skew. If I went down here, surrounded by demons, they’d probably eat me.
Val spread his wings. One moment, I was trying to stay upright, and the next he filled my blurred vision, glowing white hot, framed by wings as black and beautiful as perfect darkness. “You’re like the villain who doesn’t know when to quit with the evil comebacks.” I had all his fire, but there was no use using it against him. He was weak, his wings sagged, and his color had paled to a deathly gray, but he still had goddamn immortality on his side.
“To live, you must forfeit your freedom and your foolish love. You are incapable of losing either. Therefore, you will die, as you should have perished by my hand as a newborn abomination.” His wings loomed, large and surreal. I almost welcomed their embrace. So tired, so wrung out, I wasn’t even sure I had it in me to stand on my own two feet, but I shoved off from the tree anyway. I wasn’t going down without a fight.
“Bring it, brother-mine.” I swayed, and it took me a few seconds to realize he wasn’t moving. Blinking, refocusing, I saw why. Writhing tendrils of liquid chaos energy wove around him, knotting around the milky whiteness of his limbs, holding him rigid. He didn’t see me. Head thrown back, eyes wide, and hair failing, he was beyond seeing. Chaos had him in her grasp and was plucking him apart one piece of flesh at a time. Lashings of dark hooked into his skin and tore him to pieces. His wings dissolved, picked apart by ravenous eels of power. I blinked again and watched my brother cease to exist. Gone. Body and immortal soul, undone in a matter of seconds—an immortal chaos demon turned into memories.
There was only one being I knew who could pick apart an immortal. She stood in front of an armored personnel carrier, a little colt-like thing, all spindly arms and legs inside a monstrous heaving cloud of undiluted chaos. Our gazes met, and pure chaos tried to flood my mind. She might have succeeded had Adam not touched her lightly on the shoulder. The dark peeled apart, and Dawn stood looking at me. Tight ringlets framed her innocent oval face. A pink and white Hello Kitty dress hung from skinny shoulders. She blinked at me, gaze flat, peering right through me. What did she see?
The pair of them strode over, weaving around fallen demon and human bodies.
My demon slunk off, leaving me propped against the tree, sick and shivering.
“Are you hurt?” Adam’s flat tone relayed just how much he didn’t care about my answer.
“Pretty much.” I wiped blood from my lips and grimaced at the splash of scarlet on the back of my pale hand.
Adam reached for me. I instinctively recoiled and then froze as he pinched the collar of Stefan’s coat and rubbed it almost lovingly between his finger and thumb. “Where is he?” His puppy-dog eyes almost gave the impression he cared for his son.
“At the front line, trying to do what’s right. Not that you’d know what that was.” I dropped my gaze to Dawn. She watched the battle or at least stared in that general direction. “Hey, remember me?” She didn’t reply. Her distant glassy gaze wavered. What the hell had Adam done to her? I lifted my gaze and set it squarely on him. “They call me destruction, but they call you monster.”
Adam ignored me and searched the chaos for Stefan. From our position at the back, all we could see was the panoramic view of the netherworld where Boston had been less than an hour before. I should have been at the front. Wasn’t that what the Mother of Destruction was about? So much for becoming what I was meant to be. “I really need to sit down.” I dropped to my ass among the tree roots. “Just a little rest, and I’ll be okay.”
Adam whispered something to Dawn. Crouched down at her eye-level, he gripped her shoulders and muttered. I might have understood had I not been fighting to stay conscious. I caught Stefan’s name and Akil’s. “What are you d-doing?” I slurred. Tears swam in my raw eyes.
He straightened and marshaled Dawn in front of him, his big hands locked on her boney shoulders. “It ends here. All of it. There will be no demons left this side of the veil. None.”
Dawn stared through me. She’d do it. She’d kill them all. “Wait,