Breathe

Chapter 36

Cian

When morning came, it was far from peaceful. Normally, when the sun rose, it was a sign of new beginnings and forgotten pasts and all the wonderful things to come—but this time, this time, my skin crawled. For any moment now Nick would open the door and whisk me away, slam me in the center of some ancient carvings and watch me bleed.

I wanted to throw up; maybe it was the anticipation of Nick's arrival, of the demon gate opening, or maybe it was the momentous blood loss I had suffered the past couple days that wasn't over yet, but either way, I was overcome with nausea.

Just as I shifted to lie on my side in the bed, I heard the click of the door unlocking. My eyes lifted. Nick stood there, clad in all black, with Rae behind him in the same attire. On his face flowered a brilliant yet inauspicious smile. "Today's the day, my angel! Are you ready?"

"I—"

"Of course you are! You're as excited as I am," Nick interjected. He snapped his fingers at Rae, who stepped forward, dropping a stack of folded clothes on the edge of my bed. From what I could tell, it was a shirt and a pair of pants, both the same midnight black.

I sat up, poking at the gift. "So we're dressing in the demons' favorite color, I see," I muttered. "Great."

"Black looks fantastic on anyone," Nick commented. "Now get dressed. Quickly, now. The demons are hungry."

A few moments later, Nick tugged me out into the hall. He hadn't assessed my size very well; the shirt clung a bit too tightly to my chest, and the pants were too loose. In other words, all of this only added to my growing discomfort.

Nick escorted me from the Destiny, Rae walking not close behind, and out to the street. I winced at the pale sunlight just barely peeking above the mountains; it was the first of any light I'd seen in days. Possibly the last I'd ever see.

The dormant lights of Caprice's club flickered a few blocks away. I prayed Vinny and Lucie were long gone by now, and that Caprice knew what she was doing. If the Order was going to do something, they'd better start enacting it now. I could only stall for so long of a time.

Speaking of stalling.

At the edge of the sidewalk, an ominous black sedan waited. I halted in place, and Nick glanced back at me in surprise. "Uh...so where are we doing this, exactly?" I asked.

Nick's eyes narrowed. "Near the caves at Sailor's Point. I told you the stone's good for carving, and I've had some colleagues working on the pentagram already. They're going to grow impatient if we don't start moving."

"I know, I just—"

He took a step towards me, and another, until I could taste the malevolence on his breath. I ducked my head, wondering if he'd ever heard of personal space. "Oh, Mr. Horne, you're not scared, are you? I've gone over this with you—you don't fight me, you get out of this alive. If you make one move to defy me, however, your soul's mine."

I blinked, looking up. "My...soul..."

"I'll make you into one of us. You'll lose yourself, and I know that's not what you want, now is it?"

I gritted my teeth. "You wouldn't."

Nick laughed, turning away. "I'd do anything to get what I want. I don't care who I have to destroy. Now let's go, Horne."

Rae was waiting at the sedan's door. She silently pulled it open, and Nick shoved me inside. The door thudded shut, closing out any of the rising dawn. I was in darkness again.

The ride lasted for at least twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of anxious uncertainty, twenty minutes of bumpy terrain—I'm sure we must have gone off the road at some point—twenty minutes of praying that someone, somewhere, was preparing to put an end to this.

When we got out of the car, however, Caprice wasn't there. The Order wasn't there. It was just the edge of Sailor's Point, looking out over the cool grayness of the bay, a steep rocky cliff above the sand. And there, carved dead center in the stone, a pentagram. If it weren't there for the purpose of summoning an entire demon world, I might have admired its precision, the sharpness with which the lines were drawn. The most beautiful things had the ugliest secrets.

Fallen angels and Silhouettes alike lined the outer rim of the circle, at least ten or fifteen of them, their black clothes played at by the breeze. It amazed me how serene the whole thing was: the still crowd of people, the timid waves at the shoreline, the birds arcing across the clouds. In a few minutes, however, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to say the same. Hell was moments away from being released, and I the catalyst.

A firm hand dug into my shoulder, the same one whose scar Nick had opened weeks before. Nick shoved me towards the pentagram, saying into my ear, "I'm so glad we're doing this, my friend." As if this were some sort of friendly golf game, the kind of thing people did every other Sunday.

His foot connected with the back of my knee, sending me grimacing to the stone. I realized with a squeaky breath that I knelt in the center of the pentagram, with Nick standing before me. His smile was twisted, not one of warmth and content, but of violent pleasure. Dempsey's death had humiliated him. Now he was so close to vengeance.

He produced a knife from his pocket. Its blade glinted underneath the sun, keen and perilous. "I'll make this quick. Hold out your wrists, Cian."

My wrists. One of which I had sliced myself—he would know I'd done something. If he saw the cut that was beginning to scar over, he'd know. And then what?

Nick bit his lip, impatient. "Cian, you're wasting time! I want to get this over with as much as you do."

I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again. "You see—"

He stepped forward with a frustrated gasp, and before I could think to defend myself, his knife came down on my eye.

The blade sliced it cleanly, and I couldn't bite back an agonized scream; as my vision half-blurred, I lifted a hand to my right eye, which was now pouring warm blood.

I couldn't see him, not for an incomprehensible blot, but heard how close he was to me as he hissed, "You're making this hard for me. Now hold out your wrists, or I take the other one, too."

By then, I was trembling. My eye seared with pain, blood stinging my cheeks as it fell. Cowering, yet trying to hold on to whatever dignity I had left, I presented my wrists. Nick made a pleased noise in his throat. "I see you've already cut one for me. Just makes my job easier."

I let go.

I couldn't fight him anymore.

The most that came out me when the knife split the scar tissue was a pained squeal, but nothing else. No signal that I was fighting to hold on, no final prayer for my life. And when the other wrist was slit, I was already too woozy to make any noise at all. My head was spinning, my vision nearly black. All I saw as I fell to my side was my blood, streaming in rivers through the carved lines of the pentagram, and Nick's retreating, confident steps.

I had lost.

It was over.

All I had left to hope for was that Lucie and Vinny had escaped.

There were muttering voices, too loud, too loud. My ears stung, my eye stung, every inch of my skin stung. The ground underneath me shuddered, then seemed to crack open.

I forced my good eye open. Get up, Cian. Get up. It's not over, it can't be over—

Shadowy, ambiguous forms approached me, with teeth and eyes glowing white. Fear climbed into my throat, strangling me. The sky had blackened, the sun blotted out, the clouds dipped in ink. I thought I saw Nick's smile, heard him laughing.. It's not over. It's not over. It's...not...over...

Teeth, jaws, clenched around my shoulder, tearing my skin.

Everything left of me faded.