The Blood Bracelets #2: Demon Born

Chapter Fifteen

Fury kicked open the broken door with a frustrated growl, letting it crash to the floor like it did a day ago before she had replaced it in the frame. Despite the state of the loft, how it smelt stale and everything was either broken or dirty, Fury had decided to use Jerry's former residence as a place to recover from now on.

Belial's riddle was churning over in her mind, the words playing like a twisted melody. It sounded plausible, but Belial was the demon of lies after all. Could she trust it? Maybe he hadn't had any reason to lie though, given he had planned to kill her straight after speaking the riddle. She wondered, idly, if Belial's determination to kill her wasn't just because he had seen through her deception – after all, he and Lucifer hadn't parted on the best of terms. Maybe he hadn't wanted Lucifer to be released at all, and killing her was the only way of ensuring it didn't happen.

A thought for another time, Fury decided. For now, she focused on Belial's riddle.

Under Heaven's mortal guise.

Where – what – was Heaven's mortal guise?

She stalked into the bathroom and leaned over the basin, her eyes as red as blood-filled rubies in the reflection staring back at her. Fury was in pain. Pain! Who would have thought? She blamed it on the body of course, not herself, because she had certainly experienced more terrible injuries than the ones she had now. Unfortunately, though, she was stuck with this body.

'Fury!'

The mirror suddenly cracked and Fury stepped back instinctively, her eyes narrowing when she saw that the reflection staring back was no longer her own. 'Well, this is interesting.'

Taryn Nyte stood within the fractured mirror, looking as human as her body had once been. 'Give me back my body, Fury!'

'This is very interesting,' Fury murmured, leaning forward to gently touch the surface of the mirror. There was nothing strange about it and she couldn't sense anything demonic or magical either, so how had Taryn managed this?

'Ah,' she added, realising. The Animas had taken some of Fury's power during the fight with Belial, so perhaps in Fury's injured state Taryn was able to break through.

'Fury!' Taryn shouted again.

'Oh, enough,' Fury snapped. 'Yelling like a child will do you no good, little wings. Besides, you should be blaming Asina for your predicament – not me.'

'You tried to kill my friends,' said Taryn, her anger cracking like the mirror to show the despair underneath.

'And if the Alchemist Queen had succeeded in subduing me, your friends would have been dead long ago. The difference, little wings, is that I don't desire your friends death unless they get in my way.' Fury said, loosely folding her arms. 'The Alchemist Queen would have left you as a shell, and your friends would be rotting in the ground. Do not forget, little wings, that I am the lesser evil here.'

'Still evil,' Taryn snapped.

'True,' Fury conceded, proud of the fact. 'The Alchemist Queen should be buried under the rubble, so you have nothing to worry about now.'

'Except for you,' she replied.

Something ghosted across Fury's skin, raising Goosebumps that were entirely the fault of Taryn's human body. 'Not just me, little wings,' she warned, turning away from the mirror.

Outside the bathroom, in the centre of the loft, the dust blanketing the floor was stirring as if caught in an updraft. Fury cautiously walked to the doorway of the bathroom, her eyes narrowing, and watched as the familiar curls of black smoke materialised in the air, twisting and dancing in an invisible wind as they grew and thickened, forming the shape of a man. Then the smoke fell from his body like a curtain being drawn away to reveal the stage, and the man underneath smiled at Fury like the actor on that very stage, soaking in applause. Everything was a damn performance to him.