Chapter 49
I’m pretty sure this bread will need to be thrown out by the time they get back. I’ve been picking at it since they left, and of course it’s been several hours.
Amarah checked in throughout the day, only going quiet recently. I feel bad for how worried I’ve been, but she doesn’t seem to mind me lingering in her head.
Even if she did mind, I’d still do it. I’ve said it before—I’m obsessed. And I’d be a fool not to admit I’m in love with that girl. It’s obvious, and once we’re back, I’m going to tell her. I’ll tell Lucifer, too.
I was too terrified to tell him when we were together. My constant worry it would have him disappearing kept my lips sealed.
Look where that got me anyway.
His life may be eternal, but mine can end any moment, and from him—no, them—how much I love them, is that stupid I swear I’m not.
“Nervous Vampire,” Zuhara says with a coy look on her furry face.
“Are you supposed to be sitting on the island?”
She hisses playfully, her head resting down mere inches from the bread. “He will keep her safe.”
“I know he’ll try. I’m pretty sure Luce is as protective over her as I am. It’s nice to see.”
“Did you worry what those two would be like together?”
I shake my head. “They are quite similar, so no, I wasn’t.”
“Good, because I think fate… has…” Her voice trails off as she stands on all fours. “I do hate that man.”
“Who?”
“Belial…” Her tone is hesitant, like she’s not entirely here as she continues to speak. “He wants that girl. Oh, no…”
“What’s wrong?!” I’m up on my feet.
“Amarah!?” I scream through the bond, but it’s silent. “Little slayer, answer me.”
There’s a wall, just not one I’ve ever felt before. It’s more like fog, thick and disorienting. The indigo string with flecks of gold is still there, but I can’t grip it. I can’t reach her.
When I turn to Zuhara, her hackles rise and she hisses, “No…”
“What’s happening?!”
“He told me not to bring you,” she growls, pacing. “But… Lucifer is fighting his father. Belial was going to take Amarah as collateral so Vendra would give him something. This is a mess. Hex was right—Belial has lost his fucking mind.”
I shake my head, disbelief crashing into panic. “Take me to them. Right now! I’m a thousand-year-old Vampire, Zuhara. I’m capable of fighting!”
My voice breaks into a shout because she only lowers her head.
“If anything happens to that girl… this place won’t survive. I’ll bring it all down.”
Her golden eyes lock onto mine. “Be prepared to.”
A sudden, sharp pain slices through my chest and I grip the counter, only barely stopping myself from collapsing. I haven’t sweat since I was turned, but I immediately begin to. My lungs scream for oxygen like they’re tearing apart.
Zuhara appears in front of me in a blink, pressing her massive head against mine. “Let it run its course. She’s not dead. She’s fighting. But we must go to them.”
It feels like molten lava is flowing through my veins. My skin burns so violently I want to claw it from my body just to get relief. The only thing keeping me standing is knowing this pain is happening because of her. Because Amarah is hurt.
And I don’t need anyone to tell me what’s happening. The bond is shredding. She’s… dying.
Come on.
Come on.
COME ON.
I don’t ease into it; I shove myself upright. Zuhara doesn’t hesitate. She tears open the same portal she used to drag me to the Phantasm.
Passing through it feels like stepping into a freezing waterfall after being scorched alive. The pain recedes, only slightly, but enough for me to breathe.
Enough for me to fight.
We don’t land in Hex’s world. Instead, we’re back in Belial’s manor. The same gothic architecture swallows the space, but now it’s completely destroyed. Walls and floors have caved in. Glass litters the ground—what’s left of a chandelier lies in sparkling ruins. And there’s blood everywhere.
So much blood.
And none of it is Belial’s.
Her scent hits me like a punch to the face, pulling my gaze right to her.
It’s like my barely beating heart has crawled behind my eyes, pounding until my vision blurs in and out. She’s sitting slumped, unmoving.
She has a pulse, but it’s so, so, faint.
“I shouldn’t be surprised.” The voice that hits my ears is familiar, but not Lucifer’s.
I’ve heard him before…
Zuhara darts across the room toward Amarah, and when she reaches her, I finally force myself to look at Belial as he rises to his full height. His red skin is spattered with blood—dark, thick—and most of it is Lucifer’s.
However, I can even smell Amarah on him.
Fury, deeper than anything I’ve ever known, weighs down my chest.
“Kayn…” Lucifer’s voice cracks, but I can’t look at him. My eyes hold his father’s. The godsdamn ruler of the Beyond. “You need to go.”
Belial laughs, and the double set of fangs he bares has me flashing my own. “Oh, no. He dies too. Then you’ll have no more distractions.”
He vanishes in a blink, and I shove myself through the tearing, agonizing pull of the dying bond, meeting his punch with the flat of my palm. It drives me back a few steps, but I hold.
“I don’t know how you got the drop on me the first time,” I snarl, pulling on the Crimson Dawn. To my surprise, the power actually bleeds into the room—slowly, but it comes. “But I’ll fucking kill you for touching her.”
My fist connects with his face and, even though it feels like punching solid stone, Belial goes flying. I shake out my hand and lunge after him. While Lucifer and Amarah may be distance fighters, I’m better up close.
Belial recovers quickly, swinging at me, but I’m faster. I slip under his arm and drive my knee into his gut, sending him crashing back again.
His shoulders snap taut as he bellows a roar that shakes the ruined walls.
I’m ready to drag this fight out for eternity when a deep maroon void tears open in the floor beneath him, and he drops straight through.
Then he’s gone.
What the fuck?
“Kayn. Lucifer.” Zuhara’s voice cuts through the air. I keep my eyes on the closing space where Belial vanished, waiting—just for a second—to make sure it isn’t a trick.
After I feel confident he’s not going to sprout like a tree, I turn and sprint to her.
She hasn’t touched Amarah. My girl is still slumped where she fell, vomit and blood pooled in her lap. The sight cleaves something inside me clean in half.
“What happened?” I manage, forcing my voice to stay steady. Moving to my knees in front of her, I reach for her face, but Zuhara hisses so sharply I freeze.
“Head injury. Be careful.”
I move slower, slipping a hand behind her neck and the other beneath her legs, lifting her gently into my arms. Her hair had hidden the worst of it, but now I see the blood streaking down the side of her head. There’s a lot of it.
Lucifer steps in front of me, brushing the white strands away from her face. Her eyes are open, but when the light hits them, her pupils don’t react. They stay fixed, empty, like there’s no one looking back at us.
“He hit her…” The agony in Lucifer’s voice tears at something inside me. I want to drag him into my arms with us, shield him and her both, but I can’t spare even a finger. Not while I’m holding her like this. “He tried to kill her… just like he threatened to do to you.”
“You must take her to Vendra,” Zuhara snarls, hackles raised as she steps in front of us. Shielding us from a woman who looks eerily like Xeraphine, though different enough that I know she isn’t.
“Mom.” Lucifer moves to stand between us and her protectively.
Instinct forces me to pull Amarah tighter to my chest as I rise to my feet.
“I’ve given you a few minutes,” Proserpina says softly, though her tone carries the weight of command. “You must go.” Her deep blue eyes shift to Amarah’s limp body in my arms. “She is no use to me dead. So please. Hurry.”
A growl rips out of me, my voice riding on top of it. “She is not anyone’s to use!” I jerk my head toward Lucifer. “Open the fucking gates. Let’s go.”
He hesitates. And when he looks back at me, just over his shoulder, it’s brief. But in that heartbeat, I see it.
His choice.
His conflict.
I shake my head. “Little deviant…”
His desire to stay here—stay in the Beyond—with the monster who raised him, just to save us. It’s written in the crease in his brow, and in the pain twisting his violet eyes.
What he doesn’t understand is I’d come right back for him the moment Amarah is healed.
I’ll never not chase after him again.
Then, after a silent argument in our eyes, he turns back to his mother. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She smiles. It’s a mixture of sad, proud, and resigned. “Your destiny isn’t here, son. I love you. Now go.”
I’m grateful when he spins back toward me, grabs my arm, and tears open a slice in reality, dragging us back through the gates before anything else can attempt to take her from us.
Our exit is anything but pleasant—more like being hurled through a hurricane. I can’t keep my footing and stumble forward, momentum ripping me off balance, and I hit the ground hard. I manage to tuck my shoulder, taking the full force of the fall so Amarah doesn’t.
Lucifer slams into the dirt beside me. His wings fold tight behind him as he scrambles to his knees in front of us. The moment his large hand touches Amarah’s cheek, I see the trembling in it as he drags it down to her chest, searching—desperate—for any sign of her.
It’s like I can feel his Vigoro’s rage; it’s why it hasn’t pulled back. It wants to stay in control.
“Give her to me.” I’ve heard her voice before, but it doesn’t make it any less jarring. Vendra. “Who did this to her?”
I don’t think lying to a God is the smartest thing, but is telling her the truth better? What would she do the moment she found out that Belial has nearly killed her conduit.
“Where do I put her?” I ask instead of giving her the answer to her question.
“Place my child down, gently.” There’s a panic in her voice she’s trying desperately to hide, but I feel it, deep down in my chest. She’s hurting for her conduit… just like I am.
I do exactly as she instructs, lowering my girl to the ground with as much care as my shaking hands will allow. Lucifer helps, sliding his hand beneath her head and easing it onto the soil. We’re still in Demour—or at least somewhere covered in Ashspyte. I can smell it thick in the air.
“I’m sorry…”
I look up at Lucifer. His eyes are glossy, not just with tears but with pain and grief twisted together. I can feel the turmoil in him, every jagged shard of it.
“I should’ve sent you both back the moment I saw you.”
My gaze returns to Amarah, her lids now at half-mast and a fog shrouding the irises.
“I… lost control in there. He attacked us, and I was blinded by the rage. By the need to hurt him the way he hurt me, hurt you, and was going to hurt Amarah.”
I take one of her hands and hold it between mine. Her heart is still beating, faint and fragile, and it feels like mine is pounding harder, trying to force strength into hers.
I release a heavy sigh, shaking my head. “This isn’t your fault, Luce. It’s mine.”
She wouldn’t be like this if not for me. If not for everything I pulled her into. The moment I saw her I should’ve let her out of the deal.
I should’ve found another way that didn’t involve using the woman I care for beyond my own life.
Suddenly, thin, bright green vines sprout from the soil. In a place like this, a land choked by death, their color is too vibrant and wrong. They curl upward, winding gently around Amarah’s throat.
Then more follow, twining over her arms, her waist, her chest. Claiming her.
“You will tell me who did this, now.” There it is—her rage. A Demon shouting is one thing, but her voice hits harder; every word rolls through the ground like an oncoming quake.
I look at Lucifer, whose eyes are wide in shock. “Vendra?”
“You filthy fucking demon. You kept her away from me for months, and bring her back on the brink of death!”
The ground behind me cracks open, and as the world around us shifts, so do our positions.
“Vendra, wait! It wasn’t him. It was Belial!”
“Then I shall do to his son what he has done to my child.”
Those same vines snap quickly around Lucifer’s throat, and yank him backward. The moment I’m up, a towering familiar creature shadows over the three of us.
I square my shoulders to Thornwyn, who growls, “I do not like you.”
“I don’t give a fuck. Let him go.”
I pop my head to the side, looking down at my little deviant—completely wrapped in shrubs. I’ve been held by those before; they’re strong. It’s no surprise he can’t just tear himself free.
“She wouldn’t want this…” I say in a low, threatening tone.
Thornwyn bares its teeth, each one razor-sharp and ready to gnaw straight through any of us if given the chance.
“He will just suffer, he cannot die.”
I shake my head. “He tried to save her. Don’t punish him for the acts of his father.”
The large, overgrown weed-tree leans over both Lucifer and Amarah. His head mere inches from mine as he spits out, “Yet she’s punished. For what, Vampire?!”
I’m bracing to attack when a burst of loud static tears through the air, crackling across the space around us.
Then, out of nowhere, Zuhara is hurled through wrought-iron gates that slam into existence, cloaking the area in swirling red and black smoke.
She tumbles across the ground, rolling until she’s just a few feet from us.
She forces herself up onto her paws, but she seems slightly disoriented.
“Lucifer? Where…” Her eyes lock on the scene in front of her. “What the fuck are you doing to him?!” she snarls up at the creature.
“Yes, Thornwyn. What are you doing with my son?”