With darkness swamping him, he stumbled away and hoped he’d make it back through the portal in time…
Chapter 20
“Blaéz,come on, man—wake the hell up!”
Blaéz’s mind exploded awake. An unadulterated surge of power flared through him; so pure it felt as if he’d been strapped to a megawatt livewire. His body protested. He wanted to crawl back into oblivion when an eerie, familiar pale light filled his gaze.
“Christ.” He shoved Aethan’s hand off his chest and sat up on the dirt-encrusted cement floor of the dank Delaney subway. “That bloody power should be bound.”
“Yeah, well, tell the seraphs. Maybe I’ll get some peace from it, too.” Aethan’s voice lacked heat. There was only acceptance in his tone now.
His head fuzzy, the stink of dampness and decaying waste drifting to him, Blaéz glanced around. Rats scuttled away along the broken sidings. Great. He was sharing floor space with the varmints of New York. He pushed to his feet and braced a hand on the damp, filthy wall to steady himself.
“Those are bad wounds,” Aethan said, rising too and gesturing to Blaéz’s back. “Managed to heal most. What happened?”
Blaéz barely heard the warrior as he struggled through the haze in his mind, his thoughts zipping to one person only. “Darci?”
“Safe. She’s worried about you—you’ve been gone days, man.”
“How long.”
“Three.”
Shit.
About to dematerialize, he stopped and met his friend’s concerned gray eyes. No way could he reveal the truth to Aethan. So, he nodded. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Next time you’re hurt, hell, shoot me a message, I’ll come get you. Or find another place to bed-down instead of this damn demonii hunting ground. Those fuckheads would have captured you just to torture for fun.”
And he’d had a lifetime of that already. Blaéz dematerialized back to the castle. As he took form, he stumbled. Propping a hand on the wall, he inhaled a clean breath of sea air and green forest. Warm noon sunlight beat down on him. He shoved open the door and, with an unsteady gait, staggered inside.
There, he got the first whiff of himself. He stunk to high-heaven from the stomach-roiling sulfuric reek of Hell. He needed a shower to wash off the filth. If only it were that easy to get rid of the voices roiling in his head.
You will never escape…
“Celt.”
At the rigid tone, he turned. Michael bore down on him, his gaze taking in Blaéz’s bloody, ripped shirt. “In that state, you’ll be a damn target for every evilout there. You’ve been gone days.”
Blaéz leaned a nonchalant arm on the banister, more to keep himself upright and not fall flat on his face. “Yeah. Busy. Couldn’t get to the castle on time. But all limbs are accounted for.”
Absently, he watched the vein on Michael’s temple pick up pace.
“What’s going on? You have your female now. I thought she stabilized you, gave you what you need?”
At the terse words, Blaéz asked, “Is that why you allowed Darci to live here? Hoping to get me under control? I am what I’ve become. Away from her”—he flicked a hand upstairs—“I’m back to the same abhorrent creature you let stay here. Out there on the street, the compulsion is undeniable. I head for the cages so the shit inside me is leashed. Unless you plan on me taking Darci on patrol, too?”
“You’re trying my damn patience, Celt. Your soul pulls at you to go to that place, you think I don’t know that? Or your struggles against it? I’m not your leader to just dump crappy jobs on you; I was there, too. I saw what happened.” His shattered blues glowed, the silver light flaring through the cracks. “We all have shit to deal with—”
“You should have left me down there. I’m not worthy to be a Guardian.” And wasn’t that the bone-stark truth. Blaéz’s knees caved, his grip tightened on the newel post.
“Left you?” Michael snapped. “We were all spewed out onto this realm, had nowhere else to go. Gaia gave us a way out.”
“Ahh, the mother goddess. She didn’t get much of a deal with me, did she? Just an immoral empty vessel. Pity she didn’t see fit to end me, instead of giving me a sword and a mate’s dagger…” Blaéz rubbed his neck, the prickles on his nape multiplying. “What the hell do I do with a mate’s dagger when nothing resides inside here—” He thumped his fist on his chest. “Who in their right mind would want an aberrant fuck-up like me anyway? Darci sure doesn’t. I should have never brought her here. I cannot give her what she wants—”
Zip the fuck up, Celt!
At Michael’s savage telepathic intrusion, Blaéz hissed, teeth clenching. He struggled to calm down as anger buzzed through him like a livewire. Dammit. He should have known the moment he started to lose his temper that Darci was close.
