The demon roared in pain.
I shuddered, and the tiny hairs on the back of my neck tingled.
“Is that thing alive?” Priest watched, transfixed.
Gabriel jerked the whip, and Andras fell to his knees. “We don’t have time for twenty questions.”
The man struggled to lift his head. “Help me.” The raspy tone and the eastern European accent sounded nothing like the voice the demon used earlier.
I grabbed Gabriel’s arm. “He’s trying to say something.”
“I don’t give a crap what he says, as long as he says it in hell.” Gabriel shrugged me off and followed Dimitri into the cell.
The man’s head lolled to the side as if he were drunk. “For the sins I have committed, I ask to be forgiven,” he said in the same accent.
“Why does his voice sound different?” Elle asked, keeping her distance.
“I think the guy Andras possessed is trying to break through,” Lukas said.
Dimitri waved his arm. “Stay back.”
Gabriel didn’t even glance at Lukas. His attention was focused solely on Dimitri. “We need to kill Andras now.”
“You mean exorcise him, right?” Priest asked.
Gabriel looked confused. “There’s no way to exorcise a demon as powerful as Andras.”
“Then how do you kill the demon without hurting the guy he possessed?” Elle asked.
Dimitri looked her in the eye. “You don’t.”
“You can’t kill an innocent man,” I said.
Dimitri strode over and yanked on the man’s shirt collar, exposing a tattoo on his neck. A knife—with blood drops on the blade. “Do you know what this is? It’s a Russian prison tattoo. It means this innocent man is a killer for hire. And those blood droplets represent the number of people he’s killed. Do you want to count them?”
I shuddered.
Lukas stepped in front of me. “Why don’t you take it down a notch? She missed the chapter on prison tats in criminal history class.”
Alara pointed a chipped silver fingernail at Dimitri. “Obviously you didn’t.”
Dimitri ran a hand through his hair and lit a cigarette. “You don’t understand the way this works. Right now, Andras needs to possess a body at all times.”
“Which means if we kill the body, he dies with it,” Gabriel said.
“The body you’re talking about is a person,” Alara yelled.
“Once Andras consumes enough souls, he won’t need a human body.” Dimitri crossed the room, and bent down to pet Bear. The dog growled and Dimitri backed off. “He’ll be strong enough to take his true form.”
“And there will be no way to kill him,” Gabriel finished. He looked Lukas, Jared, Priest, and Alara, one by one. “If you want to be Legion members so badly, you’d better start acting the part. Because none of your family members would ever let that guy walk out of here with that monster inside him.”
Alara squared her shoulders. “My grandmother would figure out another way.”
Dimitri put his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, a calming gesture.
Gabriel turned away.
Dimitri fixed his gaze on Alara. “Imani Sabatier would have killed Andras with her own bare hands if that was the only way to destroy him.”
“You don’t know anything about my grandmother.” Alara’s voice trembled.
“I know more than you think, about all of your family members.” He stubbed his cigarette out on the wall. “I’m not saying this is easy. But the Legion of the Black Dove and the Illuminati share one purpose above all others: to defend the world from a demon that is desperate to take it over. If one man’s life—one murderer’s life—is what we have to sacrifice to save millions, I can live with that.”
Which only left one question.
Could we?
As much as I didn’t agree with Dimitri, I’d seen what Andras was capable of on a small scale. I couldn’t imagine what he might do if he grew any stronger.
If he opened the Gates of Hell, how many demons like him were waiting?
Hundred?
Thousands?
We had barely stopped Andras, a demon temporarily weakened after being trapped for centuries. How would we stand a chance against when he grew stronger?
Jared crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Dimitri’s right. We can’t risk it.”
“So you’re okay with killing someone?” I asked.
Lukas stared at his brother until he caught Jared’s attention. “Haven’t enough people died already?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Jared said.
“He’s saying we don’t have a choice.” Alara’s tone didn’t match her conviction.
“There’s always a choice,” I said, repeating the mantra my mom had drilled into my head before I was old enough to understand the meaning behind the words. They sank like a rock in the pit of stomach.
She chose to lie to me, and my dad.
My mother had made the wrong choice, whether or not she knew it.
Like me.
“This is so not what I signed up for.” Elle turned to Jared, her features hardening in an expression usually reserved for news reports about people running puppy mills. “What are you gonna do? Whip out a buck knife and stab him in the heart?”
Seeing her standing there triggered a wave of guilt inside me. Elle should’ve been at a party, stringing along one of the guys desperate to get a date with her. Instead, she’d been attacked by a paranormal entity and chased by a demon. Now an unstable chain smoker and a guy carrying a whip made from vertebrae were asking her to stand by and watch someone get killed.
Jared frowned. “I’m just trying to figure this out before anyone else gets hurt.”
Dimitri took something out of his coat pocket and held it between his fingers.
A syringe.
“No one is cutting out any hearts. We aren’t monsters.” Dimitri depressed the plunger and a few drops of clear liquid squirted from the needle. “We’re trying to stop one.”
Andras, or the Russian criminal—it was hard to tell who we were looking at—moaned in pain.
Lukas gestured at the needle. “That’s not the way to do it.”
“Please—” the criminal pleaded.
Gabriel cracked the whip, and the ivory vertebrae coiled around the criminal’s leg. “Shut your mouth.” Gabriel yanked the handle, and the bones tightened.
The prisoner’s head snapped up, and his body straightened. It began in his feet and traveled through his torso like a current was shooting up his back. The demon’s midnight eyes stared back at us, the corners of his mouth curving in a wicked smile.
“Be careful, Gabriel,” Andras said, the Russian accent gone now. “When I break free, I’m going to cut out your tongue.”
Gabriel released the whip and cracked it again. This time, the narrow bones snaked around Andras’ neck. “Hurts, doesn’t it? Took four hundred and forty-seven demon bones to make Azazel.”
Azazel? He named his whip?
Gabriel’s mouth twisted into a cruel smile. He was enjoying this. “Want to know where I got them?”
Even as he struggled to breathe, Andras forced a sadistic smile to match Gabriel’s. “I know you are not the one who made it, Gabriel, Champion of God. I know your name, and its meaning.”
“I paid for every bone, and watched while they were extracted from one of your kind—while the demons were still alive.” Gabriel had a white-knuckled grip on the whip handle.
“What was the price?” The lilt in Andras’ a voice made it seem as though he already knew the answer.
“We both know the price, and when I die, I’ll pay it. And my name means strength of god. Be sure to remember it so you can find me in hell.”
Dimitri cringed. “Enough. He’s buying time we don’t have.”
Gabriel flicked his wrist, and the whip slid from the demon’s neck.
Dimitri turned and faced Jared, Lukas, Priest, and Alara. “Practice is over. You’re
the Legion now, and you vowed to protect the world from Andras.” He slid the syringe out of his pocket and held it out to them. “Are you going to honor that vow?”
When no one responded, Dimitri bent down and placed the syringe on the floor in front of us. “It’s easy to call yourself a hero. It’s much harder to be one.”
The syringe lay on the floor like a grenade. No one uttered a word. Speaking felt too much like volunteering. Bear sniffed it, then trotted over and lay at my feet.
“I’ll do it.” My voice lacked any real conviction.
Priest swooped in and snatched it. “You can’t.” He looked down. “One of us should do it.”
Us.
He was drawing a dividing line—the one I had always believed was separating me from the four of them. The line I wasn’t sure existed, until now.
Hearing Priest say the words punched a hole in my heart. He was the one person who accepted me from the beginning. Now he wouldn’t even look at me.