Knox (Monsters of Veridia #1)

Chapter 8

Chapter

Eight

Adrian woke slowly, awareness returning in hazy fragments. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept. The scent of his favorite demon lingered in the air—that rainy, masculine scent that he was starting to associate with something that made him want to wrap himself in that smell. A weight pressed against his side, warm and solid.

He opened his eyes, and his breath hitched. Knox was watching him.

His gaze was intense, unwavering, his gray eyes darker than usual, as if reflecting the remnants of a storm that had passed through them both. A flicker of something raw and primal lingered in their depths, a desire that resonated within Adrian.

His heart stuttered in his chest, his body remembering the intimacy they’d shared, the way Knox had made him feel—as if he was good enough when he knew he wasn’t. Shame and exhilaration warred within him. He wanted to hide his face.

Instead, it was Knox who turned away first, as if he could sense Adrian’s discomfort.

He was perfect, wasn’t he?

Impossible, and yet, right here in this room with Adrian.

Adrian had not been dreaming him up after all.

Knox pointed at the television mounted on the opposite wall. "I was attempting to decipher the workings of this… contraption. Is it the same thing I saw at your grandmother’s house?" he asked. "Can it be used to locate the Shadow King?"

Adrian suppressed a sigh. Of course that was what Knox was thinking about, and he was right to be thinking about that. He’d made out with Adrian only to restore his magic so he could fight his age-old enemy.

Adrian could not allow himself to forget that. Their little make-out session had been nothing more than a means to an end for the incubus.

Clearing his throat, he pushed himself up into a sitting position and put his glasses back on. "It’s a television." He reached for the remote control on the nightstand. "Here," he said, holding it out to Knox. "You use this to switch it on."

Knox picked up the remote, examining it with a frown. "Curious," he murmured, pressing a button.

The television flickered to life and a cartoon featuring a talking sponge and a starfish wearing pants filled the screen.

Adrian watched Knox’s reaction, stifling a laugh as the incubus stared at the television with a bewildered expression. "What is this?"

"It’s a cartoon," Adrian said. "Pictures someone drew and animated to tell a story. Don’t take it too seriously."

"Why is the starfish wearing pants?"

"Maybe he thinks they’re comfortable?" Adrian suggested, never having given the question any thought before. "It’s a children’s program. They probably don’t want to promote nudity."

Knox still looked bewildered, if not a little fascinated. "Is this… common entertainment in your realm?"

"Don’t judge," Adrian chuckled. "It’s oddly addictive." He reached over to Knox, pointing out two buttons on the remote. "You can change to a different channel by pressing these buttons."

Knox acknowledged this, but he continued to watch the cartoon for a few minutes, shaking his head every now and then at the absurdity on screen. Adrian, against his better judgment, found himself relaxing into the moment.

There was something adorable about the absolute puzzlement on the demon’s face.

Half-watching the demon trying to figure out Adrian’s mundane world, Adrian settled back on the bed and checked his phone.

He’d gotten some responses to his last blog post, which caused him to open that website. Absent-mindedly, he scrolled through his posts.

To think that one of the characters he’d written about was now here, in this room with him…

It seemed impossible, and yet it was happening.

His eyes caught on a few lines here and there, then he scrolled on, unable to consolidate all of the different trains of thought in his mind.

He looked up at Knox—only to find the demon looking straight back at him. At some point, Knox must have decided that watching Adrian was more interesting even than watching the TV.

Normally, Adrian would have scoffed at such a thought, but Knox’s gaze seemed to communicate just that.

"What is that device?" he asked, pointing at the phone in Adrian’s hand.

Flustered, Adrian showed it to him. "It lets me communicate with others over long distances."

Knox’s eyes narrowed as he read the words on the screen.

"Wait," Adrian said. "You can read our letters?"

"I speak your language too, don’t I?" Knox responded distractedly. He was still focused on whatever he saw on screen.

Likely something Adrian had written about him.

Fuck.

Adrian realized his mistake too late.

He pulled the phone back, checking to see what exactly he’d revealed to Knox about his innermost feelings.

When he’d shown the phone to Knox, he’d been on a section of a blog post that read:

"Knox has done many terrible things in his life. Before he left the Night Court, he was one of their most valuable executioners. He often didn’t even know what crimes someone had committed, but if he was given the order, he would hunt them down and feed on them until no life remained in their bodies. He deserves to be called a monster."

"I’m sorry," Adrian said quickly. "I didn’t mean to?—"

"You wrote that?" Knox asked.

"I did," Adrian admitted, flustered. "But I didn’t mean to… I mean…"

Knox waved him off. "You’re not wrong about any of it." His eyes took on a faraway look as if he were recalling an event from his past.

"It doesn’t matter if I’m right or wrong," Adrian said, but Knox didn’t seem to hear him.

Of course not; why would he listen to Adrian when Adrian said terrible things about him?

Adrian was still trying to come up with a way to explain himself when his phone buzzed.

Irritated, Adrian glanced at it.

Daniel’s user name appeared on the screen.

BookBoyfriendLover69: Dude, HOLY SHIT! Turn on Channel 5! NOW!

Adrian’s blood ran cold.

That couldn’t be good.

He grabbed the remote and flipped to Channel 5, and the image that filled the screen made his breath catch in his throat.

"What’s going on?" Knox asked.

Adrian didn’t know what to say.

The television showed the Bay Bridge, a majestic span of steel and concrete connecting the city to the peninsula. But instead of the usual flow of traffic, the bridge was a scene of utter chaos. Cars were swerving, horns blaring, the roadway itself seemed to be buckling and twisting as if caught in the grip of an unseen force.

A news helicopter hovered overhead, capturing the scene in chilling detail. The reporter’s voice held all the shock that Adrian felt.

"We’re getting reports of… impossible events occurring on the Bay Bridge," the reporter shouted over the roar of the wind and the panicked honks of the cars on the collapsing structure. "The bridge… it’s falling apart… these people are going to… Oh, my God… it’s… it’s unbelievable!"

The camera zoomed in, focusing on a pool of swirling shadows forming on the asphalt of the road that spanned the bridge. A tall, elegant figure emerged from it, its form shifting and shimmering as if woven from darkness itself. Its eyes glowed with an unnatural light, hypnotic and chilling.

Adrian recognized him at once.

It was the Shadow King.

"Caelen," he whispered.

Knox was already on his feet, looking ready to jump into battle. "I have to stop him. Where is this bridge?"

"What are you going to do?" Adrian asked, fear gripping his throat. This was happening too fast. His mind struggled to keep up.

"I’m going to confront him," Knox said, his voice hard. "It’s like you wrote. I did terrible things. Now I have to deal with the consequences of my actions."

Adrian studied the incubus before him silently for a moment. "You really think it’s your fault that Caelen is the way he is." It was an observation, not a question. Definitely not an agreement.

"I fucked both his parents and killed them."

"I know that," Adrian said impatiently. The Night Court had ordered the assassination of Caelen’s parents, the king and queen of Elucia, a small country on the continent of Veridia, because they had sworn loyalty to a dark God, and each year offered more of their citizens as blood sacrifices. "The Night Court made you do a lot of things that were wrong," Adrian said. "But the mad king needed to be killed."

"And in killing him I created another one." Knox gestured at the TV with a bitter smile. "I won’t let him shroud this world in chaos."

"But you can’t just go to fight him by yourself," Adrian blurted, the words escaping his lips before he could stop them. "Don’t be stupid."

"I know exactly what I’m doing."

No, you don’t, Adrian wanted to cry. You don’t even know what a TV is.

That wasn’t what Adrian said. Instead he said: "You don’t have your friends with you! You’re not prepared!"

Knox’s eyes narrowed. He pointed at the TV again. "Should I just let him keep on doing that ?"

They both looked at the screen. Adrian fully expected to see the Shadow King wreaking havoc on it, but that was not what was happening.

It almost looked like Caelen was using his power to stabilize the bridge.

"Oh my God…" the reporter cried out. "It’s… it’s a miracle! He’s saving them!"

Confusion flickered across Knox’s face. It was the same confusion that Adrian felt deep in his guts. "But… why?" he muttered, more to himself than to Adrian. "Why would he do that?"

Adrian stared at the television, his mind struggling to reconcile the image of the Shadow King, the embodiment of chaos and darkness, with this act of apparent heroism as a dark arm made of shadows pulled a woman back from falling off the bridge.

"He’s got to have some ulterior motive," Adrian said.

"Of course he does." Knox shook his head, his disbelief evident. "He thrives on destruction, on manipulating fear, on twisting desires to his own ends. This… this doesn’t make sense."

The camera zoomed in on Caelen, capturing his too-handsome face in unsettling detail. His eyes, usually shadowed and cold, now glowed with an almost beatific light. Even his hair had turned white, belying his dark nature. He turned toward the camera, his gaze seeming to pierce through the screen, and spoke in a voice that was strangely smooth.

"This world," Caelen said, "is a place of new beginnings. I was trapped in a role I never chose, a villain forced to play a part in a story that was not my own. But here," he gestured toward the bridge, toward the city beyond, "here, I am free. Free to be the force I was always meant to be. A force for good, for change, for a brighter future."

Adrian shivered, a strange mixture of fascination and apprehension coiling in his gut.

He couldn’t mean that, could he?

Could shadow become light?

Knox, too, seemed disturbed. "What is he playing at?" he muttered, his gaze fixed on the screen as if trying to decipher a hidden code.

Adrian bit his lower lip, his mind racing. "Do you think he believes it?" Adrian asked, turning to Knox, his voice laced with a nervous energy he couldn’t quite control. "That he was… a fictional character, forced to be a villain by the author?"

Knox didn’t seem to understand what Adrian was talking about at first. "What author?"

"N.N," Adrian said. "The person who wrote the webnovel, the story of your life."

"Whoever that person is," Knox’s gaze hardened, "they didn’t create me or Caelen. They certainly didn’t force Caelen to be an asshole."

Adrian wanted to argue with Knox, but how? He could hardly convince the demon that neither he nor the Shadow King were ever supposed to be real.

Frankly, at this point, he didn’t know what he himself believed.

Had Caelen broken out of his story to become something other than the Shadow King?

On TV, he was still saving people.

Adrian’s phone buzzed again.

BookBoyfriendLover69: OH MY GOD HE’S SO HOT. I LOVE A REDEMPTION ARC.

Adrian stared at the message, his stomach twisting with apprehension. Was that really what was going on here?

Had Caelen freed himself from the confines of his story?

He read the message aloud to Knox.

"Redemption arc?" Knox snorted. "Caelen? That’s like saying a viper can shed its fangs and become a harmless garden snake."

"You changed," Adrian said.

Knox looked away, obviously unwilling to concede the point. "Do people ever really change? I thought I had beaten the demon in me into submission, and yet…"

"Yet what?"

Knox met his gaze. "I want to devour you whole."

The words sent a rush of adrenaline through Adrian. He didn’t know how to respond, feeling entirely caught in Knox’s gaze.

His phone buzzed again.

This time, it was a relief, an excuse to break himself free from the spell Knox had put him under.

He found a notification from "The Book Nook," the online forum where he and his friends discussed the latest chapters of Monsters of Veridia . Distracted, he opened the app, his thumb scrolling through the flurry of new posts.

#ShadowSavior is trending worldwide! Anyone else think he’s actually a good guy now?

OMG, Caelen is so hot! I’m totally on board with this redemption arc.

Do we think other characters have crossed over too? Has anyone spotted Knox?

Forget Knox, I’m Team Caelen now! He’s got that tortured soul, bad boy turned hero vibe going on.

Adrian’s stomach clenched. "People are really buying into this."

"How do we get to this bridge?" Knox asked with some urgency.

He wasn’t going to be stopped from this confrontation.

Adrian swallowed hard, his throat dry. The thought of facing the Shadow King, even with Knox at his side, filled him with a terror he couldn’t quite articulate.

He wasn’t someone who ran out and fought real-life bad guys. He preferred to sit at his desk and fight internet trolls.

But this was important. Possibly more important than anything he’d done in his life.

He took a deep breath, trying to quell the panic rising within him. "We’ll get a taxi," he said, his voice steadier than he felt.

"A taxi?"

"A car," Adrian explained. "One of those metal things that nearly ran you over last night."

Knox hesitated, but only for a moment. "As long as they’re fast."

Adrian nodded. "C’mon."

Together, they left the hotel.

As they reached the street, Adrian hailed a taxi. The driver, a middle-aged man with tired eyes, eyed Knox’s horns with curiosity. "Is there a convention in town?"

"Not quite." Adrian licked his lips as he sat in the backseat of the taxi. "Please get us as close to Bay Bridge as you can."

"Bay Bridge, huh? Awful what’s happening there. Are you looking to take pictures?"

"No, just, please go. I promise a good tip."

"All right, all right. But I don’t know how close I can get you."

As the taxi pulled away from the curb, Adrian glanced back at the hotel building, quickly reflecting on everything that had happened that morning.

How was this his life?