Drowning In The Dark - Pippa DaCosta Page 0,39

now, I added silently. Considering how I was all-demon, dripping flame and calling a tide of heat to me, I could understand how he might not believe me. With a shuddering exhale, I shook my demon from my flesh. She snapped and snarled her displeasure, but I gave her the promises she wanted to hear. This wasn’t over. In fact, it had just begun. I shivered, naked. Steam rolled off my pink skin. “Now that we’ve got the inevitable lock-her-up out of the way, shall we talk about this like adults?” I sent out a silent thanks to Akil for his gift. Whatever he was planning, he clearly didn’t need my help.

“Sir.” An Enforcer approached from behind Adam. “We have a situation in Charlestown. We need to get you on scene ASAP.” His wide eyes flicked away from me then back again.

I smiled at the both of them. Yeah, drink it in, fellas. You’re lucky I didn’t burn you and your buddies alive. A demon purr resonated through me. I let it vibrate at the back of my throat and grinned as my audience tensed. The Mother of Destruction was back.

“Muse, you could have killed my enforcers,” Adam said, “but you didn’t.”

Without Akil’s control, I might have. “Yes, I could have killed you too, and the people behind those cameras, and the techs in the lab down the hall. I feel them, their heat. If I wanted, I could turn their own heat on them, ramp it up, and burn them from the inside out. You’ve heard of spontaneous combustion?” He paled. Good. “Don’t fuck with me again, Adam.”

He nodded once. “Will you help us?”

“Yes, had you been listening, you’d have realized that already, and we could have avoided the…theatrics. Now, can I have my clothes back, please?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

We rode back to Boston in their blacked-out SUVs. The guy forced to sit next to me squirmed and perspired. In the twenty minutes it had taken to leave the facility, the whispers of my power display had spread like wildfire. I’d reached out ethereally to Akil before leaving and felt his well of controlled rage. I didn’t envy anyone on shift when Akil decided the game was over.

As we neared Charlestown, wailing sirens punctured the night. The enforcers rammed in the back of the van with me grew restless. I looked at them, wondering what sort of people they were behind their combat gear. An electric current fizzled between them, a collective fear. They were afraid of me, of what was to come. I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t look like much, and given my history, they’d wonder whose side I was on. This truce between me and the Institute was a thin one, liable to snap at any moment.

The van pulled up, and the enforcers unloaded. The last to leave, I jumped out and immediately felt the burn of ice in the air. Dread hardened my gut. No, please no… But I only needed to look around the street for the evidence of Stefan’s handiwork. Jagged fans of ice jutted from the edges of tightly packed houses. Snow had drifted in places, piling against closed doors and banking against cars. But in other places, the street was clear. It wasn’t natural snowfall. And certainly, the razor-edged barricades of ice thrust upward out of the ground weren’t in any way normal.

I followed the enforcers as they fanned out down the street. Drops of blood marred the snow in places. In others, gouges scored through the ice. This was a battle site, not one of Stefan’s elemental slips.

We followed the sounds of groaning ice and blades clashing and came to an intersection where the ice had flooded across the road, capturing cars, streetlamps, and benches in crystal. The enforcers ducked down behind cover, signaling to one another. Adam hung back, talking into a radio. Buzzing radio chatter leeched through the quiet.

Screw this. I wasn’t wasting another second. I rounded the corner and walked into an icy blast of winter. I couldn’t miss Stefan’s beautiful wings sparkling in the mist ahead. The vapor rising off the street whipped and swirled. Hideous growls punctured the artificial quiet, and I caught sight of a massive beast inside the fog. Its furred hide glistened wet with blood and melted ice. I caught fragments of its form—blurs in the fog—like trying to piece a jigsaw together without all the pieces. I knew it was big, as least three times as tall as Stefan. Metal screeched, glass shattered,