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I laughed. I couldn’t help it. In all the years he had been telling me that, it had never
occurred to me how he treated his actual sons. Yes, he lavished gifts on them, but he could be
cruel to them. When they were young, I remember savage beatings when one of them
misbehaved. He had no time for them. If he couldn’t buy their love with money then he wasn’t
interested.
I was such an idiot.
“You did beautifully, my boy,” Tomas said with a grin. “Even your boyfriend played his
part as I’d hoped he would.”
“Stop all this cryptic bullshit. Either tell me what’s going on or kill me.”
“Kill you?” Tomas ran a hand over my cheek. “Drake, I’m not going to kill you.”
“Then why am I tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse?” I asked after jerking my
face away from him.
“Because you’re bait.” He shrugged. “After your lover gets here, you’re free to go. If he
even makes it back out of Hell.”
“What do you want with Elijah?”
“Don’t worry about him,” Gareth said with a laugh. “We’ll take excellent care of lover
boy for you.”
“Shut up!” Tomas hissed at him.
“Why would he come here?” I asked.
“The same reason he went back to Hell,” Tomas said simply. “For you.”
“He didn’t go to Hell for me,” I said angrily.
“Sure he did. And by doing so, he’s setting the war into motion for me.” Tomas grinned.
“For you? What the hell are you talking about?” I stared at him incredulously. Maybe it
hadn’t really sunk in that he really was the one who had planned all of this. Hearing him say it
now just made it more real than our speculating in the apartment had. But I still didn’t
understand what he had to gain by all of this.
“Now, now, Drake. You know I’m not going to sit here and tell you all of my secrets. If
you want to live, you’ll just sit there and look pretty for Azazel…or Elijah as you call him.”
How could he possibly know about Elijah? Even if he had been plotting to start
Armageddon all this time, there was no way he could know that Elijah was the Fallen Angel.
There was only one person on Earth, other than Elijah and myself who knew…
“No,” I said out loud as I forced the thought from my mind. Alice would never betray me
like that.
“No what?” Gareth asked, grinning his stupid smile at me.
“None of your fucking business,” I shot back with a glare.
A loud crack filled the room as Tomas’ fist connected with my cheekbone. For a minute,
I wondered if he’d fractured my face. The pain was incredible, but I refused to give him the
satisfaction of hearing me react. I gritted my teeth and swallowed down the scream that fought to
escape my throat.
“I told you to watch your language,” he said quietly as he walked away.
“How did you know?” I asked when I could breathe again. “About Elijah?”
“I think you know the answer to that Drake,” Tomas said.
“No. No, I don’t know. At least, tell me that.”
“Maybe later,” he said as if he had no intention of ever telling me the truth.
I hoped Elijah wasn’t dumb enough to come in after me. Sure he was an Angel, but I had
no idea what kind of powers he might possess. I also didn’t know what kind of trap they had set
for him. The fact that Tomas knew exactly who and what Elijah was scared me. We had hoped to
have an element of surprise, but if he was expecting the Angel to come then he would have
prepared accordingly.
“If everything goes to plan, we won’t have long to wait,” Tomas said as he settled into a
chair across from me. “I believe your boy should be back to your apartment soon. He’ll get my
message and come running to your rescue.”
“He could be days,” I said. “He had things to do down there. I don’t know when he’ll
actually return.”
“Time moves differently in Hell, Drake.” Tomas’ tone sounded as if he were explaining
something to a child. “An hour on Earth could be a month down there. Trust me, he’ll be here.”
I wondered if Tomas knew why Elijah had gone back to Hell. If he didn’t know that
Elijah was getting me a new sword, there might be hope for us getting out of this situation
relatively unscathed.
As much as he’d been running his mouth, I had to believe he didn’t know about it.
Surely, he’d have mentioned it by now. I glanced around to see if I could find the first sword, but
there was nothing in the room except for a couple of chairs, some old busted up wooden pallets
and the three of us. I didn’t even see or hear whomever I had vomited on earlier. If Tomas had
the sword, it wasn’t readily available. Another plus in my column.
I was getting tired. The poison was still working its way through my body, and the stress
of the situation coupled with my weakened state was making my eyelids start to droop. There
was nothing I wanted more than to be back in my apartment, curled up in bed next to Elijah.
“I think he’s passing out again,” Gareth said, his voice growing closer as he spoke.
“Leave him,” Tomas responded with a sigh. “There wasn’t that much poison in the
pouches, he’ll be all right. He just needs to sleep it off.”
I didn’t want to sleep. I needed to figure a way out of this mess. It pissed me off that I’d
fallen for all of this. I should have known better than to drink blood Gareth had left for me. He
wasn’t a nice guy. He was a fucking bastard. Looking back, it should have been obvious he
would pull something like this. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]