Page 159 of Veil of Death and Shadow

“Thank you.”

There was something oddly calming about Thorne’s presence, despite the constant anger boiling just under his surface, despite knowing that he wanted me dead sooner than later. In fact, maybe it was the latter point that I found comforting altogether. Unlike with Kieran, there was no question where things stood between us. The divisions were clear, the hatred and disgust unquestionable. There was no gray area.

In a lifetime of feeling caught between worlds, there was something oddly soothing about the easy binary of his starkness. A simplicity in his dislike of me, his desire for my death, that quieted the constant tumult of the last few days.

He walked by me, as if to go back into the house, but then paused just before reaching the wall. “I understand your anger towards Kieran, but you might go easier on him.”

I narrowed my eyes. “He lied to me. For days.”

“He did.” He arched his brow. “But he’s sacrificed a lot to try and give you more time—drawing things out for as long as he has, in the hope that the fates might change their mind before it’s too late.”

“Does that happen?”

He shook his head. “Not often, no. Though I suppose it’s not impossible.”

Thorne studied me for a moment, as if deciding something, before finally saying, “Do you know why he calls you Agony?”

“Yes,” I snorted, “because he knows that I hate it.”

The corner of his lips twitched, not quite a frown, but the shadow of one. “Perhaps. But I suspect there’s more to it than that. Kieran spends his death chasing dopamine, fleeting pleasures. I’ve known him for years, but I’ve never once seen him attached to something in the way that he is to you. Your death will, I think, be quite agonizing for him. Even more, perhaps, than your extended life has been.”

I licked my lips. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve seen his arm?” Thorne raised his own ringed hand. “It’s painful for us—to not siphon the power we’ve been fated to collect. The longer we wait, the more painful it becomes. He cannot get power or any of his strength back, until he siphons from you.” He tilted his head to the side, almost cat-like as his gaze swept over me. “Kieran is no stranger to pain. Like most of us, he’s learned to build up a tolerance for it. But letting you live as long as you have . . . not many would be able to stomach that kind of pain. It’s the longest I’ve ever seen a reaper last. If he waits more than another day or two, I suspect it might even kill him.”

And then, with that, he stepped through the wall and back into the house, leaving me alone with my thoughts that were somehow more conflicted than they’d been before he’d found me, as the edges of the sun started to crawl over the horizon.

30

MAREENA

Present day

The trip to House of Lust was an uneventful one. Danvers had given the okay to send four cars—one of them Claude’s—and, in addition to me and Rina, ten other Wrath recruits were coming along to rescue Sora. Of course, the rescue mission was really only a priority for me and Rina. The others mostly seemed excited by the unexpected, hastened opportunity to escalate the conflict with one of their biggest rivals. As long as the mission resulted in Sora’s safety, I decided it was best to ignore the dubious intentions of the others. The stakes were too high, and there was every possibility that I was running out of time.

Of course, Kieran and Thorne hadn’t exactly given me much information to go on. I was either going to die tonight or I wasn’t—same two options that everyone faced. And though I tried not to let myself linger on the possibility for too long, I couldn’t help but let the smallest trace of hope leak into my system at the possibility that maybe Kieran was right—maybe the fates would change their mind.

Death and I had been moving through this intricate dance for as long as I could remember, maybe this was just the next level.

The mysterious Danvers, who, from my understanding, was not one of the ten recruits in our current arsenal, had spent the few hours leading up to dawn conducting an elaborate plan with Rina. It included leaving Claude’s SUV just outside of House of Lust’s entrance, with the added hope that when the vampire finally came to retrieve it, any connection the vehicle had to traipsing through Wrath territory would be severed.

I’d raised concerns about showing up at daybreak, but Rina assured me that House of Lust lived a more nocturnal lifestyle, and most of the compound would be turning in just before we arrived, spent from the evenings more exhausting activities. In this sense, their lifestyle worked heavily in our favor.

As did the fact that Danvers had provided a pretty comprehensive floor plan of their compound, which included his best guess of where they might be keeping Sora. The location he marked was in one of the compound’s older, lesser used buildings—close to the perimeter, and in what seemed to be an abandoned animal shelter.

The thought they might be keeping Sora cramped in a dog cage made my stomach turn, but that was infinitely preferable to how Wrath often dealt with their prisoners—death and dismemberment.

Rina filled me in on the plan on the drive over, and it honestly seemed . . . achievable. Which was strangely terrifying. But if it went as she and the others hoped, we’d be back in the cars, Sora in tow, in under thirty minutes.

Most of the recruits would create a diversion by sending some sort of message to Lust.

I didn’t much care about the details on that end—their ridiculous turf wars and contrived ideological battles were of no interest to me. If they were going to use this as an opportunity toescalate things, I knew there was very little I could realistically do about it. Best choice for me was to ask as few questions as possible where that part of the plan was concerned, and hope that nobody got hurt, on either end of the situation. There’d been enough talk of death tonight for my taste.

While that was going on, two of the recruits would go with me, where we’d use their distraction to find Sora and get out as quickly as possible. Of course, unbeknownst to them, we’d also be shadowed by two broody reapers. Both of whom had spent the entire twenty-minute drive in sullen silence, crowded awkwardly in the back seat, Thorne sitting half through Rina, half beside her.

When we left the cars and made it to the split point, Rina turned to me, grabbing my arm.

“This is where we leave you,” she said.

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