Drowning In The Dark - Pippa DaCosta Page 0,77
my tongue and down my throat, thick and sweet. Netherworld air. I mentally probed for the veil as my feet carried me toward the ghostly demon. The barrier between worlds rippled, tissue paper thin. It would tear at any moment. Like the demon, the veil was hardly there at all.
“Air demon,” Stefan said, voice flat. He pulled the cold from around us. “She’ll try to suffocate your fire.”
Air. Just great. My track record when it came to dealing with air demons included Damien, and he’d regularly wrenched the air from my lungs and doused my flames.
“Leave her to me. Find Ryder.” He flicked his wrist, producing an icy short sword that very quickly doubled in size and sharpened into a razor-edged scimitar.
A ripple of iridescent light cascaded through the air demon, and her amethyst eyes warmed with recognition. A half blood. “Stefan she’s—”
“I know.” He broke off from my side, passing his old workshop. The walls and sidewalk frosted in his wake. “I don’t suppose you wanna talk this through?” He curled humor through his words. “Maybe that half human part of you is curious? You ever tried ice cream?”
Her delicate laughter tinkled like the sound of diamonds poured over glass, feminine, yet sharp, more demon than human. Her eyes glowed. Her skin blurred, shifted, sailed away like fog, and then coalesced into her female form once more.
“You are too late. We have freed him.” Whispers, that’s all she sounded like, whispers against skin, promises forgotten. A slither of fear stoked my doubts, and my fire surged in response. Her face turned to me, and then she was gone. Just like that. Vanished in a blink. I searched the street, the rooflines of the industrial units, the shadows between empty warehouses, but couldn’t see any disturbance in the air.
Stefan whirled, raising the ice blade, slicing it through the cloud of mist that formed behind him. Her laughter echoed. She was intangible, and there was nothing for him to hit. He stumbled back, ice daggers glinting as they sparkled into existence around him, but with no target, they were useless. She hovered, ghostlike, too close in front of him. He reeled, but as her hands thrust out, into him, he snapped to an abrupt halt and choked.
Ryder would have to wait. I snapped my demon to attention, spilling fire through my veins, and sent my element out, coiling it through and around her ghostly form. She sizzled and snapped her head around, angling her wraithlike body toward me. Stefan dropped to his knees, gasping, and she rushed me. Cool, electric air gushed over me, the blast so dry and abrasive that it extinguished my fire as surely as a puff of breath might smother a candle flame. I knew this was coming. Damien had taught me how, without air, my fire was nothing. But what our ghost friend had failed to realize was that I was no newbie half blood, and Akil’s fire in my belly was eternal. I spun, spread my torn wing, and reignited the inferno from inside. This time, I sent it out with hunger behind it. Feed the fire oxygen, and it thrives. I felt the moment the flames blistered her wispy flesh and heard her screams. More solid with every passing second, she reached for the veil, and would have called the netherworld air to her had Stefan not plunged a dagger through her back. She fell into his arms, solid, naked, and bleeding. I got a look at her terrified eyes, and heard old words on her lips.
“I’m sorry.” Stefan lowered her to the ground. Her lovely eyes shone with tears. She was like us: human inside. Had she dreamed of freedom too?
There were no demon doctors here. No EMTs. Jerry was probably still playing poker with Akil. She would die on this drab backstreet, and nobody would mourn her. Half bloods don’t get happy endings.
Shaking my demon off, I moved up behind Stefan and rested my hand on his shoulder, careful not to snatch it back as the cold crawled up my arm. “Leave her. We don’t have time…” For what, exactly? Goodbyes?
He stood and strode ahead of me. Following, I briefly checked the faces of the other fallen bodies in the street. Militia. No enforcers, at least none I recognized. I couldn’t lose Ryder. He was the only real friend I had. What would I tell Jenna? What about his daughter? His ex-wife? How would I tell them?
“He’ll be okay,” Stefan said, as