A Darker Past (The Darker Agency #2)(60)

Turning to Lukas, Dad said, “Meet us at the cliffs. It’s far enough out of the way that no one should see us, and close enough to the caves to make it in less than an hour walk.”

Lukas nodded, and my parents stepped into the shadow of the hallway and disappeared, leaving us alone.





Chapter Twenty-Four


“The cliffs?” I asked, watching the spot my parents had just been standing in.

Lukas took my hand. “Damien showed me this morning. It’s a place on the outer edges of the Shadow Realm. Very dangerous.”

I snickered. “Woohoo! Danger is my middle name.”

“This is serious, Jessie. This place we’re going? Where the prison is hidden? It’s like nowhere you’ve ever been.”

“Aww. Lukas Scott, are you trying to say you’re worried about me?”

He wasn’t smiling. “If anything were to happen to you…”

“I’m good. Promise.” I squeezed his hand and winked. “I’m so good I make your job easier.”

I started to move away to grab my bag from the floor, but Lukas held tight, pulling me back. He released his grip and brought both hands to my face, fingertips brushing my temple on either side. “Protecting you isn’t my job. It’s my life. You’re not an assignment, Jessie. You make me crazy, but at the same time, keep me anchored. You’re my reason.”

A lump formed in my throat. I tried to swallow it down, but it wouldn’t go away. “Reason for what?”

“For everything,” he whispered, closing the distance between us. I felt the kiss from my lips down to the tips of my toes. Every inch of me caught fire, and as I wrapped my arms tight around his neck, the words slipped to the tip of my tongue. You’d think it’d be easy. Three silly, simple little words. But even in that moment, an instance where I felt them so completely, I couldn’t push them past my lips.

Lukas pulled away and waited a moment, eyes on me. He clasped his hand over mine, and without a word, I focused on Dad and shadowed us across. I’d never been to this part of the Shadow Realm before. The sky was lighter, a stormy gray rather than the inky black of the main drag, and there were no buildings. In the distance, what looked like an ocean, bordered by a pale, sandy beach, dotted the horizon. It would have been beautiful if I didn’t know what kind of danger hid around every corner.

We popped in right beside Mom and Dad. “Okay, now,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “I’m here. The party can officially start.”

“Everyone okay? What took so long?” Dad asked. Mom looked a little pale, but otherwise fine. I was betting she’d never shadowed with Dad before.

I had a horrible feeling I was blushing. “I had to tie my shoe. So, um, where are we, exactly?”

Dad adjusted his pack. “This is the Outer Reaches. It’s the physical border between realms. The prison, if the information I uncovered is correct, is down the beach a ways, in the back of the Blackland Caves.”

I stared out at the water. Every once in a while a massive wave crashed into the shore, and I couldn’t see from here what it was, but something black spilled from the water. “There’s a physical border?”

“When this is over, you are going to sit down and learn these things. Your mother is right. Your lack of knowledge is a dangerous thing,” Dad said.

Mom clapped him across the back and let out a hoot. “And he finally steps up to the parenting bat. Welcome aboard, sweetie.”

He gave her a wry smile, then nodded to the beach. “Let’s get moving. Our time is limited, and Lucifer will already know what we’re doing.”

Dad started forward, but Lukas grabbed him. “Won’t he try to stop us?”

“He will try,” Dad said over his shoulder.

Like everything else in the Shadow Realm, nothing was as it appeared. The semi long walk to the beach seemed to take forever. By the time we reached the oddly glimmering sand, it felt like hours had passed.

The closer we got, the darker the sky grew, and when we reached the mouth of the cave, it was back to the starless, inky cover I’d grown so used to seeing. There was an odd smell coming from inside. A cross between rotting flesh and sulfur. And every few minutes something that resembled a scream drifted out to meet us. More violent than the screams that came from the souls in the river, but less agonized. These were angry, not anguished. “It’s not gonna be as easy as waltzing in and snatching this thing up, is it?”

Mom and Dad both looked at me like I had three heads, and Lukas actually snorted.

“Hey, ya never know,” I said in my own defense.

“No,” Dad said. “It’s not going to be that easy. I’ve never heard of anyone other than one of the Seven Princes, or their direct offspring, surviving the Blackland Cave.”

“Well, I don’t know about everyone else, but that makes me eager to jump right in.” Sarcasm aside, I added, “If no one else has made it out alive, what makes you think we can do it?”

“No one else had the Darker girls on their side.”

Mom laughed. She threw an arm around his shoulders. “Suck up.”

Grabbing her hand, he pulled her forward. “You know it, babe.” He stopped at the entrance. “The most important thing to remember going forward is that once we step across, we are all as good as human.”