take precious seconds, and we shared the same element. With the symbols intact, Val was as elementally nullified as I was. The last thing I wanted was to give him power. Sure, I could drain him, but he’d slit Jenna’s throat the second I smashed the picture. So the bag it was then. But how to get near to it without Val seeing…
Val’s pale lips pressed into a thin line while his mercury eyes assessed Ryder, Stefan, and me, showing no hint of his conclusion. Wrapped in demon-skin leathers, he dripped menace. His lips were cruel, his gaze scathing. A rapier was sheathed at his waist, and I could bet he’d have further weapons strapped to his body. Jenna didn’t make a sound. From her dull-eyed expression, she wasn’t even aware of us. Her mind had checked out, which was probably for the best.
“I do not care for you,” Val pointedly told Ryder. “But my human female does. She weeps with pleasure, cries your name, mortal-man, while I poison her mind with lust. She spills her secrets in the throes of ecstasy. She betrayed your scheming as I knew she would.”
“I’m gonna kill you slowly,” Ryder spat.
Val ignored the threat and swiveled his gaze to Stefan. “What a glorious thing you are, half-blood Prince of Wrath. Such a shame you never live up to expectations.”
I sincerely hoped Val was guessing and hadn’t already seen Stefan’s fate as he had mine. What was it he’d said? He saw the future in flesh. That must mean he had to touch someone to read them, the way I had to touch metal to see the past. I couldn’t imagine he’d ever come into contact with Stefan. If they ever got that close, one of them would have surely died. “Why are you doing this, Val?” I’d inched back a little, but not nearly enough. “You despise people. You hate this world.”
“I have no desire to be here. But this night has long been approaching and my time with it. This night I walk in my father’s shadow. A’morrow, I stand beside him as prince, and he wishes for you, sister-mine, to stand beside us.”
Well, wasn’t that just the picture perfect family? I grinned. “You’d rather kill me than see me as equal.”
Val displayed impossibly perfect teeth in a leering smile. “You forget. I already know the outcome.”
“You see, I’ve never really been a great believer in fate or destiny. Let me tell you something about humans, brother-mine. We change, we grow, we learn from our mistakes. Demons don’t. A demon’s future might be static, but a human future is fluid. We’re too fickle for fate.” It sounded like a good theory. It was all the hope I had left. Ryder’s hand slipped inside his jacket while Val’s slate-gray eyes narrowed to slits.
“You forget one important thing, sister. You are not human.”
When Ryder pulled the gun, I expected him to shoot at Val, but he didn’t. He shot at the picture on the wall with three staccato blasts. Fire lunged through me like the wild, hungry thing it was. I yanked it back and instead, hooked my ethereal reach into the glowing beacon of heat my brother commanded. His head snapped around. A snarl bubbled from his lips, and his eyes blazed with the sheer indignation that I would dare attempt to do such a thing to him, right before Stefan blasted him with a jagged wave of ice. It arched up, around Jenna, and slammed into Val, piercing his body in countless places while at the same time slamming him backward. Jenna dropped like a stone. Val let lose a bellow, and I lunged for the weapons. I might have made it, had he not tugged his power back. Searing heat whipped from my body as though he’d wrenched out my muscles in one grab. I dropped to my knees. This would take more than a few party tricks.
“Muse…” Stefan shimmered, still pouring ice into the barrier clamped around Val, but it was melting as fast as he could shore it up.
Rousing my demon, I stayed down, bowed my head, and gently called my brother’s fire to me. He raged. I could feel the pressure of his anger almost as hot as his element, but it wouldn’t do him any good. I knelt, as though in prayer, and drank him down.
Moments later, the sharp retort of a rifle shot shattered my concentration. Almost immediately, the pulsing energy my brother commanded snuffed out. He