Read Online Entice: An Ignite Novella by Erica Crouch - Free Book Online Page B

“Can’t you guess?” He allows a few seconds before he says anything, as if he’s truly waiting for him to guess. “Death.” The word rings out, hollow-sounding against the cold, hard walls. “Ruin.”
    A sick feeling worms its way through my veins, making my arms tingle and sting. I don’t want to hear how Azael will end, to realize my greatest fear for him is an inevitability. Knowing I can’t do anything makes me anxious, twitchy. I want Gus to stop, to take back what he’s said, erase the future he’s already seen written in ink and rewrite Azael’s story. I want him to stopstopstop. I need him to keep going.
    “The only way you could end, Azael, is in absolute destruction. The question is, who will you bring with you?” He glances at me so briefly that I’m sure I imagine it. “But perhaps there is no better fate for those of us who have fallen.”
    Azael jumps to his feet and stalks up to Gus until he’s inches from his face. With them standing so close together, I notice that Gus is just a few inches taller than Azael. It’s strange. Azael, with all his bravado, seems like he should be a fist or two taller than Gus, who shrinks ever so slightly into himself.
    “Listen here, book boy.” He grabs Gus’s notebook and tosses it across the room. “No one understands what this means more than I do.” He puts so much weight on that one word, this , that I know he’s talking about more than Eden. It encompasses everything—his fall, his rise, his task. His duty to Hell. The room suddenly feels much too small. “I will bring all the world to ruins with me.”
    “I’ve no doubt.” The words are small and do nothing but enrage Azael further. His eyes burn into every inch of Gus.
    “Tell me this: did you fight in the war?”
    Gus attempts to stand a little taller but ends up caving his shoulders in on himself, as if he’s been hollowed out. His words work their way through his tapping fingers before they reaches his lips. Taptap. Taptap . “I did.”
    I search his body for scars, but any that remain are too thin and translucent for me to notice. I can’t imagine him holding a weapon, let alone wielding it with any success.
    “Then you know what part I played in it?”
    “I do.”
    “Remind me.”
    Silence stretches the three inches between them like static. It shocks Gus first, lighting a boldness in him that surprises me. “I was wondering when that trademark arrogance of yours would arrive.”
    Azael steams.
    “Don’t forget, Azael, you are my subordinate . I do not care what rank you are because I am, and always will be, above you.” His words lose some of their power in his meek delivery. I watch on without interference, too interested in the weird power dynamic they are fighting over to get involved.
    Several sentences are crushed in Azael’s jaw before he works out something to say. “Do you know your ending?”
    This takes Gus by surprise. Avoiding Azael’s glare, he walks across the room to retrieve his notebook. Unsure how to answer, he bunches it in his hands, twisting it until the papers in it spiral out like petals.
    “No, then. How about Pen’s?”
    I sit forward carefully, my bed squelching under me. Does he know how my story ends? Do I want to know? I don’t have time to debate it before he answers.
    “Your fates are joined.”
    “Death?” The word drops from my lips before I can catch it with my tongue. “How? When?”
    Gus drags his eyes away from Azael to me. “It’s a dangerous thing to know the future when there’s nothing you can do to change it. Many have been driven mad trying to rewrite the future, an impossible task.” His fingers tap again, as if his nerves need to find a place to escape. Taptap. “Knowing one’s fate is enough to cripple some, cut them at the knees and leave them motionless, afraid of moving forward. But the fates will always find you.”
    The air tastes thick and I have to suck it down with a conscious effort. If I don’t think