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“Hell. You have to give me more than that. Zaq?”
But he’d already ended the connection, leaving me staring in frustration at the phone. Then I growled. “Fuck.”
Because I hadn’t warned him about Tomas. On the other hand, if he was concerned about who might be listening in on our conversation, maybe it was for the best.
Father had returned to the beach house earlier that day. I texted him and he arrived on the cliff within a minute. Meanwhile, I tried to get in touch with Rafe with no luck. I was beginning to worry he’d been kidnapped, too.
Father took the news of Zaquiel’s call with a grim nod. “Jessa was just the start. I’ve learned enough to know that Slayers, Inc. is going to try again. They won’t rest until I’m broken. Slay you three, and everything I’ve worked for was for nothing.”
I eyed him. This past week, we’d grown closer, and I heard what he was too proud—or stubborn—to admit. Not just Mom would be heartbroken if the Slayers sent me, Zaq and Rafe to our final deaths.
“Fuck that,” I growled. “We’re going to fight them with everything we have. I’ll be damned if I let them win.”
Father’s face was stark. “But how do we separate our enemies from our friends? Because if Tomas—” He broke off, shook his head.
I didn’t hesitate. “We stand together,” I said, and held out my hand to him.
He swallowed hard and gripped it. “Yes. We stand together.”
And as we stared down at Mila’s grave, for the first time I understood why he’d stood back and allowed the other spawn to bully us. We’d never have survived this long otherwise.
But if Mila survived, I was going to do my damnedest to see that my own kids didn’t have to go through the same thing.
And then, at last the week was over.
I’d asked to be the only person at the graveside. As the sun began to set for the seventh time, I lurched into motion, pacing back and forth on the cliff, my eyes glued to where the sandy soil covered Mila.
My love.
My life.
29
Mila
There are no words to describe the agony I went through.
Picture your bones, your organs, your very skin melting down, morphing to some new creature, and you might come close to imagining it. But even then, you can’t really know unless you went through it yourself.
I tried to follow Rosemarie Kral’s advice. “Don’t fight it,” she’d said. “Breathe into it. Let it take you where it wants you to go.”
But breathing was impossible. The pain was all-consuming, like being dropped into a burning pool of lava.
I groaned—I may even have screamed—until I had no mouth or throat or tongue to make sounds with. But still it went on. Until when at last the darkness beckoned me, promising oblivion, I willingly threw myself into it.
For a time I knew nothing.
I floated in the blackness, Mila and not-Mila, in a sleepy sort of peace.
From far away, I sensed Gabriel. His love was my tether, the only thing that kept me from floating up to the stars and taking my place in the endless midnight sky.
I grabbed onto it and held tight like the lifeline it was.
* * *
It was the hunger that woke me.
At first, it was a low-level, easily ignored emptiness. But it ratcheted up, became all-consuming. A craving I had to feed, or go mad.
