Chapter 14
Mason
I’d given Dakota that fucking gun, knowing it wouldn’t kill me. I’d given it to her and then I’d watched her grip it in her small hands, watched her nervously glancing over at me as I took away every shred of her agency, as I forced her to accept all the things I wanted to do to her.
She always surprised me, though. With that fire in her eyes, that darkness in her soul.
I liked that.
I liked that a lot.
It made me want to keep pushing her, just to see what she’d do to retaliate.
I could guess what she was thinking most of the time, but not all of the time.
Sometimes it looked like she was about to do something crazy, but then she refrained.
I wanted to be there whenever she went through with it, wanted to be the one she was doing it to.
My phone was burning a hole in my pocket as I walked down the deserted block, shadowed with midnight, yellow streetlights casting weak circles of light on the old, weed-ridden sidewalks.
It’d been a few days since she put her number in my phone.
Today was Saturday—technically Sunday now, based on the clock—which meant she might be downtown again, maybe in that stupid bar she’d gone to with all her friends last weekend.
Though when I was watching her, it didn’t seem like she was friends with those people.
Only one of them seemed to really notice her.
I’ll notice you, baby. Every goddamn time.
Until you hate me.
Even then, I’m not letting you get away from me.
My body was aching with pent-up aggression, lingering traces of akrasia building up in my blood over the past few months, longing to get out. As an angel, there were two ways to be neon-sick: akrasia and alapadnos. Too much neon and too little neon.
I was almost solely susceptible to the former.
Not because there was enough neon on Earth to ever be in any sort of abundance, but because I so frequently let my neon levels drop dangerously low—when I went underwater for as long as possible—they skyrocketed the second I breathed Earth-air again.
The instability was what caused the akrasia, accumulating in my body like a sickness.
Eventually I’d have to purge it, or I’d end up in an actual state of akrasia.
That was almost impossible to achieve on Earth. It was a different story in Heaven, though. Especially for angels of my kind.
Alapadnos was different in the sense that it didn’t build up in the body; it was simply the result of living in a neon-dim environment for too long, and it would be fixed once you moved somewhere else.
It was easier to manage than akrasia, which had to be bled out or burned through in a massive use of power.
I crossed an abandoned crosswalk in a few long strides, my hands stuffed deep in my pockets, even though I never got cold. One of the perks of being an angel, I supposed.
I wasn’t out searching for demons tonight, but I still had my knife with me.
It was kind of like Dakota’s knife in size and shape, except mine hadn’t been forged in this plane.
While she was sleeping, I’d looked through her purse.
She had a journal in there—which I didn’t touch, despite wanting to—along with her knife, wallet, keys, and lots of other random things.
Aquaphor, wired earbuds, hair ties, a lighter that someone had written on with black permanent marker: KOTYUSHA, a bunch of mostly-empty perfume samples, gum.
Despite all the samples, she hadn’t been wearing much perfume the times I’d been close to her. I preferred it. Her skin smelled perfect. So good that even the memory of it made my cock twitch in my jeans.
A black bird swept down off the roof of a nearby building to land on top of one of the streetlights, feathers ruffling with the wind. After a second, another one joined it, coming from the same roof. Something hurt in my chest at the sight of it.
I ducked my head and continued forward.
I knew there were other angels in this area, and they were the ones I was looking for now. Others like me, probably needing the same things I needed—at least that’s what I hoped.
There were three angelic aspects: Aiglen, Sigeian, and Thrausian.
Aiglen and Sigeian were about evenly split in terms of percentage of angels born with that aspect—roughly forty-eight percent each—and Thrausian was significantly more rare than the other two.
One might think that being so rare was a good thing, that it’d make an angel more valuable, desirable, but that was the furthest thing from the truth.
Aiglens, with their ichor-rich blood and asteria manipulation, were the favorites.
They almost never chose to fall to Earth.
Firstly, because Heaven loved them. Secondly, because being able to control asteria was a useless power on Earth—there simply wasn’t enough neon for the flame to ignite—so they’d be significantly less powerful.
Thirdly, because if they ever did fall, they’d be scooped up by demons the second they let their guard down.
The draw of ichor was too strong for a demon to resist, and while they could get it from any angel’s blood, the ones with golden blood were the most desirable. Aiglens also needed a ton of neon to survive, and even more of it to use any of their power—which they couldn’t get very easily on Earth.
They were made for Heaven through and through.
Sigeians were the exact opposite. They required very little neon to stay alive, and hardly any to use their power.
They were essentially unaffected by neon-dim environments, which made them very capable of living on Earth.
And their blood wasn’t ichor-rich like the Aiglens, so there wasn’t any added risk in that sense.
But they were still loved in Heaven, so most chose not to fall.
And then there were Thrausians.
The ones nobody ever wanted to talk about, for fear of summoning one.
Almost every single Thrausian chose to fall to Earth at some point, for one reason or another, because Heaven hated us.
It wasn’t like I didn’t understand why. But I’d never chosen to be born like this.
There were many reasons people despised us, but one of them was that we became stronger the closer we were to death.
You had to imagine what that ability would do to a person to really understand it.
Imagine the sort of instability it would breed in someone.
Each second we got closer to our own death, power and strength rushed harder and harder in our veins.
We felt fucking invincible.
And then we died.
Thrausians died significantly more frequently than any other aspect. And by significantly, I meant probably a hundred times as often. Angel death was uncommon in general, but not at all within this aspect. It was almost expected that, as a Thrausian, you would die.
Because it wasn’t like with the increased strength you were any less likely to die.
You could be ten seconds away from it and feel on top of the world, but then be taken out of the world once that timer was up.
We didn’t have any sense of our own limits, not like the other aspects did.
As they got closer to death, they became weaker and weaker—as was normal with any living creature on Earth.
I didn’t.
And I couldn’t even tell you how many times I’d pushed that fucking limit.
It was why I held my breath underwater, letting my neon levels drop dangerously low, letting myself get closer to death, just so I’d get to feel that euphoric rush of undiluted power flowing through my body.
The other fallen Thrausians were who I was looking for now.
Gravel and broken glass crunched under my shoes as I walked past abandoned buildings, crumbling facades, rusted metal. There was no method for the direction I was walking, just a feeling.
Until that feeling became a tangible thing, a scent.
I started following it, the trail leading me to the cracked-open entrance of a large uninhabited building. Pulling the door open, I stepped inside and surveyed the space. Many of the interior walls had been knocked down and the first floor stretched out before me in a mess of rubble.
As I went a bit further into the building, I saw what I’d been looking for: a group of four Thrausians. Two of them were fighting; the other two were watching.
They didn’t say much to me when I walked in; one glanced over in my direction but the other kept watching the fight. Clearly they knew why I was here. Every surface in the building was singed with black smoke, a few jagged streaks etched into the stone.
I rolled out my shoulders, tilted my head side to side. Electricity tingled at my fingertips, my skin burning with the need for release.
The one who’d glanced over at me when I walked in approached me then. His eyes were dark, his irises almost black.
“Just fists,” he said.
“I figured.”
“Stop before you lose control, and trust me to do the same.”
I nodded. The conversation was transactional and to the point, which I appreciated. We both had the same needs, given to us by our shared nightmarish aspect.
I let him take the first punch, which he did, slinging his fist into my stomach.
It felt good. The sort of pain that could wear down the roughness inside of me—even if only temporarily. Something I could hand myself over to. A physical outlet.
We went back and forth, our hits getting stronger and stronger, my body warming.
I tried to tamp down that dangerous heat, though I could still feel it simmering inside of me. The violence was only tending to the fire. Every punch and kick and noise of pain stoked the coals.
He hit my cheekbone, hard, jerking my head back. Something snapped inside of me with the hit. A single fracture.
Fuck. No.
Genuine instability clawed at my throat and I swallowed hard to try and keep it at bay. But the moment I recognized the amount of control I’d just snapped, the battle was already half-over. One fracture was enough to set off a chain reaction.
The change happened in a split-second.