Archon(138)

The demon hushed her anyway, sweeping back the red hair from her face with a shaking hand. “Don’t worry,” she said, smiling so that her teeth appeared, blindingly white. “You did very . . . very well . . .”

“And you’ll stay with me?”

“Always . . .”

Naamah stopped breathing.

The snow, of all things, had finally killed her.

The demon’s eyes would have actually grown back if given the chance. But the poison she’d used on so many souls, keeping it safe from her own veins inside the wicked blades overlapping her nails, had been in Lucifel’s deadly rain, its potency alarmingly high. The Prince’s venom had entered Naamah through the mess of her eyes, and from there to her brain. After that, she probably knew there wasn’t much time left.

So she’d decided to spend it with the human she’d grown to love.

Kim waited a few more minutes, and it began.

Slowly, her wings crumbled into fragments of bone and ash, framing her with their metal pieces still connected to skin. Now she was merely another young woman, exotic-looking, but singed and dead. He’d make certain to contact his foster father, Mastema, and send others for her body quickly. Lilith, her mentor, would have many questions that needed answering.

“Requiescat in pace,” Kim said, more out of habit than a desire to answer her request.

Stephanie must have recognized his voice somewhere in the tangle that had been her mind. She cried out his name, and then she resumed calling for Naamah, as if the demon could still answer.

Kim left her in her temporary coffin of branches and snow, walking past Angela to gloat over his other conquest. He deserved this one more than all the others, and he ached to glory in it with as much delight as the idea that Angela would speak to him long before she saw Israfel again.

Troy. Dead. Because of the same, miraculous black rain. All these years, and he’d never gotten close to killing her. His cousin was an object of hatred for both angels and demons, feared for being the hungry monster that she was. Jinn of the lower clans spoke her name with reverence bordering on dread. And yet, a fluke of nature had brought her down like a crow with an arrow through its breast.

She’d covered herself with both wings, half their feathers severely damaged by the snow, portions of her feet burned to a crimson red.

But she was frozen like the water.

Unresponsive.

He slid the obsidian knife out of his coat, already tasting his cousin’s blood on the blade. He had to finalize this himself. Drain the rest of her life out before it reanimated her like the nightmare she was.

He reached out, his hand shaking, and flipped her heavy wings open.

Her large eyes were closed. He’d never seen Troy asleep, or resting in any position that resembled it, and he stared down at her, as if seeing her paper-white skin, and bruised lips, and sharp, evil nails for the first time. Blood still touched her features here and there, and she could have been beautiful like her ancestors if it weren’t for those long ears and that wiry frame. Jinn were made for hunting even more than for breeding, and Troy’s more feminine attributes were characteristically undeveloped.

“I win,” he whispered, holding the knife above her heart.

It was like murdering his father twice.

She opened her eyes, letting out an eerie gleam of phosphorescence.

Her pupils riveted on him, hard and horrifically cold. “You spoke too soon.”

Rage, like always, propelled her in a frenzy of speed. She lunged for his face, raking him mercilessly across the chin, and then latched onto his chest with her toenails, her fingernails, slipping as he was slipping on the sudden stream of blood. They tumbled to the earth, Troy crushing him, Kim gasping for breath as her teeth aimed right for his jugular.

He swore, screaming, lodging his knife deep into one of her wings.

She howled, contorting off him with more hisses and deep-throated growls.

Kim turned and ran.

His shoes slid through the snow, and his lungs felt like they would burst, but Troy was nearly on top of him already. He was pulling ahead, out of range for a death grip, yet her nails sliced with evil suddenness into the skin of his back. A fluid warmth dripped down to his ankles.

There would be no running after all.

Kim wiped his palm across the blood dripping down his chin and spun around, flinging it in her face along with his words. “Exorcizo te, spiritus immunde!”

It was the best he could do. The droplets converged on her, glowing with a pain he only recently dared to inflict. She smacked into the crimson shield like it was a wall, her yellow eyes slits that barely opened in the brightness of the light. He’d never seen her so angry, enraged to the point where even the ache of the light meant nothing. Troy was a picture of absolute fury, her nails scrabbling across the shield’s illusory solid surface, spit slathering from her mouth and splattering off her teeth, dotting the inside of her prison with diamonds of saliva. The shield of energy and blood had become a bubble, but it also wouldn’t last for long.