The Brightest Embers. Jeaniene Frost
a moment, I stood there, not looking away from the ashes wetly falling to the carpet. I’d faced a realm full of demons and minions determined to kill me, yet I had never been more afraid than I was now. What if I turned around and saw that the manna hadn’t worked? How could I bear it if the last seconds I’d spent with Adrian were the final ones we’d ever get?
I tried to breathe, but my chest ached too much. The wind picked up and the sprinklers began shooting out as if trying to douse a five-alarm fire. Please don’t let this be the end. Please, please, please!
“Ivy.”
A sob escaped me when I heard Adrian’s voice. I whirled, my paralysis vanishing. I fell to my knees next to him, an incoherent sound escaping me as I saw him brush the remains of another clump of manna from his now-healed throat. Then hard arms pulled me to him, his lips found mine and I kissed him until I couldn’t breathe for a different reason this time.
When he finally lifted his head, he was smiling. “I love you, too,” he murmured. “More than you will ever know.”
“I’m glad I get the chance to find out,” I said, so overcome I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
I thought a shadow crossed his features, but it must be remains of the wet ashes. “One day, you might.”
ADRIAN KISSED ME AGAIN. I could’ve stayed that way for the rest of the night, but Costa cleared his throat in a manner meant to get our attention. When Adrian and I both ignored him, he tapped us on the arms. Hard.
“Guys,” Costa said through gritted teeth. “Security’s here, and they look pissed.”
I looked up to see three uniformed men glaring down at us. Then they looked around in a disbelieving way at the holes in the wall, the dark stains on the sodden carpet, the broken mirror farther down the hallway and, finally, the blood still staining Adrian’s clothes.
“What in hell happened here?” one of the guards asked in heavily accented English.
From the other people peeking out of their hotel rooms, they weren’t the only ones who wanted to know that. Adrian got up, bloody droplets accompanying his every move, and reached into his pants pocket.
“Don’t worry—I’ll pay for all of it,” he said, pulling out a credit card with a ridiculously high charging limit.
That was one way out of this situation. The security staff no longer looked as if they were about to tackle us, but they were still clearly pissed.
“You’ll pay on your way out,” one of them growled before giving another disgusted look around. “This flooding will take days to clean up!”
“Hey, that’s from your sprinklers,” I corrected him.
“What sprinklers?” the guard snapped.
I pointed at the ceiling, but the word “Those!” died on my lips. The hallway had several smoke alarms, but unbelievably, I didn’t see any sprinkler heads. Now that I was thinking about it, the water had seemed to come from the sides, not just from the ceiling, and I still had no explanation as to where the strange, strong wind had come from.
“Don’t say anything else,” Adrian murmured, taking my hand.
I looked down at our clasped hands. I hadn’t noticed the slingshot melding back into my flesh, but it now once again resembled a tattoo instead of the ancient supernatural weapon that it was. That awful burn running along the right half of my body had stopped, too, so the staff was no longer reacting to the presence of a demon.
Wait a minute. The staff... “Oh, shit,” I whispered.
My sister, Jasmine, slicked her wet blond hair back before giving me a supportive, if somewhat pitying, smile. “Guess we now know what your other tattoo can do.”
Guess we did. Then again, Moses’s staff was famous for supernatural weather events, hence all those plagues against the Egyptians that resulted in the Israelites’ exodus several thousand years ago. Next to that, a little indoor rain and wind was pretty ho-hum.
“Get the rest of our stuff,” Adrian said to Costa and Jasmine. “We’ll meet you downstairs.” To the guards, he said, “Feel free to escort us to the front desk, if you’re worried about our skipping out on the bill.”
He received a barrage of Armenian for his reply. I was glad I didn’t know the language, because I was sure I wouldn’t have liked what was said. One of the guards stayed with Costa and Jasmine while the other two took Adrian up on his challenge and escorted us all the way to the front desk.
Once there, we waited while the manager checked out the fifth floor and returned to chew us out in very good English. When it was all said and done, Adrian paid the hotel an amount that could have also purchased a great used car.
“Once again, sorry for the mess,” he told the manager. “The wife and I just love to play with Super Soakers.”
“And paintball guns,” I added, since Adrian’s shirt was still stained with red.
“You forgot smashing mirrors and putting holes in the walls,” the manager said sourly.
Adrian flashed a grin at him. For someone who had been inches away from death less than an hour ago, he looked like his usual cocky self now. “What can I say? It’s our honeymoon.”
The manager gave him an extremely unamused look. “Congratulations. Now, get out.”
We met Costa and Jasmine at the front of the hotel. They’d brought our bags and were in the process of trying to hail a taxi, but the sight of those smaller sedans made me remember that not all of us were here.
“Brutus,” I said with a gasp. “I left him on the roof!”
“I figured as much, so I went up there when I was getting the bags and told him to stand by,” Costa said.
“But you’re afraid of him,” I blurted, then could’ve kicked myself. No guy liked being called out on his fears, especially in front of his not-so-secret girlfriend.
A hard smile ghosted across Costa’s lips. “If you’d been trapped in a demon realm with Brutus as its flying guard, you would be, too. But these past few months have shown me that Brutus isn’t evil. He was just being directed by evil people.”
Adrian looked away, and now Costa was the one who looked like he was mentally kicking himself. He might not have meant to bring up the fact that Adrian had been ruling the realm Costa had been trapped in, but now it hung in the air like a cloud of sulfur. Costa continued to shift uncomfortably, while Jasmine cleared her throat and found something fascinating to stare at.
I squeezed Adrian’s hand. He rarely talked about the guilt he felt for all he’d done when he’d been brainwashed by demons into believing they were good and people were monsters, but I knew it still cut deeply.
“Brutus wasn’t the only one being directed by evil people,” I said, addressing the unspoken tension. “All of us have our reasons for being in this fight.”
“Damn straight,” Costa said quickly.
A humorless smile played on Adrian’s lips. “Don’t ever feel bad for bringing up the past, Costa. You’re not the only one who isn’t able to forget it.”
“Yes, but none of us are going to let it define us anymore,” I said, then tried to change the subject. “I didn’t get a chance to say this before, but I’m so glad you and Jasmine are okay. I freaked when I heard those screams.”
“Oh, that was me,” Jasmine said, shooting a quick glance at Adrian. “I don’t know how that demon found us, but she burst into my hotel room and went right at me. She must’ve thought I was you, because she kept calling me Ivy. If Adrian hadn’t plowed into her before she could reach me, I might