Galen and Galilea continued to argue. Now, it really did feel wrong to be listening in on their personal matters. I decided not to knock. Maybe this time, they’d work things out. I was sure Galilea still loved Galen; though, why, I didn’t know. And Galen wouldn’t be there if she didn’t matter to him, would he?
I took two quiet steps back, away from the door, and made my way to the living room.
“Is he coming?” Nyx asked.
“No. He’s talking with Galilea,” I said. “I didn’t want to interrupt them. It sounded…serious.”
“Well, I’m not waiting for him.” Eryx opened the front door. “I’m exhausted and hungry. I’m sure he can find his way to the hotel.”
“I’ll drop him off once we’re done here,” David said.
After brief goodbyes, Eileen excused herself and went to bed, but not before preparing a cup of tea to take along. David and I walked with Dr. Gunn to the lab.
***
It’d been more than two hours and Dr. Gunn was still working in the lab in the garage. We decided to wait in Galilea’s living room, sans Galilea. My cheek was pressed against David’s chest as we sat on the sofa. My eyes were closed, but I wasn’t asleep. I heard footsteps, yet kept my eyes shut.
“What happened in there?” David asked.
“Usual. She’s playing hard to get,” Galen said.
“You’re an asshole to her, you know? You should treat her better.”
Dream boy curses when he thinks I’m asleep. Noted. I felt Galen take a seat on the couch.
“I’m beginning to think she hates me,” Galen said.
“You think? It’s been about a hundred years, and you’ve never introduced her as your girlfriend to anyone.”
“We date,” Galen said. “We don’t do the girlfriend-boyfriend bit.”
“You’re going to lose her, and you’ll regret it.”
“Eh… She’ll come around. Sooner or later.”
“You, my brother,” David said, “have far too much confidence in your words.”
“Ah, so now that you’re wed, you want to give me relationship advice?” Galen laughed. “Because you’re wise beyond your years having endured heartbreak and betrayal? And speaking of betrayal,” he paused, “I’m not convinced the child in her womb is yours. How do you know she didn’t fuck your best friend?”
I clenched my teeth, felt David’s chest rise high.
“You’re playing with fire, Galen. Don’t talk about her that way. And for Deus’s sake, don’t start this here. Not now.”
“Fine. But I can’t help but wonder. If Eros comes looking for his bastard, what are you going to do—let him fuck her again?”
“Shut your mouth,” David growled.
“David’s right. You are an asshole,” I said, sitting up. “And a huge dick.”
Galen laughed a cynical laugh that made the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. I heard footsteps in the hallway and turned to see who it was. Galilea appeared at the doorway to the living room.
“What the…” Galilea’s eyes widened. “Isis…Isis, get away from him.” She reached behind her back. “Galen!”
“Galilea, put down that dagger,” David said. “He’ll leave, if that’s what you want. There’s no need for violence.”
“Galen!” Galilea screamed louder.
“Galilea, you’re scaring me,” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”
Galen walked up behind Galilea. But he was also sitting on the couch. I glanced from the couch to the hallway.
But how?
The Galen sitting on the sofa grinned. I felt a cold chill run up my spine, and I stiffened. His eyes shifted in color from green to blood red, his irises long like a reptile’s. Immediately, the rest of him took on the shape of a demon.
CHAPTER 18
The Turpis reached for my throat, but I leaned back, avoiding its claws. With a one-armed grip, David heaved me off the sofa. My legs soared up, and the demon’s clawed hand caught my ankle. I kicked at it, but I didn’t land a hit. The demon yanked hard on my leg, and David lost his hold on me. I flew forward, landing on the demon’s chest. Its sticky arms caged me in quickly.
“Leave her alone, you son of a bitch!” Galilea charged at it, Galen at her side.
I struggled to loosen the demon’s grip on my arms and managed to free one of them. David reached for me, desperation splayed across his face. I screamed out of frustration and fear.
The demon pressed a sharp nail into the side of my neck. Everyone froze, including me.
My pulse thumped quickly, the vein in my neck tapping at the creature’s claw with every beat. I felt beads of sweat escaping my pores, causing my forehead and upper lip to dampen. David held my stare, fear in his eyes. As much as I wanted to run to him, I was at the demon’s mercy. Seconds seemed to tick by like years as I waited for something—anything—to happen.
A gasp came from the right side of the room. Eileen stood immobile below the hall archway. The sound of glass crashing on the floor—her teacup—caused the demon to turn. Before I could understand what was happening, I found myself skidding across the floor. My head hit the wrought iron leg of a buffet table. David pounced on the Turpis, but it punched him in the stomach, and he fell to the side.
Galilea kicked it in the face, and it flew back. The demon landed at Eileen’s feet. She screamed. Galilea shoved her away from the creature, and Galen threw himself at the beast. As they wrestled on the floor, the Turpis pawed at Galen’s face. Galen moved with swift movements, evading the demon’s clawed limbs. But as fast as Galen was, the demon was a millisecond faster—fast enough to seize Galen’s face in its large talon. Galen groaned in pain, his face blistering under the demon’s grip. My insides quaked, fearing for Galen’s life as I watched him squirm, then let out a scream of agony. I jumped to my feet and grabbed a small, marble statue. I took one step toward Galen and the Turpis, but stopped when I heard David speak my name. I turned to look at him. He was still down, recovering from the demon’s blow.
“Don’t…” David wheezed.
I glanced at Galen, who was losing the fight. I didn’t know what to do. I was the only one capable of helping him at this point. Just then, I saw Galen’s dagger slice down, mutilating the demon’s arm with a clean cut. The demon let out a deafening screech and kicked Galen across the room. Galilea went at the demon. The Turpis caught her wrist, and she screamed in pain as her skin sizzled. She dropped her dagger, and the demon recovered it from the floor.
“Galilea!” I charged forward.
“Isis, stay back,” David said, pushing himself off the floor. He reached under his shirt and darted toward the demon, a dagger clenched in his fist.
The beast rose to a hunched stance, dark goo trailing from its shoulder. It shot me a chilling look and growled. With the flick of its wrist, the demon hurled Galilea’s dagger at me. David jumped in the blade’s path. A second later, David hit the floor. The dagger’s handle stuck out of the side of David’s stomach. An ocean of bright red blood formed around him.
“No!” My jaw shook. I glared at the demon. Keeping an eye on the creature, I bent down to take David’s dagger.
“Run,” David said, gasping. “Isis… run.”
“No. Not anymore.”
I felt a hum in my chest. A strange vibration. It felt like rage and fear, but most of all, it felt like strength.
“I’m right here,” I said to the Turpis. “What are you waiting for?”
The demon took slow steps in my direction. The hum in my chest grew louder. I felt the vibration crawl up my trachea and arrive at my throat. When the Turpis was a few feet away, I opened my mouth to spew words of hatred at it. Instead of the chain of curse words I thought to say, I heard a rumbling growl.
Was that me?
The demon stopped midway through his stride across the living room. It looked as confused as I felt.
“Hello, handsome,” a male voice said.
Stunned, the demon turned its head. E
ryx carved his dagger into the demon’s neck. I secured the dagger in my hand with both hands and jammed it with all my strength into the beast’s head. It jerked and fell lifeless on the floor. The body crumbled into a pile of gray dirt and seeped down into the stone floor.
“David…” I turned to look back. But he wasn’t on the spot where he’d been a minute before. I followed the trail of blood on the floor. With a frantic scream, I called for him again. “David!”
“He’s here,” Dr. Gunn said, a hand appearing behind the couch. “He’s with me.” When Gunn had come in from the lab, I didn’t know, but as I stepped closer, I saw he’d removed the blade from David’s side. His hands were pressed on a white lab coat covering David’s wound. “He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s unresponsive.” Gunn’s nervous blink set in. “I-it doesn’t look good.”
I sank to the floor next to David and reached for his pallid face, my hand hovering over his cheek, afraid touching him would hurt him further.
“Why is he still bleeding?” I asked no one in particular. “Why isn’t he healing?”
“I don’t think he can,” Gunn said.
“But he was able to just a few days ago.”
“Yes, a few days ago, but not today. Not anymore, it seems. Which means…”
“What?” Galen asked, standing next to Eryx. “What does it mean?”
“He’s lost too much blood.” Gunn glanced at the red pond around David. “The wound is fatal.”
My chest caved like a sinkhole, swallowing down everything in one gulp.
“No.” I clasped David’s face with my hands. “Oh, please, no.” My tears fell on David’s face. “David, don’t leave me. You promised.”
A hand touched my shoulder—Eileen’s. Galilea knelt beside me.
“Isis, don’t worry. He’ll be okay,” Galen said. “We’ve got this.”
“We?” Eryx asked. “Galen, you look like you took a nose dive into a flamethrower. I doubt you have the strength to heal yourself, much less heal someone else.”
“I can do it,” Galen said.
“No, you can’t. Why do you think I came back? We share a psychic bond, Galen. I can feel how weak you are,” Eryx said. “You’d only be hurting yourself.”
“I said,” Galen gave Eryx a pointed stare, “I can do it.”
Galen held out his hand, palm out, to his twin brother. Eryx huffed, pausing to survey David, before he touched his own palm to Galen’s. With their free hands, the twins pressed David’s stomach. I watched as the color on David’s face turned from a deathly gray color, to a light peach tone.
“Stop.” Eryx pulled his hand away Galen’s. “That’s enough. You can’t handle anymore.”
“I can finish this,” Galen said, reaching for Eryx’s hand.
“No, you can’t. You can’t always be the hero.” Eryx stepped away from him. “You have to know your limits.”
“He’s our brother, Eryx.” Galen waited for a reaction, but Eryx said nothing. “We’re losing time. He’s slipping away. Look at him. His pulse is weakening.”
“Don’t you think I want to heal him?” Eryx frowned. “But I can’t do it alone, and you can’t do it in your condition. Can’t you understand? You’re going to kill us, Galen. If you die, I die. What good will that do David?”
David took a ragged breath. His eyes remained closed. The color of his skin faded, paling once again.
“He’s having trouble breathing,” Gunn said.
“Eryx…” Galen raised his brows at him. “He’s hanging on by a thread. He’s your blood.”
“Can’t we take him to a hospital?” I sobbed.
“It’s best if he’s not moved,” Eileen said softly. “We don’t know how bad the internal bleeding is.”
“There’s only one way to save him.” Galen looked at his twin brother. “Eryx.”
“You’re making me choose between both my brothers.” Eryx rubbed his face with his hands. “Just… Let me think. There has to be a way I can—”
David wheezed, and I couldn’t help but cry louder.
“Eryx, please!” I pleaded. “Don’t let him die.”
“Damn it, Eryx,” Galen said through gritted teeth. “Give me your fucking hand.”
“No,” Eryx said. “Look, I can hold on to him—to his life force—by myself. But you’ll have to call Mother. Tell her to come, and—”
“She can’t replace me!” Galen snapped. “No one can. You know better.”
“No, but her being a Rune makes her a wild card. She can supplement what you lack in energy.”
“We don’t have time for experiments,” Galen growled.
“But Eryx is right.” Galilea stood up. “Runes have the ability to tap into waves of energy to weaken or strengthen power vibrations. I can’t help you because my abilities allow me to tap into brainwaves—that’s how I can distort people’s vision and memory. But Nyx, she’s a natural healer.”
“And you’re confident she can do this?” Galen asked Galilea. She nodded.
I pulled David’s phone out of his pants pocket. My hands shook as I scrolled through his contacts. At last, I found the name I needed.
“Nyx,” I said as soon as I heard her voice. “We need you here.” I hiccupped. “It’s an emergency.”
CHAPTER 19
His chest rose and fell slowly, the sound of his breaths soft, yet deep. David’s eyes hadn’t opened for nine weeks. The blush on his cheeks pacified my fear of losing him—somewhat. But feeling his limp hand in mine provoked the panic I felt every time I had to leave his side.
I smoothed out the white sheet covering him from the waist down, careful not to touch the side of his stomach where the lesion continued to heal. The scenes from the night David lay on the floor on the verge of death replayed in my head. Nyx had done as Eryx and Galilea predicted; she’d helped David survive the fatal wound. But her power, compared to Galen’s in full health, wasn’t enough. Galen had been burned so badly by the demon that his body was using all the strength it had to cure itself—a type of self-preservation deities’ bodies had in place. Demon burns were like a poison to deities, which took longer to heal than other injuries. Had Galen not been injured, he would’ve been able to bring David back to consciousness.
At the point David’s vital signs reached a safe level, Galen and Nyx collapsed. They used every last ounce of energy to save David. Eryx was drained as well, but not like his brother and mother. While Galilea tended to them, Dr. Gunn and Eileen started a blood transfusion directly from Eryx’s arm. But it wasn’t enough to wake David from his profound sleep. He’d lost too much blood, and his body wasn’t as resilient any longer. When Galen recuperated, the twins strived to bring David back to consciousness, but their intents were to no avail.
“Why isn’t David responding to the twins’ attempts to heal him?” I asked Nyx.
“Because his body is much too damaged to heal. It’s up to Deus now, may he hear our plea.”
For now, all I could do was wait. And that, in itself, was the hardest part.
It was equally hard to continue to plant farces on Claire, telling her lie after lie of what’d supposedly happened to David, to why David was lying in a bed in his house and not in an intensive care unit in a hospital. I was too frantic to speak to her, so it was Eryx who delivered the news. He told her David had gotten mugged and stabbed at a gasoline station on the way to our house. Of course, the news threw Claire into a massive attack of hysteria, thinking the worst happened to me when he told her I couldn’t come to the phone. After calming her down, Eryx explained I was too upset to speak, but that I was fine.
Since then, my days had grown long, and my nights longer, as I stared at David lying there, motionless.
“David,” I whispered, tracing his face with my fingers. “When are you going to wake up?” I kissed the side of his head and brushed his cheek with the back of my hand. “You have to come back to me. I miss you.”
A heavy knock rattled the bedroom door. Startled, I gasped and wi
thdrew my hand. I let out a sigh and dried my tears with the sleeve of my shirt.
“Come in,” I said, trying to hide my broken voice.
“Hey.” Galilea walked into the room.
She studied my face for a moment, and then browsed the medical equipment surrounding the hospital bed David lay in. David’s room had been almost empty before, but now, it was filled with all sorts of beeping machines.
“Did the doctors leave?” I asked.
“Yeah. Eryx took them home. Dr. Gunn will be back first thing in the morning as usual.” She moved one of the monitors and propped her elbows on the mattress, next to David. “I tried again—to see the future with the Stones.”
“And?”
Her mouth pulled down to one side. “I think something’s wrong with me. The Stones won’t show me anything. It’s never happened to me before. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said, hiding my disappointment. “You’re probably too stressed to concentrate.” But what if the reason Galilea couldn’t see the future was because there wasn’t a future to see? My stomach twisted in knots. I pushed aside the notion, blinking away the moisture forming in my eyes. “Have you been able to hold up your block?”
“Yes, but right now, I’m resting it. Keeping my fingers crossed we’ll be okay. I’ll only be using it to hide you and me tonight, as soon as we step out of the house.” She glanced at David. “I can’t strain,” she said, an apology hard on her face. “I need to keep my energy up—just in case.”
“It’s okay. I understand.” I hugged myself to keep from shaking at the thought that David was visible to those wretched beasts.
“It’s past midnight, you know? Claire was expecting you hours ago. You shouldn’t have told her you’d sleep there tonight. We don’t know when or where the next attack will be,” she said. Her words made my stomach drop. “You’re risking her safety.”
“I know,” I said. “And I don’t want to leave David, but she insisted.” I rubbed my eyes. “And I know she’s worried about me, which makes me worry about her in turn.”