The Sweetest Burn. Jeaniene Frost

CHAPTER TWO

      BRUTUS SOARED OVER ME, and Adrian almost grazed my back from how close he came. Seconds later, I heard multiple thumps and a scream. I rolled over in time to see the minions fall to the ground. Only bloody holes remained where their heads had been, and when Brutus whirled back around, his leathery wings were spattered with red.

      Then Adrian jumped off Brutus and torpedoed himself onto the snake-armed demon. Two-hundred-plus pounds of pissed-off male slamming into the demon caused him to plow back into the sand. Adrian’s bulk pinned him down, but those coiling serpents surged toward him, gleaming fangs extended to strike.

      “Watch out!” I screamed.

      Before the first syllable left my lips, Adrian had already grabbed the serpents below their snapping jaws. With a brutal jerk, he ripped their heads off. The demon let out an ear-splitting howl and black blood spurted from where the snakes’ headless bodies still protruded from his wrists.

      “Adrian,” the demon spat. “Don’t do this! Your father—”

      “Is dead,” Adrian cut him off, then ripped the demon’s throat out. I caught a glimpse of something pulpy before I turned away, my stomach clenching with disgusted relief. Demon physiology was different, so what Adrian had just torn out was the equivalent of the demon’s heart.

      Unfortunately, it wouldn’t kill him. Only three weapons in the world could kill demons, and one of them had melded into a tattoo on my arm that now hurt as though it had caught fire.

      Adrian climbed off the demon. I stared at the snake heads, which, like the demon, weren’t turning to ash because the demon wasn’t really dead. He was just unconscious, so he wouldn’t disintegrate and neither would his severed serpentine arms, apparently.

      “Were they poisonous?” I asked, still trying to recover from everything that had just happened.

      Adrian glanced at the heads. “Oh yeah,” he said, sounding oddly amused. “Demon poison is the deadliest there is.”

      “Then why did you grab the snakes with your bare hands?”

      Fear for him sharpened my voice. It took all the self-control I had not to run over and check to make sure that he hadn’t been nicked by one of those lethal fangs. I wasn’t about to do that, of course. I might be thrilled that he hadn’t been killed, but I was still furious with him over other things.

      Adrian let out a contemptuous snort. “I know that demon. Vritra is used to everyone running from his snakes, so he never expected me to go right for them. Sometimes, a person’s most powerful weapon is also their greatest weakness.”

      My mind flashed to how close those snakes had come to biting Adrian. “How’s that?” I muttered, trying to ignore the roughly lyrical cadence of his accent that was as unusual as he was.

      Adrian’s gaze raked over me as he came closer. “People count on their most powerful weapon too much, so when it’s gone, they don’t know what to do. The moments before they figure that out is your best chance to kill them.”

      A cold-blooded assessment, but his ruthlessness didn’t surprise me. It was to be expected since Adrian had been raised by demons, hence the snake-armed demon’s comment about Adrian’s “father.” Foster father would be a more accurate way to describe Demetrius, the demon who’d snatched Adrian up when he was only a child. Demetrius wouldn’t be snatching up any more children. I’d seen to that when I killed him.

      “What’s that?” he asked, suddenly lunging toward me. I jumped back, but Adrian had already grabbed me. His large hands slid along the cardigan covering my arms, and I yanked back, refusing to let him touch me. “There’s blood on your clothes,” he said, sounding concerned. “Did one of them hurt you?”

      “Nope,” I lied. Yes, I was still hurt, and that counted for more than my physical injuries. “It’s from the other guy, who’s probably blown away by now.”

      His dark blue gaze narrowed. “Another minion attacked you?”

      Brutus didn’t like that idea, either. He stalked over to the ashes of the other two minions, snarling as he clawed them, as if that would make them any more dead. I went over and patted his wing, grateful for the excuse to turn my attention away from Adrian.

      “Don’t worry, boy,” I crooned. “You got them.”

      His gorilla-like head dipped as he slimed the side of my face with a lick. I hid my wince. If Brutus saw it, his feelings would be hurt. The fearsome two-ton gargoyle could be as sensitive as a golden retriever at times.

      “Where were you, anyway?” I asked, not expecting an answer. Brutus could grunt, chuff, snarl and roar, and while I was getting better at picking up his mood from those, he couldn’t speak a single intelligible word.

      “With me,” Adrian replied. “Sorry, we ran late today.”

      Today? I stared at him, piecing together the subtext. Adrian couldn’t be bothered to even send me a text message these past couple months, but he’d been hanging out with my gargoyle on a regular basis? I glared at Brutus. Just you wait until we get home, I silently promised the gargoyle. Somebody wasn’t getting any raw chuck roast for breakfast after this!

      The snake-armed demon’s skin was starting to blacken and burn under the dawn’s brightening rays. After everything demons had taken from me, I’ll admit that the sight pleased me. If I was just a tad more vindictive, I would’ve videoed it so that my sister, Jasmine, could enjoy it, too.

      “What are we going to do with him?” I said, nodding at the demon. “The beach is empty now, but it won’t be for long.”

      Adrian’s reply was to say something to Brutus in what I referred to as Demonish. The harsh yet disturbingly beautiful language was where Adrian’s unusual accent came from. I only recognized the word for “go,” but Brutus understood all of it. As soon as Adrian finished speaking, the gargoyle grabbed the demon and flew off toward the ocean.

      “What’s he doing?”

      “Dropping him far enough away that the demon won’t be a threat to any beachgoers,” Adrian replied. “If we’re lucky, his prolonged exposure to daylight will turn him into a withered husk. Demons can’t stand our realm in the sun. I told you that.”

      He had, which begged the question, why had the demon risked such exposure by entering this world right before dawn?

      “Ivy.” The low, resonant way Adrian said my name made shivers roll over me, although I’d rather die than let him know that. “It’s good to see you.”

      I didn’t want to be, but I was glad to see him, too, and for more reasons than him knowing exactly how to take out Snake Arms. I’d tried to talk myself out of feeling anything for Adrian during the two months since he’d admitted that he had betrayed me and then disappeared. Told myself that what I’d thought I felt for him had been due to the extreme circumstances we’d found ourselves in mixed with the temptation of forbidden fruit. Some days, when I only dwelled on the cold logic of the situation, I even believed it. The fact that Adrian had made no attempt to contact me seemed to support that theory. And now, after all this time, he thought that showing up, smiling and flashing me a smoldering look would make everything okay?

      “Yeah?” I said, turning my back on him. “Well, now you’ve seen me.” And I walked away from him. “I wouldn’t stay here, if I were you,” I threw over my shoulder at Adrian. “There’s a gateway on the beach. I glimpsed the demon realm only seconds before Snake Arms and his friends came out of it.”

      “Where?” he asked, catching up to me all too quickly.

      “About four blocks this way,” I said, cursing myself because now, he had a good reason to keep walking with me.

      He reached over, touching my arm. “Ivy, wait—”

      “Now, that’s funny,” I interrupted,