fight me. Fight me , you asshole! She’s not worth it.”
The anger in Rhode’s voice was expected, but it didn’t lessen the blow of his words.
He doesn’t mean that. He’s trying to fight for you.
Cyro grinned. “You know, it’s funny you should bring up the subject of her worth because, while I’m nothing if not a truth-teller, I’m afraid the same can’t be said of our dear Neela. You see, it seems she has been telling some tall tales. For instance, I never knew she was so vulnerable aboveground in the mortal lands. My goodness, can you imagine the agita it would have saved me to just have killed her here outright all those years ago? What a missed opportunity.” His face twisted into a scowl, but something far more sinister danced in his eyes. “And so, I would be remiss letting another tale go by. Tell me, Axtar , do you still think she’ll be worth it once you find out that she was the one who told me to do the rhodium experimentation on you in the first place?”