Touched by Fire (Demons of New Chicago #1) - Kel Carpenter Page 0,70
light to chase after Piper. I needed to get her before he ruined everything.
I don’t care what he said. Piper was not his anything. She was mine.
And he wouldn’t take her from me.
A quick sweep of the club told me there were hundreds of souls, all prepared to be a barrier between us.
But my brother underestimated me. While he’d spent the last ten thousand years running, hiding, and lying through his teeth—I became the Harvester.
Hundreds of souls were nothing to me.
And I proved it with a snap of my fingers.
26
A laugh echoed through the empty alley, equal parts mad and flirtatious.
I turned in circles, but it was all brick walls and boarded-up windows. A shitty metal stairwell went up one building on the left side of the street. The only source of light apart from the moon was a broken lamp flickering in and out. It reflected off the shallow puddles and the slivers of glass that peeked through the boards blocking the windows.
“We can still run,” Nathalie said. “We can make it—”
“If we run, he catches you too. The crash is coming, Nat. I’m going down. Running for the doorway was my choice, let me pay for it. Leave me.” The words came out in broken fragments. My rage may have been fading, but I still had some fight in me yet.
I wouldn’t be taken.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t my only option.
If I could escape Ronan twice, I could escape Lucifer.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said, standing her ground at my side.
“Then you’re a fucking idiot because if I didn’t know he’d get me anyway, I’d leave you.”
Hurt crossed her face before she buried it under anger.
“You don’t mean that,” she said. “You’re such an asshole, and ever since I met you, I question my own sanity, but I see you, Piper. I see who you really are, and I’m not leaving you here to get taken. We either make it out together, or not at all.”
I wanted to rip my own hair out. She was infuriating.
Why couldn’t she just take the easy way? Why did she have to force my hand?
“Goddamnit Nat, why can’t you just—”
A soft tsking brought my words to a grinding halt.
Lucifer walked out of thin air. Literally. Blood smudged his white suit and neck, but he didn’t look any worse for wear beyond that. How was that possible?
“Where’s Ronan?” I asked.
The pleasant mask turned brittle under his anger. “Fun fact about being a demon on earth. Nothing has magic unless you give it magic. I was the first demon here, ten thousand years ago. The first to learn. One drop of my blood and they change into a supernatural. That I own. My club was filled with them. They’re keeping the Harvester busy.”
The way none of them tried to stop me suddenly made sense.
He’d already sicced them on Ronan.
“Nathalie, I need you to leave.”
“No—”
Lucifer laughed, temper cooling once more. His mood swings were giving me whiplash. “You’re a conundrum, Piper. You don’t trust her to even know what you are, yet you openly discuss killing me with my own people.”
“What’s he talking about?” Nathalie asked.
“Nothing,” I replied in a hard voice. Lucifer grinned.
“Your hatred of magic has blinded you. It was all too easy for the pussy cats to give you a sad story and gain your trust, yet you won’t give it to her. I find this fascinating.”
“Nathalie—”
“I’m. Not. Leaving,” she said in a punctuated voice. “Even if you’re a dick. We’ll be talking about this later.” Her unyielding sense of loyalty was going to get us killed if I didn’t buckle.
I didn’t want to do this with her present.
I’d already come to grips with the fact that I wouldn’t kill her. I couldn’t. I might be an asshole, and prejudiced, and downright mean sometimes, but I wasn’t the kind of person that killed someone who stuck their neck out for me.
Our strange partnership started as a kidnapping, but the only reason it became more was because she chose to trust me. To help me. To save me.
I wouldn’t kill her, but she’d die all the same if I did nothing. We both would.
“Come,” Lucifer said, beckoning me forward. In this state I was so much more susceptible to that honeyed voice. I let the magic urge me on and used it to fuel me.
To fuel my rage. My magic.
A decade of festering hate rose to the surface as I walked across broken concrete.