Oh, fuck me.
“What did you do?” Chaz whispers the words, but they sound thunderous in the silence around us. Then he repeats them, his eyes shifting to me. “What the fuck did you do to me?”
I swallow, watching the black fade until it’s just his hands again. “Nothing. I bound your life force with Abaddon’s—”
“What exactly does that mean?” His tone stays calm, but I have a feeling he’s anything but below the surface. “Life force.”
“It’s hard to explain. A lot goes into life, but it’s sort of like an essence tied to your soul.”
“O-kay,” he says slowly, a little more edge to his voice. “But a demon doesn’t have a soul. The darkness smothers it out and takes its place. Darkness is what keeps a demon alive.”
My breath stops, my entire body numbing. “Oh.”
“So, that would mean…” His jaw tenses, the control slipping. The shadows return for a second until he closes his eyes. They dissipate, and he takes a few more breaths before looking at me again. “I have darkness inside of me.”
“You shouldn’t. Only one life force can exist at once. There shouldn’t be room for anything else.”
“Except I’m not whole,” he says. “I lost my light, Nyx. A rather important part of the angel equation, which means there’s a massive void.” He stretches out his hands and lets the shadows flow from his fingertips. “Or there was. It looks like your little stunt gave the darkness an opening to move the fuck in.” He practically growls the last few words, and I fold my arms across my chest.
“How was I supposed to know any of that?” I ask. “In case you missed it, my ancestors were more worried about bitching than giving us useful information, like what powers a demon.”
Chaz storms toward me, his temper flaring along with the darkness. “So you shouldn’t have been screwing with what you didn’t understand.”
I backpedal, and I’m pretty sure I just reached his breaking point and am about to wake up in my spirit form.
But then his shoes skid as he stops in front of me. His eyebrows shoot up, and out of nowhere, he smirks down at me. “What powers a demon? Or what powers a demon has?”
“Both? I knew nothing about them until I met Hex during my first life.”
“Well, lucky for us,” he says, holding out his hands, “I’ve known everything there is to know about them since my beginning.”
I’m about to ask what the hell he’s talking about when he waves his palm off to the side of us. At first, nothing happens, but then I notice the air. A slight ripple, like a mirage, except right beside me and not from the heat. My eyes snap up to Chaz, and he shrugs right before he sidesteps and disappears.
I suck in a breath, my head taking a second to wrap around what just happened. And then the air returns to normal, and my shock flips to irritation. He did not just create a demon portal and leave me here.
“Hey,” he says from behind me.
I jump, grabbing my chest as I whip around to face him a few feet away. “Jesus. I thought you’d left me.”
He picks up the cooler and my clothes. “Wouldn’t do me any good to abandon my hostage.”
“Hostage?” I say.
He nods and open another portal. “Plus, there seems to be a small caveat with the portals.”
“And what’s that?”
“It seems that since I only have some darkness in me”—he vanishes through the portal, and in a blink, he reappears so far ahead that I have to squint to see him cupping his hands around his mouth—“they have a limit.” He steps out in front of me again. “But we should be able to track down some extra heartbeats before your boyfriend checks in.”
“Ex-boy—” I drop the last part of the word because he’s already gone.
I blow out a breath and gather the waters and sunscreen from the ground, and then I follow my captor through.
Because what the hell else am I going to do?
Chaz notices the outline first, set low on the horizon.
I’ve been gripping his bicep for a while, trying to keep up as we portal-hop. He closes one, opens another, drags me through. Wash, rinse, repeat. But once we see the building, he pulls on his shirt and tosses the cooler behind a bush. He crouches down in front of me. I don’t hesitate to climb on, and he hikes me up as my legs wrap around his midsection. For only being a few hours into demon powers, he’s got this part down. One hand opens while the other closes. We blink our way across the desert until the shack takes shape.
The last portal brings us out behind the building. Wooden siding and shingles in the middle of nowhere, but none of that matters because music is beating through the shabby, spring-loaded screen door. I slide off him, and Chaz grabs my hand, bringing me with him. He leans around the corner, and the tension melts out of his shoulders. When he spins around and half-smiles, I peek to see what has him sliding down the wall.
Motorcycles. Parked in a long line that extends past where I can see. And behind them are cars and trucks and a four-wheeler.
“Thank God,” I say.
“Nah, baby. God didn’t carry your ass here.” He climbs off the ground and hooks his head toward the corner. “Let’s go.”
I stay close behind him. Part of me still expects Hex to jump out, yell boo, and start us all over at the sweatshirt again. But we step onto the forward-slanting porch at the front without him appearing, and once we’re walking under the overhang, it feels like we’re in the clear.
“Patty’s Saloon,” Chaz reads the sign beside the green metal door before swinging it open and directing me inside with his chin. “Hostages first.”
I roll my eyes, passing him. He follows right behind me, and I’m about to smart off when an entire bar’s worth of people stop what they’re doing to look at us. The music is still thumping from a jukebox in the corner, and the door bangs shut behind Chaz, but everything else seems frozen. Bikers wearing a whole lot of leather—like you’d expect bikers to wear—bandanas, sunglasses tucked in the necks of their shirts, and then everybody else. Tables full of ripped jeans, T-shirts, caps faded from the sun, and a whole lot of skirts and crop tops.
A hand creeps onto my waist, Chaz’s protective hold reminding me to breathe, but after the initial shock of us walking in, the room reanimates. People turn back to their beers and conversations. A few stares linger as Chaz nudges me forward, his arm staying across my back.
“What can I get you?” The graying redhead behind the bar smacks her gum, her tone wary. “Water from the looks of it.”
“Phone?” Chaz asks.
“Pay phone.” She nods toward the back, somehow filling six shot glasses of whiskey while still keeping a careful eye on us. “Slip your hand in the slot where the phone book should be. You’ll find yourself some quarters.”
Chaz busts out a grin that I’ve been on the receiving end of a few times. Not lately, but before he hated me. He raps his knuckles on the bar top. “Thanks, Patty.”