scowled at him. “No. Akil isn’t dead. He doesn’t get to die. He’s here.” Reeling, I scanned the carnage, searching for Akil’s distinctive outline. He’d be there because he was always there. He’d always been there. For me.
I staggered forward, stumbled over burned remains, and the tears fell. I knew, but I couldn’t believe.
“Muse...” I heard the truth in Ryder’s tone, felt it in my bones, in my flesh, in my heart.
“He can’t be dead, Ryder. He can’t.” I reached down and turned over warped metal, shoved aside scorched demon skulls. Embers sizzled against my hands, but I didn’t care. Akil was here. He was…
Ryder snatched at my ash-covered hands and yanked me upright to face him. His grip tightened around my wrists. I pulled, but he held firm. “Muse, goddamnit, stop. He’s gone.”
I had to get away. I had to find Akil. I pulled and kicked, half-mad. Akil needed me. Ryder yanked me into his arms and trapped me against his chest. “He’s gone,” he breathed, cradling my head into his shoulder. “He’s gone.”
The truth shattered my strength.
Gone.
No more true lies. No more fire-touched embraces. No more Akil. A ragged breath hitched in my throat, and I collapsed inside Ryder’s embrace. “We need to get out of here.” With his help, I moved forward. One foot in front of the other. Always moving on. If I stopped, I’d stop for good. Partial bones crunched beneath my boot. Clouds of ash puffed into the air. I made it another two feet before doubling over and throwing up.
“They’re coming.” Ryder placed a hand on my shoulder, fingers gripping deep.
The sound of vehicles growling to life carried across the blast zone: the Institute, or what was left of them. If they came, they’d capture me. I could barely light a match, let alone fight off the enforcers. “Get me out of here, Ryder, now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
“Y ou want a drink?”
“No, I’m good.” Ryder and I were in some half-baked attempt at a motel somewhere down the east coast. I stood at the window, arms crossed, squinting into the headlights of each passing car. I’d adjusted Stefan’s blood-red coat so it fit my physique, although it was still too long around my ankles. I kept it on, finding solace in the smell of warm leather and winter. It had been a week since I’d wiped out most of the netherworld. Behind me, on the TV, a news report rattled off the number of demons captured and killed in the past twenty fours hours. No new netherworld breaches had opened. Most had closed. But not the one in Boston. That still oozed like a festering wound. Nothing substantial had come through, not yet, or so the press said. The demons who remained on this side were being hunted with extreme prejudice. Anything remotely demon was a target. The strength of the veil fluctuated. In places like Boston and New York, where the attacks had been most ferocious, the veil barely existed at all, and the lesser demons still broke through. In others areas, mostly rural, the veil pulsed, separating the two worlds. Would it all fall eventually? Was this the human world now? Scarred and tainted by the netherworld?
I didn’t sleep. Killing demons helped me forget what I’d done, what had been done to those I cared about. Ryder joined my nightly hunts. So that’s what we did. By night, we hunted lesser demons and kicked their asses back to hell or killed them if they wouldn’t go quietly. By day, we travelled south. Needing to get away.
“I got a call.” Ryder sat back in a chair, boots up on the table, beer in one hand while he rubbed his shoulder, still bruised from where Val had stabbed him.
“I thought we agreed no phones.”
“Yeah, well, I got a throwaway and dialed up a mailbox I set up should the shit hit the fan. As this pretty much qualifies, I tried it. Jenna left a message.”
“Is she okay?”
Ryder nodded and took a long drink of his beer. “As much as any of us. What she said… You ain’t gonna like it. Adam is flaunting his demon-killing weapon, A-K-A Dawn. The Institute saved the day.” He saluted me with his beer can. “Hoo-fuckin’-ray.”
Dammit. Adam had more lives than a cat and could spin my bomb blast into a goldmine PR opportunity. “And?” There was definitely more. Ryder was too grim for there to be any good coming my way.