Chapter 10
The shadowed corridor is silent—no sensual music or trippy, colorful lights back here—for which I am grateful. We walk slowly, careful not to make a single sound, as the pulsing in my body grows tighter and more insistent.
I’m so focused on following Finn’s trail and that of his Brood, I don’t even notice the mortal walking around the corner.
“Shit,” I breathe.
“You’re not supposed to be back here.” The guy’s got to be about thirty, clean-cut, blazer-and-sneaker combination—reminds me of one of James’s buddies.
“Sorry,” I say, softening my voice a little. “We were looking for the bathroom.”
“This one’s into some kinky stuff,” Deacon says, looking at me with heart eyes.
“I like to watch him drink toilet water.” I beam up at Deacon. “He just loves it. Can’t get enough!”
But the human isn’t as easily fooled as Finn was. “I know you,” he says, drawing closer.
I look at Deacon wide-eyed, even as my heart starts to beat faster. “Yep. He’s sort of a legend, huh?”
“Not him.” He points at me. “You. You’re the one Finn’s after. He described you to us. Pale, dark-haired, kind of catlike. Silver locket, gray eyes.”
Deacon’s usually relaxed demeanor hardens into something I haven’t seen before. Not even when I’ve pissed him off or we’ve braved the Brood. There’s something uniquely predatory behind those periwinkle eyes. “Point that finger at her again, and I’ll break it in half.”
The guy begins to rummage through his pocket for his phone. Only Deacon is swifter. He’s got him by his neck up against the wall before he can press a single number. The cell phone clatters to the ground.
“You work for Finn?” Deacon asks, terrifyingly calm.
“Fuck you,” the mortal spits as he thrashes.
“Is Reid being kept here?”
“Why should I tell you, traitor?”
Deacon’s glacier eyes glint. “That’s a yes.”
The guy jabs his finger toward me once more, even as his face begins to turn blue. “You’ve been harboring the very girl our High Thane is after!”
Without even meaning to, I take a step back. This mortal’s vitriol is like a whip. How many other mortals have Finn and his father indoctrinated? But Deacon’s eyes are on the man’s still-outstretched index finger. “I warned you about that.”
Before I can move, I hear a sickening crack—like a carrot bitten in two—and then a broken wail. The man’s cradling his hand against his chest, cheeks flushed with agony. On the ground is the other half of his finger.
“Your ribs will be next. Like toothpicks. Where does Finn play his little games?”
The man says nothing, but his wet eyes give him away. He can’t help but look to the right. Deacon grins. Victory. His gaze lands on me and narrows with curiosity. “Take him out and follow me.”
Take him out? “You’re asking me to kill him?”
Deacon’s already scanning down the hallway to the right. “You’re a hunter. You’ve got something pointy on you somewhere.”
“I know you have trouble with this concept,” I bite out slowly. “But hunters are the good guys. We don’t kill mortals, even morally bankrupt ones.”
Deacon’s eyes light with amused pity as the man struggles beneath his grasp. “They’ve really gotten to you, haven’t they? Can’t you see? You, me, the Elders, the High Thane, this loser…we’re all the same. There are no good guys.”
“That’s not true. Hunters protect people.”
The man coughs out a scoff, and Deacon squeezes his neck tighter. “Yeah, by killing.” Deacon nods his head at the lackey. “Even this guy gets it.”
“Knock him out and let’s keep moving,” I snap. “You’re wasting time.”
The man opens his mouth and Deacon and I both slap our hands over his face to silence him. “Knock him out? When he wakes up, he’s going to tell Finn you were here. That I was with you. Either you kill him or I will.”
“Then we will think of something else. We’re not killing a mortal man.”
“I already told you, Vivienne: There is no we.” Deacon pushes me aside and brings his mouth to the man’s. For a moment, I’m so taken aback I cannot move. I’ve never seen—
“Don’t!” But I’m too late.
A thin stream of shimmering light passes from the trembling man’s lips into Deacon’s mouth. Nearly invisible to the naked eye. The more Deacon drinks, the more feeble the man becomes, face graying, veins protruding blue and swollen along his neck and hands as they clutch uselessly at Deacon’s arms.
And then it’s over. The man falls to the ground in a heap, dead. Bursts into ash seconds later like a demon impaled with silver.
For a moment, I cannot find words. “You…you took his soul.”
Deacon sucks in a hearty inhale as if this narrow hallway is filled with clean mountain air. “So?”
It’s unnatural, what I just witnessed. The separation of the human body and the immortal soul. The man who just accosted me is now condemned to an eternity down in hell as a turned demon. I take a step back from Deacon and swallow hard.
His glacial eyes narrow as he studies me. “Do you want Reid back? Or do you want to sit on a pious throne made from the hide of the highest of horses? Eventually you’re going to have to pick one.” When I don’t respond his teeth fuse together so hard I can hear it. “I’m a demon. This is what I do.”
I bite my tongue. “Reid doesn’t take souls.”
Deacon scoffs, already moving toward the dungeons. “Right.”
A horrific thought drips through me as I recall those final moments with Reid at the docks.
The ferocity with which he fought, the crimson of his claws, the ram horns that sprouted from his head…
Could he have been taking souls while he taught at Harker?
Reid wouldn’t kill innocents. I know that in my heart.
Not with the absolute disdain he held for demons.
But maybe Reid allowed himself to indulge in mortals like this one.
Bad people who did bad things. Who deserved to wake up in hell, turned into demons.
Or maybe Deacon has just succeeded in making me question the character of the man I was falling in love with. A brother he always tormented, and may still be tormenting now, by birthing doubts within me.
“I hate you,” I whisper.
“I don’t care,” Deacon replies.
The wood-paneled hall continues to grow more and more well lit, as if the cloak of lust and shadowed desire is wearing off the farther we get from the Manor’s main floors.
The walls are bare of art, just the occasional ornate door with a crystal knob.
Despite us making it to the last one at the end of the hall, Finn’s rhythm has fled me.
“There may be Brood in there,” I say. “But Finn’s gone, I think. ”
“Maybe he took his lady friend back to the room where you were blowing me.”
I don’t even have the energy to spar with him. We came all this way and lost the trail. “Maybe.”
Deacon gives me a weird look. “We’ll try in here and then retrace our steps.” His arms ripple into those vicious instruments of power once more, and he moves to break the lock. “You ready?”
I stretch my back with a deep sigh and then yank out my daggers in answer. They gleam beneath the low lamp above. The peaceful fawn on Angel, the swirling snake on Hellion.
We barrel into a room with concrete floors and chains hanging from the ceiling. My heart leaps in hope—
And plummets at what we find.
A vast pool of blood. Broken chains. No Reid.
“Is it…”
Deacon’s nostrils flare with recognition. “It’s his.”
Nobody can lose that much blood and survive. Not even a demon.
Pain I’d been keeping at bay for the last week rushes up in a scarlet wave. “No,” I breathe.
My knees give out, and I fall, bone on concrete.
We’re too late. I’m too late.
I can’t feel my body.
I’m not breathing as my hand reaches for the edge of his blood. The last of him I’ll ever touch. It’s slick along my fingers. Tears drip down my face.
Had he never come with me to the docks that day, none of this would have happened. Finn never would have been able to hurt him—
Finn. Who killed him. Who made him suffer.
“I’ll rip the skin from his”—a sudden, shuddering breath—“his bones. The skin from his entire fucking body.” A mist of incomprehensible fury is rising in me.
Anger and the desire to kill like I’ve never felt.
Through the veil of it I can track its origin to the pulsing, furious scar down my spine, but the knowledge that it may not be wholly my own does nothing to dull the need.
The craving to kill. My back begins to ache with a gritty, biting pain that sends adrenaline into my palms. It’s not the bloodlust I’ve felt my entire life as an aeon.
That was the athlete in me—the driving force to do what I’m great at.
What makes me whole. This…This feels like I’m being possessed.
Deacon’s uncharacteristically silent. When I peer up at him, he’s staring at the pool of Reid’s blood. Beneath that stoic, cruelly calm expression, furious grief burns.
Despite the rage ratcheting up my spine and coating my vision, I have the self-preservation instinct to realize that if Reid is dead, Deacon doesn’t have any need for me anymore.
He’s going to drag me back to Fever Dream.
Chain me in that bedroom and leave me there to rot.
In my current state, the most frightening part of that is being left with this insistent need without the release of a deviant to slaughter.
“Deacon…” I warn. I’m about to plead for something, though I can’t fathom what there is to say, when footsteps sound in the hall.
Fast as whiplash, Deacon’s enormous hand slams over my mouth.
His other snakes around my waist, dragging us both behind a shelving unit filled with instruments of torture.
Spikes and knives and flails. Some still wet with Reid’s blood.
I thrash against him, the pain in my back and the grief in my heart teetering on agony.
The door opens.
“Hurry,” a demon says, closing it behind him. “Finn’s game is almost done. There are four mortals left, and he’s a move away from checkmate.”
My eyes widen. That can’t mean what I think it does.
“You’re screwed,” another demon with a higher-pitched voice snarls.
“Me? You left to get your rocks off!”