DARK SOULS (Dark Souls Series) (27 page)

Through her curls, I saw another flash in the sky, almost like lightening as it flooded the ship. With Gwyn in my way, I couldn’t see anything beside, in front or behind me, and I gurgled with frustration.

“Keep still,” she said.

Groaning as my muscles continued to fuse back together, I could only do as she asked. I just prayed that Asher was okay, that he wasn’t dying on the ship above me, his life draining out of him while I lay helpless and trapped by his sister below him.

I heard the pained screech of the demon once more, and my ears perked up at the sound. There were sounds of thrashing and grunts of pain as Asher continued to fight the demon, the smell of licorice wafting into my nose as they continued to battle.

Slowly, I began to move my arms and legs, the pain leaching away as my body healed. My jaw snapped back into place, and I sighed with relief. I wasted no time and started struggling to get Gwyn off me, but she was surprisingly strong.

“What the hell do you think I meant by lie still?” She pounded her arms hard against the ground, locking me into place. “You’ll get us all killed.”  

The darkness pressed against me, only a weak flicker, yet it taunted me into letting it loose to devouring Gwyn whole. I stamped down on it. I wasn’t going to kill a human.

The demon squealed once more, this time sounding more like a trapped animal than a circling predator. Curious, I tried to blow Gwyn’s hair out of my face with my mouth, but to no avail.

In an instant, the squealing stopped, the ship above us blanketing into silence.

“What happened?” I whispered into Gwyn’s ear. “Where’s Asher?”

In response to my questions she rolled off me, and I gulped in the cool night air, closing my eyes in relief at the feeling it settle on my newly healed but still very wet skin. The sound of hammering feet on metal caused me to snap my eyes back open, and I turned towards the sound. But as soon as I did, I immediately wished that I hadn’t.

Asher was ripping down the ship’s staircase towards me with a look of such fury on his face that I cringed in response, sitting up but making no unnecessary moves.

“I told you,” he yelled as he stomped off the ship and and came onto the pier, blood dripping down his cheeks and down his neck, pouring in dark streams across his glistening face, coating his hair. “I
warned
you to stay away!”

 “You were in trouble!” I yelled back, annoyed that I sounded so weak. I coughed, gurgling up murky water and phlegm before I continued, “That thing was killing you!”

I let him come closer, unable to comprehend that he was bleeding that heavily, that he’d been hurt that badly. He stopped mere inches from where I sat, so close that droplets from his hair hit my face. I flinched, raising a hand to wipe my cheeks. When I pulled my hand back, his blood looked transparent, the color watery and diluted.

Was he…wet?

My eyes shot back up to his face.

“It was
not
,” he said, growling at me, the whites of his eyes wide with rage. “
You
are the one who almost killed me.
You’re
the one who got in the way and almost killed yourself in the process!”

“I wasn’t going to watch you die!” I yelled back, horrified that tears were starting to blur my vision, confused at the implications of his appearance. Both of them saved me?

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t didn’t do the same for me. Don’t tell me you stood back and watched until all the blood had leaked out of me, until I was devoured by that…that thing. You didn’t,” I continued before he could cut me off. “Just like I didn’t.”

He clenched his fists. “You have no idea what you’re walking into. You have no idea, and yet you stumble after us anyway with no regard for your life. No regard for
our
lives.”

I jerked back at that and nearly fell back into the river, feeling deep hurt at his portrayal of me. “I considered your life. I ran over here thinking about nothing but your life, and the fact that I was watching your blood flow out of you. I saw fangs sink into your neck and start to rip you apart.” I realized that my voice had risen to high-pitched yelling and was breaking embarrassingly between words, but I didn’t care. I stood up, trembling but facing him down, my eyes boring into his even as I shook. “For the past few weeks, all I’ve been considering are other people’s lives! You have no idea about me. You have no idea what I’ve been going through—what I’ve
gone
through! So don’t you stand there and think that you know me.”

I felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest as we stared each other down, our heaving breaths the only sound in the night.

“All right, enough with this. Enough.”

Gwyn stepped between us and shielded her brother. “You screwed up royally, Emily, even if you refuse to see it. We told you what would happen if you knew about us. We warned you.”

Her arms lifted up, and I widened my eyes. “I’m not here to fight you,” I said to her, my voice shaking. “I don’t want to fight either of you.”

Gwyn’s eyes shone under the moonlight, droplets of water beading and shimmering on her skin, and I had to fight to control the darkness from screaming through me and latching onto her throat.

“How much did she see?” Asher asked behind her, his voice softer as he began to regain control.

Gwyn cocked her head slightly, acknowledging his question but choosing to remain silent.

“Gwyn, how much did she see?” he repeated, his tone thick with warning.

Sighing, Gwyn relaxed her shoulders but didn’t take her eyes off me as she replied, “Nothing. I covered her after you—she saw nothing.”

 Asher hesitated before answering, and I watched as the muscle under his eye twitched ever so slightly. “Then let her go.”

“What?” Gwyn turned sharply to face her brother. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You heard me,” Asher said as he walked from behind Gwyn and stood in front of me, blocking me from Gwyn. “Let her go.”

“She’s going to get you killed, Asher.”

I watched as they glowered at each other, neither one giving in. But eventually, Gwyn began to relax her stance. She glared at Asher long and hard before turning sharply on her heel, her footsteps hard as she walked down the pier without another word.  

My body relaxed at her departure, and I took in a deep, silent breath as Asher turned and faced me. My breath caught in my throat and almost choked me as soon as my eyes met the icy silver.

“Don’t do this again,” he said, unblinking.  

I nodded, meeting his gaze head-on and refusing to look away—refusing to let him see just how much my body was shaking underneath his towering gaze.  

Without another word, Asher turned away from me and began walking in the opposite direction, his body tight with anger.

I watched him leave. My heart was heavy with sorrow as he melted into the shadow of the ship, but I didn’t regret my actions.

In the midst of my dangerous world, where I battled monsters both inside myself and out and risked death with each passing minute, I deeply, unequivocally cared for him.  I didn’t want anything to happen to Asher Benedict, and I was going to keep protecting him, no matter how angry he became with me. My stomach clenched as he continued to walk away.

“I had to save you, Asher,” I whispered to his retreating form. “I couldn’t let you die. Not you.”

I saw his shoulders stiffen, and I realized that he might have heard my words. The old Emily might have been humiliated; she might have flushed with embarrassment over the fact that he had heard her. But the new Emily, the one who was becoming hardened, the one who was turning her soul into shards of steel just like the ship behind her, didn’t flinch. She tipped her chin up in defiance instead.

“I couldn’t let you die, either,” I could have sworn I heard, his whisper carrying through the night.

Once he was completely out of my sight, I sighed, my body finally sinking onto the pier as my heart fluttered against the walls of my chest like a small, wounded bird.

“Asher,” I whispered, my breath coming out in a foggy mist as I rested my hands against the smooth ground of the pier. “Why did I have to set my heart on you?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The next few days were a living nightmare.

The hunger had come back, loud and painful, and I wrestled with the excruciating emptiness every minute of every day. I couldn’t concentrate at work and I had to make frequent trips to the bathroom in order to wipe off the cold sweat and quell my relentless shaking. Macy would constantly look at me with concern, asking me if I was okay, and it was becoming difficult for me to pretend to be fine around her. The effort I was expending maintaining a continual guise of normalcy was an even higher drain on me, and I knew that I had to do something before it got out of control.  

If only Gwyn and Asher weren’t so watchful of me.

Since the night of Liz and Amanda’s Halloween party, I’d seen Gwyn lurking in every corner, her gaze sharp as she tracked my movements. Her actions could only mean that she suspected something—that maybe she had even
felt
something when she had saved me from the demon. If I had any thought that her saving my life would make us even with each other, her constant eyeballing of me during every second of every day quickly erased such a notion.

Her study of me didn’t end once my shift ended at Cream, though she took every advantage of the fact that I was stuck in one spot for most of the day. Every day she took her usual place in the corner, sitting casually, her back resting against the window as she watched me serve coffee while fighting exhaustion. She had textbooks in front of her, but she never looked at them. Just nursed her coffee for hours, lifting it to her lips every now and then, eyeing me over the rim.

I’d finish work at Cream only to start my shift at Butterfield, and there she’d be, chatting with Ettie over meatloaf and mashed potatoes, her eyes always moving sideways, catching me.
  

Those eyes sent a constant tingle down my body, and I felt it every time she looked away and then back again.

I had a connection with her. I just didn’t know if she had the same connection with me.

I would also wake up at nights, restless and confused with dreaming, and I would see Gwyn, either sitting on the hood of her car on the street across from my apartment or perched on the fire escape directly across from my apartment windows. She would never bother to hide from me. She wanted me to see her, to know that she was watching me.

This was a classic case of stalking, harassment, or just plain bullying, and maybe if I were normal, I’d do something about it. But what could I do? Call the police and say “Hey, a girl who fights demons won’t let me out of her sight, and I think it’s because she thinks I’m a demon. And oh wait—I think I actually am one. Either that or I’m an invincible demon Hunter.”

No, I don’t think so. I’d have to figure out another game plan.

Despite seeing Gwyn everywhere, I rarely glimpsed Asher. I could only come to the conclusion that he was avoiding me, and he was doing an exceptional job of it. He didn’t bother to come to Cream
or Butterfield; his twin filled that roll. When I did spot him, it was only for brief periods where he would either be picking Gwyn up in their truck or grabbing take-out from her when she exited Butterfield. The latter sightings of him hurt the most—because if he wasn’t even making the effort to even enter the restaurant, it meant he just didn’t want to come in. He didn’t want to see me.

I tried to catch his eye only once, and I regretted it instantly. I was walking to the restaurant, my head lowered and deep in thought as I meandered through city crowds, when I felt that instant tingling feeling and my head shot up, searching. I saw him standing beside his pick-up truck, his head snapping in my direction as soon as he sensed I was near. He had looked at me with such smoldering anger that my mouth dropped open with hurt. The look he gave me damaged me, emptied me to the point where I could barely feel my heart beating in my chest. His stare lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like days as my mind registered the cold, arctic thunder in his eyes. I thought I was hallucinating when I saw a brief flash of pain cross his face before he turned away, because when he turned back, his face was blank and indifferent as he stepped into his car.

I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of sobbing, or even crying out his name. I disguised my own face with stone and I turned away from him, too.  

Our stony cat and mouse game continued over the next week. By the following Sunday, I was no longer able to play the game; I had become too weak with hunger.

Desperate, I invited Macy over on Sunday in order to stay the night and help me with my plans to escape underneath Gwyn’s watch. I had asked Macy to come to my apartment under the cover of approaching dawn so as not to alert my newfound stalker.

Always up for something out of the ordinary, and usually up until dawn, Macy agreed and true to form, took it to the next level when I saw her standing in my doorway, clad in black leather pants, a tight black halter top, and a black baseball cap under which she had tucked her soft brown curls.

“Well, you
did
say I had to be incognito,” she replied in reaction to my startled gaze, tipping her chin up pertly as she walked towards me.

“You got me there,” I said, moving from my desk where I had been sitting and staring out the window.

“So, what’s this all about? You want me to go burgle a penthouse or something?” Macy asked as she plopped down onto my bed.

I faced her as naturally as I could, fighting my shaking body. “Not exactly. I need you to stay here while I go out. I promised Ettie I’d help her bake bread this morning. You know, since I didn’t show up to work last week.”

I felt so bad lying to Macy, especially since she’d forgiven my antics at the Halloween party, only to have to face more lies from me, more secrets. It didn’t matter that she had no idea I was lying. She trusted me, and I kept betraying her.

She raised a brow in question. “Uh-huh. And what does that have to do with me, exactly?” She leaned back against the pillows, crossing her arms. “I left a really cute bartender for you.” She pointed to her head. “But scored his hat.”