“No, because we’ll kill Brom.”
“Can’t Brom just, you know… text us the information?”
“No, it will keep him from telling us in any possible way.”
Cyn grabbed her wrist and jerked it toward Brom’s wavering fingers.She struggled, but it was too late.Brom’s hand clamped over both hers and Cyn’s hands.She jerked with the impact of the images that bombarded her mind: people collapsing, gasping for air, writhing in pain.Children crying as they clawed at their parent’s sleeves.Jack, right there at the Yard, stumbling against the Harley.Leo falling to the passenger seat of his car, driving right into the side of a building.Glesenda and others dropping at the dojo.Oh, God, a whole class of kids staggering, falling to their knees as they called for their mommies.The vision panned out, showing people falling all over Miami.
She saw a flash of her and Cyn fighting together, and then the vision disappeared.Brom had backed away.The parasite’s hand was nearly touching hers.
Cyn pulled Ruby closer, his arm going over her shoulders.“Brom, what can we do to help you?I don’t know much about parasitic demons.”
Brom shook his head and made those horrible sounds she’d heard earlier.“J… J…”
“Justin?Is that what you’re saying?”Ruby asked.
The parasite tightened its hold around Brom’s throat, cutting off even those utterings.And then they both simply disappeared.
“What happened?”Ruby asked.
Cyn swiped his hands through the area where Brom had been standing.“The demon either cast an illusion of invisibility or took him somewhere else.I don’t feel him so I’m thinking it’s the latter.”
She kept staring at the place where Brom had been.“Those pictures, people dying.”
“That’s the future,” Cyn said.“And we have to stop it.”
We.She and Cyn.No.She pulled the book out of the car, set it on the hood, and opened it to the sketch that was supposed to symbolize her and Cyn.Mon had translated it to a dance.Like she would dance with Cyn.
She turned to him.“Mon knew what you’d done.That’s why he hated you, isn’t it?”
Cyn nodded.“Brom understood that I was only a weapon, and he was grateful that I saved you.Not so, Moncrief.We didn’t have the kind of history Brom and I had.”
“Of course, Mon wouldn’t want to turn me over to you when I was thirteen.You’re the reason I was orphaned!”
She saw a fleeting shadow of regret.“He found that problematic, yes.”
“Problematic.”She laughed at the absurdity of Cyn’s understatement.She couldn’t bear to look at him another moment, turning the pages instead.But she couldn’tnotlook at him.“You tell me to put aside my emotions, control them.That’s easy for you to say.You don’t have any.”The acidic words tingled on her tongue.“Do you?”
She wanted him to admit that he did.
“No.”
But she heard it, a sliver of rawness in the word.Grayson had picked up his feelings, though he hadn’t said exactly what those feelings were.And she had seen Cyn’s surrender.Even if he wouldn’t admit it.
She wouldn’t kill him.As ifyoucould, her inner voice taunted.She would simply walk away from him, because the thought of that obviously caused him distress.Probably because it would compromise his role as her protector.
The thought empowered her.For about two seconds.She wasn’t experienced enough to handle demons and tulpas and God knew what else would appear.She did need him, damn it.And it wasn’t only her life at stake here.So, she would focus, just as he said, until they killed Mr.Smith.
There, that’s being logical and in control of my emotions.
No matter what, she would not let her anger or her heart soften to this cold killer.She turned back to the book.The wordDoomhad appeared since the last time they’d looked.“Mon called the three-headed monster in his fairytales Black Doom.All those people dying, that really is doom.”
“And your destiny is to stop it.”
She walked back to the Yard, intent on finding out Darren’s last name.
Cyn’s footsteps were soft on the stairs below her.She had wanted her parents’ killer.When she reached the top of the steps, she turned back to him.
“Thank you for not… for stopping when you did.”
