Drowning In The Dark - Pippa DaCosta Page 0,79
inside my skull, and the shock of seeing my brother’s face practically tear off in front of me held me dumbstruck. Seconds ticked by, maybe more.
My brother’s element whirled around us, wild and incensed. I saw the gaping hole in his skull reforming. His skin stretched, his face distorting like a rubber mask.
Stefan grabbed me, recoiling as my fiery flesh singed his skin. “Dammit, Muse. He’s immortal! You just pissed him off. The longer you gawk, the less time we have to get outtah here.” He adjusted Ryder’s dead weight in a fireman’s lift over his shoulders. “Get moving. Ryder isn’t getting any lighter.”
We sprinted out of Ryder’s place and back to the car. Stefan shoved Ryder into the backseat, and I chose that moment to look back.
Val didn’t emerge through the door of Ryder’s house like any normal being. Hell, no. A tangible darkness spewed from the windows and doorway and swirled in the street before blasting apart to reveal the moon-pale skin of my brother and his vast midnight wings. His white hair whipped about his face while his skin marbled with white-hot veins of fire.
He thrust out a hand and lashed a tendril of fire around the car at Stefan. Stefan threw up a shield, turning demon, but he stumbled under the surge of heat.
“Hey!” I tossed the gun into the car—it wasn’t going to make any difference—opened my wing, making myself a target, and strode forward. “You want to play, brother?”
Val’s bright white eyes locked on me. He forgot Stefan and yawned wide, revealing a mouthful of curved teeth.
“Get out of here,” I snarled to Stefan. “Go.” His wide crystalline eyes told me he didn’t want to leave. ‘I can do this… I’ll be okay.’ My attention snapped back to Val. His wings opened like ship’s sails, and he stalked forward. I registered distantly the growl of a car engine, but I trained my sights on my brother. “You think you can take the Mother of Destruction?”
He came closer still, his wings arching either side of me. “I don’t need to take you. I just need to keep you here, sweet sister.” My fire sputtered, fuelling his grin. “Can you not feel it?”
There was something. I’d noticed it as soon as we’d returned to Boston: the sweetness in the air, the heavy draw of it between my lips and across my tongue. I stumbled back, reaching out with my senses, exploring. The veil, wafer thin, and crumbling. Not dissolved, not yet. But close.
“It is too late. This city cannot be saved. The veil will fall in moments.” Val grinned.
“No, there must be a way to stop it.”
“This was always happening. You cannot stop the future.”
Pressure pushed at the back of my skull and fed down my neck. The headache from hell, literally. I tried to shake it off and focused instead on my brother. “I’m going to drain your fire, brother. If it doesn’t kill you, I’ll find another way while you’re spent and out cold at my feet.”
“Do it.” His wings came around like darkness closing in, and I sent out my fire to smother him, sink into his soul, and tear out the throbbing orb of power at his center. A splash of color above me snagged my attention. Val stilled and lifted his gaze. Washes of reds, greens, violets, mingled and spilled over in a waterfall of light. My element swelled, pushing beneath my blackened demon skin and spilling uncontrolled fire over my flesh. The pressure in my skull exploded in a white-hot blast of agony, ripping reality away. Distantly, I watched myself fall to my knees as an entire world’s worth of power poured into me. The veil fell. The netherworld flooded into the Boston backstreet. Lightening scored angry purple skies. The ground, black and burned, surged and heaved beneath my knees. Writhing brambles knotted and lashed around buildings and devoured the industrial units, Stefan’s old workshop, Ryder’s house. The hungry dark consumed it all. Blind to all but the elements, I closed my eyes. I still felt the power snarl and tangle around me, through me—all of the elements, not just fire. Earth, air, water, ice, and chaos. The part of me that was human shrank away from the onslaught, buried beneath the weight of two worlds. I hid inside, fled to the far corners of my mind, and curled myself into a tiny, insignificant thing. I knew the human part of me would not survive. Akil’s voice fluttered to me,