Becoming his Monster

by Amelia Hutchins

  Thump…thump…thump.

  And just like that, my body was reborn again.

  Slowly, I sat up and turned to stare into horrified midnight eyes, the shock on his face overriding the emotion that continued to ebb and flow through me. It took effort to rise to my feet, to rise from the pain that ached from the rawness of the loss all over again.

  “Lena,” he uttered thickly, aware of the truth they’d laid bare to him. His eyes lowered, taking in the glyphs and runes that had given them the right to do as they’d done. To take my world and protect him from what I had become.

  He moved faster than my eyes could track and held my body against his. I pushed away from him, but his hold was too much. Anger ripped me apart, and I screamed through my aching lungs as I finally managed to push him away from me. I surveyed the others, hating the wet eyes and tears that rolled down their faces from witnessing my fall.

  “Did you enjoy the fucking show?” I asked, hating them for seeing my pain lay bare to their eyes. A sob bubbled up from my lungs, and I forced it back down. Synthia stared at me, her eyes wet with tears. “Open this fucking dome and let me out!” I demanded forcefully.

  “Lena,” Lucian said my name like a fucking prayer as it rolled off his tongue.

  “Lena is no more! She died for you, for him! You did this to me. You and your whore gave me no choice!” I seethed as my hair floated as my power rose, raw and unchecked as hatred burned through me. I was a powder keg set to detonate.

  “You’re alive,” Spyder said as he held his hand against his own heart.

  “Let me go!” I snarled, uncaring that everyone was now calling their own power to them as mine rose dangerously high. Lucian stepped into my path, and I slapped him, hard. I continued even though he did nothing to prevent it. He could have easily blocked it, but yet he let me inflict the pain I’d felt and continued to feel on his face. I didn’t want to harm him, but I needed him to feel the pain I felt, to know that I suffered.

  “Open the fucking door,” he urged, and I paused, setting my forehead against his chest, inhaling his scent deep into my lungs before I found the strength to push away from it. “Let her go,” he mumbled as he stepped back, staring at me through eyes that swam with unshed tears.

  I didn’t stick around to see if they fell, or if he’d actually shed a tear for the child we’d lost. I vanished the moment the door was open and the wards were lowered.

  The death echo ate at my soul, my core. It thrummed through me until it touched the empty womb that would never hold life again. I’d made the ultimate sacrifice to save them, to save him. Oh, I’d known I would be back. Heaven wouldn’t take me, and Hell couldn’t contain me, which left me adrift in my own hellish prison.

  Just soulless beings that couldn’t die.

  Empty. Devoid of what we’d once been. Craving to be what we had been, but unable to ever feel or know life again.

  I didn’t love anything anymore. I didn’t hate anything anymore. I didn’t feel much of anything anymore either, other than an endless need to kill, slaughter and destroy anything that threatened the creatures who’d just held me prisoner. Ironic, since loving them was what had gotten me to this point in the first place. The only time I did feel anything was during the death echo as I relived my loss, over and over on an endless loop I couldn’t escape.

  “It happened again, didn’t it?” Joshua asked as I materialized beside him. I nodded, and his arm looped through mine in comfort. “We were drawn to it, to you. Something is pulling us here as well, do you feel it?” he asked.

  “I do, I can,” I nodded. “We need to figure out what it is and eradicate it.”

  “And if it is our blood?”

  “Then we kill them all.”

  Chapter 6

  I stared at her, the minutes turning into hours as I waited for her to vanish, for it to have been nothing more than a dream. I’d felt her heart as it had begun beating, linking the bond that connected us as if she’d never ceased to exist, and yet she’d fucking died in my arms.

  The darkness inside of her was seductive, unreal, and yet she’s something stronger than I could sense, feel. How she came back was a mystery, one I planned to unravel, and yet I didn’t fucking care. She’s here, and it was all that mattered.

  Watching her death echo had almost brought me to my knees. The loss she felt as the reapers had taken the child from her womb had felt real, even to me, one who doesn’t feel. Lena had suffered long after the air had left her lungs and her body had grown cold. Had I still been holding her as she’d been going through hell?

  The runes she’d painted on her skin had burned into her flesh, trapping the seal into her corpse. She’d sacrificed herself and our child to save the world, a fucking martyr in her own right, and yet she’d known, she’d known death was only her beginning.

  Her prick of a brother hadn’t died either, and my mind raced to replay her actions after he’d taken her to the cabin in the woods. How had he known, and were they the same? She was stronger, faster, and more powerful than any of the others she seemed to run with now.

  Untapped magic oozed from her pores, a reminder of how immortal she’d become. I wanted to grab her, tie her up, and force her to tell me what had happened, or how she’d known she would come back.

  I’d felt her soul escaping her body—or Katarina’s portion of it. The reminder that she was created by magic shivered through my mind as I watched her. Her body was new, beautiful, and the darkness inside her only made my dick hard to experience this new and more durable version of her.

  There were differences in her, the black that filled her eyes until it swallowed up the whites of her retinas. The lines that pulsed with magic as her anger grew unchecked, and the way she fought. She fought like she fucked: fast, hard, and with no fucking mercy. My mother fucking match in every way and yet she didn’t want me.

  She’d taken us on, and she’d laughed at our efforts as if we were an inconvenience she didn’t mind playing with. So what was she doing here? Protecting her family, or was there something more pulling her to this place?

  Her back stiffened and she turned, throwing me a look that dared me to come play with her again. I wanted to play with her; I wanted to slam my mouth against that full, sexy fucking mouth that did such naughty things when it pleased. I wanted to feel her tremble around my cock as she demanded and took everything I gave her, and yet for the first time ever in my existence, I wanted to hold her against my body, listening to that heartbeat that mirrored the drums of war. To feel the warmth of her that screamed with life.

  She’d come back to me, and I didn’t care how or why she had, as long as she stayed. Spyder settled beside me, emerging from the shadows as he slinked into the spot next to me.

  “How? How is this even fucking possible? I felt her die, and then I felt the emptiness she left when she killed herself,” he snapped, his hair a mussed fucking mess of strands from running his fingers through it or ripping it out.

  “Something brought her back,” I uttered thickly, hating the weakness I felt but uncaring if he felt it. “Something powerful enough to take her from death without a mortal soul,” I pondered. “She’s…more. She smells like hellfire, mixed with enough power to light up the entire world.”

  “I don’t care who brought my kitty back, only that she’s back, Lucian. I felt like my world had been torn apart without her.”

  “You know she’s mine, right? I don’t envy fighting you for her, brother,” I hissed.

  “We’ll see who she chooses, if she even wants anything to do with either of us. She deserves the fucking moon for what she endured alone. You created life with her, something neither of us had thought possible, and then she lost it. She loved him, your son. She sacrificed him and her life to protect you. Who the fuck does that? You’re a fucking prick for not seeing her intentions.”

  “You think I don’t know that? If I�
�d known she was going to play the fucking martyr, I’d have strapped her into chains and kept her in my room until the end of days. Neither of us deserves her, neither of us are worthy of that woman,” I mused, watching as her spine straightened and then arched, seductive and intoxicating. That’s what she was. She was all woman, all black lace and fire that I burned to touch and yet knew I couldn’t, not yet.

  The moment I’d seen her fighting my world tilted, the thought of the seal using her flesh to dole out its evil had burned through me as if my world was on fire. I’d been sure it was the seal, using her as a meat suit to create havoc, and yet she had laughed at us as if she’d found us lacking.

  The moment her heart had begun to beat, I felt her. I felt all of her, the emotions that churned through her, the wrongness of what she had become, but most of all, I felt my Lena trapped in a cage that couldn’t hold her.

  She’d told me to let her go, but that was beyond what I could do. I didn’t love anything, but Lena, Lena made me feel more than anything else in my world had ever come close to making me feel. Emotions were beyond me, beyond what I was.

  I’d thought I’d loved Katarina in the early days, but it was lust I’d felt for her. The creaminess of her flesh as it had touched mine. Her body was addictive, and yet I’d thought it more. I’d thought it love, but her death…it only left me empty.

  Lena’s death had brought fucking tears to eyes that had never experienced them before. She’d taken my seed and created life with it, and just like that, it had been taken away from us. Her death had brought the creature that I am to its knees roaring in denial, and then I’d sat beside her lifeless body, scouring my mind, my world, for a way to bring a soulless body back from the grave, only to find nothing.

  I’d buried her in a nameless grave, one I watched endlessly as pain had forced me to remain there. I’d thought I had loved Katarina, but Lena, Lena made me want to destroy the entire world I’d fought to protect. I’d wanted to bring down the stars and snuff every fucking one out of existence for shining without her.

  Lena was the stars, and I her darkness. She shone brighter than anything this world had to offer me before her, and she exposed parts of my darkness that I’d never thought could be brought to light, but she was light to my darkness. She had been vibrant, full of life—and now, now where she’d been beautiful before, she was ethereal in immortality.

  It made the lines of her face more defined, exposed the subtle curves of her flesh until even those who hadn’t noticed them before itched to trace them intimately. Her hair was fuller, more vibrant in color, and her eyes, those beautiful blue eyes were lit from within with a fire that refused to be snuffed out.

  “And if she is here to kill us?” he asked, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Then I’ll have fun playing with her,” I announced. “I doubt she was brought back to kill me. If she was, and her purpose was such, she’d have done it already. No, someone brought her back for another reason, and we need to figure it out soon. I refuse to let her go a second time.”

  “You don’t have her,” he laughed soundlessly.

  “I have her; I’ve always had her, Spyder. She just doesn’t know it yet. Obviously, you don’t realize it either. I’ll get her back because she’s my moon and the stars that burn in my skies. She’s mine, and nothing short of me dying will change that.”

  “You cannot be killed,” he scoffed.

  “Exactly, and even if I have to force her to remain hidden from the world to continue to exist in mine, I will do whatever it takes to keep her. Even exposing what we are,” I warned and he tilted his head as he considered it.

  “Katarina wasn’t worth this mess, but Lena is worth the world. I’d help you destroy it to protect her, you know that. Our bond, it went deeper than it should have, so be warned, I want her too. I want to feel her shatter around me once before you claim her, Lucian. I’m owed that.”

  “If she wants you, she’d have had you. Her sexuality isn’t something she hides or sheds for one man. Lena is everything sexual and sensual in this world. Her body was made to be fucked, but her mind, her mind is much more than just sex and chaos; it’s a storm that burns with the fires of life and love. She’s my fucking match, Spyder. My world,” I growled. “If she wants you, you can join us. If not, it will be your loss.”

  “We’ll see,” he mused, turning his eyes to watch her as she stood guard over the Guild like a silent sentinel. The others followed her lead; whether they realized it or not, she was born to lead. They’d follow her wherever she took them, which was another indication that whoever had brought my Lena back, had known who and what she could become. “Deviant, Bane, and Devlin are currently closing down the other clubs; see that they do so without drawing unwanted attention to themselves.”

  “And Club Chaos? Will we fix it up again, so we have a fallback shelter? I don’t imagine this Guild will withstand Lucifer when he finally emerges. I’m positive he isn’t finished coming at us yet. He’s somewhere licking the wounds of his loss, but he’ll resurface when he is ready.”

  “Club Chaos already stands once more. Now that her ghost isn’t haunting the halls, or everywhere I look, I rebuilt it. It’s now able to withstand whatever comes at us. I’ll protect her coven for as long as I can, but eventually, they will need more than we can give them. They feed off the mortals, unknowingly. But still, without the walls remaining up between worlds, their magic will falter. It’s the curse I placed, the failsafe that ensures they don’t win the game. It cannot be undone.”

  “And what of the others who have been surfacing in the chaos? What do we do about them?” he queried.

  “They’re here because Lucifer has been freed. If they intervene before we are ready, we’ll end them without warning. That’s another reason why we need to close the clubs and get them back to us. Our numbers are small now, even with the shadows we have trailing them, the hellhounds scenting out their trail, we need everyone back here for when shit hits the fan because this isn’t over.”

  Chapter 7

  Lena

  I felt his stare the entire night, eating away at the defenses I’d erected once the slithering, slimy fingers of the death echo released me. When day broke across the sky as the sun rose to replace the night with the first rays of the sun, the others vanished from the line. I didn’t move, unable to leave this place as if held here by invisible hands. A cold hand gripped my heart as I considered what would be keeping me here. As if I’d been brought back to be his fucking lap dog and guard him.

  “It’s him,” I muttered as anger pulsed through me. “I think we can’t leave because of him.”

  “It may not be him,” he offered as his blue eyes slowly took in my ash-colored face. “It may be the bloodline, our blood. They’re inside that place too.”

  “I guess it could be,” I agreed, even though I didn’t think it was. I didn’t want to have to end our own bloodline to escape the pull to this place. “It’s worse today,” I admitted. “Like I can’t leave,” I shivered as the words escaped. “Like I can’t leave here even if I wanted to,” I muttered breathlessly as panic filled my chest.

  “We will figure it out,” Joshua said as his eyes looked over my shoulder. “We will figure out why we slink back to this place, hiding in the shadows like fucking puppets. Lucian is coming, Lenny. You should try to leave before he captures you again.”

  “You should go, I can’t,” I growled. “Leave before he ends up catching us both.”

  I turned, not waiting to see if Joshua did as I bid him to. Lucian’s approach was slow, calculated. His strides exuded power as he stopped right in front of me, peering down into my gaze. Had he waited for the others to leave before he’d approached me? Biding his time until we appeared weak and outnumbered? Maybe, but I got this feeling it was something else.

  Not that it mattered, if I wanted to hurt him, I would.

  I’d come back colder, emp
tier, and stronger than I’d ever been in my other form. I was no longer mortal, bound by their laws or rules. Not having a soul had benefits; for instance, when someone died right before me, I didn’t care. I didn’t flinch or bat an eyelash at the loss of the human, or whoever it was who perished. I envied them their death. I had felt nothing until he’d touched me, fighting him had made me feel. Before last night, the only thing I’d felt was the echo of my death as it played out every full moon. It was freeing, refreshing not to care what happened to people.

  Before, I’d felt everything.

  “We need to talk,” he growled as he stared down into my empty eyes.

  “I don’t think we do,” I returned aloofly. I shoved my hair over my shoulder as I stared up into his obsidian depths, reveling at the galaxies that shone back at me. My heart raced, and I hated it. It was why I’d ripped it out of my chest last time I’d hidden in the shadows, watching him. He’d once been the hunter and I his prey, but no more.

  “You’re alive and I watched you fucking die,” he snarled. “I held your fucking corpse in my arms for hours. Days, Lena,” he muttered as he scrubbed his hand down his face with irritation.

  “I wouldn’t have become a corpse if you’d left me out of your fucked-up games. Maybe if you and your girlfriend had left me and mine alone, we wouldn’t be at this point, now would we?” I asked.

  He recoiled, his eyes burning with an intensity that left me trembling.

  Lucian: 0. Lena: 1.

  “You weren’t supposed to be a part of it.”

  “I know, but I never even existed until she split an egg and filled it with poison. I was in it before I was even real, Lucian. But then you never cared before when innocent lives suffered for you and your game, so why would that change now? You destroy lives and leave chaos in your wake and yet still, you’d play it with her, wouldn’t you?”