Iniquity (The Premonition, #5)(31)
“He’d never be yours!” I retort, tasting bile.
“Everyone has a price, Simone. Everyone. Your uncle included. What’s more, he could’ve been your price, wouldn’t you agree?” Emil studies me. “I know you. You’d have done anything to save him...anything.”
What he says scares me, not because he’s wrong, but because he’s right. “I’m going to kill you,” I promise.
Emil laughs with delight. “How?” he asks. “You’re so much weaker than me—always have been and still so very guileless. I do admire your iron resolve, however. It keeps me entertained in every lifetime I spend with you.”
My eyes widen is surprise.
“What—” he smiles with delight, “you didn’t know we’ve been together before? You don’t remember us, do you? You don’t remember me!”
“It was in Lille—”
His laughter causes me to fall silent. “Oh, you really are at a disadvantage, aren’t you? Sheol must have negotiated it all from you! Everything! So...you remember nothing before Lille?” he asks me. He tries to tuck a piece of my hair behind my ear, but I evade his hand, stepping farther from him. “You’ve truly come here blind!”
“I know enough about you to know that you need to be destroyed at any cost.”
“Any cost? Are you quite certain about that? You couldn’t do it in our last lifetime, and I was merely a human then. Now I’m a god.”
“You’re a coward,” I snarl. “You hide behind humans.”
He’s a mere breath away in a millisecond with his hand wrapped around my throat. He lifts me up to his eye level as my feet kick out wildly. “You have no idea what I’ve become. I’m going to kill everything you love, Simone, and I’m going to make you watch, helpless to prevent it. Then, I’m going to destroy you until there’s no more you—just me.”
I reach out to him and put my hands to his face, sending out all the energy I can gather into one, intense pulse. Mr. Kendrick’s body is blown away from me as if I were a live grenade. Emil’s essence separates from his human host into a black, smoky cloud. Mr. Kendrick lands on the icy pavement of the street and slides across it until he comes to rest in a snow bank.
The black cloud that is Emil collects and forms a gigantic, shadowy angel with sharp, pointy wings that tower above me. His skeletal mouth widens as he emits a horrible scream that sounds like a hundred thousand voices crying out at once. I cringe as my hair blows back from my face. His elongated, claw-like fingers cut a hole in the very air, tearing it open. It folds back to reveal an orange glow from the night skyline of a city on fire. Achingly elegant, gothic buildings rise up out of the darkness. Gargoyle-like creatures patrol the air with long, albino wings that swoop and cluster above the shrouded streets and the midnight river that runs crookedly through the ancient metropolis.
For a moment, the sight of it mesmerizes me; it’s gruesomely lovely and soul crushingly frightening all at once. I’m aware of its scrutiny as well. It’s as if a thousand eyes have turned towards me, hunting me. While the pungent scent of offal assails my nostrils, my heart contracts in a futile attempt to hide from it and the eyes watching me. I strain to get away from Emil’s essence because this is worse than the 7-Eleven on the night Freddie tried to kill us. It’s Sheol.
An invisible force yanks me toward the opening. Xavier gets between Emil and me. He wraps his arms around me, spreading wide his scarlet wings, shrouding me from evil. Xavier opens a compact in his hand. The world around me distorts, swirling in a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors as I whirl into the iridescent glow of his portal.
REED
I rest my bound wings against the damp, brownstone wall at my back and listen to the sound of water lapping against rocks. I don’t need to study the cell; I know every inch of my cage by memory. It’s similar to the one they kept me in the last time I was at Dominion’s chateau on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Still, my eyes follow the mortared slabs of rock, reinforced with layers of metal stronger than steel. It’s Trictofite, an oar mined from magma deep within the Earth, farther down than humans can dig and, unfortunately, the solid metal door is made of it as well.
My bare feet nearly freeze to the bedrock floor. I ignore their numbness as I gauge my position to be somewhere beneath the arena where the Powers had put Evie on trial and judged her. Anger over that thought warms me before I shiver; the last time I was here it was summer. Winter comes with a new set of hardships. My muscles are beginning to cramp from the frigid air. I bring my bound wrists closer to my chest as I draw my knees in. Closing my eyes, my mind moves through each hall that I’d cataloged while last in this stone prison. I study the intangible map as a means of doing something constructive and to repress the ache associated with the loss of butterflies—the loss of my proximity to Evie.
Centuries of control and ability to live in the shadow of emotion collapsed within me today when Tau blew the boatswain. Within inches of ridding myself of Xavier from our lives forever, everything changed in that moment. Seeing Evie fall, pale and nearly lifeless, to the ground was like having the light cut out of my life. It had affected Xavier in the same way. We were both rendered powerless in that moment. It’s apparent how much I need her; she’s my air. She’s what’s keeping me alive. Without her, I’ll suffocate.