chaos rises 03 - chaos falls Page 24

  Mother raged and yanked on the elements, trying to twist the world around her. Air shifted, stone cracked, and I stared into Gem’s eyes. I could bring her back. I’d failed Anna, but I would not fail Gem.

  Mother’s cackle cut through the howling storm.

  The oily touch of chaos spilled in from all sides.

  “I will unmake you,” the mad queen purred, unleashing a storm of black and purple chaos tendrils.

  I curled my ruined wings in close. Chaos whipped across my back. All the elements raged, the veil coming alive all around us, but inside the cocoon my wings made, I saw only Gem’s glittering eyes. My lips on hers, I pushed air into her body, pouring all my will with it. Breathe, Gem. Live. It cannot end like this. Death cannot have you. Come back to me. You are mine.

  Her eyelashes fluttered.

  A gasp hissed through her teeth.

  “We need you…” I told her, opening my wings. I need you.

  Ice snapped and sighed outward. She saw me then, saw the fear on my face and heard the storm raging all around us, and she smiled. “It’s okay,” she mouthed. Her wound folded inward, closing up. The elements poured in, called from the netherworld around us, and melded together, enhanced, crafted into something more than we could ever be apart. That power of the veil rebuilt Gem and soared through every demon here.

  Mammon was aglow, barely distinguishable inside a furnace of light. All around, the elements poured and howled, cracked and tore, lashed and beat. I yanked Gem to her feet. “Now!”

  Gem’s ice wings exploded outward, casting a dazzling net of jagged ice over Mother. Chaos spiraled in, knotting darkness around and through Mother’s wings. Fire raced across the floor and surged up her legs. Water bubbled up from inside her, streaming from her eyes and mouth. And the walls closed in, crushing all the elements in close, building pressure until, all at once, the storm they had created snapped tight, wrenching Mother’s construction apart.

  Mother’s scream collapsed into silence. The elements fled. My grip slipped, and the air rushed away from me. Fire spluttered and extinguished with a hiss. Water from Gem’s melting ice soaked into the now motionless rocks.

  Above us, the colors of the veil dissipated.

  Mother was gone.

  “We do not have long…” With a sweep of his hand, Baal parted the stone, opening a window in the rock wall. The veil twitched and danced in the netherworld’s purple skies. Its colors had dulled. It was closing once more.

  Once the veil was sealed, there would be no passing through. Whatever side we were on when it sealed would be our homes for a very, very long time.

  Gem’s gaze slid from me to Kar’ak. He stood between Mammon and the mad queen, wing tips dripping water. I knew what Gem was looking for, but he was not Torrent. She left my side and approached him, head up, wings proud. She might have been the smallest demon in the chamber, but her presence was one of the largest.

  “I know you’re not him,” she said.

  Movement to his right caught my eye. The mad queen bowed her head and drifted silently into the shadows, cloaking the edges of the chamber.

  “But he’s in there,” Gem continued. “He is a part of you.”

  The mad queen’s footsteps were so light I could barely feel the shift in the air as she edged around the chamber, approaching me and Baal or, more likely, the window behind us.

  Kar’ak jerked his chin, black horns catching the flickering light.

  “He has the right to decide his future,” Gem said.

  “The pretend man inside has no rights,” Kar’ak replied, adopting the haughtiness of all self-important princes.

  The mad queen lifted her dark eyes and caught my gaze. Nobody saw her moving through the shadows. Nobody but me. She and I had a deal. I freed her, and in exchange, she would help us destroy Mother. That deal was complete. Her eyes turned shrewd. She had been imprisoned much of her adult demon life and all her human one. She would not quietly go back inside her prison.

  The king’s attention was locked on Gem, but it wouldn’t last.

  The mad queen shook her head. Just a tiny shake, a plea. Her voice eased inside my thoughts. “Do not tell them, friend.”

  She had done nothing to deserve a lifetime prison sentence. Yet she was chaos. Nothing good ever came from allowing chaos to go free.

  I shifted and eased my wings open, appearing to merely relax, but their ragged expanse offered her cover.

  “Stop her!” Mammon lunged.

  I blocked his charge, wings splayed and teeth bared. “Back off, Mammon!”

  “Get out of my way, fool!” Mammon moved to swipe me aside. I blocked his forearm with mine, hissing at the burn the block cost me. Crimson fire rimmed his black eyes.

  “Let her go. She has earned it.”

  “You have no idea of what you speak. She—”

  “And what if she’s changed?” I challenged.

  Mammon snorted. Hypocrite.

  I pulled my wings in, revealing the empty shadow where the queen had been. “It seems she does not want to be imprisoned again.”

  I allowed a smirk to play on my lips. But where I expected to find fury in his glare, I found what looked like… humor? How could that be? Unless he had wanted her to escape? Wait, had I played into his plans? Oh, no, no, no… I narrowed my eyes at the Prince of Greed.

  His responding grin was for me only.

  Slippery beast.

  Stone rumbled, and a doorway opened in the chamber wall.

  “Go,” Baal ordered. “Bring back my queen before she creates another crisis.”

  Mammon turned, deliberately dusting me with embers, and marched from the room. It was an act, all of it. He had no intention of bringing her back.

  The glower Baal cast my way was not kind. “Some things never change.” He headed for the doorway. “You have until sunbirth. For your sake, I hope you choose the human world, Pride. I do not believe the netherworld is large enough for both your ego and Mammon’s.”

  Baal paused and produced my feather. A lick of air stole it from his claws and delivered it into my hand. He snorted and slid his crocodilian gaze to Kar’ak and Gem.

  The king considered his next words carefully. “Kar’ak, a new Court rises, and I suspect you will not enjoy its reign. The old ways are dead. Find a way to live with yourself. It doesn’t have to be here. You should consider the half-blood’s proposal before the veil closes for good.”

  “I haven’t proposed anything,” Gem denied.

  Baal’s grumbling laugh shook the floor.

  Gem looked to me. If she wanted answers, I wouldn’t give her any. That had never been part of our agreement. The answers were hers to find.

  “Sunbirth,” I told her. “I hope to see you in the City of Angels.” Staying here or returning to LA was her choice. I would never take her choices from her.

  Her little smile grew. She’d be there.

  Kar’ak eyed me, his demon glare calculating.

  I sauntered up to him. “Don’t let my civilized manner fool you. Hurt her and I’ll rip your wings off and yank your insides out through your throat. You don’t want to know what I’ll do with your horns. Let’s just agree that I have the imagination you lack.” I bopped him on the nose and he snarled in response.

  Gem could handle Kar’ak. And she had my help.

  “I am air and everywhere,” I purred. I’d be watching him, but I also had a score to settle, and judging by the light bleeding across the horizon, I didn’t have long left in the netherworld.

  Soon, I’d be home. Soon, I’d rebuild my city. But revenge called, and I had been a long time answering.

  I found the mad queen sitting atop a rocky outcrop, legs pulled up to her chest, her gaze fixed on the fortress across the barren plain below. She hadn’t gone far, perhaps because the fortress was all she knew. A prison might become a home if there was no better option.

  I approached from behind, deliberately disturbing dried twigs to avoid startling her.

  “I
want to unmake them all.” She lifted her face to the breeze. “But there is one I want to unmake the most. I trusted him once, and he betrayed me. I want to unmake him, but when he is gone, I know I can’t bring him back, and… I don’t want him gone forever. Forever is such a long time.”

  She spoke of Mammon, and I knew those feelings well.

  I stopped at the edge of the outcropping, letting the breeze filter through my naked wings. The veil twitched in the sky, and below us, lessers scurried in the grasses, cawing and sniping at one another for scraps. There was a terrible beauty in the netherworld, like the queen herself.

  “I know revenge.” I slid my gaze to the fortress. “It’s a road that leads only one way.”

  She joined me at the edge and looked down. “I thought I would go home, but I am not human. Not anymore. This is my home now.”

  No, she wasn’t human. She was gloriously demon. This world would need her chaos. “I find it’s far better to get even than to get revenge.”

  Cocking her head, a curl of hair fell over her purplish eyes. “What does that mean?”

  “Play him at his own game. He seeks to use you. Allow him to think he is, but make sure you’re using him in return. It’s the demon way.”

  Understanding flickered in her eyes. “You are not like the others.”

  I smiled into the netherworld wind. “There are no other demons like me.”

  “Am I interrupting?” a demon voice snarled from behind.

  Mammon.

  Not so long ago, I would have flung everything I had at him. Now, after everything we had seen, my decades of thirsting for revenge seemed trivial.

  “The road only leads one way,” the mad queen said. She turned and studied Mammon from head to toe. Wing tip to wing tip. He stood, unfazed by her visual exploration. If anything, the low-slung nature of his wings made him appear almost regretful.

  His gaze settled past me on the colors of the veil. Mammon’s veins pulsed softer. His wings bowed, and for a moment, the humanity in his eyes yearned for more, yearned for freedom beyond the veil. Akil was in there. The man. He had ties to the human world, perhaps even a life, should he want it.

  To my surprise, I realized if he chose to return, I wouldn’t stop him.

  But when he looked at the mad queen, the regret on his face hardened into determination. He wouldn’t leave the queen. Perhaps he felt responsible for her, or perhaps he had other plans for her. The latter was likely. Had he truly changed, or had I?

  I offered my enemy my hand.

  Mammon glowered at it, searching for the trick.

  I thought I’d known these demons. They had changed, all for the better, and none could deny it.

  Mammon clapped his hand in mine and shook. He took one last look at the veil, released my hand, bowed his head to the mad queen, and stalked away, out of sight beyond the trees.

  “Will I see you again, Pride?” the queen asked.

  I regaled her with a dazzling smile and bowed my head. “I never say never.”

  Gem stood on the scorched plains like the first star of the night. She tapped her foot and arched a razor-edged brow. “Fashionably late?”

  “Worried I wouldn’t show?”

  “Not one bit.”

  Sunbirth crested the horizon, spilling its red light across the land and throwing the fortress in silhouette.

  Time to go.

  Gem scanned the nearby tree line and plains beyond.

  “We must go.”

  She nodded. Her expression betrayed all the human emotions I sometimes wished I hadn’t taught her to embrace. Kar’ak wasn’t coming. Torrent was lost to her a second time. Some demons didn’t change for the better.

  She swiped open a hole in the veil, stepped through, and offered me her hand.

  I hesitated, turning to imprint the world I loved to hate in my mind. If I left the netherworld, I would be leaving the Court behind. Like before, I’d be weak. A prince of nothing. Just a demon masquerading as a man. Without the Court, my strength would fade.

  “Don’t leave me hanging!” Gem reached closer, her icy hand offering another chance at another life.

  I had people who needed me. I had a life and something like family. I was Li’el, restaurateur, Hollywood socialite, and guardian angel of the City of Angels. I couldn’t leave that behind, no matter the lure of the Court. This wasn’t my world.

  The queen stood atop her jutting rocks. Shadows gathered behind her. She lifted a pale hand. I would see her again, some time, some place. Demons like her had a way of circumventing the rules.

  I clasped Gem’s arm and stepped through.

  The veil fizzled and vanished behind us, leaving nothing but the burnt rubber odor of the netherworld and an echo of regrets in my head. All around, trees towered, blocking out the sky. The air smelled of wet pine and turned leaves.

  Gem shook off her icy armor and shivered in her torn, wet clothes. In her human form, her pale skin took on a milky pallor. “I kinda liked Baal. Will he be okay?”

  I curled my wing around her and hugged her close. “They have more hope in that world now than they’ve ever had before. They’ll be just fine.”

  “And us?”

  I looked up, catching glimpses of stars through spindly branches, and when I looked back at the girl tucked under my wing, those stars sparkled in her eyes. “Do you doubt it?”

  “No.” She smiled sadly. But the smile soon grew. “We’re gonna be just fine.” We trudged forward a few steps. “Do you know where we are?”

  “Somewhere on the Eastern seaboard?”

  She frowned. “You have no idea, do you?”

  “I’m not perfect.”

  She scoffed, teeth chattering from the cold. “Oh, Pride says he’s not perfect. I died, didn’t I? Because you would never say that.”

  “Hush.” I shook my bare wings, disturbed by the memory of her lying dissected on the table. “Didn’t you know? I’ve changed. Evolved. I am beyond perfection and critically flawed in all the best ways.”

  Her little laugh warmed some part of me that reminded me why I’d returned and why I wanted to stay.

  Chapter 32

  Marianna Ramírez’s grave was one of several thousand new graves lining the cemetery hills. I had visited a few times over the past week, this time bringing flowers. Human women liked flowers, or so I had learned over the years. I wasn’t sure which flowers Ramírez had liked, so I brought her a dramatic bouquet of lilies and set them over the mound of dirt, wondering if she would believe I had tried to make it right. I wasn’t perfect, that was clear, but I had tried. Was that enough?

  The sounds of construction work traveled on the breeze, and behind me, a city grew out of the rubble, like it had hundreds of years ago. A little thing like a god bent on recreating the world wasn’t about to keep LA from its glitzy parties.

  In the weeks since Mother had tried to remake LA, the city had begun to take shape again. Cranes jutted into the pale blue sky. Returning people milled around pop-up stores.

  The ingenuity of humans never ceased to amaze.

  The Reely Nauti was moored at the marina—sans rotting demon carcasses. Noah tossed me a wave from inside, but any warmth from the greeting was quickly doused by the sight of Christian lounging on the deck, soaking up the rays.

  I turned the cell phone over in my pocket, the same cell I’d had Noah keep safe for me.

  The boat rocked as I boarded. Gem drew the gangplank in, storing it safely away, and with a roar of the engines, Noah steered the yacht out of the marina. We navigated up the coast to where sand had been shipped in to reshape the beaches. Mother’s island had been breaking up more and more each day. The Pacific wouldn’t stand for a chunk of artificial land blocking its approach to LA. A few more storms and it would be swallowed beneath the waves. I watched those waves beat at the foreign land, knowing Torrent would have helped it along had he been here.

  The growl of the engines died, and the boat bobbed gently on the surface. Out on the ocean, wit
h just the breeze on my face, I could imagine nothing had changed. But everything had changed.

  “Is here okay?” Noah approached. When I didn’t reply, he touched my shoulder. “We’ve got your back.”

  Did he? He hadn’t seen me attack Anna. Did he truly know what it was he believed he loved?

  He was about to find out.

  Gem was sprawled on one of the cabin couches, deceptively at ease, toes tapping as her earphones buzzed music into her ears. As I passed, the air chilled.

  There was no such chill outside. Familiar heat beat down from a cloudless sky. I shrugged off my jacket and tossed it onto the deck chair next to Christian. Diamonds winked on the water’s surface between us and the coastline, two miles out. After rolling up my sleeves, I crouched at the edge of the deck, draped an arm over my knee, and dangled my fingers in the warm water.

  “You know,” I began, tone light, “There’s one thing I still don’t understand.”

  Christian’s brow arched over his shades. He’d unbuttoned his shirt, leaving it wide open to soak up the rays. His military-issue dog tags hung on a chain around his neck. I reached for Anna’s little cross, hidden beneath my collar, and brushed my fingers over the bump in my shirt. He and I both had faith, albeit in different things.

  He sat up and planted his bare feet on the deck. So casual. So comfortable. And why wouldn’t he be? “What’s that?”

  “The lesser attacks around my restaurant. You remember those?”

  He shrugged. “I thought we figured it was the mother demon driving the lessers crazy?”

  I straightened. “Yeah, that was probably it.” Water lapped and clunked against the sides of the yacht. “Still, it’s strange, don’t you think? Mother targeted other predators, and the lessers swarmed out of fear, but the lessers killing people around my restaurant? That doesn’t seem to fit.”

  “Who knows?” He stood, rolled his shoulders, and tucked his thumbs into his jeans pockets. “It’s over. They’re gone.” He squinted into the sun and nodded toward the shore. “We got our happy ending.”

  Did we?

  “Not all of us.” I watched him closely.