Nick squatted in front of Greyson and took her hand. “Squeeze as tight as you want, Megan, you won’t hurt me.”
“Hold on a minute, guys, I don’t think this is really necessary,” she started, but it was too late. Greyson squeezed her so hard she almost couldn’t breathe, and Nick pulled her arm taut while Malleus produced a long silver pair of tweezers from somewhere on his person and plunged them into the wound in her arm.
She didn’t want to scream but screamed anyway. Her fingers ached from squeezing Nick’s hand with her left, Greyson’s with her right, while she buried her face in Greyson’s chest and cried, and begged him to stop. Deep below the pain was shame, the knowledge that she should be braver than this, should be stronger than this, but somehow the fear of what was to come made it all so much worse. It felt like Malleus was trying to remove her actual bone, like somehow the tweezers could grow and bend and tug out her demon heart as well.
As abruptly as the pain had started, it ended. Fresh blood spilled down her forearm to her hand, still held in Nick’s, and covered both of them as though they were being hand-fasted.
Malleus showed her his palm, where three bloodied bits of metal lay among the calluses. No wonder it felt like he was trying to dig out her intestines through her arm. Apparently the bullet had shattered when it hit her bone.
She wanted to laugh. It was the adrenaline, she guessed, buzzing through her body, shooting like champagne straight to her head. Now it was over she felt like she could fly, and while it lasted she wanted to savor it.
Instead she ended up wandering around the ghost town of the lobby while Malleus took care of Greyson and Nick. Both men cursed and gritted their teeth manfully; she felt their eyes on her and tried to pretend she didn’t find it amusing, although she suspected they were hamming it up for her. She’d seen Greyson take much worse pain without being quite so noisy, and she had the distinct feeling that Nick was just as tough if not even tougher. But she appreciated it just the same. For a minute—right around the time Greyson moaned, “By the fiery gates of Hell!”—she was even able to forget where they really were and why, and imagine they were on some sort of crazy Halloween dare.
Too bad the jokes, like the adrenaline rush, couldn’t last. By the time they were finished her hands were shaking and her fear was flooding back. She needed something hidden in this place, and it wasn’t just Ktana Leyak threatening her. It was this building, this place, the memories of the unhappy teenager she’d been, the nightmarish, vague recollections of her time spent here while the Accuser shared her body.
And knowing her father had done that to her. The one man who was supposed to love her more than any other man ever could, who was supposed to teach her how to relate to men and how to expect to be treated by them for the rest of her life, had discarded her without a second thought.
Did that color her relationships? Was she now in love with an emotionally distant demon because her father had never been there for her? It was ridiculous, she knew. It wasn’t as though she was an open book emotionally either, or didn’t keep secrets, and Greyson was nothing like her father.
And yet…he’d gotten where he was today in part by stepping directly on the heads of people who’d helped him. He’d worked his entire life to become Gretneg, and she knew he’d kill to stay there.
Would he discard her, as her father had done, if she became too much of a threat to his position? If dumping her would cement another deal, strengthen an alliance, bring him more power and money?
It wasn’t simply the cold that made her shiver. For a moment she just stood there, feeling more lonely than she ever had in her life.
Then he stood in front of her and heat radiated from his skin, and she didn’t care anymore what was wrong or right. If the last months had taught her anything, it was that no matter how hard you tried to guard against the unexpected, you couldn’t do it. And if her work had taught her anything, it was that feelings and emotions could be coped with but not stopped. She’d deal with whatever fallout happened when it happened. If it happened.
He held her for a minute, then pulled away, stroking her cheek with his fingers. “Ready?”
“My arm still hurts.” It did too. He took her hand, and she felt the smooth rush of his power over her skin. The pain lessened a little.
“I don’t want to use too much energy,” he said. “We’ll probably need all we can get. But that should be better.”
“It is, thanks.” She looked up and caught his eyes with her own.
The others were pretending not to watch them, but Megan knew they were. She cleared her throat and glanced at the floor. “What do we do? I mean, can you feel anything, do you know where it—whatever we’re looking for—is?”
“No. This whole place feels like demon.”
“Start at the top, work our way down?”
“Probably better the other way around. I’d rather not climb more stairs than I have to.”
She’d almost forgotten about his leg. With a concerned little sound she leaned down, but he touched her shoulder to keep her where she was. “It’s fine. Listen, Meg…”
“What?”
His fingers twined in hers, warm and comforting, while she waited for him to speak. Finally he shook his head. “Never mind. Is this the bottom floor, or what?”
Her heart sank. “There’s a basement.”
Chapter 26
Fire filled Greyson’s palm as they picked their way down the stairs, throwing shadows on their faces. In its light Greyson looked gaunt, tired; she could only imagine how she must look with her hair frizzing around her head and her eyes wide with fear. Megan didn’t think anyone had been down here since the place closed, but she was wrong. Spiders were here and rats and cockroaches, skittering across the mess of strewn papers and dust and bones on the floor when the light hit them. Her skin crawled at the sight. It was bad enough in the lobby, but here, where no light ever came and no workman had been in to even halfheartedly tidy up, it was chaos, a foul-smelling dump where years’ worth of waste had settled like silt on the ocean floor.
Cobwebs shrouded the damp, slimy walls, so thick and dusty they were more like curtains. In the center of one lurked the largest spider Megan had ever seen, almost as big as the palm of her hand. Its horrible eyes glittered when the light hit them. She gasped, her fingers twitching in Greyson’s. She couldn’t go in there, she just couldn’t. And she shouldn’t have to.
“It’s not in here,” she said, aware for the first time that her demon heart had moved feebly when they were in the lobby, just when they entered. It lay still in her chest again, even though her own heart—her human heart—pounded like a hammer. “It’s not down here, I just…I feel it, I know it isn’t here.”
“Okay.” But he paused, and nodded toward the far wall. “Looks like something’s down here, though.”
“What? I—oh.”
Files. The entire wall was lined with filing cabinets, lurking behind the fog of spiderwebs. One of the drawers hung open; Megan could see the files inside.
“Do you want it?” He moved a little closer, still holding her hand. “You don’t have to, bryaela. You don’t have to see it if you don’t want to. But if you do…it’s there.”
“I don’t.” It came out more strongly than she’d intended, her voice echoing off the walls and sending something rustling away through the mess on the floor.
“Okay,” he said again. “So let’s just head back up the stairs then.”
“Wait.”
He stopped.
“I…I do. I think I do want to see it. Maybe I should see it.”
“Malleus?”
The big guard demon pushed past her carefully and headed for the files, sliding his thick index fingers down the faded labels on the drawers, then opening a few and sifting through them. The folders themselves looked surprisingly clean and dry, but that didn’t make Megan any more comfortable about actually holding it in her hands after Malleus dug it out.