Iniquitous (The Marked #3)(36)

And worse, with myself.

There were millions of unknowns whipping around in my mind, but I couldn’t find the courage to own them just yet, to ask the questions that needed answering. The cold truth was, I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. I wasn’t sure how I’d invoked or what that would mean for me now. For my bloodlines. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was coming back home a different person, and I was terrified to my core of who that person might be.

So, I did the only thing that felt normal to me. I buried it. I pushed my fears and uncertainty as far down as I could get them, and I turned my attention to something else—something bigger than myself, something more tangible. I turned my attention to the nightmare that had just bled right into my reality.

I’d hoped that after destroying the pit and burning Engel’s body that the sky would’ve returned to normal, but it didn’t seem to work out that way.

The Roderick sisters had done something; changed something. Engel had said as much before I killed him—that I was too late; that the door had already been opened.

Only problem was, I had no idea what he was talking about.

When Trace’s Alt came back to warn me about The Uprising, he never mentioned anything about doors opening. Maybe his coming back had altered the course of events? Maybe what happened out there tonight wasn’t just about the Uprising. Maybe it was something worse.

I looked over at Dominic.

His posture appeared relaxed, with one arm on the armrest and the other one loosely holding the steering wheel, but if I looked close enough, I could see the faint impression of stress lines between his eyebrows. He was worried and that scared me even more than the red glow around the moon.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” I asked him, ticking my chin to the strange sky as the fog-kissed road rushed past us on both sides.

He turned abruptly as though I’d surprised him with speaking again. “No, angel. I have not.”

I felt a chill run down my back, but I suppressed it. “What do you think it means?”

He shook his head without looking at me. “I can’t say for sure,” he said, tilting his head to the side as if to study the view. “Whatever they were trying to accomplish, it appears as though it worked.”

I frowned and then shook my head. “They didn’t finish.” That much was obvious when they broke formation and took off running. But, they’d done something. “There has to be something in the books about this.”

“I wouldn’t know, love.” He smirked. “My brother the scholar might be better equipped to confirm or deny that.”

I nodded. If any of this was in the records, Gabriel would have read about it and memorized the text backwards. Of Course, Gabriel was more of a package deal. And did I really want the Council and Tessa getting involved in this before I even figured out what this thing was?

Grimacing, I said “We need to find the sisters and find out exactly what that ritual did.”

“And what makes you think they would help you?”

“Because I’m not planning on giving them an option.” My frown deepened. “They better have a way to undo this mess before it gets any worse.” Though frankly, I wasn’t even sure of the consequences yet.

“You can’t undo magic, love,” he pointed out, but I already knew that.

“You know what I mean.” I wasn’t about to let formalities get in the way of what needed to be done. “We need to find them and we need to force them to fix whatever the hell they did.”

He didn’t openly object, though something in his eyes was telling me that finding them wasn’t going to be that easy. That this mess wasn’t just going to be swept away under some hellish rug.

“How hard can it be?” I asked rhetorically. “They work for the highest bidder. We just need to figure out what their price is and lure them out with it.”

“I wish it were that easy, angel.” He bounced a glance at me and then shifted gears. “They aren’t your run-of-mill Dark Casters. They hail from one of the most powerful covens of our time.”

“So what? Big deal!” I said, unimpressed with their stats.

“Getting involved with them is dangerous.”

“I think it’s a little late for that,” I countered. “Besides, it’s not like they’re the first Descendants to turn away from the Order and join the Dark Legion…or whoever the hell they’re working for. I’m not scared of them.”

“Well, you should be. For starters, they didn’t turn away from the Order. They were turned away…from birth.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they’re half demon, love,” he said, bouncing a glance at me as he ticked his eyebrows ominously. “While that makes for quite a tasty bloodline, it’s also the quickest way to get shut out by the Order.”

Why was I not surprised? “So they’re half angel and half demon?”

“The very best and worst of both worlds.”

“Great.” I threw my hands up in frustration. God only knows what the hell their twisted demon-magic did or what kind of havoc it was going to wreak on the rest of us. And with demon blood running through their veins aplenty, I seriously doubted I was going to be able to appeal to their sensible, let’s-save-the-world-together side. But God damn me, I had to try. “I’m not giving up, Dominic. We have to try.”