Darksoul (17 page)

“Zel?
” I blinked. “Ash calls me that.”

Hunt
er pushed off the wall, as lazy and uncaring as ever. “It’s catching on.”

No. It
didn’t seem right coming from him. In a way, Hunter was so proper, not one to use diminutives or make things short or cutesy. His lips hadn’t stumbled around the word. It’d slipped out naturally. And yet…

He saw the look on my face. “Hazel,” he said. “Relax. I was just trying it out.”

“Is that…” I scratched the back of my head, giving a weak laugh. “Is that so? Um—”

“It means something to you?” His gaze searched mine. “The fact that he calls you that?”

“Ha-ha. Of course not. What makes you think—I don’t—um—” Heatedly, I gestured at the feather-turned-blade and scratched the side of my neck. Damn nervous habit. “Can we get back on track here?”

He stared at me for
three seconds too long. Something shifted in his expression, went hazy and slightly troubled. As if he didn’t know what to make of it, of my affection for the nickname. It made me feel special, in a way, that Ash had given it to me. But Hunter clearly didn’t understand, and though I wanted to explain, I couldn’t bring myself to.

Seeming to silently drop the subject, h
e stepped closer and lowered the sword into my hands. Together, we gazed down at it. It was light and felt delicate against my upturned palms.

“I want you to w
atch,” he said, and let go of the blade, leaving it only on me. Almost immediately, it burst apart, as though it needed to be wielded only by him. Silver tufts melted down my fingertips and fluttered into the air before disappearing out of sight. Just like that, it was gone.

I swallowed. “So I can’t…”

“No. You can. But only if we go through certain procedures that would enable you to wield it, so to speak.”

Are you kidding me? “So let’s
go through the damn procedures.”

“We
still have the problem of how you would hide it.”

“We’ll deal with that when the time comes.
Will you teach me?”

“
Mmm,” he murmured. “Teaching a Nephilim child. Quite the intriguing idea.”

“
I’m not Neph—” I gritted my teeth. “I’m not half-angel.”

“Oh?” Slight a
musement. I wanted to punch him. “Then how do you explain the fact that your blood killed a twenty-foot long creature and that your palm—which you slashed twice—healed at an alarmingly fast rate?”

“I just—I’m
a s-special—human.”

“Special human,” he said, as if tasting
the wording on his tongue. “Interesting way to put it.”

I was so done with this. “Will you teach me?”

A pause. “Yes,” he said at last. “I suppose I will. But before I go…” His wings stirred behind him. Once again, the halo engulfed his entire form and his voice returned to the male-female tone. “I want you to think of a way you’ll pay me.”

I froze. “Pay you?”

“I don’t do anything for free.”

“Are you kidding me?” I stared incredulously at him. “
You’re supposed to be nice! A charity worker! Angel and all, you know!”

“I thought you’d realized by now that I’m not a nice angel.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but the words caught in my throat. Just who the hell was I dealing with? Lucifer?

“Think about a payment method
,” he said as he stepped forward, his cold light frosting my skin. He curled an index finger under my chin and leaned down, brushing his lips against the corner of my mouth. I tried not to recoil. “
Any
payment method.”

Before I could
shove him away, he arched his wings and took off through the ceiling. Letting out an exhausted breath, I sagged against the wall. Great. Unreadable, cool,
and
sleazy. Just what I needed.

Mom came home shortly
thereafter. As she got ready for bed, I sat on her comforter and curled my knees against my chest. How was this possible? If Mom liked women but had had me—a h-half-angel child—how had she gotten it on with—?

“You’re looking at me weird, honey,” said Mom, lathering
a dot of cream under her eyes. She stood in front of her dresser, a medley of anti-aging products strewn all over. “Everything all right?”

I mustered up all the strength I had. “Mom, how did you—” I paused, then chose my words carefully. “You had me when you were seventeen. Right?”

“Yes.”

I watched her. “But you like girls.”

“Yes.”

“Were you—?” I hated to say it. But how was it possible? An angel would never rape a human.

…Right?

“Was I…?” she prodded, meeting my eyes through the mirror.

I decided to go with another tactic. “Do you believe angels exist?”

She blinked at the question. “Angels? Oh, I don’t know, honey. I suppose God
does, but…” She sighed and turned around. “Are you exploring religions? We’ve never been much of church-going folk—or anything folk—but if you’d like to go to a temple sometime—”

“No, no! Um—” I shot up from the bed. If she’d had me with an angel, why couldn’t she remember him? Why wasn’t she sure of their existence, if she’d done the unholy with one of them? Unless— “No. Sorry. I was just—”

She scrunched up her eyebrows. “Everything okay?”

Before I knew what I was doing, I walked over, gently grabbed her shoulders and
turned her toward the mirror. She looked confused. Tucking my bangs behind my ear, I examined both of our faces.

What I saw made me stop breathing right then and there.

I’d always assumed that, since Mom had dark brown hair, my dad had to have been blonde—therefore giving a kid whose head was as light as mine. But looking at Mom’s and my face more closely, I realized that the disparities in our physical appearances went beyond that. Her eyes had a rounder shape, her face looked more like an elegant oval and her lips were thinner than my puffier ones.

I sucked in a breath and took a step back.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“No—nothing’s wrong.” I scratched the
back of my head and managed a nervous smile. “I just—I wanted to stand next to my awesome mom. I, uh, never get to do that. Right. How’s Allie?”

She dodged my attempt to change the subject. “Hazel, sweetie,
is everything okay?”

I reassured her it was nothing. Again.
Later, when she went to bed, I slipped into her warm arms and tried to fall asleep against her chest. This was the woman I’d known my entire life. The woman who’d nurtured me, raised me, and bust her ass trying to keep me alive. I believed it. She believed it. But why…

“Honey, you
all right?” she murmured sleepily. “You seem a little restless.”

“I’m okay. Go to sleep…Mom.”

My voice broke on that last word.

Chapter 16

On Monday
, I cleared things up between Ash, Hunter, and me. Hunter was an angel. Ash, a half-demon. Done. I did take a moment to thank them for helping me weeks ago, for killing the little shits that had come after me. Hunter shot Ash a sidelong glance. The side of Ash’s mouth tilted up.

I’d wanted to pull Ash aside and ask him why he hadn’t told me about his, eh…half-demon-ness. I’d known him for almost
half my life. But I was reluctant to pose the question. He probably had a reason for not telling me, and I didn’t want to intrude too much. I was just starting to get used to this, after all. Getting used to the idea that not everything out there was human. I needed to take things slow. One irritating, world-shattering snippet at a time. That’s the way to do it.

When Ash and I were alone at lunch on Wednesday, I cupped Io in my ha
nds and held her up. “Hey, do you know what this little creature is?”

He
was writing in his notebook, clumsy handwriting filling the page at an alarming rate, and he glanced up when I spoke. “Ah,” he said, his eyes twinkling with amusement as he looked down at her. She shied away from his stare. “You mean Hunter’s gift to you.”

Gift? “Yeah, well. I was wondering what she is.”

“I have no idea. He created her and a shit ton of others like her. That’s all I know.” Ash returned to his small book and resumed writing in it, slower now, as if he were focusing on the words. “I think that was his favorite. He always brought her to school.”

“C
reated her?” Wow. I wasn’t going to deny it. That was cool. I deposited her on my shoulder, and she curled with relief at being farther away from him. “But how?”

“Don’t know. He won’t tell me.”

“So you’ve tried asking.”

“Hunter is…”
He let the orb of his tongue piercing poke out of his lips in thought. “A bit of a hard nut to crack. Even for me.”

“We can crack him together.”

“I think I’ll leave that job to you.”

Eh? “But—no. T
he two of us. Right? A team? We could excavate and dig and shit. You know, a Hunter expedition.”

Ash
spared me a sidelong smile. Then he returned to his writing, going strangely quiet.

Huh. “You’re acting weird,
Asshu-kun
,” I said, sliding closer to him. Io skittered down my arm, trembling. “You okay?”

Be
fore I could look at his math notes, he slammed the book shut. “I’m horny.”

“Thanks. I really wanted to know that.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “You asked.”

“Hey, hey,” I said,
placing a gentle hand on his arm.

“Yes?”

Sweetly, I said, “Fuck you. For giving me way too much information. All the damn time.”

“Fuck me
.” He regarded me through hooded eyes. “Please do. Go ahead and take off your pants. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Gross.”

“I’ll start slow. Kiss my way up your legs, until I get to—well. Mm.” He leaned toward me as if to share a secret. Something cool curled around the back of my neck and tried to bring me closer to him, and I reached up to bat it away. “Have I ever told you how much I like to eat?”

“No. Because I didn’t ask. And that’s because I don’t give a fuck. Now, would you please—
”

But
then he did the most obscene thing possible.

At first I thought he was making the peace sign, two slim fingers spread into the shape of a V.
Oh, silly me. Silly, silly me. He placed it under his lips and, holding back laughter, let the tip of his tongue peek through. It curled up a little. I stared at him, horrified.

“I like to eat how I kiss,” he said. “With my whole—”

Ew. Ew. Ew. “Listen, you always say these things as if you think I’m going to blush. I’m not going to blush. Capische? I’m immune to your shit. Thank you. Goodbye.”

“Your thighs.” He cupped his han
ds around the sides of his head. “Right here. So nice and warm. And meanwhile my entire face is between—”

Someone help me now. “Where are Sumi and Hunter? Where the hell are Sumi and Hunter?”

“I like to look up while I do it. I like to watch my victims getting pleasured. Is Little Zel next?”

“Shut up.”

“Because we could go to the bathroom right now and—”

I lashed out and clamped my
palm over his mouth. “Verbal
porn
,” I ground out. “Swallow it back. Go on. Swallow it. Don’t let it come back out.”

He said something against my
grip. When I let him talk, he said, “That’s what I say every time I get a blow—”

God.
“Is there seriously no end to your nastiness?”

His eyes smiled.
I was about to do something heinous to that pretty face of his when, suddenly, the shadow slithered around his neck again. I blinked. Before I knew what I was doing, I reached out to grab it.

“Wait, Zel—” said Ash, but it was too late.

As soon as I wrapped my hand around the cool wisp, blackness rippled from my touch and a hundred glimmering scales folded into view, dark and sleek. A midnight-black snake was slithering around Ash, curling itself around my waist, bringing me closer to him. Threads of silver light followed the contours of its body, hovering over its skin. I felt myself pale. A scream clawed up my throat.

W
hen Ash saw that I was about to shriek bloody murder, he said soothingly, “Relax. She won’t hurt you.”

Wide-eyed, I stared at him,
unable to bring myself to nod or to even breathe.

“Panther,” he said
, meeting the snake’s eyes. “Behave.”

In response, it
coiled itself around my wrist and tugged. A gentle pull. Strangely familiar.

“Make it go away,”
I said, swallowing. It was now coiled around me, trying to get me to climb on his lap. Or something like that. “P-Please.”

“
Thera, you’re scaring her,” he said gently.

The snake froze. He
lifted his arm, and she uncoiled herself from me and slithered up his bare skin, sliding across his shoulders. I sat back. Slid away. Grass scratched the butts of my palms. She nuzzled his cheek and closed her eyes. I thought I saw the sides of her mouth tilt up.

“Ash, there’s a—”
I gestured at the side of his face. “You have a little s-something. Right there.”

“I’m
aware of that.” Looking amused, he tilted his head at me. “Zel, this is Panther. Thera for short.”

Panther
reared back and looked at me. She wiggled a little. The threads of light blurred out of sight and sharpened again once she stopped moving.

“She says hello,” said Ash, his eyes softening with a smile.

Swallowing, I lifted a hand and gave one weak wave. “H-Hi.”

“I’m sorry about her behavior. I promise she won’t”—and he
gave her a pointed look—“do it again.”

But then she slithered down and
wrapped herself around my ankle, and pulled it closer to Ash. Io fluttered toward her and tried to push her off.

I took my foot
back as soon as Panther let go. “Why—why does she keep doing that?”

He stared at me
. Now that I thought about it, I’d felt her before. I’d noticed, of course, but hadn’t given it much thought since I hadn’t seen anything when I looked.

He didn’t answer my question.
“No one else can see her,” he said instead, cracking his leather book open and starting to write again. “In case you were wondering.”

I studied
her. She was now curling herself around his other arm. “I’m assuming she’s not an earthly snake?”

“No.”

“From hell, then?”

His pencil stopped. After a moment, he repeated, “Hell.”

I suddenly got the feeling I’d said something stupid. The feeling intensified when Ash’s lips twitched. He looked up and met my gaze, and I saw what I feared I’d see: hidden laughter twinkling in his eyes.

“Hell,” he said, and a laugh escaped him. “Interesting word choice.”

“Okay, fine. I’m dumb. Why don’t you explain your world to me so I don’t stumble around in the dark like an idiot?”

He considered me for a second too long. Then: “Haelvia.”

“What?”

“Not hell. Haelvia.”

I reached up to massage my temples. “So no heaven and no hell? Is that what you’re telling me?”

He returned to his writing. “No. There may be. Just as there may be a God and a Satan and a divine hierarchy and a slew of stuck-up archangels. But if they do exist, they haven’t bothered to visit us. Neither angels nor demons—that is, the ones who live in Sielae and Haelvia—have seen them.”

It was both fascinating and terrifying and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know more. “What…what about the Bible? And the Qur’an?”

His pencil didn’t pause. “Void in our world. Most religious texts are comprised of human history with God or some other element added in. Although entertaining to read, those books have nothing to do with us.”

“Oh.” I faltered, and then decided I had to ask. “So…are all demons Nephilim-hating bitches or what?”

“I’ve kissed you, haven’t I?”

Um. “What?”

A
sideways smile. “Joke.”
A mean one
, I wanted to say, but he was already continuing. “I meant it as an example. The fact that you’re half-angel wouldn’t discourage me from kissing you.”

“That’s because you’d kiss anything with a vagina.”

“Don’t forget—and vaginas themselves.”

“This conversation just took a turn for the worse,”
I muttered.

He l
et out a quiet laugh. “To answer your question, no. Most demons don’t particularly care about half-angels and their deadly blood, so they stay in Haelvia where they’re perfectly safe. The demons that do come to Earth to hunt Nephilim—and, of course, steal souls and eat human hearts—are considered an abomination by Haelvian citizens.”

I was wrong before.
Now
the conversation took a turn for the worse. “Steal souls and…eat human hearts?”

“You can’t possibly think they come just to hunt your kind. That’s a side ac
tivity. What they really want…” He looked out at the courtyard and nodded toward a lanky boy who was making his way to the vending machines. “Is him. And the girl walking behind him. And the librarian. And the teachers. And the porn stars—”

“I get it.”

“To a demon,” he said at last, “a soul is power. The heart is just a palatable meal.”

After a pause, I said, “I see.”
I wasn’t sure I did. This was way more than I’d bargained for.

He regarded me through hooded eyes
. “Even then, most demons—who, make no mistake, look just as human as you and me—are lazy as fuck. Coming to Earth? Forget it. And they scorn the lower demons who do.”

“They look…
human?”

“Most. With some alterations here and there. If they’re powerful enough, they can shift between their forms.” He dragged a hand across his jaw. “Lower demons are stuck as they are.
They want to rise in power, and ingesting human souls is the way to do that. Which is why the ones who come here are so…”

“Hideous? Terrifying?”

The side of his mouth twitched. “Yes. But I promise you—the majority of Haelvian citizens are stunningly beautiful. I mean, look at me.”

“Right,” I muttered.

“And to answer your previous question,” he said, reaching up and tickling the underside of Panther’s snout. “Thera was a gift. From…someone who means a lot to me.”

“Oh,” I said. “
Who?”

“Asher,” a cool voice said above us.

We looked up. Hunter stood there, his face as unreadable as ever, eternal sketchbook tucked under his arm. He nodded his head to the side. “A word?”

A
sh gracefully rose to his feet. Not letting go of his eyes, Hunter said something in quiet, even French. Panther shyly gazed at him as he spoke, and Io excitedly flashed around his torso.

“Wow,” I said
, staring up at them. Three inches and a half above six. Damn, these assholes were tall. “This must be what it was like to look up at the Twin Towers.”

Hunter spared a downward glance at me.
His eyes softened with amusement. Ash watched him, then kept a tiny smile to himself.

“Okay,
that was supremely stupid,” I said. “Sorry, sorry. Please, go on. Leave.” I saw Sumi coming from the cafeteria and leaned forward to push against their legs. “Now.”

Hunter tore his eyes away from me to look at Ash and stopped when he saw that
he was being watched. The side of Ash’s lips tilted up as he said something in soft Russian.