Got you.
A smirk spread across my face that was so devious it scared even me.
Asher appeared over my shoulder and scared the shit out of me.
"Third floor. He's on his way down." I whispered when my heart finally stopped jumping.
"Where are the others?"
My eyes searched the cameras until I saw Max's head peak out of a room on the fifth floor, and Xander and Finn carefully patrolled the fourth.
No sign of Drax, but I was less worried about him.
If anything, I pitied Draydon if he ate him in the dark.
Human, angel, hybrid. Drax didn't discriminate when it came to blood, and without me there to keep him in check, I had no doubt that he would probably suck Draydon dry.
But there was always a part of me that worried. I had no idea what tricks Draydon had up his sleeve.
My wrist ached just thinking about the cross that he'd pressed against my skin.
I brushed my fingertips over the spot, the skin had healed but it still felt oddly rough.
Draydon had been around for a lot longer than I had, and he'd obviously had more combat time too. But I didn't have a single doubt that he'd never had to showdown anyone with the determination that I had.
When you put something between me and someone I loved, I didn't stop until I won.
That was both my best trait and my most toxic one.
Down the hall the sound of the metal door that led to the stairs slamming closed sounded loudly.
My bet was Draydon's pride was his downfall. He was so confident in his ability to take me on and win that he was sloppy. He forgot cameras and slammed doors, all things that told me that he didn't find me a threat.
That would be his biggest mistake.
Asher disappeared for a split second, and I nearly choked on his smoke cloud. He reappeared just as fast and the lights slowly flickered on.
"This place had a backup backup generator." He smirked.
"I guess you have to be extra prepared when you're in the middle of fucking nowhere."
Before Asher could get in a single word, a golden whip swung around the corner and wrapped around his arm dragging him into the hallway. The stomach wrenching familiar sizzle of holy water against a demon's skin was faint in the air and Asher screamed.
He evaporated into a puff of smoke to try to escape the hold that the whip had around his wrist, but he kept reappearing in the same spot, wrenching in pain.
"You demons are all the same." I heard Draydon's voice spit angrily at him.
Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I emerged from the room too, with the sizzle of anger simmering beneath my skin. I felt my eyes slowly heating with it too, to their blazing shade of demonic red.
The more it happened, the more I got used to it— the more it felt comfortable.
I had a stomach full of darkness that was clawing to be released. I didn't quite know what a demon's darkness did to an angel, but if he made a single move to hurt anyone I loved, he was about to find out the hard way.
"Are we?" I cocked my head to the side and a devilish grin spread across my lips.
Draydon scowled and allowed his white wings to spread further out behind him.
If we weren't about to fight to the death, I probably would have been a bit more in awe at the sight, because holy shit, an angel.
But any awe that I might have had was completely smothered now by the smoldering anger.
"What is it that you even want?" I snapped. "Why not just leave us alone?"
"What do you mean? You're the one who freed me from my hunter trapper!" Draydon released the whip's grip from Asher's wrist and Asher teleported back to his feet leaving only a small puff of black smoke where he once lay on the ground.
He nursed his wrist, holding it closed to his body. I winced at the smell of burning flesh that I knew was emanating from his charred wound.
"Okay, that is true, but it was also completely coincidental." I half laughed. "So, maybe you could just go away?"
Draydon lifted the whip and spiraled it toward us with a dealing crack. Asher disappeared and I did a summersault to escape its wrath.
"I can't. Not until I free him from your mother's head and make him pay by watching me kill you both, just like he did to my family."
It didn't take rocket science to know that he was talking about dear old dad.
When was I ever going to stop paying for the transgressions of my parents? It seemed like my life was just one big string of consequences for their actions, one right after the other. Even getting chosen for the trials was because the man who raised me had killed a governor's son.
I didn't know how to explain it but something inside me snapped. I was done. I was done letting people push me around. I was done telling myself I wasn't good enough. I was the princess of the fucking Underworld for god's sake. I was the only woman ever selected for the trials, the only person to ever put an end to it. Time and time again I proved myself and my power, and I refused to listen to it. I refused to acknowledge my worth.
But not anymore.
Demon or not, I was going to embrace myself for who I was, one-hundred percent.
And I wasn't going to let anyone push me around, not anymore.
Draydon the Destroyer was about to be destroyed.
My eyes glowed so hot that I was afraid they were going to melt out of my skull and pool on the floor. My skin was crawling with darkness, or magic, or whatever the hell it was that I'd absorbed from Asher earlier. I felt it coursing just beneath my skin. I held my hands down by my sides and let myself feel the power. I wasn't fighting my own darkness anymore— I was embracing it. That alone made me more powerful than I'd ever been.
I looked up at Draydon, my eyes glowing red and a smirk formed on my lips.
"Now's the part where you run."
My words pissed him off so much that I was afraid the vein that throbbed on his forehead was going to burst and he was going to die before I had a chance to deal with him.
"See, you're always ready to kill, Scarlett. Who's the real monster here?"
He said the words so spitefully, probably expecting them to snake their way into my ear and play with my conscience like they had before. He'd made me doubt myself and my instincts once.
"You see, the difference between you and me is I believe in standing my ground and protecting the people I love." The words vibrated through me as they came out, each one more powerful than the next. "You kill because you think you're better than us. You kill because you think you're doing God's bidding and cleansing the world. You kill innocent supernatural beings because to you they're guilty just for being born."
There was so much power coursing through me that I felt my feet slowly lifting off the floor, the energy so strong that it held me in the air.
"I kill to protect the people I love and to save the world. Tell me, who is the monster here?"
The words sent Draydon over the edge, and he flung his whip out. I felt it wrap around my wrist.
For a split second the smirk on his face told me that he thought that he'd won, until he gave it a tug and realized that its burn was merely a scratch to me.
I was filled with so much dark energy that his holy weapon felt like a mosquito bite. The slightest itch, an inconvenience more than anything.
I would have paid a million dollars to get a photo of his face a few seconds after.