Chapter 9
The last remnants of the Horsemen’s calls reverberated through my head before disappearing into the dark recess of my mind, leaving behind an uneasy silence and the cold certainty of their return.
My eyes opened to the feel of metal around my wrists and a searing heat under my skin that had nothing to do with desire.
It wasn’t the pleasant kind that came from bodies pressed too close or skin warmed by a lover’s touch.
This was different. It was the kind of heat that came from a bone-deep fever, radiating outward in pulsing waves, like my body had been left too close to a flame and forgotten there.
I blinked up at my bedroom ceiling, the room slowly swimming into focus.
The windows were dark now, lit only by a sliver of moonlight that pressed through the rain-streaked glass, making shadows dance against the walls.
The hard rains from earlier had finally calmed, easing instead into a light prickle against the glass as though it had nowhere better to be tonight.
I wondered how long I had been asleep this time. Apparently, long enough for daylight to bleed into nightfall.
My wrists were cuffed above my head again, secured to the headboard with the same chains from last night. Only this time there was no anticipation humming under my skin. No heat that made the restraints feel like they were part of a game I desperately wanted to play.
Just cold, punishing metal and the knowledge that I couldn’t be trusted.
Trace was sitting on the armchair in the corner of the room, his forearms braced against his knees, his hands clasped tightly together as Dominic stood by my balcony door, staring out at the night with his hands in his pockets and his back to the room.
Neither of them looked relaxed. And neither had noticed I was awake yet.
I tried to speak, but my throat was too dry. The sound that came out was more rasp than actual words.
Both of their heads snapped to me.
“Hey.” Trace was beside me in an instant, his fingers brushing the matted hair away from my eyes as his gaze bounced around my face, mapping every feature as though he hadn’t seen me in years. “You’re back.”
The feel of his cool hands felt like a godsend against my heated skin.
“How are you feeling, angel?” Dominic came around the bed on the other side, his demeanor fully composed as it always was when things were at their worst. But his eyes gave him away. The worry sat in them unguarded despite everything he was doing to hide it.
“Like I’m on fire,” I croaked as I turned my face into Trace’s palm.
The sheets beneath me were soaked with sweat and sticking to my skin in places I didn’t have the freedom of movement or the energy to peel them off of.
“She’s still burning up,” whispered Trace to Dominic, but I heard him just fine.
That explained why I felt like I’d just taken a staycation in the infernos of Hell.
“How long was I out this time?” I asked, the question coming out more desperate than I intended. Every time I lost a stretch of hours I couldn’t account for, it felt like losing ground I’d never get back.
“You needn’t worry about that, angel,” said Dominic, the corner of his mouth crooking up just enough to qualify as reassurance.
Even though he hadn’t bothered to answer my question, I could tell by the look in his eyes that it had been longer than the first time. How long though, I had no idea, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to know.
My skyrocketing temperature made everything feel sluggish, as though my thoughts were moving through syrup. I knew I should have been more concerned about the lost time, but the exhaustion was too consuming for me to care enough to push through it.
I forced a swallow and peered up at the cuffs around my wrists, still trying to piece together what happened after the voices took over. “How did I get back up here?”
“You don’t remember?” asked Trace carefully.
I frowned. “I remember Caleb talking to us in the living room. And then the voices coming back.” My fingers curled weakly against the chains. “They were telling me to go after the baby again, but it was so much more painful this time. Everything was stronger. Louder.”
Dominic’s brows perked up at my admission. “Anything after the voices?”
I shook my head. “Everything’s fuzzy after that.”
Trace and Dominic exchanged one of those loaded looks that carried an entire conversation in the span of a second. A conversation that I clearly wasn’t privy to.
“You were trying to leave again. Trying to—” Trace broke off, his jaw working as he stroked my cheek with his thumb. His blue eyes glimmered with strain as though it pained him to see me like this.
“Join the Horsemen,” I finished for him.
Even then, the pull was still there. It was quieter but still present like a persistent tug in my chest that wanted me moving. Wanted me hunting. And beneath it, I knew the whispers were still there too…muted but waiting.
“You fought us pretty hard,” said Trace, rubbing the back of his neck like the memory of it was still sitting in his muscles. “You just kept saying you had to go. That you were running out of time.”
A faint recollection broke through the gaze. The mounting pressure in my chest, the urgency clawing up my throat to tear free from their hold and join the Horsemen so that I could go after Nikki’s unborn baby.
The thought disgusted me and turned my stomach into knots.
“We had no choice but to restrain you. You were hurting yourself,” he went on, pained by the admission as though it had physically hurt him to do it.
I grimaced at his words. I didn’t remember that part. Frankly, I couldn’t recall anything after the voices had taken hold of me except the overwhelming need to obey them.
“It’s probably for the best that you don’t remember,” offered Dominic as he reached onto the end table and picked up a glass of water before bringing it to my lips. “Drink, angel.”
I held his gaze over the rim of the glass. “That bad?”
He didn’t answer. Which was answer enough. I craned my head just enough to take a small sip before pulling back.
“But you were able to stop me at least, right?” I said, telling myself that had to count for something. That it was progress. A data point. Evidence that this was still survivable and that we weren’t completely screwed. “I didn’t hurt anyone this time, right?”
“Caleb was able to put you under before anything like that could happen,” explained Trace. “He layered some slumber spell on top of everything else we were already doing. Between the three of us holding you down and his magic forcing you under, it was just barely enough.”
I winced at the image of it. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fact that I had to be magically sedated like a wild animal.
“If I wasn’t so scared about what was happening to you, I probably would have been impressed that you fought it for as long as you did. A lot longer than any of us expected,” he added, his tone a mixture of admiration and grief.
“Even ravaged by a fever, you are formidable, angel,” said Dominic, brushing the back of his knuckles against my cheek.
Despite wanting to sink into his touch and let myself disappear into the distraction, I held his gaze. “And by fever, you mean the spell rot. Right?” The words sat like coal in my mouth.
I had remembered that part of the conversation very clearly. Frankly, it wasn’t a phrase you’d forget very easily. The words alone made my stomach want to fall out of my body.
Dominic dipped his head in a single, curt nod.
“Right.” I peered up at my wrists, taking in the red marks where the metal had bitten into them during the struggle. The skin around them appeared abraded and almost raw. “Pull my sleeves down please.”
“Angel—”
“Pull them down,” I repeated more firmly, and Dominic sighed and then did as I asked.
I looked up again, my gaze locking on my forearms as all the breath in my lungs left my body.
The black lines had spread again. They crawled past my elbows now, branching up toward my upper arms in fractured patterns so dense they barely looked like veins anymore.
I turned my arm slowly in the low light and watched them pulse faintly with each heartbeat, as though something living ran just beneath the surface.
“Why is this happening to me?” My voice cracked on the last word before I could stop it.
Dominic straightened and then crossed his arms over his chest. I could tell he was working very hard to project a calm that I knew he didn’t entirely feel.
“Caleb believes it’s some sort of power overload,” he answered simply.
“Between your Slayer and Nephilim blood, and now the Horsemen essence, they appear to be fighting against each other for dominance, and your body is bearing the cost of it.”
The idea that my own body was doing this to itself, that my own abilities were turning against each other from the inside, made me feel physically sick. Then again, anything with the word rot in it was something I wanted out of my body as fast as possible.
“How long until the fever breaks and I start feeling better?” My eyes moved between them, and I caught it immediately—the half-second of hesitation, the micro-adjustment in Trace’s expression before he schooled it.
“It’s hard to say,” he offered, his gaze sliding from me to Dominic and then back again.
He was lying to me. Placating me. But why? And then it hit me. There was no external force to remove. No curse to break. This was coming from within me. It was my own body turning against itself.
I looked back up at the poisonous lines crawling up my arms and felt the realization burrow slowly into my chest. “I’m not going to get better…am I?” I asked, meeting Trace’s eyes again.
His throat moved as he swallowed. “We don’t know anything yet, and until we do there’s no point in stressing yourself out.”
“Caleb is gathering information as we speak,” added Dominic, his tone careful but confident, as though he weren’t going to accept any other outcome. “Someone will have answers.”