Page 17 of Breathe Like Hell

Demons could travel between Hell and Earth, if they desired. Unlike angels, who only got to make that decision once. There was no ichor in Hell, though, and the golden substance was quite a lure. Most demons who made it to Earth and got a few drops of ichor in their system never went back.

Micah glared at me. “Then go find him. If you get eyes, tell me.”

“We need to talk about this more.” I pushed off the counter and took a few steps toward him, watching the flex of his jaw, his fingers curled into fists. “Aamon is going to be surrounded by other demons. That’s a certainty. And while I’m able to kill them all without anything from you, I’m going to be pretty fucking hot afterwards. If you want this to be a suicide mission, you should also be prepared for the chance that I’m unsuccessful. Because I will black out.”

“You’re lecturing me like I don’t already know all of this. That’s why I told you to tell me once you know where he is.”

“And what’s our plan when I do? How long are you going to wait?”

Micah’s eyes lifted to meet mine, an indecipherable emotion hiding in the shadows around his irises. “I’m not going to wait.”

I was quiet for a minute. It wasn’t the response I wanted.

I wanted him to say he was going to wait, that he’d make me fight alone until the last possible second at which he could still stop me from losing all control. It would be easier that way—not physically, but in the way that it was a whole lot easier to hate him when he was being a dick to me.

“Whatever,” I said, turning from him and leaving the house, heading towards my car parked on the street. It was getting colder outside as we neared the winter months, the sky tinted gray and the wind sharp on my face and arms.

Turning the key in the ignition, I let out a long exhale.

It wasn’t like there was a good way for me to find a specific demon, especially not during the daytime. Due to their glowing eyes and thus their inability to blend in with humans, their life on Earth differed greatly from angels’, and they rarely were seen anywhere near people. Most of them were nocturnal because of the simple fact that there were less humans out at night.

The hardest part about killing Aamon was getting him in the position to do so.

Once I could ambush him with Micah by my side, it wouldn’t be extremely difficult to kill him. But finding him, getting him in a location to be killed, ensuring Micah was with me when I saw him, those were the difficult things. I did hold some value in human life, and as long as he was physically close to some unsuspecting humans, I couldn’t use my power to the full extent I would need.

I tapped my thumbs on the steering wheel while I thought about it.

The last place I knew he’d been was at Dakota’s trailer. I figured it was unlikely he’d still be in that area—if he knew me and Micah at all, he would know she would be with us, no longer alone and vulnerable in her trailer. But it was worth trying. I hadn’t actually seen him last night with my own eyes. It was only Dakota’s recollection of the situation that I was going off of. I hadn’t seen him many times over the course of my life at all. If I had, he might’ve been dead long before now.

I shifted into gear and started the drive to her place. I put the windows down, letting wind rush into the car. It was warping the air, pressing the cotton of my t-shirt tight against my chest, tearing through the quiet. I needed all the air I could get right now.

It was such a strangely-delicate thing to keep stable, the balance between my need for neon and my absolute lack of desire for it.

Almost everything pushed me in the direction of fracturing, and it was a battle I had to constantly fight. Holding my breath, experiencing negative emotions, strong physical sensations. All of those things were things I craved for the most part, but all of them could lead to my inadvertent suicide. It was so fucked.

Fracturing generated a massive amount of power—the sort of thing required for me to kill Aamon—but the aftermath was brutal.

As if every ounce of control I’d ever had was spent up in the explosion, and I was barely clinging to rationality. The desire to continue suffocating myself became unbearable.

And then, in turn, the continued lack of breath would push for another fracture.

The cycle repeated until death at that point.

I’d experienced plenty of single fractures in my life, most of them able to be cleanly managed with Micah’s help—or by thinking about Dakota now—but sometimes I didn’t have that. I knew if I got to the point of fracturing several times in a row, I’d die without his help, so I’d been desperately clawing myself away from that fate in the years since him.

Dakota wanted me to explain it to her, but I couldn’t.

If she knew the way I’d started to rely on her in my brain, it would freak her out, scare her away. It was a lot of pressure, knowing her presence was the main thing keeping me alive right now.

I didn’t know why that was, either. Why she had this effect on me.

There was something different about her soul, and I had no clue what it was.

In a way, it felt like her soul had always been an anchor in the back of my head, though I’d never given conscious thought to that feeling until I met her. Then the feeling became stronger and I wanted it more, needed it more.

Part of me wanted to ask Micah what his opinion was, but a larger part of me didn’t want to speak to him unless it was absolutely necessary. And there was always the chance that he’d use it against me.

My car rolled over the uneven road leading back towards Dakota’s trailer, small patches of grass springing up between cracks in the asphalt on the edges. She wasn’t here right now, as far as I knew. Micah had dropped her off for her shift at the gas station earlier, before his faculty meetings.