Chapter 19
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Dante roared as I sped-walked down the sparse streets straight for the Monster Arena.
Cole’s influence seemed to have spread across the campus, evidenced by the dark fog that curled around my ankles.
I decided that was a good sign. It meant that he was strong, and I needed him strong—and angry—when I freed him because he was the key to taking the Dean down.
All I had to do was convince him that the Dean was a bigger threat than me. Given that she wanted to mess with Hell and she was the reason he was locked up in the first place, I figured that wouldn’t be too hard to do.
I clutched the handkerchief to my chest that I’d used to soak up the few droplets of blood from the young Queen. It was my lifeline. The proof of that came as it hummed with innate power that would give me access to any locked door in the Academy.
Finally, I could see Kaito again.
And I could face Cole.
Dante gripped me by the shoulder—hard—and spun me around so fast that I almost toppled over. “Do not walk away from me,” he growled as the black mist moved through the air, dancing upward over our chests.
I really didn’t have time for this shit.
“Look, Dante. I get that you’re pissed off and Cole is getting under your skin.
” I wasn’t feeling any of Olivia’s feel-good spell anymore, so the sooner I got to Cole, the better.
“Don’t you get it?” I asked as I held up the handkerchief.
“This is the key to my true Awakening. I’ve always been incomplete and broken.
” I shoved the precious cloth into my pocket before he could rip it away from me.
“You wouldn’t understand what that’s like. ”
“I wouldn’t understand?” he roared, grabbing for me again but I moved too fast for him to get ahold of my skirt.
He presented the long scar across his wrist as the dark fog glided over it, seeming to be interested in Dante’s past pain.
“I lived without a hand for a year for you, or have you forgotten that little detail? You know what makes a man feel incomplete and broken? Missing a fucking appendage!”
Tears threatened to stream down my face, even if I knew it was the effects of the rage demon making Dante act like a complete asshole. “I never asked you to do that for me,” I snapped before turning and breaking into a run.
Maybe I wasn’t as fast as the Hunter, but I wasn’t going to make this easy on him.
I pushed all of my supernatural strength into my legs as I fled down the streets. I missed Logan and knew he’d enjoy this. He’d run alongside me and play rather than chase me down like a Hunter homing in on his victim.
Dante kept up pace as he caught up with me faster than I had anticipated. He’d grown stronger after becoming my Virtue, just as all my guys had blossomed into their powers. Except right now he used the gifts I had awakened in him against me and it pissed me off.
Just as his fingers clawed into my hip, I spun, using my momentum to fling him around me and onto the ground. He hit hard and went into a tumbling roll. I went to jump over him but the Hunter kept his eye on me, even in the disorienting spin, and grabbed at me so that I went tumbling down with him.
We became a tangle of arms and legs as the street jabbed rocks into my side, knocking the wind out of me until we stopped and Dante pinned me down. His chest heaved and his wild orange eyes glowed with murder and lust.
“You still don’t remember, do you?” he asked, his anger burning hot and violent as the darkness threatened to close in around us. He yanked down his neckline and revealed the long scar that ran across his throat. “Think, Lily. Think hard.”
I froze, staring at the mark as I felt inevitably drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I traced one finger across it, retracting my dark claw that matched the scar’s shape far too perfectly.
No. That doesn’t make sense. I couldn’t have…
I pulled my hand away. “I don’t like this, Dante. Get off me.”
He grabbed my wrist and pulled my fingers to his throat again, forcing me to feel the raised line. “Not until you remember.”
“Remember what?” I asked. “There’s nothing that—”
My words cut off short as a deep, dark memory struggled to the surface. The darkness all around me sucked me into a place I’d kept walled off from my mind, for my sanity’s sake.
I’d once been more Demonspawn than anything else. All I knew was anger and betrayal. My father, the Incubus King, had only wanted to use me to build an army of more just like me. At first, I’d been the perfect instrument for his plans. I’d embraced my Demonspawn side. Lack of empathy. Anger. Rage.
But most of all… I’d had a need for understanding and acceptance.
I started to question his actions, especially when he hurt people who didn’t seem to deserve it. Empathy wasn’t something a Demonspawn was supposed to have, but I wasn’t just a demon.
That’s when he’d locked me up in the darkness, that vile place where I’d gone when Kaito had given me the Awakening vial. It was where I’d lost my mind.
Where I’d lost everything.
I’d hurt people after that. It was a blur, even now, but I knew I’d done terrible things I could never forgive myself for.
“The blood on me,” I said, remembering that first night in the rain when I’d found myself at Cindy’s bar. I glanced up at my Hunter as my stomach twisted. “It wasn’t my own.”
His expression went grim as he waited for me to finish my thought.
“It… was yours.”
I’d been the one to do this to my Hunter. I’d sliced his throat wide open and left him for dead.
That was the first time he’d tried to hunt me down and failed.
But his blood had done something to me. It had touched a power inside of me that connected with my angel heritage and given me a second chance.
A clean slate.
“That’s why I wiped out my memories,” I said, mesmerized and horrified at the same time. “I didn’t want to remember doing that to you.” Not when my soul recognized him as my Virtue.
“I almost died,” he growled, his rage still palpable, but seeing the realization and pain in my eyes seemed to satiate his violent need to hurt me.
“You didn’t have any knowledge of what you were, or how to control your powers.
You managed to wipe out your memory, but in doing so, you sent out a shockwave that hit every supernatural in range.
” He frowned. “Luckily, I was in transit between Earth and the Academy when that hit and exempt for the worst of it.”
All the fight left me at once and I slumped against the ground as the dark mist lingered over my lips. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
My Hunter seemed to relax, just as I did, as if us sharing this deep, dark memory and bringing it out into the open banished its control over us.
I realized that if this was Cole’s influence, he might need a trigger to hold onto to push rage. He couldn’t create it, I realized. He needed a source to fester.
And I’d just found Dante’s.
The Hunter’s eyes returned to their radiant orange glow as he got off of me and offered his hand.
“I didn’t tell you because I don’t want to hurt you, Lily.
” He frowned when I stared at him. My heart still twisted from the revelation, as well as the hurt that he’d kept something like that from me all this time.
“It’s this damn fog, Lils. I’m sorry. I never should have forced you to remember. ”
“So why do you care now?” I asked as the tears finally came, stinging their way through my eyes to hiss across my heated skin. “It took Cole’s influence to finally get you to face what I did to you? After everything we’ve been through together, you held onto it.”
He knelt and turned my face. “I’m sorry that I kept it from you. I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t know that a rage demon would use it against me.”
I managed a chuckle. “He’s proving to be a handful, isn’t he?”
“Do you intend to go after him?” he asked as he kissed the damp line on my cheek where my tears had fallen. “Tell me the truth, babe. You’re not just going for Kaito, are you?”
“You don’t feel what I feel,” I insisted. “Cole is hurting and lashing out. He doesn’t know what’s going on. All he knows is that he’s been imprisoned and he’s pissed and he’s using every advantage that he can get.”
“And you intend to win him over by freeing him?” he asked with a heavy dose of skepticism.
“Well, yes,” I admitted. “He’s one of us, Dante. He’ll come around.”
My Hunter sighed and rested his elbow on his knee as he gazed over the fog that had overtaken Fortune Academy’s streets.
“Look, I’m not dumb enough to think I can stop you.
But you have to be smart about this. The guy is a powerful demon and he’s not going to be open to ‘coming around.’ He’s going to want to hurt someone, and I don’t want that someone to be you. ”
“It won’t,” I promised. “And plus, what choice do we have? We need him. You saw what happened the last time I tried to face the Dean without him.” All of my Virtues had been there, but it still hadn’t been enough. That resulted in a one-way trip to Hell and we’d barely survived.
Dante smirked. “Yeah. Well, I’m not saying you shouldn’t meet up with him, but you need to be careful.” He shifted away from me. “You don’t know him like I do.”
That earned him a raised brow. “Oh?”
His orange eyes glittered with faint anger that threatened to return. “Let’s just say he’s intruded on a few of my dreams and the guy can be a real asshole.”
I smirked as I got to my feet and brushed away dirt from my hopelessly ruined uniform. “If there’s one thing this Academy has taught me, it’s how to speak ‘asshole’ around here.”
He smiled, this time his dimples making an appearance. “Touché.”
This felt like my Dante, the witty Hunter who took his life in stride, no matter how rough it got. “So, does that mean you’re going to let me go without tackling me again?”
“Perhaps,” he said with a shrug as he stood, “but I don’t think you should go in there without a plan, or without your Virtues.”
“Not an option,” I countered. As much as I wanted to bring all of my guys, that would put a target on their backs, especially in the very likely scenario that Cole didn’t work with me as planned.
“Well, bring at least two of us,” he suggested. “I’m obviously coming. And Orion would be the strongest second, since he’s been the most… connected with you lately.”
I smirked. “You mean he’s been the only Virtue brave enough to sneak past the Dean’s spies to get into my bedroom at night.”
“Dumb enough,” Dante corrected as he grabbed my wrist and dragged me back the way we’d come. “Now it’s time for him to repay that indulgence.”