Mathieu by Irene Ferris Read Free Book Online

was trapped God only knew where, and the only one who could save her was sitting in front of her refusing to come off his mountain.
    She looked back up at Mathieu. He’d gone pale, probably at the thought of leaving his sanctuary. She frowned. “We need your help. I need your help. You owe me.”
    He sighed and shook his head. “You realize that time moves differently There, don’t you? What seems to be days to you is weeks or months or even years to those trapped over There?”
    Jenn narrowed her eyes at this information. “No. I don’t even know what There is. ” She sighed, shook her head and repeated herself. “That’s why we need you. That’s why I need you. That’s why Amanda needs you.”
    Mathieu raised his eyebrows. “There is where Demonkind live, if you can call their existence that. I would call it Hell, but Hell would be more hospitable.”
    “ She needs your help. I need your help. Please Mathieu, I’m begging.”
    Mathieu stared at her, his eyes glowing amber with reflected firelight. After a long silence in which Jenn read in his eyes the deepest despair she’d ever seen, he blinked and looked away. “Begging does not suit you. All I was has always belonged to you.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “I swear that I will help you as much as I am able. But you need to understand that she may already be lost.” He shuddered with some dark memory. “Do you know what has her?”
    “Something like Gadreel. The energies it left behind were similar to what we found in London.”
    He sighed and then took a deep breath, drawing strength and courage from some unknown place. “That doesn’t tell me enough. We should move quickly.” He paused and then cocked his head. “Is she strong-minded?”
    Jenn looked down at the picture in her hand. “I’d say so. She’d argue with a doorknob. Just ask her father about how little she wants to do with her birthright.”
    “Hopefully that stubbornness will be enough to buy her the time we need.” Mathieu didn’t sound confident as he rose to his feet. It seemed that the motion drew the firelight to him. He glimmered in the shadows, his eyes still shining with reflected flames. “We’ll need to leave now to make the best of the light. Time is of the essence.”

C hapter Eight
    Mathieu breathed in the thicker air as they descended. It was full of scents, each cloying in its own way. He could smell the resins of the evergreens around him, but there was a faint underlying scent of machine oil and of humanity.
    The first reminded him of his youth, the second repelled him, and the third drew him in with the promise of pain and sorrow, food for the darkness within.
    He’d tried so hard to run from, to ignore those urges. But he could feel them uncoil under his skin at the promise of a feast.
    “Are you okay?” Jenn’s voice was low, quiet in the stillness. He could tell she was hurting, the pain radiating from her in a delicious aura.
    “I’m fine.” He answered automatically as he choked down the darkness. Not her. Never her. You will never hurt her or anyone she holds dear, he told the darkness as he kept walking.
    He wasn’t fine. The trip down the mountain was disorienting. When they’d passed through his wards he’d drawn them back into himself, absorbing their power and erasing all traces of their existence. It was an odd feeling since they’d been up so long they felt as if they’d grown independent from him. Now he was walking back into a world he’d tried to forget existed.
    “You’re not fine. I can tell.” Already she knew him again, it seemed.
    He paused. “No, but I will carry on. Do I have any other choice?”
    She was silent at that.
    They trudged together towards the people who waited for them. She’d been much slower than he’d expected on the way down, her blisters and the thin air catching up with her. They would be caught in the dark before reaching her camp. He wasn’t worried about himself, but he could tell by the