Untouchable Darkness (The Dark Ones Saga, #2)(73)

“Even the feathers weep of his absence,” Ethan said in a grave voice sliding his hand behind Genesis back and quietly escorting her out of the room. Alex and Mason followed, maybe they too sensed the stillness in the air, the absolute paralysis of the cells around us as if they too were confused on what course of action to take. After all, what was the protocol when a Dark One suddenly sprouted wings out of his back? And not black, ripped up wings, but true wings, the ones of his father, an archangel.

I stayed glued to the floor as Cassius hovered near me. Was it possible for him to be more beautiful than before? It must be, because he was, his strong jaw was smooth, cut perfectly across a flawless face. Sensual lips curved downward into a scowl as his wings slowly retracted back toward his body then disappeared altogether.

“What happened?” I asked, slowly rising to my feet and making my way toward his shivering body. He might look gorgeous but he also carried an air that he’d just undergone the most traumatic experience of his life.

“Everything,” Cassius whispered. “And yet, nothing I shouldn’t have seen.” His eyes flashed. “I should have seen it. I should have seen all of it, but he was always so vague.” Cassius’s shoulders rose and fell with each laborious breath he took. “It was a future that was too closely tied to mine.”

I pressed my hand to his shoulder, he reached out and caressed my fingertips, his skin was smoother than before, as if it was brand new, barely created a second ago and placed on his body.

“A life for a life,” he said in a low tone.

“And the life taken?”

“Offered. He offered his life, and everything, all of his power and his job, fell to me.”

“More heaviness,” I guessed as Cassius shared a look with me and in that look I saw everything, Sariel offering himself up, the child I’d recognized in the dream, trees, the thrones, and all of the angels.

“When you stabbed me, I didn’t know what I was doing, just tried to give you as much power as I could, I knew you were running into danger. I had no idea that by doing that, I was condemning myself to death.”

“I wanted to help,” I said in a small voice. “It’s my fault he’s dead, if I hadn’t run off—”

“There were several futures, Stephanie.” He cupped my face with his hand. “Believe me when I say, this was the best one, the one—now that I know Sariel’s thoughts— that he very much hoped for.”

“And the others?”

“Altered, only slightly.”

“I haven’t told the others about Bannik, about what I saw.”

“Well.” Cassius pulled me in for a hug, pressing my body tight against his. “I think it is time they know what we are up against, not just a race of unruly Demon, but a fallen angel hell bent on destroying both humans and immortals alike.”

“He doesn’t want everyone dead.” I squeezed my arms around Cassius. “He wants them enslaved.”

“Death is better.”

“It is.”

“If it comes to a choice.” Cassius tensed up again. “I will kill myself, destroying both humans and immortals at the same time. I will kill us all before I let him make slaves out of us.”

“Is that your choice to make?”

Cassius paused, his voice grave. “It is now.”





Cassius



TO BE A DARK ONE was to know perfection, but be unable to reach it. Now that I had Sariel’s blood flowing somehow miraculously through my veins, I could touch it, smell it, bond with it. But my humanity, or whatever was left of it, rejected the notion completely. Logic shook its head in denial, and so I appeared different, but I was very much the same.

Split completely down the middle between two races.

The answer as well as the end.

In a cruel twist of fate, the angel of life and death had created both—me. I had no idea if I possessed enough power to fight off Bannik on my own, but what I did know was that the battle between dark and light was just starting to get interesting.

Mason was hovering over the stove flipping a steak as he so often did when he was upset about something. I had to wonder if he had some Italian or Greek running through some of those wolfish veins. The blood of Sariel called to me to use it—no longer would I have to guess about anything—but my humanity pressed the fleeting thought away, what fun was life when you knew all the answers already?

I’d learned that as a human.

I’d keep living that way as a Dark One.

Alex sipped a cup of coffee and pretended to be reading but he rarely turned the page, just stared it down, lost in his dark thoughts, the same ones he so often tried to play off when really, it was quite possible he had the hardest future of us all.

And Genesis, lovely, beautiful, pregnant Genesis sat on Ethan’s lap while he drank from her neck.

If you blinked, you could almost miss the small cut near her ear where he kissed and sucked.

“Gross.” Alex said in a bored voice. “At least have the decency to do it in private.”

“You eat at a table,” Ethan pointed out. “Why can’t I?”

“Hah!” Mason flipped the steak in the air again. “Vampire has a point.”

Alex scrunched up his nose while I sat between the two of them, Stephanie still gripped my hand, offering her support, her love, it floated off of her in perfumed waves, stabilizing me, altering me so completely that I knew had I been in Sariel’s place—I would have made the exact same choice.