A Darker Past (The Darker Agency #2)(34)

He leaned closer. “Do you have it?”

“Not that we know of. I’m guessing it would be bad if he got this thing?”

He took a step back. Some of the rage evaporated, and I relaxed a little, finding it easier to breathe. “Monumentally.”

“We don’t have it, but that doesn’t mean he won’t find it. What happens if he does?”

Valefar frowned. “My dear little demon, if Gressil gets that box, it will be the beginning of the end. For everyone.”





Chapter Fourteen


Angry Valefar was a sight that stole your breath away. But Scared Valefar? I think it was ten times worse. When a guy like Val was worried, you knew it was big time. Infinite budget disaster movie big. He’d been quiet the last few minutes, pacing from one end of his office to the other like a caged animal jonesing for a kill.

“Go home. I need to deal with this.”

“Any”—a wave of dizziness washed over me and when it passed, I was standing back in the Archway again—“idea what I should do?” I finished, annoyed.

“Jessie?” Mom was a few feet from where I’d left her. The sun was just cresting the mountains, and the chill in the air made our breath visible.

“It’s bad,” I said, walking toward her. She was bent over the witches’ stone altar. Cassidy was gone.

“A Prince of Hell is involved. Of course it’s bad. Did he tell you how to take him out?”

I shook my head. Valefar hadn’t been any help. In fact, as far as help went, he’d been kind of the opposite. All my little visit did was make me twitchy. “He wasn’t in a chatty mood.”

She started toward me, stopping halfway across the field. There was six feet between us. Ten, tops. Any more than that and she would have been standing in the small patch of sun between us as it came over the mountain.

A thick tuft of purple smoke drifted up between us, closer to her, and I wasted no time. I took two steps back into the shadow of the trees and popped back out right behind Mom. “What—”

I grabbed her arm, dragged her into the shade, and shadowed again, meaning to bring us back to the office, but instead, ended up about eight feet from where we’d been. About eight feet from where Gressil had materialized. “Um, this is not where we were supposed to end up.”

“Worry about that later,” Mom shouted, ducking as the demon hurled the same kind of energy bomb he’d thrown at Lukas and me back at Town Hall. It sailed over Mom’s head and missed me by a fraction of an inch. She shoved me to the right as another zoomed toward us. “Get down!”

I ducked and rolled. The sun was almost over the mountain, and Gressil, the smart little demon that he was, was herding us away from the shadows and into the open space. I turned to make a break for the tree line, but wasn’t fast enough. Something cold and sharp knocked me down. I hit the grass, trying to take a breath, but my entire body was convulsing.

“Jessie!” Not my mom. A guy. Lukas.

Warm, strong arms wrapped around me, and the grass beneath me gave way to air. I wobbled on my feet, unsteady and spinning and still trying to force air into my lungs. “Lukas? Where did you—”

The rest of the question died on my lips. Gressil was approaching Mom across the field. She was smack in the center with the sun shining down. I had no way to get to her other than to run.

And that’s what I did.

I shoved Lukas aside and sprinted forward. The world tipped sideways as I went down hard on my left knee. Snow seeped through my jeans. A sharp pain shot up my thigh, bringing involuntary tears to my eyes, but I ignored it and sprang to my feet. My legs felt like rubber, and even though I knew my brain was sending the message to move faster, my body just wasn’t up for it.

A sound filled the air. A shrill, irritating screech. Over and over. A single word.

Mom!

It was from me.

Gressil reached her first. I wasn’t far behind, but the whole thing happened in a matter of seconds. The time it took for me to take a single breath.

“I will take what I need from the Belfair coven,” I heard him say, “but until you deliver my Master’s prison, I will kill a Darker each day.”

I skidded to a stop in the slush and grabbed his arm as his fingers closed around Mom’s neck. He picked her up like she was nothing. A rag doll or a pillow. Not a mighty warrior, but a feather-light child. I was knocked back to the ground as he swung her around, stopping for a moment to grin down at me. “Better hurry. There aren’t many of you left.”

“Nooo!”

With a devastating wave of the demon’s arm, Mom sailed backward. Through the field and into the tree line. She crashed against the largest oak in the front row, and time came to a screeching halt. Breathing stopped. The early morning birds, singing their oblivious song, grew silent. Everything, everywhere came to a sudden, painful halt.

I started to run.

Lukas reached her first, pulling out his cell.

I got there seconds later and dropped to my knees. She was so incredibly still. So silent. All I wanted in that moment was for her to open her eyes. Tell me I’d acted impulsively. Lecture me on another mistake. Launch into a speech about the beauty of a normal life.

But there was nothing.

Lukas’s voice floated, disembodied, in the background. It was garbled, and I couldn’t understand more than a word or two of what he was saying. A tremor ran through me, turning into an allover quake as I laid my middle and pointer fingers under my mother’s jaw, at her pulse point. A faint but steady rhythm fluttered beneath the tips.