A hand wrapped around my wrist, and I instinctively slammed a foot back just as Phil stood. He spun around, grabbing my other wrist and ripping the gun from my grip, tossing it to the ground.
I went silent, focusing, the panic falling to the back of my mind. I twisted my leg back, catching it behind my attacker’s, and jerked it forward, forcing his knee to bend. I used the weight of my body to shove him back, feeling him stumble, but then his arms wrapped tightly around me as he regained his footing.
“You can’t fight me,” the Devil purred as Everett came running. “Tell me his name, little razor-lined rose.”
My eyes widened, my focus faltering. I knew that voice. I had heard it whispering in my ear before. Whispering and taunting and singing songs of bravery, and strength.
“Prove me wrong,”he had said.
Azrael.
The name was like a beacon of death in my mind.
Azrael.
He dropped me to the ground as if my touch burned him. Once it shifted from a fight to a conversation, he was forced to let go.
I collapsed into the wet grass, spinning around to stare at him. He stood above me like some sort of all-powerful fallen god.
My heart was beating out of my chest, but I knew what he wanted. “Alascer,” I whispered, reality and fiction crashing down all around me like waves breaking against each other as two storms erupted.
His smile widened, something so dark flashing in his eyes, I almost wanted to ask him to take me with him. Wherever he was going, whatever mission he was about to go on, I wanted to go. I needed to go. “Keep them sharp, you’ll need them again. Very soon, it seems. Oh, and yes, this is all real, you should say hello to your dog, she’s been quite the blood-thirsty little addition to my family.”
And just as he went to turn away, something unbelievably soft drifted across my skin.
I gasped, jerking away from her, my head whipping around just as she stopped, her ears back, her body low to the ground. She whined and whimpered, barking at me, her tail wagging hesitantly.
My eyebrows pulled together as I took her in, trying to filter through the memories. I had a dog, didn’t I? A beautiful, snow-white dog who loved her. This dog was lathered in blood, and she had a few scars I didn’t remember her having before, but thoseeyes were the same. What was her name?
Oh, that’s right. “Lucy?” I whispered. She was alive.
She was alive and thriving.
Her ears perked, her entire body going still before she erupted. Her body started shaking, her tongue rolling, barks leaving her lips as she jumped and whined and sang, but never came within a foot of me, as if she were still afraid. Still worried.
A second later, Everett hit his knees in front of me, pulling my attention from the dog to him. I jerked my legs to my body, taking him in, my heart racing. He was wearing his familiar suit, his dark tattoos could be seen around the collar, on his face, just passed his cuffs. I recognized the way his lips curved, and all of those stories forever imprinted in those icy blue eyes of his.
So many stories. So dark and tragic and real.
I felt something inside of me shatter. “You came,” I whispered, my voice cracking.
Everett lunged for me, pulling me tightly into his arms as he fell back on his knees, clinging to me.
I dug my nails into his shirt, wrapping my legs tightly around his hips, pulling him as close as I possibly could, inhaling him with everything I was as the sobs shook through me.
He came. After all this time, he hadn’t forgotten about me. He had brought an army to get me. He had brought everyone.
He had come.
“I gave you my word,” he told me, his own voice thick. “I gave you my word, Olivia, and my word is everything.”
23
Everett
October 13th, 2022
It’s been a month since we brought her home, and for the first two weeks she had sat in a hospital room we had set up in a small warehouse along the outside of the city limits. Doctor Rameriz, along with a psychologist, had been in and out talking to her nonstop, running tests, making sure she was as okay as she could be given the situation.
