Strife: Hidden Book Four Read online

  I slashed out again, and she barely blocked me, making the ax appear again. I grunted as the contact reverberated, making my shoulders ache. She glanced toward Nain, and then she smiled. I panicked, tried to slash out at her again. And then she was gone and I looked around, seeing her rematerialize a few feet behind me. She had a gun in her hand, and she smiled as she let off a shot, just before I charged into her, knocking her down.

  It didn’t hit me.

  I heard Nain grunt behind me, and I saw red. I could feel his anger. He was in pain. I grabbed the avatar of Terror around the throat, and she clawed my arms, bared her teeth at me.

  “Better go, Fury. He’s hurt bad,” she said, grinning a feral smile. “I think I hit something important.”

  I heard myself roar. I lost all sense of myself. And I squeezed, as hard as my body would let me. I felt her struggle, and then I felt her go still, and still I squeezed, and I tore my way into her mind. I could see Strife there. Exactly as she had appeared to the Normals. They’d been working together. And I saw the source of her power.

  Immortal power.

  The power of the avatar of terror.

  Ancient and terrifying.

  Take it.

  Take it.

  Take it.

  “Molly, don’t,” I heard Nain shout behind me.

  Take it. You know you want it.

  “Stop, Molly.”

  Imagine how strong we could be, a sinuous, sibilant voice in my mind.

  “Molls!”

  You have to fight me off, don’t you? And then a throaty laugh, bordering on a cackle.

  “Baby, come on,” Nain, groaning now behind me.

  Take it, you fool. Before it escapes this body.

  I shook my head. Made myself let go of the avatar’s body, made myself leave her mind. Once I stopped touching it, the body just disappeared, as if it had never been there at all, and I felt the spirit of Terror leave. It would inhabit another body at some point. But it would be new, and it wouldn’t be after my blood.

  I shook myself out of it, got up and ran toward Nain. His chest was a mess. She’d hit right near his heart. He was breathing heavily. Shaking. Blood was dripping from the corner of his mouth.

  “No. No goddamn way,” I said, falling to my knees next to him. I slashed my wrist, let the blood pour over his wound. “Why weren’t you in your demon form?” I chided him. In his human skin, he was much more vulnerable. That, and the fact that I was almost sure the weapons used by the avatar of Terror were much more lethal than what we usually faced, had ensured that he wasn’t going to be with me much longer.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he grunted, trying to push my hand away.

  “Healing you. Goddamn it,” I shouted.

  He groaned, tried to push me away. “You can’t fix this.”

  “The hell I can’t,” I muttered. “Don't push me again.”

  I opened the vein again, let my blood pour into him. He stopped trembling.

  “It burns,” he groaned.

  “That’s how it feels when you heal. Now shut up,” I said. I could feel myself weakening, my heart struggling against the massive blood lost while healing Nain. My nose was bleeding, my skin cracking, burning, from using my powers against Terror. Nether was raging in my mind, angry with me for not doing as she ordered.

  I tried to ignore it all, and stared at Nain’s chest. Watched bone reform itself, muscles and skin slowly but surely knitting back together.

  One more time.

  I slashed my wrist again, worked the blood into the last of the wound. My heart was thundering within me, sputtering as if it was ready to give up.

  “No more, baby. I’m fine. Stop it,” Nain said, sitting up and gripping my upper arms. I looked at his face. He was still deathly pale, but he was alert. No more trembling. No more blood from his mouth. I felt tears come to my eyes and my vision swam in front of me. One of the imps appeared at Nain’s side, shoved a shirt toward him, still sporting its tags.

  “Can’t walk through the city like that demon,” the imp, Falrog, said.

  “Thank you,” Nain said to it, and the imp thumped its fist to its chest, saluting him the same way they saluted me.

  I sat and watched him strip off what was left of his destroyed, bloody shirt. He set it on the ground, and I threw flames at it. Leaving our blood sitting around was a bad idea.

  “Thanks. Don’t use your powers any more now.”

  “Fuck off,” I said. I brought my knees up, rested my face against them, mostly so I wouldn’t have to look at him. I didn’t want to see his muscles bunching as he moved, or that trail of dark hair that led from his navel and into the waistband of his jeans. I sat, and refused to look at him, and forced my tears back, and felt myself burn as I healed. My heart rate settled back to normal, and I stopped trembling as my wounds, both those received at Terror’s hands and those I’d caused to myself, healed. I sat there, and I felt Nain sit beside me. Close, but not touching. And I knew damn well what he was doing. I could feel my power building again, my body strengthening, healing faster, because of his demonic rage feeding my own demon.

  After a while, I felt whole, full of power again. I stood up and walked away from him, back toward the RiverWalk. He followed me, and we didn't say anything for a long time. I tried to shut down all of the emotions I was feeling. I tried to focus on details: the sound of the river to our right, the lights twinkling downtown to our left. Anything but the man behind me and the feelings running through me.

  Of course, he broke the silence.

  “I didn’t know you could do that. Thanks for saving me.”

  And something snapped. I growled, and I shoved him as hard as I could. He hit the wall of a building nearby. “Fuck you, Nain,” I said.

  He sprung up, eyes glowing red, an immediate demonic response to a threat of any kind.

  “What the hell, Molly?”

  “Just shut up,” I growled, and I dropped my enchantment on myself, letting him see my eyes glowing, my wings. My own response.

  “You’ve been ready to rip my head off all night. What’s your problem?”

  I rushed him, shoved him again, my rage overtaking me. “You are such an asshole,” I shouted.

  “Stop,” he said, grabbing my arms when I tried to hit him. I fought against him. He groaned in response to my rage, my power swirling around us. And I couldn’t get a lid on it, couldn’t stop being angry, especially after what we’d just gone through, seeing him near death again.

  “Do you even know what today is, you son of a bitch?” I asked him, still struggling, still trying to hit him.

  He held me tight. “What the hell are you talking about?’

  I growled again, determined to get loose so I could hurt him.

  “I hate you,” I said, feeling some of the fight go out of me, feeling stupid tears come to my eyes. I tried to push him away. “I hate you so much.”

  “Molls. What’s going on?”

  “It’s the anniversary of the day I killed you.”

  “I’m alive.”

  “You are such a bastard. Is that supposed to make me forget the way it felt when I killed you? Am I supposed to forget the way my soul ripped when you died? Or the way I felt the pain I caused you? Or the emptiness I felt the instant you were gone?” By now I was crying, shouting, tears coursing down my face, still struggling against his iron grip, trying to get loose.

  “Honey,” he said and his voice was low. Guilt and sadness, regret coming from him.

  “Get away from me,” I said, trying to pull out of his grip.

  “No.”

  I growled, and he pulled me into his arms, holding me against him. I tried to pull away from him, but I was exhausted and I felt the last of the fight go out of me. I felt my knees buckle, and then he was holding me up, supporting me as he held me against his body, huge strong arms encircling me as I cried. I fisted my hands in his shirt, gripping it.

  “I hate you. You destroyed me. You lied to me. You made me
hurt the one person in my life I ever loved.”

  He didn’t say anything. He held me tight.

  “Something in me died, too. And I don’t know how to get it back,” I said, and that seemed to do something to him. He raised his hands to my face, cupped my face between his hands. He leaned down and kissed first one eye, and the the other.

  “I’m so sorry, Molly,” he said, his voice hoarse, rough. He pressed his lips to the top of my head, stood like that. His hands were cool on my face, his body huge, hulking, protective over mine.

  I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t know it was today. I’m sorry.

  Let go of me.

  No.

  I shoved him away, and this time, he let me go. I wiped at my eyes in irritation, drying the remaining tears with my sleeve. And then I glanced at him one more time. He looked stricken, haunted almost, standing where he’d held me. I turned away and headed toward where the car was parked, knew he was following me.

  We climbed into the car in silence.

  “Take me back to your house.”

  “Not a chance in hell, Nain.”

  “You’re going to sleep tonight. You’re exhausted. Your parents aren’t around. I’ll watch you.”

  “You are not fucking watching me while I sleep,” I snarled.

  “Yes I am. Or do you want Nether to make another appearance? You’re upset, you’re stressed out, you’re tired. You’re hurting. I’ll sit in that chair in your room. When’s the last time you slept anyway?”

  “The night with Nether,” I said.

  I felt his shock. “That was over a week ago.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “They told me you didn’t sleep after I died. I thought they were exaggerating.”

  “I’m not talking about this,” I said.

  I felt his gaze on me. I just wanted him away from me. But I knew I couldn’t get rid of him that night. He was right. I was ready to fall asleep driving. And I was a mess, and Nether was already pissed off at me. I drove toward my house, and thankfully, he didn’t talk to me anymore.

  I pulled up into the driveway, patted Kurt and Courtney as we walked toward the back door. Nain leaned down and scratched Kurt behind the ears. The dogs had lived with him at the loft after I’d died. He’d fenced off the empty lot next to the building, installed sod and everything. They even had custom-built doghouses.

  We walked in the back door. Eunomia and Levitt were in the kitchen, washing dishes.

  “Hey,” Levitt said in greeting.

  Eunomia looked me over, stopped still from drying the plate in her hand.

  “Mollis? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. We managed to destroy Terror,” I said, and Levitt pumped his fist in the air, congratulated me.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” E said, eyes still on me. “But are you all right?”

  “I’m all right enough. He’s here on babysitting duty tonight. I feel like I’m about to fall over.”

  She nodded. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Thanks.”

  I made my way up the stairs to my room, Nain right behind me.

  I didn’t want to be in my bedroom with him. In the room we’d bonded in, in the room we’d made love in. I gritted my teeth, refused to start crying again. I steeled myself and walked into my room.

  He settled himself into the yellow chair in the corner of my room, the one I liked to curl up and read or doze in sometimes. I went to my dresser and dug out pajama pants and a t-shirt, then I went across the hall to the bathroom and took a quick shower. I pulled the clothes on and took a deep breath. Then I headed back into my room. He was still in the chair.

  “There are books over there,” I said.

  “Lots of classics,” he commented.

  “I went through a phase where I was trying to read them. I thought at one point I’d try to go to college and figured it couldn’t hurt,” I answered, pulling the covers of my bed back.

  “Jane Eyre looks pretty worn,” he said, still looking through the stack of books.

  “Yeah. That’s one of my favorites.” Nearly told him that I like Wuthering Heights, too, even though I hated it the fist time I’d read it. I kept my mouth shut, tried not to remember the way I’d come to my house to be alone a few months after he’d died, tired of everyone else hovering over me, trying to make me speak or eat. How I’d sat in that chair and flipped through my copy of Wuthering Heights until I found the part where Cathy says that “whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same” and cried and screamed into the empty house, grieving, missing the other part of my soul. I’d written his name in the margins of that page, as if writing it would make him feel more real again. I shook my head, climbed between the covers. I turned away from him, faced the wall.

  I heard him flipping pages. Felt the usual from him: demonic rage. Lots of guilt mixed up in that just then. Good.

  “Do you really hate me, Molls?” he asked after a while, his voice low in the mostly dark room.

  “Yes. I really do.”

  He was quiet for a long time, and I thought he wouldn’t respond. Then he finally said “good.”

  “Yeah? What’s so good about it?”

  “It means you still care enough to hate me. And if you still care enough, then maybe someday you won’t hate me anymore.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” I said, closing my eyes.

  Chapter Nine

  When I woke up, I glanced toward the chair first. He was there, head resting back against the back of the chair, snoring quietly. He was too big for the dainty chair, and he looked like a giant. Even more than he usually did. I got up and shook him.

  “What?” he asked, jumping awake.

  “I’m up now. Take the bed for a while.”

  “Thanks.” I watched as he climbed sleepily into my bed, rested his head on my pillow. Tried not to notice the way he pressed his face into my pillow, the same way I had so often with the pillow on his bed after he’d died. Within moments, he was asleep again. I looked toward the chair. Wuthering Heights was sitting on the little table beside it. I sat down in the chair and picked up the book. I leafed through it, noticed a piece of yellow paper from the legal pad I kept on the table sticking out of it. I opened it to the page he’d marked, which was the same page I’d been thinking about the night before, the one on which I’d written his name in the margins.

  I looked at the paper. I’d thought it was a bookmark. It wasn’t.

  In his neat, exacting hand, he’d written to me.

  You are my soul, Molly. Always will be.

  My hands were shaking. I put the paper back in the book, set it down. Left the room before I did something stupid.

  I went into my bathroom and locked the door behind me. I rested my hands on the edges of the sink, let my head fall forward. I tried to remember to breathe.

  Focus, girl, I told myself. That is a whole mess you can’t even deal with right now.

  I tried to force myself to snap out of it. I brushed my teeth, washed my face. I brushed my hair and put it up, slipped into a pair of jeans and a black top.

  I put on make up, which I’d been doing more often in the past couple of weeks, when I thought of it. It made me feel more human, I guess. Normal. As I did it, my mind kept going back to what he’d written.

  I had two notes from Nain now. The one he’d left me after he’d died, and the one he’d left in my book. I had the first note memorized. It was in a metal box in my basement. It was creased from being folded over and over again, smudged.

  I can’t. I just can’t even with this right now, I thought. I’m supposed to not be feeling anything, and when he’s around, I feel every goddamn thing. Everything was bigger, stronger, when he was around. Especially the things that happened between us. Every word, every glance seemed weighted, tense. There was no way to be calm around Nain. Not really. I shook my head and took a deep breath, steeling myself to face him again.

  I opened the bathroom door just as he was comin
g out of my room.

  “You should sleep longer,” I said.

  “I can’t sleep in there,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “I can smell you all around me. It doesn’t make me feel sleepy.”

  I watched him. “It doesn't? How does it make you feel?”

  His eyes met mine. “Is this really something you want to talk about right now?”

  I blushed. “I guess not.”

  “Stone’s on his way to pick me up.”

  “I could have driven you home.”

  He was watching me. “I think you’ve probably had enough of me for a while.”

  I glanced away. The hallway felt tiny with him in it. It felt as if all of the air was being sucked from my lungs. I rubbed my hands together, rubbed my arms. “Thanks for staying last night,” I finally said.

  “Anytime. Thanks for not fighting me on it.”

  I nodded.

  We stood there a while longer, and I could tell he wanted to say something. He was tense, his emotions swirling around me. I tried to shut them out, remembering that I was supposed to not be feeling.

  “Molly, I—”

  At that moment, Stone walked through the front door, calling a raucous “good morning!” into the house.

  I glanced up at Nain, met his eyes. We stood there like that, for just a second.

  “I’ll see you,” he said, and I nodded. He headed down the stairs. I watched him go, and called a good morning to Stone. When they were gone, when I heard Stone’s car going down the street, I headed back to my room, and I sat in the chair, and I held his note in my hand and tried not to feel anything.

  I really didn’t want to feel the things I was feeling anyway.

  I made myself leave my room and try to stop thinking about things I had no business thinking about. For once, I was the first one up, and I let the dogs out and fed them, tossed the grungy tennis ball they loved so much a few times and watched them chase it down. It was early November, and the air had taken on its winter chill.

  I was about to head inside when I felt a presence behind me, coming out of the gateway. When I saw who it was, I smothered a groan.