I watched a demon leave the cloud, he projected. That demon could have taken her with him, and I simply missed her.
If that was the case, she would have fought the demon the entire way down, willing to die rather than be captured and imprisoned. If somehow the demon had managed to maintain his hold on her, she would be hurt, and hurt terribly, but Zacharel would rather she hurt than die.
Hurt he could save. Dead he could not.
Now, however, he had an answer to his earlier suspicion. The demons had attacked the temple for a reason, only he had not guessed they’d desired his distraction and Annabelle’s solitude. Furious with the demons, with himself, he straightened far too close to the earth’s surface, nearly shredding his wings as they slowed his momentum. The landing jolted his entire body, causing him to stumble forward.
The first thing he noticed was the demon carcass in pieces on the ground. A fresh kill, the blood liquid, without clots, and not from impact but from claws. Two demons fighting against each other? For rights to Annabelle, perhaps. Zacharel looked around through narrowed eyes, searching for any sign of her. Miles of forest in every direction, the animals and insects unnaturally quiet.
To the left, moonlight reflected off of something. Something of Annabelle’s? He raced over, leaving a trail of ice in his wake, and picked up—his brother’s urn. It was empty.
The glass shattered in his hand.
“What is it?” Thane asked as he landed.
Zacharel bent down, patted the ground. Dry. His twin’s essence had not spilled here. It could have spilled inside the cloud, and if that was the case, it was gone forever, rendered nothing but ash. Destroyed by his hand just as Hadrenial himself had been. Or one of Annabelle’s attackers could have emptied it out on the way down. But Zacharel didn’t scent—
Wait. Yes, he did. He scented his brother: the morning sky, dew drops and a hint of the tropics. Someone had absorbed his essentia.
Another breath and Zacharel realized the scent was fading. Whoever carried Hadrenial’s essentia was running away. Annabelle? Or a demon? Or both?
“Zacharel?” Thane asked.
“Go. Help your boys interrogate the demons,” he said to Thane. If he had to destroy the world to save Annabelle, he would, but he would not allow his soldier to be blamed in any way.
Without waiting for a reply, he raced forward, telling himself not to allow any more fear or fury. Not now, not later. Already his chest was on fire, surely bleeding, the fissures he’d once felt now full-blown wounds as the emotions poured through him.
Branches slapped at his cheeks, ripped at his robe. Jagged rocks sliced into his bare feet—the demons must have removed his shoes. Along the way, he bypassed two more demons, one dead, the other in the process of dying. He didn’t stop, but created another sword and slashed in half the body of the living.
At the edge of the forest was an electric fence. Annabelle, a human, would not have made it over the spiked top, yet whoever carried the essentia of his twin had. He was chasing a demon, then. Only question now was whether or not that demon was dragging Annabelle with him.
The primal instincts that had driven him to seek Annabelle for pleasure sharpened into something dark and deadly. The fury utterly consumed him, no holding it back, budding into the most destructive force he’d ever experienced. He flared his wings, intending to fly up and over, but his gaze snared on a speck of something dark on the metal links.
Blood. Red, not black. Fresh. Saturated with Annabelle’s scent.
Well, then. No other questions remained. She was out there, and she needed him. Whatever he had to do, he would save her. Even at the expense of his own life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ANNABELLE STRUGGLED to breathe. Her throat was horribly swollen, the airways already partially blocked. What little oxygen she managed to draw in only exacerbated the problem.
Demons dropped from the sky, homing in on her like heat-seeking missiles. No matter where she hid—inside bushes, the tops of trees, holes in the ground—they found her as if she had a neon sign pulsing above her head. Here. She’s here.
She had more injuries than she could count, and the wings…those hideous wings that had grown into misshapen branches with bulbous membranes rather than feathers completely unbalanced her. Didn’t help that a dead demon corpse was slung over her shoulder, slowing her down. But she couldn’t move on without him.
“Hey, what you doing? Massster callsss.”
Annabelle jolted as the speaker came into view. On a limb just above her, a half man, half snake demon, like the one Zacharel had killed the night they’d met, followed her, his tail winding and unwinding as he slinked forward.
The demons kept doing this, talking to her as if she was one of them. But then, maybe she was. Scales had replaced her skin, claws had replaced her nails, and she had no idea what had happened to her face, could only feel the grotesque differences in the shape of her bones.
The transformation had happened as she’d fought the demon in the cloud, each change coiling from the burn in her chest, a burn that had spread, worsening as her fear had deepened, sharpening as her anger had grown. She’d tried to calm herself, even after she’d managed to win the battle, but by the time she’d made the connection between her body and her negative emotions, it had been too late.
“Come. And why you carry dead anyway?” He reached for her. “To eat? I help eat.”
“Don’t you dare come near me!” she shouted, the world going dark for only a second. Less than a second, really.
But when she refocused, fresh blood covered her shaky hands, dripped from her gasping mouth. The vile taste of it even coated her tongue. And the snake…his body was in pieces and scattered at her feet.
She hunched over and vomited. This, too, kept happening. Demons approached and she momentarily blacked out, only to find them dead when she resurfaced. I don’t just look like a demon, I’m becoming one.
What would happen if Zacharel found her like this? Would he reject her? Kill her? Or would she black out and kill him?
A sob lodged in her throat as she hefted her burden back on her shoulder. I can’t be one of them. There’s another explanation, surely.
A thick tree root tangled with her foot, and her foot lost, propelling her face-first into the dirt and twig-laden ground. Stars winked through her vision on impact, but somehow, she maintained firm hold of her burden.
She scrambled up. The demon’s headless torso slammed against her back, pressing against new tendons and bending her wings, making her cry out. She wasn’t sure—
Something else, something harder, slammed into her from behind. Her feet were swept out from underneath her and she smashed into the dirt. This time, she did lose her hold and the demon shot forward, flipping end over end before smacking into a tree.
Before Annabelle could react or right herself, equally hard fingers were daggering into her scalp, jerking her up, twisting her around. Fierce emerald eyes peered down at her, Zacharel’s face so overcome with rage his features were actually altered. His cheekbones appeared sharper, his lips thinner. Even his body seemed bigger, his muscles straining the fabric of his robe.
“Zacharel, please. Let me go before I—”
“Be silent.” He backhanded her, and if he hadn’t been holding on to her dress with his other hand, she would have smacked into another tree. “You do not speak unless I tell you. Understand?”
A thousand other stars winked through her vision. He shook her, and she cried out.
“What did you do with the human girl?” He got in her face, placing them nose to nose. “I know you did something, for you smell of her.”
Stay calm. “I—I am her. I’m Annabelle.” Her jaw was already swollen, the two parts refusing to work properly. Could he understand her? “I’m Annabelle.”
His eyes slitted dangerously. “You are not.”
Oh, yes. He could understand. He simply did not believe.
His grip lifted to her neck, and he hauled her off her feet, her legs dangling. He kept her suspended like that for several heart-stopping moments. All the while she kicked at him. He was going to kill her. Here, now, he would choke the life out of her, thinking she was a demon. And he wouldn’t be pleasant about it, wouldn’t make it easier for her.
“Taste…” she managed to gurgle out. Taste the truth.
A twig snapped a few feet behind him. He dropped her as he spun. As she gasped for breath, she crab-walked backward. If she could stand, she could run. If she could run, she could hide until she figured out a way to get through to him. But her legs failed her, the muscles like two-ton boulders.
She watched as Zacharel produced his sword of fire and struck, burning through a bush. A sharp cry was released—and then cut off abruptly. The scent of charred leaves and rotten fish filled the air, wafting on a sudden, frigid breeze. A thump, a demon head rolling, followed by another thump as the body fell forward.
He spun to face her, the sword still in his hand. One step, two, he approached her.
“Zacharel. D-don’t. Me. Annabelle. Taste. Truth.”
Still he approached.
Annabelle blinked, darkness closing in around her. “Please…taste…”
“I will never taste a demon.”
“Words…taste…words…” She met his gaze as long as she could, waiting, hoping…slipping into darkness.
* * *
ZACHAREL WATCHED as the female demon stood on suddenly steady feet. Between one blink and the next, her eyes went from ice-blue to blazing crimson, the silky length of her blue-black hair lifting from her scalp as if she’d just been struck by lightning. Nails elongated into daggerlike claws, and—
Ice-blue eyes. Like Annabelle.
Blue-black hair. Like Annabelle.
It’s me, Annabelle.
He stilled, his study of the creature intensifying. She wore a red dress similar to the one Driana had worn at the club. The material was ripped, gaping and bloodstained. Dark green scales covered her body—a body shape his hands knew intimately. Her shoulders were stooped, with monstrous wings stretching from around her back, the ends twisted into sharp little knots and points.