The Noru 2: The Last Akon (The Noru Series, Book 2): The Noru, #2

By Lola StVil

An impossible rescue mission.
A dangerous love triangle.
And, an evil, determined to destroy them all...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lola StVil
• Release date: Sep 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781501461828

Lola StVil

Lola StVil was seven when she first came to the US from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She attended Columbia College in Chicago, where her main focus was creative writing. She is the author of the best-selling Guardians series and the Noru series.

Book preview

Book I: 

Diana Mason (AKA Ruin)

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone…

—Edgar Allan Poe

Chapter One:

Sick

lola

You ever kissed a guy so he’ll shut the hell up? Well, that’s the only reason my tongue is venturing down Kill’s throat right now. But as soon as our lips part, he’s back to talking about his favorite pastime—Silver.

Next time I’m in battle with that asshole, I’m gonna take him apart, the super demon vows.

Doubt it.

Really, what did you ever see in that piece of crap? he asks.

You wanna have sex or you wanna talk? I ask rudely.

What’s your damn problem? he snaps.

I didn’t come here to talk about Silver. You wanna take him out in battle then do that and stop bitching about it.

Why are you being such a—

Do you really want to finish that sentence? I warn him.

Fine. No more talk about Silver, he replies.

Whatever, I’m taking off, I say as I put my jacket on and head for the door.

Who said you could leave? the leader asks.

Kill, on the battlefield, I do what you say. This isn’t the battlefield. And you’re just some demon I pass the time with. Try and remember that.

You know, you have a real attitude problem.

Blow me, I reply as I slam the door shut behind me.

I head down the hallway of the crappy hotel and out onto the street. The reason for my foul mood isn’t just because of Kill. Ever since the night at the cabin with Silver, I’ve been pissed at just about everyone. And who is at the top of my list?

Me.

How could I do something so stupid? How could I start to care for someone? Had I not learned from the last time? What the hell was I thinking? I let Silver slither his way into my head. And now he’s my only thought.

I’m in love with him. In other words, I’m sick. That’s exactly what it means to be in love.

Love is the disease of the weak. I don’t know how I contracted it but I did, and now I’m acting like a clueless human girl.

Even if love weren’t a sickness Omnis invented, things between Silver and me wouldn’t work. Silver has a girl. And I mean, a girl. Her name is Pryor. She’s like twelve years old or something. She’s short, has red hair, and an attitude so positive, you want to drive a dull butter knife though her skull and twist.

Silver’s thoughts are never far away from Pryor. We’d be in the midst of the most intimate acts, and I knew the redhead was on his mind. I can’t tell you the number of times I thought of taking a hatchet to that girl.

In the end it didn’t matter because he got mad at me and took off. Normally I couldn’t care less if a guy takes off. In fact, I encourage them to be as far away as possible once I’m done with them. But Silver is different…

I was relieved when he left—in the beginning. I thought I could be rid of this sickness. Yet his absence only made me want him more. It’s months later and I am more in love with him than I was before. He made no attempt to reach out to me. I stayed away from him too. Yet, I’d find myself flying across the world hoping to run into him. 

Then out of nowhere he texted me. Once his name appeared on my cell, my disease progressed to dangerous levels. I had crazy thoughts that I could not control, thoughts about us being happy with each other. 

Beyond stupid, I know. But that’s what the illness does: It takes away your ability to think straight. How could Silver and I possibly be happy together when he refuses to give into who he really is inside?

Technically he’s half demon and half angel but really, there is no such thing as half demon. That’s propaganda bullshit. Aaden Case (AKA Silver) is a demon. Period.  

Does he admit that? No. He likes to walk the line and be just this side of evil. I tried to help him see who he really was but he just kept fighting me. 

So, we stopped communicating altogether. Then out of nowhere, he summons me to him. When I get there, I find that he has called me over to help save the life of the tacky redhead. 

Seriously.

And what do I do?

Help him. 

The next time I see him, it’s in a battlefield. I don’t kill him. But we both know it doesn’t mean I won’t try in the future. In fact, I can almost guarantee we will be face-to-face again, and I will not allow my feelings to cloud my judgment. 

A few yards away I hear an animal growl. I look over and spot a member of my team--a winged beast with fangs and blood dripping between his teeth. 

Manic, where have you been? I ask. 

He transforms back into his demon form. 

I found a nice little angel, who made a decent snack. He grins as he licks the angel blood off his fingers. 

Classy, I reply. 

Hey, gather Kill and the rest of the team. You won’t believe who’s been captured! he says. 

Who? I ask. 

When he tells me, my mind is racing. I’m thinking a million thoughts all at once. 

They’re holding him until the angels are willing to make a trade, Manic informs me. 

What do they want in exchange?

He tells me and I am speechless. 

Yeah, I know. The angels will never agree to that, my teammate adds. 

How long are they giving the angels to decide if they want to make a trade?  

Three days, then they kill him.

Three days!

Can you believe they got him? I wonder how they are going to torture him? I hope it’s something that can peel skin. I love the scent of freshly peeled flesh, Manic says. 

How long have they had him? I ask.

Nearly two days; I’m sure he’s just scraps on the floor by now. Manic laughs as I take off into the sky. Manic calls after me but I don’t turn around. I head straight to him. I don’t know what I’m going to say.  I just know I need to see him face-to-face. 

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An hour later, I walk into the cave and see the prisoner. His arms are spread out, held at his bedside by reinforced steel shackles. They are laced with a mixture called Quden. Quden makes it nearly impossible for anyone to break free. It doesn’t matter how much he struggles, the prisoner will not get free, without help. 

They have really worked the prisoner over. His left eye is swollen shut. There’s a deep gash on his cheek and his lip has been split open. His shirt is tattered and reveals even more serious injuries. He’s been stabbed in the rib cage. Blood oozes out slowly from his side and congeals on the ground below.  A patch of flesh from his thigh has been burned off and a bone protrudes out of his right leg. His face is pale and gaunt. He does not have long to live. 

Did you come to finish me off or her? he asks. 

I turn my attention to the moaning lump on the floor a few feet away. She’s a human who tried to cheat some demons in a card game. She’s in worse shape than the prisoner. Every once in a while she can be heard moaning and softly pleading for her life. 

The human has learned her lesson, you can let her go, the prisoner says. 

I look him over. His wings have an impressive span. His dark intense eyes remind me of someone…

Even in shackles, and near death, I can see the prisoner’s allure. He studies me just as closely as I study him. 

 He told me about you, the prisoner says. 

 Really, who? I ask.

You know who, he counters. 

What did he say? 

He said that you are powerful, talented…broken. 

Well, he was wrong. There is nothing broken about me, I reply firmly. 

So you had the perfect life when you were human? So perfect that you gave away your soul to become evil and join the other Kasters? he asks. 

I became what I was meant to be. 

Things could have turned out differently for you, he lies. 

No, there was only one path for me… 

You could have stopped at being a demon. But you went past that and became a Kaster.  Malakaro sought you out and you allowed him to make you into this super-powered demon. It didn’t have to go down that way.

Malakaro didn’t seek me out. I came looking for him. All my life I was looking for evil, I inform him. 

Why? 

You of all people are asking me that? I reply. 

Darkness is usually something you learn. Who taught you? he asks.

I learned about darkness and cruelty from the master: Omnis. 

Tell me about it, he offers. 

I don’t know why I give in to his demand but I do. 

"My human name was Diana Mason. I lived in a small city in upstate New York called Coopersville. I lived there with my mother and grandmother. My mom never told me who my dad was and I never asked. I figured screw him if he didn’t want to be part of our family. We were fine by ourselves. And we were; we really were.

The town talked about us all the time because we were strange. We would go downtown in our PJ’s just because we didn’t feel like putting on street clothes. We’d wear tiaras to the grocery store and call each other names like princess sparkle." 

"As I grew up, the craziness didn’t stop. My mom and Nana found ways to make everything far more fun than it should have been. We were studying Native American history in school and so they read up on it too. Soon we were up on the roof doing a rain dance. Nana would wake us up at 3am because she wanted us to see the first snowfall.

When my first boyfriend dumped me, they let me make a voodoo doll of him with cookie dough and place it in the oven. We beheaded a million ex-boyfriend chocolate chip cookies.

"They called us the triplets because we were always together. We’d go barefoot on long road trips in the car and sing loudly to the music on the radio. My Nana would moon cop cars, flirt with guys in the car lane next to us, and fake heart attacks so the cute waiter would have to give her mouth-to-mouth. We had very little in terms of money but we had…everything.

"Then one day, Nana said she felt achy. We thought she had come down with the flu or something but we were wrong. Soon she couldn’t even make it to the bathroom by herself. She was having trouble breathing and she would shake a lot. 

"We took her to a doctor. They had her tested for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, and a slew of other things. They couldn’t find out what was wrong with her. All they could tell us was that she would most likely get worse. 

"It got so bad; she would soil herself and not even know it. She’d rage at us for no reason and physically fight us. She’d walk out into traffic, burn herself on the stove, and cry for no reason at all. Things got worse, just like the doctors said it would. Soon she was confined to bed because the simple act of sitting up caused her so much pain she’d beg for us to end her life. 

"Omnis was killing the woman I loved, slowly. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t just kill her quickly. Why had he tortured her? Why had he let her suffer so much? 

"Eventually my mom couldn’t take it anymore. We placed Nana in a shit hole of a nursing home. It was subpar in every way. The staff was incompetent, overworked, and didn’t give a damn. The facility was dirty, cramped, and barely legally habitable. But it was the only thing we could afford. 

"Her first night there, Nana caused so much chaos they had to sedate her. The next morning we came to see her and she told my mom she would never forgive us for putting her in the home. 

"A few weeks later, one of the nurses, who was supposed to be watching her, parked her in a wheelchair in the hallway by the window. She left her there to gossip with the other nurses. She called out over and over again but the nurse assumed she was just acting out as usual. But she wasn’t. She was calling out because she was in pain. 

"By the time the nurse came around to see what Nana wanted, she was dead. She died alone in the hallway of some rat-infested shit hole. And the only reason they even remembered she was there was because they could smell her rotting corpse.  

"My mom never forgave herself for sending Nana there. I tried to make it better, but nothing I did worked. My mom fell into a deep depression. Meanwhile I tried to figure out why things had happened the way they did. I drove myself crazy wondering why Omnis let my Nana die so horribly. 

"That question ruled over my life. I looked for answers from philosophy books, religious leaders, and even fortune-tellers. I could not find the answer to my question. 

"Then what was left of my world was taken when I came home and found my mom floating in a tub of red water. The blood looked too red to be real. It reminded me of ‘movie’ blood. But it was real. She had taken her life and left me alone. 

"I locked myself away and cried for months. I didn’t care about anything anymore. I didn’t even think about the question anymore. I had to live with the fact that I would never know why Omnis did what he did to my family. But I was wrong; I would find the answer from a boy whose name I would never know. 

"I watched him from my window. He had curly brown hair and wore a baseball cap. He noticed a smaller kid go by on a bike. He pushed the little kid off the bike and down to the ground. The bike owner cried out as the bully hopped on the bike and pedaled away. 

"‘That’s my bike! Why are you taking it from me?’ the little boy yelled.

And the bully replied, Because I can." 

"And just like that, it all became clear. Omnis took my family away, tortured Nana, and let Mom kill herself because he could.

"It all began to make sense. I had assumed that Omnis cared about us, that we had somehow mattered to him since he created us. Childish thinking. The truth was so much simpler than that. Omnis made us on a whim. We are here because we are. There is no deeper meaning. We don’t matter to Omnis. And that’s okay because Omnis no longer mattered to me.

From then on, I knew I had to live my life doing whatever I wanted. I didn’t have to think about right or wrong because right and wrong doesn’t matter. What’s right is whatever you can get away with.  If you want to gut someone who has pissed you off, then find the right blade and gut them. Simple.

Ruin, I’m sorry about the way things happened for your family, but it’s not that simple, the prisoner replies. 

Oh, but it is. Take the human in the corner. Maybe she should be spared. Maybe she just made a mistake and I should take pity on her, I offer. 

Maybe you should, he replies. 

But you see, it doesn’t matter. I have the ability to take her life and for that reason alone, I will, I tell him as I head over to the human. 

Ruin, wait! he says in a strained voice. 

What is it? 

He said something else about you. Something I think is true, the prisoner pushes. 

I’m listening. 

He told me that you had ‘potential.’  He thinks you could find it in you to fight the darkness. You could become a force for good.

You think it matters if you are good or bad? You think anything we do in this world makes a difference? Are you fucking joking? I snap. 

It does make a difference, believe me. What you do matters. It matters to me and to the human you’re about to kill. 

I kill her; the sun comes up. I don’t kill her; the sun comes up. The only thing that matters is how much fun you have before your time is up, I reply as I head over to the fragile human cowering near the cave wall. 

Did you have fun, human? I ask mischievously. 

Please don’t kill me. Please, no. Please. She sobs at my feet. 

Ruin, don’t! the prisoner pleads.

She made choices that led her into this cave. We all did, I remind him. 

You have to show her some mercy. She’s just a human, he begs. 

SHOW MERCY? WHAT MERCY DID OMNIS SHOW MY FAMILY? HOW DID HE HELP US? I roar. 

My voice is so loud it echoes throughout the cave. 

Killing the human won’t bring your family back, he reasons. 

"No, it won’t. I could just let her live. But then that’s the great thing about this cesspool of bullshit called life. I could do a lot of things. But right now what I’m going to do is cut her throat with this blade. I could suck the life out of her, but I like the feel of a good blade against human skin. The killing feels more…personal." I share with him. 

He has feelings for you, the prisoner warns. 

His words cut right through me. The ground beneath me seems to give way. Although I’m standing still, I feel as if I’m floating out into a dark abyss with nothing to hold on to. 

He doesn’t, I whisper, mostly to myself. 

He does. I know him. I know how he thinks, the prisoner replies. 

No, he hates me, I promise. 

He hates who you are right now. But he knows that you have it in you to be better. You can change. That change could make him love you. 

LIAR! I counter. 

No, it’s true. If you love him, don’t kill the human.

I don’t love him. I don’t love anyone. 

I don’t believe you, Ruin. I think you came down here for a reason. I think you came into this cave because deep down you want to help me, the prisoner insists. 

I came because I was sent here to finish off the human, I lie.

Then why haven’t you? You’ve been down here for a while now. If you wanted to kill her, you would have done so already. 

You really think you know me, don’t you? 

Yes, Ruin, I do, he promises. 

I may have felt some strange attraction to him before, but that was before. Now I couldn’t care less about him, you, or the human, I reply as I grab a fistful of the human’s hair and yank her head back. 

She continues to cry and beg for her life. The prisoner calls out for me to stop. My blade cuts through the air and quickly makes contact with the human’s neck. I slice into her soft flesh; like slicing into a tender rib eye steak. She makes a gagging sound as the life escapes her body. I wipe the blood off my blade and place it back into my pocket. 

Damn it, why the hell did you do that? he asks.

Because I can. 

As I head out of the cave I turn back to face him. 

They are going to kill you in three days if the angels don’t give them what we ask for, I warn him. 

The angels won’t hand it over. They would rather you take me out. 

And what about him? Do you think he’ll be okay with you being murdered? I ask. 

Maybe he would be; I was always a better Akon than I was a father.

Chapter Two:

Out of Reach

lola

I’m not going to help Rage. He’s a demon who switched sides. I have no obligation to him at all. I should be flying back to my team.

So why am I just standing here? Because he would be livid to know I didn’t help his father. But then again, so what? I don’t owe Silver shit. I don’t care that he would be angry with me.

Then against my better judgment, I flash back to a rare moment I had with Rage’s son.

We both did something we had never done before—talked about our past. It felt foreign and weird, but ultimately it didn’t completely suck…

It was back when the two of us used to hang out and destroy things. We had just set yet another cargo of supplies on fire. It belonged to the Paras and they didn’t take kindly to seeing their stuff go up in flames. So they chased us across the globe.

It took weeks to get them off our trail, and when we finally did, we celebrated. We got a dozen bottles of Coy Dark and drank our asses off. We somehow ended up in a junkyard being chased by a couple pit bulls.

Silver hurled his signature silver colored fireballs towards them as a warning. It worked; the dogs scurried away. We then climbed onto the hood of the nearest car in the junkyard. We lay there together, looking up at the dark sky.

You know I could have made a mixture so we were hidden from the Paras, I told him.

Yeah, but what fun is that? he asked.

I laughed and agreed with him. Then his cell rang. He looked at it and declined the call.

Your father? I asked.

Yeah.

How many times has he called?

Too many.

So what’s his deal? I wondered.

He was evil and now he’s not. That’s pretty much it.

He gave up being evil for you and your mom, right?

So the story goes, he said.

Does he completely suck at the whole Dad thing? I asked.

No…he taught me how to use my powers, how to control them, he even had the safe sex talk with me. Everyone else’s parent got all embarrassed and crap but not my father. He talked to me way before everyone thought he should, and he was blunt.

You really needed him to explain it to you? I teased.

Actually, I did some exploring on my own way before that but it seemed important to him. So, I let him give me the talk. It went something like this. He mimicked his dad’s stern voice and pointed his finger.

"Aaden, angel and human boys are the same when it comes to sex. It’s all you guys think about. You’re gonna want it all the time. But here’s what you need to know: I don’t give a damn how much you want her. It’s her show; if she’s not ready, she’s not ready. Don’t push. That makes you an asshole. Don’t beg, that makes you a punk. And if she says yes she wants you and you don’t use a condom, that makes