Hearts of Fire
Page 3
“And?” he asked. “You have a lot of meetings with Justin. Give me a reason to care about this one, or let me be, Levi. I’m not in the mood for company.”
The other man’s mouth curved in a rare ghost of a smile. “You never are. I’m sure you know what he wanted to talk about, after tonight’s show on High Street.” The smile faded. “I didn’t bring you out of Hell to self-destruct.”
Meresin snorted. “I am destruction. If you didn’t know that after all those years eavesdropping on the Infernal Council, then the joke’s on you, serpent. I am the only Fallen who can command the lightning.”
“And you’re as unstable as your element. Though I think we could argue about which of you is commanding the other.” Levi sighed softly. “I knew what you were, Meresin. So did the Council. You couldn’t have been surprised to find out that they’d decided you’d become too dangerous to keep. Especially after you disappeared on them.”
Meresin shrugged. No, he hadn’t been surprised. They’d made him, knowing they would eventually have to break him. The lightning hadn’t always been his. Those powers had come…after. And Amriel had warned them all.
The straps had been tight around his wrists, another in his mouth so that he wouldn’t bite off his own tongue. So that he could bite down instead of scream. The forgemaster had told him it would hurt, told him it would be a pain like nothing he could imagine. Still, that hadn’t prepared him. Nothing could have. He had screamed, and screamed, until he was no longer sure there was anything left of him but the sound of his agony. Somewhere inside, Meresin knew he was still screaming. Always.
He fought back a shudder and tried to focus on the waves rolling in and then pulling away from the shore. Rumble, hiss, rumble, hiss… Those memories were better left buried.
“Is there a point to this trip down memory lane? That can’t be why you climbed up here to find me.”
“Who says I climbed?”
Meresin slid him a look. “I honestly don’t give a damn if you spun a web, teleported, or flew. Spit it out, whatever it is, and be done with it.”
Another long, thoughtful pause made him want to singe Levi, and see how Lucifer’s former pet monster liked it. But he wasn’t stupid enough to try it. Not yet, anyway.
“You’re being sent out on assignment.”
“Again,” Meresin said, his harsh laugh masking his relief. He’d been worried that this time would be different. But, of course, it wasn’t. As always, his services were needed. “I’m out on assignment most of the time. I’m beginning to think no one wants me around.”
Levi didn’t even crack a smile. “If you think that, you’re right. Justin considers you a danger to his people, and to the city. And to something he holds even more dear.”
Hellfire, was this everyone’s day to torment him about the vampire king’s sister? Even if he was interested in pursuing her, which he wasn’t, they were as unsuited as fire and water. He’d watched her—the duties she undertook with quiet, ruthless focus, the things and people she chose to spend her time on. The conspicuous absence of lovers when he was certain she could have anyone, anytime. For all her carefree charm, Dru had as much steel in her as her brother did. She was control. He was chaos.
It might have been nice if Justin had realized that those two forces were at a stalemate for a reason. If he didn’t have any control left, he and Dru would have come together in some sort of mutually assured destruction long ago. But no, he was the danger. As though she were some delicate flower. He could smell her arousal every time she got near him. Peaches and vanilla…so sweet. So f**king tempting.
If he wasn’t careful, desire would cage him all over again.
Meresin bared his teeth, violet light beginning to crackle and wind up his forearms as some of the anger that eternally raged inside of him burst through the wall he tried so hard to keep around it. The sexual frustration made it that much worse. Damn her for coming to the rescue earlier. And damn him for needing her.
“Justin is a fool. I haven’t killed any of his people, no matter how much they might deserve it. I do my duty in protecting his damned city. And as for his sister…he’s the one who keeps throwing her in my path. I don’t want her.”
He hated that he couldn’t make it sound like anything but the lie it was.
“Justin sends her because she seems to be the only one who can calm you down. When it’s a choice between that or letting you light up a few dozen vampires, there isn’t really much of a choice at all.” Levi looked at him speculatively. “He isn’t the only one who’s noticed that you and Dru have some sort of connection.”
He hated the cold speculation in the serpent’s dispassionate eyes. His thoughts about Dru, many of them reserved for when he was alone, weren’t any of Levi’s business.
“There isn’t a connection, beyond the fact that she pisses me off,” he said. There was no way he would ever admit the truth. Not to Levi, not to anyone. He’d wanted Dru the first instant he saw her—long and tall and ivory-skinned, with that thick platinum hair down to her waist. Her lashes and brows were as dark as Justin’s. The story was that her overzealous sire had drained her so close to true death that even her hair had lost its color. Maybe it was true, or maybe there was some other reason, but those near-silver waves made her an even more striking beauty. It was the hair he’d seen first. Then the body. He had drunk in every lithe curve, even though he rarely felt any physical interest in anyone. But it was only when Dru had looked right at him that he’d been completely lost.
The sight of her had knocked him on his ass. It had gotten only marginally better since. That was what pissed him off. The desire he couldn’t escape, the way nothing existed but her whenever she got near him…and the fact that the woman herself kept getting near him with no regard for her own safety. He had nothing to offer Dru, or any woman. It hadn’t really been a problem for him before he’d come to Terra Noctem.
Now it was just another problem among many. Meresin glared out over the water. Any peace he’d found was completely shattered.
“You actually like her. That’s…different.” Levi sounded as though he found the idea morbidly fascinating, the same as he did zombies.
“Bull,” Meresin growled.
“And you’re still terrible at lying. I realize this is redundant, but what in burning hell is your problem tonight?” Levi asked.
“I hate everything.”
“I was searching for a new problem,” Levi replied flatly.
Meresin sighed. “Just tell me what the assignment is, and go away. I’ll do my job. I always do, whether or not Justin approves of me. This mission is his idea, right? What kind of wild-goose chase has he dreamed up to send me on for the good of the city?”
“That’s the thing, Meresin. He hasn’t. This comes from Uriel.”
Meresin frowned, anger momentarily giving way to confusion.
“Uriel? How? I’ve been up here all of two hours, Levi, and the archangels don’t exactly carry cell phones. You expect me to believe he came running just because I fried a pair of useless vampires? He barely made it to Terra Noctem before it was overrun with demons last month!”
Levi stared at him silently, and Meresin wondered, not for the first time, whether the serpent had a direct line to their white-winged supervisor that he and the other renegade Fallen didn’t know about. Not that asking would get him an answer. Even now, two years after escaping his fate in Hell, Meresin knew almost nothing about Levi. None of them did. He had led them here, and continued to lead them well. That was all that really mattered. Still, it was difficult not to be curious about the rest.
“Uriel does what he will,” Levi finally said. “You’re lucky he showed up when he did. I’ve never seen Justin so close to banishing one of us.”
Mersin smiled thinly. “And did you lobby for my continued presence? Did you plead for mercy on my behalf?”
Levi’s expression didn’t change. “As tough as you make it to want you around, I defended you.” His voice grew smug. “In fact, so did Dru.”
Meresin pressed his lips together, jaw tightening. Dru again. Why would she defend him? Why did she insist upon involving herself at all? Didn’t she have enough things and people to try to run? He ought to be angry about her interference. Instead, he felt unexpected pleasure at the thought of her demanding he stay. She wanted him here. Enough to tangle with an archangel about it. Flustered by his reaction, he forced his thoughts back to the present.
“So Justin was shouting about tossing me out, and then Uriel arrived to save the day. Fine. Whatever works. More demon hunting in some far-flung corner of the world for me, I guess.”
“Not this time.”
“No?” His eyebrows lifted. Unease coiled like a snake in the pit of his stomach. Uriel showing up so quickly didn’t bode well. Not when he’d been on borrowed time for so long. He knew it, and he still couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it, until Levi said the words.
“You know what you have to do, Meresin. It’s what you were always going to have to do if you wanted to stay. Time’s up. Uriel sensed it.” Levi’s gaze was cool and unwavering in the dark. “And so do you.”
His words were all it took to summon the images that were always hovering at the shadowed periphery of his mind.
The table was rough stone beneath him and carved with monstrous symbols. They matched the symbols the knife had etched into his chest, wounds that bled freely now, silver darkening slowly to black as the chant continued all around him. His wings tried to beat beneath him—he’d made a mistake, he realized, a terrible mistake—but there would be no leaving this place. It was too late to take it back. Thunder rolled in the smoke-gray sky above.
“Forgemaster! Bring down the lightning! Now!”
Meresin’s eyes slipped shut, and a shiver racked him that had nothing to do with cold. His heart pounded. He fought the emotion that welled up and threatened to paralyze him. He didn’t want to remember.
“No,” Meresin said with a guttural growl. “I can’t go back to the forge. I’m not ready.”
“If that’s your answer, then I might as well have left you in Hell and let them toss you into the Phlegethon,” Levi said quietly, referring to the burning river that ran through the Infernal City. “So I suggest you think about that before you go storming off. You told me you wanted to live. Remember?”
Gnashing teeth in the abyss below. Screams in the dark. And a voice, right outside his cage. The Leviathan, who rarely spoke but was always listening. “Tell me something, demon. As you hang here, thinking about your soulless death tomorrow, what do you want most? And…how badly do you want it?”
“Maybe I changed my mind.”
“No. You didn’t.”
He looked at Levi, and, for just a moment, every bit of anger was gone, replaced by things that were so much worse—hopelessness, emptiness. Fear. He’d lived off the lightning for so long. Even if he could make it back to the forge, even if by some miracle Amriel was able to undo the damage done, what then? He wanted to be his own master, but what would be left of him?
“I’m a dead man anyway,” he said. It was a truth he’d never spoken before.
“Only if you choose to be,” Levi replied. “The second you left Hell, that part was up to you.”
His laugh sounded hollow and strange to his own ears. “It’s not that easy. As you well know.” He breathed in deeply and considered his options as he looked out over the sea. “I don’t even understand what Amriel did, much less how he could possibly undo it. They told me he could bind the lightning to me like he binds fire to steel. That I would be the first of the Fallen with an element running through my veins, ready to call upon in an instant. A warrior unmatched Above or Below.” His voice dripped with bitterness as he remembered Lucifer’s poisonous promises. “A hero.”
“You commanded all Hell’s aerial powers for thousands of years,” Levi pointed out. “You were an unmatched warrior.”
“Maybe. But we both know I commanded nothing.” He shook his head, disgusted. “They sent me out in front of the aerial forces to inspire fear, not to make decisions. Just a terrifying puppet with the Infernal Council pulling the strings. So when they discovered I was struggling with my ‘gift,’ why would they treat me like anything but a broken toy? I was a warrior, but I was—I am—more monster than hero.”
Levi’s voice was faintly bemused. “Join the club. And you might want to remember why you were in that cage when I came to you. It wasn’t for acting like a monster.”
“The Council didn’t agree.” He tried not to feel anything, tried to block out the past. It was a tactic that hadn’t been working very well for several years now. Finally, he sighed. “So this is what it comes down to. I get to choose between certain death or near-certain death.”
“A small chance is better than none.”
Meresin eyed him skeptically. “Have you ever seen the flame unbound from a fire sword? The steel doesn’t just break. It shatters.”
“Because in the Infernal City, only the nefari do that work. And if you haven’t noticed, they break lots of things. If Amriel can’t do better than that, he deserves a few well-placed bolts of lightning to the head before you go out in a blaze of glory.”
Meresin snorted. “Fair enough.” Deep in his chest, he felt the wretched tendrils of hope trying to take root and hated that he couldn’t stop them. In all this time, he hadn’t been able to even contemplate going back…not for answers, not for anything. The chances of him managing it just because he’d been given no choice were slim at best. He tried to turn his thoughts back to the present and things he might actually have some control over. “Is Uriel still in the city? Since he decided this was important enough to come rushing in for.”
The other man’s mouth curved in a rare ghost of a smile. “You never are. I’m sure you know what he wanted to talk about, after tonight’s show on High Street.” The smile faded. “I didn’t bring you out of Hell to self-destruct.”
Meresin snorted. “I am destruction. If you didn’t know that after all those years eavesdropping on the Infernal Council, then the joke’s on you, serpent. I am the only Fallen who can command the lightning.”
“And you’re as unstable as your element. Though I think we could argue about which of you is commanding the other.” Levi sighed softly. “I knew what you were, Meresin. So did the Council. You couldn’t have been surprised to find out that they’d decided you’d become too dangerous to keep. Especially after you disappeared on them.”
Meresin shrugged. No, he hadn’t been surprised. They’d made him, knowing they would eventually have to break him. The lightning hadn’t always been his. Those powers had come…after. And Amriel had warned them all.
The straps had been tight around his wrists, another in his mouth so that he wouldn’t bite off his own tongue. So that he could bite down instead of scream. The forgemaster had told him it would hurt, told him it would be a pain like nothing he could imagine. Still, that hadn’t prepared him. Nothing could have. He had screamed, and screamed, until he was no longer sure there was anything left of him but the sound of his agony. Somewhere inside, Meresin knew he was still screaming. Always.
He fought back a shudder and tried to focus on the waves rolling in and then pulling away from the shore. Rumble, hiss, rumble, hiss… Those memories were better left buried.
“Is there a point to this trip down memory lane? That can’t be why you climbed up here to find me.”
“Who says I climbed?”
Meresin slid him a look. “I honestly don’t give a damn if you spun a web, teleported, or flew. Spit it out, whatever it is, and be done with it.”
Another long, thoughtful pause made him want to singe Levi, and see how Lucifer’s former pet monster liked it. But he wasn’t stupid enough to try it. Not yet, anyway.
“You’re being sent out on assignment.”
“Again,” Meresin said, his harsh laugh masking his relief. He’d been worried that this time would be different. But, of course, it wasn’t. As always, his services were needed. “I’m out on assignment most of the time. I’m beginning to think no one wants me around.”
Levi didn’t even crack a smile. “If you think that, you’re right. Justin considers you a danger to his people, and to the city. And to something he holds even more dear.”
Hellfire, was this everyone’s day to torment him about the vampire king’s sister? Even if he was interested in pursuing her, which he wasn’t, they were as unsuited as fire and water. He’d watched her—the duties she undertook with quiet, ruthless focus, the things and people she chose to spend her time on. The conspicuous absence of lovers when he was certain she could have anyone, anytime. For all her carefree charm, Dru had as much steel in her as her brother did. She was control. He was chaos.
It might have been nice if Justin had realized that those two forces were at a stalemate for a reason. If he didn’t have any control left, he and Dru would have come together in some sort of mutually assured destruction long ago. But no, he was the danger. As though she were some delicate flower. He could smell her arousal every time she got near him. Peaches and vanilla…so sweet. So f**king tempting.
If he wasn’t careful, desire would cage him all over again.
Meresin bared his teeth, violet light beginning to crackle and wind up his forearms as some of the anger that eternally raged inside of him burst through the wall he tried so hard to keep around it. The sexual frustration made it that much worse. Damn her for coming to the rescue earlier. And damn him for needing her.
“Justin is a fool. I haven’t killed any of his people, no matter how much they might deserve it. I do my duty in protecting his damned city. And as for his sister…he’s the one who keeps throwing her in my path. I don’t want her.”
He hated that he couldn’t make it sound like anything but the lie it was.
“Justin sends her because she seems to be the only one who can calm you down. When it’s a choice between that or letting you light up a few dozen vampires, there isn’t really much of a choice at all.” Levi looked at him speculatively. “He isn’t the only one who’s noticed that you and Dru have some sort of connection.”
He hated the cold speculation in the serpent’s dispassionate eyes. His thoughts about Dru, many of them reserved for when he was alone, weren’t any of Levi’s business.
“There isn’t a connection, beyond the fact that she pisses me off,” he said. There was no way he would ever admit the truth. Not to Levi, not to anyone. He’d wanted Dru the first instant he saw her—long and tall and ivory-skinned, with that thick platinum hair down to her waist. Her lashes and brows were as dark as Justin’s. The story was that her overzealous sire had drained her so close to true death that even her hair had lost its color. Maybe it was true, or maybe there was some other reason, but those near-silver waves made her an even more striking beauty. It was the hair he’d seen first. Then the body. He had drunk in every lithe curve, even though he rarely felt any physical interest in anyone. But it was only when Dru had looked right at him that he’d been completely lost.
The sight of her had knocked him on his ass. It had gotten only marginally better since. That was what pissed him off. The desire he couldn’t escape, the way nothing existed but her whenever she got near him…and the fact that the woman herself kept getting near him with no regard for her own safety. He had nothing to offer Dru, or any woman. It hadn’t really been a problem for him before he’d come to Terra Noctem.
Now it was just another problem among many. Meresin glared out over the water. Any peace he’d found was completely shattered.
“You actually like her. That’s…different.” Levi sounded as though he found the idea morbidly fascinating, the same as he did zombies.
“Bull,” Meresin growled.
“And you’re still terrible at lying. I realize this is redundant, but what in burning hell is your problem tonight?” Levi asked.
“I hate everything.”
“I was searching for a new problem,” Levi replied flatly.
Meresin sighed. “Just tell me what the assignment is, and go away. I’ll do my job. I always do, whether or not Justin approves of me. This mission is his idea, right? What kind of wild-goose chase has he dreamed up to send me on for the good of the city?”
“That’s the thing, Meresin. He hasn’t. This comes from Uriel.”
Meresin frowned, anger momentarily giving way to confusion.
“Uriel? How? I’ve been up here all of two hours, Levi, and the archangels don’t exactly carry cell phones. You expect me to believe he came running just because I fried a pair of useless vampires? He barely made it to Terra Noctem before it was overrun with demons last month!”
Levi stared at him silently, and Meresin wondered, not for the first time, whether the serpent had a direct line to their white-winged supervisor that he and the other renegade Fallen didn’t know about. Not that asking would get him an answer. Even now, two years after escaping his fate in Hell, Meresin knew almost nothing about Levi. None of them did. He had led them here, and continued to lead them well. That was all that really mattered. Still, it was difficult not to be curious about the rest.
“Uriel does what he will,” Levi finally said. “You’re lucky he showed up when he did. I’ve never seen Justin so close to banishing one of us.”
Mersin smiled thinly. “And did you lobby for my continued presence? Did you plead for mercy on my behalf?”
Levi’s expression didn’t change. “As tough as you make it to want you around, I defended you.” His voice grew smug. “In fact, so did Dru.”
Meresin pressed his lips together, jaw tightening. Dru again. Why would she defend him? Why did she insist upon involving herself at all? Didn’t she have enough things and people to try to run? He ought to be angry about her interference. Instead, he felt unexpected pleasure at the thought of her demanding he stay. She wanted him here. Enough to tangle with an archangel about it. Flustered by his reaction, he forced his thoughts back to the present.
“So Justin was shouting about tossing me out, and then Uriel arrived to save the day. Fine. Whatever works. More demon hunting in some far-flung corner of the world for me, I guess.”
“Not this time.”
“No?” His eyebrows lifted. Unease coiled like a snake in the pit of his stomach. Uriel showing up so quickly didn’t bode well. Not when he’d been on borrowed time for so long. He knew it, and he still couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it, until Levi said the words.
“You know what you have to do, Meresin. It’s what you were always going to have to do if you wanted to stay. Time’s up. Uriel sensed it.” Levi’s gaze was cool and unwavering in the dark. “And so do you.”
His words were all it took to summon the images that were always hovering at the shadowed periphery of his mind.
The table was rough stone beneath him and carved with monstrous symbols. They matched the symbols the knife had etched into his chest, wounds that bled freely now, silver darkening slowly to black as the chant continued all around him. His wings tried to beat beneath him—he’d made a mistake, he realized, a terrible mistake—but there would be no leaving this place. It was too late to take it back. Thunder rolled in the smoke-gray sky above.
“Forgemaster! Bring down the lightning! Now!”
Meresin’s eyes slipped shut, and a shiver racked him that had nothing to do with cold. His heart pounded. He fought the emotion that welled up and threatened to paralyze him. He didn’t want to remember.
“No,” Meresin said with a guttural growl. “I can’t go back to the forge. I’m not ready.”
“If that’s your answer, then I might as well have left you in Hell and let them toss you into the Phlegethon,” Levi said quietly, referring to the burning river that ran through the Infernal City. “So I suggest you think about that before you go storming off. You told me you wanted to live. Remember?”
Gnashing teeth in the abyss below. Screams in the dark. And a voice, right outside his cage. The Leviathan, who rarely spoke but was always listening. “Tell me something, demon. As you hang here, thinking about your soulless death tomorrow, what do you want most? And…how badly do you want it?”
“Maybe I changed my mind.”
“No. You didn’t.”
He looked at Levi, and, for just a moment, every bit of anger was gone, replaced by things that were so much worse—hopelessness, emptiness. Fear. He’d lived off the lightning for so long. Even if he could make it back to the forge, even if by some miracle Amriel was able to undo the damage done, what then? He wanted to be his own master, but what would be left of him?
“I’m a dead man anyway,” he said. It was a truth he’d never spoken before.
“Only if you choose to be,” Levi replied. “The second you left Hell, that part was up to you.”
His laugh sounded hollow and strange to his own ears. “It’s not that easy. As you well know.” He breathed in deeply and considered his options as he looked out over the sea. “I don’t even understand what Amriel did, much less how he could possibly undo it. They told me he could bind the lightning to me like he binds fire to steel. That I would be the first of the Fallen with an element running through my veins, ready to call upon in an instant. A warrior unmatched Above or Below.” His voice dripped with bitterness as he remembered Lucifer’s poisonous promises. “A hero.”
“You commanded all Hell’s aerial powers for thousands of years,” Levi pointed out. “You were an unmatched warrior.”
“Maybe. But we both know I commanded nothing.” He shook his head, disgusted. “They sent me out in front of the aerial forces to inspire fear, not to make decisions. Just a terrifying puppet with the Infernal Council pulling the strings. So when they discovered I was struggling with my ‘gift,’ why would they treat me like anything but a broken toy? I was a warrior, but I was—I am—more monster than hero.”
Levi’s voice was faintly bemused. “Join the club. And you might want to remember why you were in that cage when I came to you. It wasn’t for acting like a monster.”
“The Council didn’t agree.” He tried not to feel anything, tried to block out the past. It was a tactic that hadn’t been working very well for several years now. Finally, he sighed. “So this is what it comes down to. I get to choose between certain death or near-certain death.”
“A small chance is better than none.”
Meresin eyed him skeptically. “Have you ever seen the flame unbound from a fire sword? The steel doesn’t just break. It shatters.”
“Because in the Infernal City, only the nefari do that work. And if you haven’t noticed, they break lots of things. If Amriel can’t do better than that, he deserves a few well-placed bolts of lightning to the head before you go out in a blaze of glory.”
Meresin snorted. “Fair enough.” Deep in his chest, he felt the wretched tendrils of hope trying to take root and hated that he couldn’t stop them. In all this time, he hadn’t been able to even contemplate going back…not for answers, not for anything. The chances of him managing it just because he’d been given no choice were slim at best. He tried to turn his thoughts back to the present and things he might actually have some control over. “Is Uriel still in the city? Since he decided this was important enough to come rushing in for.”
