“I know.” It was all I had. Fucking weak and useless. “But I need you to do this. For me. I need to leave knowing that we finished this.”
She hesitated, then nodded her head. Just once. Without another word, she sucked in a breath and jumped over the edge. I followed her and dove into the icy waters. My eyes adjusted quickly, a perk of the demon’s presence. I grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled us deeper beneath the surface.
The cave wasn’t that far down. The opening was small—I almost missed it—but large enough for us to both fit through at the same time. My head broke the surface as Sam’s did. She gasped and sucked in a greedy lungful of air as we splashed toward solid ground. The water was frigid, but we managed to drag ourselves from the icy drink.
She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “We’re how many feet below the surface, cut off from natural light. Is it just me, or is the fact that this place is lit like a Christmas tree creepy?”
“Yeah,” I said. I pulled off my shirt and twisted it, squeezing out as much water as I could before pulling it back on. “You okay?”
“You mean besides being a human icicle?” She worked to wring the water from her own shirt by pulling sections and twisting. “Sure. Great. Fan-freaking-tastic. If we screw up and Chase gets here first, I don’t have to worry. The cold will kill me long before he ever gets the chance.”
Without another word, we started into the tunnels. Like the brochure advertised, the cave was something to see. Quartz lined the walls, so thick in some places that you couldn’t see the rock beneath it. The cave floor was covered in super fine white sand. It oozed through my toes with each step—steps that were becoming more and more difficult to take.
A burst of pain hit me, unlike anything I’d felt from the demon, and I stumbled, dropping to my knees.
“Jax?” Sam fell beside me, and the red cloud around her shifted predominantly to gray. Normally it would have incited some kind of reaction from the demon. A spark, a twinge of hunger. Now it stayed dormant, leaving me to deal with the emotion on my own.
“I’m…I’m okay.” I let her help me up. The pain was still there, a pressure in my chest, almost as though someone was pushing on my ribs from the inside. But it was bearable. For now.
It will become worse.
I ignored the demon and forced my feet to move forward. The tunnels were long, but they were easy to navigate. So far there seemed to be just one path. My sense of time had always been shit, but if I had to estimate, we’d walked for twenty minutes by the time we reached the end. The tunnel narrowed, and as we came to the thinnest part, we found that it emptied into a cavern.
“Oh my God,” Sam said, her voice barely a whisper.
“We did it, Sammy.” The stone lay several feet away, in the center of what almost looked like a small version of Stonehenge.
But Sam didn’t answer. She wasn’t looking at the stone anymore. She was staring at me. “It’s not over,” she said. Pink burst from around her head and shoulders. “I have a plan.”
“A plan,” I repeated. Suddenly I understood her reaction to all this. Her lack of despair. She thought she had a way to fix things.
“Sammy—”
She jabbed a finger toward the stone in the center of the grotto. “That thing is crazy powerful, Jax. I think if we can get Van back, she can use it to get rid of Azi. She can—”
“Sam…”
The stone is unable to do that. It is powerful, yes, but it is a part of me. It cannot be used against me.
I shook my head. “The stone can’t do that. It won’t—”
“No!” She fisted handfuls of my shirt and shook me as hard as she could. “You took him from me once. Not again. Not again!” The blows followed. They landed erratically from my shoulders to my gut. One even grazed my chin. I let her rage, let her lash out until her fury-fueled cries had dissolved into soft sobs, and the force behind her attacks was nothing more than a whisper. “Please do something. Fight,” she begged. “Anything. Just don’t leave me again.”
I had nothing to offer her. No solution or soothing words. So I did the only thing I could. I gathered her into my arms and held on like I was standing on the edge of the world, which, when you looked at it, I guess I kind of was.
I will not be able to replace you.
The blue thickened. Sam’s sadness now blanketed everything. Even the stone, glinting off the strange light coming from the cave walls, was lost to it.
I have never felt sorrow so profound.
I held her. She cried. For what seemed like years, we just stood there, at the end of our road and staring down the reaper.
I cannot…I will do it.
What the fuck are you talking about?
No way was I going to speak out loud with Sam standing right here. Her distress was suffocating, and I didn’t want to give her false hope. Not until I was sure.
I will leave.
Just like that? Bullshit.
You underestimate me. My…emotions.
Demons don’t have emotions. You’ve told me that multiple times.
It appears I was mistaken. I felt Azi focus on Sam, on her pain, and shudder. I could not remain here and watch her die.