all it did was throb. Dawn’s power sought my soul and found it occupied. Akil’s heat blasted over me, white hot and cleansing. I dropped like a stone. My cheekbone cracked against the solidified lava field, adding to the symphony of pain already riding my body. I reached for Akil, knowing he was close. His heat embraced me, gathered me in its cocoon, and held me.
Mammon’s midnight-black eyes held me rigid for a few seconds. He held out a hand and plucked me off my back, planting me on my feet. I shot him a sideways glance. His lips drew back, crescent teeth glinting, and I swear I saw something of Akil’s expression on the beastly face of the Prince of Hell. His energy fed mine—the soul-lock at work—and for a moment, I lost myself in him. The battle raged, the princes moved ever closer, the lesser demons caterwauled, howled and tore into their kin, and at the eye of the storm, my mind was calm.
Dawn’s power struck lightning fast and lashed Mammon across the chest. He staggered, flung open his wings, and gathered his power. Heat rushed from beneath my feet. I might have been enough. For any other demon, it would have been, but Dawn wasn’t any other demon. She threw her arm up, parted her little inky fingers, and fixed her red eyes on Mammon. Elemental demons are forged from chaos. Dawn was chaos, all wrapped up in a little girl’s body. She didn’t even have to get close. Thrusting her hand out, she clenched her fingers closed. Mammon shuddered and fell to a knee.
No. This couldn’t happen. “Dawn…” I called my power, but Mammon tugged it back, needing it more.
Dawn’s demon face virtually mirrored her human one. She looked human, if not for the purple-black skin and countless writhing tendrils of power snapping about her. Her flat expression and cold eyes told me: she would kill Mammon. She was the only one who could.
I ran toward her, even as I felt something inside, some new part of me, shatter. My legs buckled, I stumbled, but my momentum carried me forward, lengthening my stride. I leapt over bodies and debris, pummeling the uneven ground. No, no. “Dawn, stop…” Akil’s presence—the infusion—spluttered. I dared not look back. I’d seen her tear Leviathan apart. I knew what sight would greet me. She’d unmake Mammon as she had the Prince of Envy, and there was no coming back from that.
Closer. Just a few more strides. A whip of black acid snapped across my body. Pain burned across my torso. I yanked on the fire, but still Akil held it back. His presence hammered hard and fast, thrashing like a trapped animal. I glanced back and saw exactly what I’d feared. A miasmic cloud of pulsating darkness interlaced with threads of fire. I couldn’t even see his flesh inside the heaving darkness.
Another tendril lashed me. I stumbled, twisted, and lunged, slamming into the little girl who would be an immortal killer. She hissed and spat, raked her nails down my face, and then plunged her power into me. “Dawn…” I pinned her down as her chaos burrowed beneath my skin. “Please… please don’t do this.” Chaos tore through me, yanking my head back and wrenching a scream free. A cresting wave of fire purged her touch. I wasn’t entirely sure where it came from, but I took it while I could and drowned her in flame. She screamed and thrashed, but only when I felt her tendrils recoil, did I release her. I scrambled off, eager to get away, and then searched for Mammon. Fire licked across my skin. I staggered and quivered, the way one might to shake off an insect, but the flames clawed higher—outside of my control—not mine. In one blinding lunge, the liquid flame both smothered and consumed me. I couldn’t do anything but let it ride me and knew without understanding that this was wrong. It wasn’t meant to happen like this. The tingly spiciness on my lips, the cinnamon smell, the bite of cloves. Warm, comforting, familiar. It was inside me, everywhere. It was the scent of Akil’s death.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
I snapped my head up and peered through flames. Mammon’s remains stained the lava field. Blood, bone, flesh, nothing larger than a fist. He was dead. The immortal chaos demon who had saved my sorry ass more times than I could count was gone. The suave, sly, manipulating sonofabitch I loved to hate would not