“You can either come with me, or Spyder and my men will destroy your friends,” Lucian murmured, his tone cold and unforgiving. I looked past him to where his men stood, weapons at the ready to hunt down the others at his request. “Choose.”
“Fine, you can have a few minutes of my eternity but no more. I’m not your plaything anymore, Blackstone. If that is even your real name,” I seethed. “I can smell you, you know. That thick, earthy scent of burning brimstone and ashes; the death and despair that oozes from within you. What are you?” I asked breathlessly, stepping closer to him. “Let’s talk about that, shall we?”
“You don’t need to know what I am to fuck me,” he replied smoothly.
“Oh, I think you have the wrong idea,” I chuckled. “I’m not fucking you. Last time it ended rather badly for me, wouldn’t you agree?” I asked pointedly, lifting a blonde brow at the question.
The tick in his jaw twitched, the only indication I’d struck a nerve. The sky opened up, sending a light drizzle of rain down through the ozone, dusting his thick black lashes with droplets. His hand lifted up, shoving a strand of hair away from his face before he lunged, catching my arm and bringing my body close against his.
“I never wanted that for you,” he uttered as his tone hitched as if it hurt him to admit it. “It also wasn’t just about fucking you, Lena. It was always about more, and the more of you I got, the harder it was to let you go.”
“But that’s what I got, wasn’t it? One day to know I held your son in my womb, and then he was gone. My only choice as his mother was to let him go. To let him be free of the monster I now hold within me. Your monster,” I whispered thickly for his ears alone. I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the rain, letting it wash away the pain I felt. I used it to hide the tears that streaked down my face, only it couldn’t hide them. I knew what he would see, as if I’d painted my lashes thick with mascara; black streaks rushed from my eyes to race down my cheeks.
“Don’t fight me, or they will hunt them down and destroy them all.”
“Are you sure they’d win?” I asked as I stepped closer, placing my hands flat against his warm body. “Are you afraid of me, Lucian?” I asked as he swallowed hard.
“Not of you, sweet girl. I’m afraid I’ll wake and you’ll still be buried in that cold fucking earth where I watched them place your rotting corpse.”
Ouch. Point for Lucian. “You should be afraid of me,” I shrugged. “You’d deserve it if I disappeared. You deserved the pain you felt because it’s nothing compared to what I endured as they took my son and left me alive.”
“You think I wanted you to die?”
“I think it doesn’t matter what either of us wanted, it’s what happened. You can stronghold me into coming along with you, but you fail to see that no matter what you do, you’ll never find that whimpering girl you lost. Your Lena is dead, she’s in that dark fucking hole you so gently placed her into. Don’t expect me to play her, not even for you. I won’t, I am not weak and I will not fucking bow to you.”
“You are her; I can feel the bond, Lena. Can’t you? Spyder felt it as well the moment your heart started beating. I take it your brother assisted in hiding you from us again? Preventing me from feeling you when you returned to this world?” he demanded.
“I didn’t do dick,” Joshua snorted, his eyes wild with the need to defend me. I took in his flexed hands, aching to fight Lucian, itching for the fight he’d so relished at my death. Not for me, but because his anger demanded he avenge what I’d lost: his nephew. My head tilted, and I slowly brought my eyes to Lucian’s dark gaze, and pushed Lucian away from my brother, hard.
Joshua’s eyes snapped towards mine; the others let out low, rumbling growls of warning, and I smirked. Fucking hell, they wanted to compare dicks, and I was the only one lacking one to join in their little competition.
“Let’s go, asshole,” I snapped in frustration as I ground my teeth together. “We all know you have dicks, and some are bigger than others, but this isn’t a dick situation other than you all acting like one.”
I met midnight eyes that sparkled at me with the silent promise of retribution for my comment with bored contempt. I hadn’t lied, I wasn’t afraid of him. I was, however, afraid of what he could do to my brother. I followed him when he turned on his heels, heading towards the Guild silently. His massive strength and power oozed from his pores to sizzle across my flesh. It was something I’d once craved as a heroin junkie desired the prick of a needle against its flesh. My feet sloshed through the growing puddles mindlessly as I stared at his broad shoulders. I didn’t even care that I was still dressed in the tiny sundress, which was now sheer and doing very little to hide my body through its flimsy material. My body reacted to the cold, and that gave me pause as I continued to follow Lucian past the stairs that led into the Guild.
My nipples hardened as I followed him and I frowned, wondering how it responded to it if I hadn’t been bothered by it. I wasn’t human anymore, which meant I wasn’t bothered by shit like the cold or being uncomfortable. It ran like a well-oiled machine, working well to hide what we’d become, and yet it mimicked a human and the reactions they experienced well. Like it knew we had to pretend to be human or perish against the sea of monsters oozing into this realm daily.
Once inside, I paused, taking in the array of creatures that stood between us and the empty hall on the other side of them. Arms folded across chests, weapons sat at the ready for any sign of violence from me. Magic hummed around me, sensing me as if they could feel out whatever I’d become. I laughed coldly as Lucian turned to stare at me.
“Did you bring me in here to kill me?” I asked softly, my eyes aglow with the irony I currently felt.
“I want to know what the fuck you are and how you’re still alive, Lena. People without souls don’t come back, they cease to exist. They sure as fuck don’t experience death echoes. Ghost relive their death, no other creature has ever had to relive it. It’s a punishment for not crossing into the next realm.”
“But I am here, and I do experience it, and that bothers you, doesn’t it?” I exhaled. “You don’t like not knowing what I am, and yet you expect me to be fine with the fact that you are an unknown as well. Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“Answer the fucking question.” His tone was harsh, angry as his eyes searched mine as if he would see the truth in them.
“I don’t know what I am, only that I am here. I also don’t fucking care how it happened or why. We just came back, and when we did, we were alone or with those who knew we would rise. There was no one around to explain it or tell us what we’d become. Can I go now?” I asked, crossing my arms to mirror his angry stance. “I need to go find something to change into, something more…less sheer and flimsy as fuck.”
“I have a room upstairs, you’re joining me in it for a while,” he said in a rough, grated tone that made my spine both straighten and curve with need at the same time.
“If there’s a bed in it, I’d rather a torture device in a cell. I believe there’s a rack down in the catacombs I passed before I took the grimoires from this place.”
“That you somehow managed to retain even after you died.” It was a statement, not a question. Lucian watched me as a smile lifted to play across my lips. “Dead things cannot play with magic, nor retain what they held in life. They don’t retain grimoires, which are living things.”
“And?” I asked crossly. “I don’t owe you an explanation for anything. I gave you everything I had to give, which in case you forgot, included my life. I owe you nothing, Lucian. Yet here I am, so tick-tock, asshole. I have other shit to do.”
“I need to know how you are reanimating the body, how you’re able to control it,” he snapped.
“It’s my body, my mind, but I seem to have lost that pesky soul that made me give a fuck. Which means I literally have no fucks to give you. Not a damn one, big boy. You want t
o fuck? I can do that, but it may be a dead fuck, get it?” I wiggled my brows as his frown deepened. “You want to…” I blinked as something wet and icy splashed me in the face. “Did you fucking throw holy water in my face?” I asked as I sputtered and wiped my face off.
“She’s not a demon,” Ristan said, his silver eyes narrowing at me as if I’d grown a second head. “Her heart is, in fact, beating. Strangely, though… It’s in tune to yours, Lucian. When it beats, it holds your rhythm. I don’t feel anything but darkness and rage coming from her though, a lot of fucking rage.” His eyes saddened, and he frowned as he stared at me. “There’s an endless pain consuming her from within, pain she cannot control.”
“Back the fuck up before I end you, demon,” I growled low, meaning it.
“You’re mortal-ish. I’ve never smelled or seen, let alone felt anything like her before. That black shit, though, that’s worrisome. It smells of midnight, and yet only cursed things bleed black or owned things. Curious thing you’ve become, little one.”
“That you know of; you see, there are not just a few worlds with gaping fucking holes in them, the doors are all open. The creatures we fought last night are not new to us, but they were to you. You didn’t see them, which is why I’m standing here right now. Had you been able to sense or see them, I wouldn’t have had to make my presence known yet. You are not aware of the monsters that hunt in this world now. I’ve fought shit that raised my hair, and I’m not easily scared lately. Those hounds we killed? They feed off the blood of witches, almost like a vampire but not quite. Before the hounds, it was demons, not from Hell, not from Faery. They didn’t need a soul to enter this world, they only need the gate opened, and in they walked. Some vampires consume souls, not blood. Creatures I’ve never even heard about are now here, feeding off the humans and no one seems to care. Those vampires? They bled black, as I do. So as far as I am concerned, what I am is the least of our fucking worries right now. Make no mistake; even if we are no longer human, we are no longer at the top of the food chain. We are the food, ladies and gentlemen.”
“How can you say that if you don’t even know what the hell you are?” Synthia asked pointedly.
“Because there are creatures that I fought and I had to run from, Synthia. Creatures that easily took some of the others out,” I countered. “We don’t die, but we can be killed; which means we cannot stop them from doing what they came here to do. That is what we’ve been doing while you all hold up in your safe little haven pretending the world hasn’t gone to shit.”
“You’ve been alive for months, and yet you couldn’t be bothered to end our pain?” Kendra’s voice cut through the room, and I tensed. It hit me harder than a brick wall at a full run, knocking the air from my lungs as I turned to stare at her across the room.
“Your sister, the one you loved so much?” I asked, staring at her across the distance that kept her safe from the monster I’d become. “She isn’t in here anymore. That light I once had burned out. That fight I had to live? Died with me. I don’t eat, I don’t sleep, and I love nothing. I am not her, I am a shell of what I was, and I do not want you to expect anything of me. I will let you down, and I will fucking enjoy it.”
“You’re my sister!” she snapped. “No matter what the fuck you are, bitch. We mourned you. I mourned you. You’re my other half. We buried you in a nameless grave with only fucking initials that let the world know you ever existed. It damn near broke me! So who cares if you eat or sleep, and I don’t need you to love me, Lena. I want my sister back. You’re my sister. So whatever the fuck your issue is, get over it. Your heart beats. That means you live.”
I smiled sadly at her as her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I don’t need my heart.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped angrily, her turquoise eyes alight with tears that flowed from them. “You’re alive, I know you are. I can feel you, here,” she cried as she touched her chest.
As she watched I let my claws extend. The serrated nails pushed into my chest, the sickening sound filling the room as I withdrew my still-beating heart. It beat, dripping black blood down my chest and onto the floor below as I pulled the useless organ out. I dropped it onto the ground and looked up, peering into her eyes.
“It beats when they decide to bring me back. I don’t need it to beat. I don’t need you or him, or anyone. I don’t miss you. I don’t feel anything, Kendra. I only know hate and pain, two things I refused to feel in life, and now it’s the only thing I can feel. The two emotions I refused to feel in life are now the only thing I know. You did bury me. I was in that coffin until I was removed from it, but I wasn’t alive, and I’m still not. I didn’t need air or food. I didn’t waste away waiting for Joshua to come unbury me. I just existed in that cold box, unfeeling. He didn’t have to rush because I’m not alive. Those days I spent in that cabin with him, he knew I would meet my death, and he would be the one to bring me back from it. He explained sacrifice and what I would be rewarded with if I had the strength to make it. I wasn’t a saint as you’re trying to make me out to be. I chose death to save you and my son, but I also knew I wouldn’t die. I killed my child; I did it to protect him and you. But I also did it because I couldn’t stand the thought of losing to those assholes. I won the fucking game, hands down. I ended it, and I’d do it again just to say I did.”
“You did it to protect us,” she argued.
“I did it because I didn’t have a choice. It was you or me; one of us wasn’t walking away, and you were too fucking weak to see it. I was already dead; the seal was inside of me. The only way to null it was to remove the souls and find something strong enough to hold it. I am, and I did. But now that it is over, so is she. Your sister is dead, deal with it. Push it to the back of your fucking mind, throw a fucking fit, do whatever the hell you need to do to accept it, I did.” I knew it was a slap in the face, but she had to face it. Pain ached, burning my insides until I wanted to lean over and retch with it.
Pushing them away was the only way to protect them from the monster I was becoming. I could feel myself evolving, growing as the others continually did. Some went missing and never returned, while others returned changed or worse than they’d been. Efficient killing machines couldn’t be loved, nor should they be, and that was what I was becoming. I didn’t want to watch them break apart again; they deserved better. I’d watched it, cold and detachedly as they’d fallen to pieces in the wake of my death. But I was changing into something cold who watched with a detachment of emotions, as if it was how I protected myself. My feelings were ice-cold, and anything else seemed foreign, wrong somehow.
“Lucian, tick-tock, you’re wasting my time,” I said, turning to him and flipping him off as his eyes took in the empty hole in my chest where my heart had been. “Eyes up here, big boy. You might make my panties wet if you keep eyeing my hole like that.”
“You just ripped out your fucking heart,” Ristan said, his eyes wide as shock shone from them. It marred his pretty face and made me want to mess his perfect hair up.
“It’s an over-exaggerated organ,” I shrugged. “It’s not even close to the shape they said it was, and it only reminds me that I have to continue when my son is dead and gone. You want to know how I kept my presence from you. I ripped my fucking heart out the moment it began to stir after I was reborn.” My flesh was already healing, the immortality speeding the process as I stood there, bickering for no other reason to give Joshua and the others time to flee. “I left it in that coffin for you, though. After all, that useless thing was what drew me to you in the first place, Lucian.”
“Follow me,” he snapped, his eyes still locked on the heart that beat upon the floor. “Spyder, collect her heart.”
“Can I keep it?” Spyder asked as he mean-mugged Ristan, who licked his lips as he stared down at it. He bent down and retrieved it before he slipped it into a sack Ryder handed him.
“Oh, Spyder, you’ve always had a piece o
f my heart,” I chuckled. I blew him a raspberry before I wiped the black blood from my hand onto the dress as my claws retracted. “Be careful, though, the last person who picked it up ended up buried in my coffin when I crawled out.”
“Who is in your casket?” he asked.
“Someone who meddled where they shouldn’t have,” I shrugged indifferently.
Chapter 8
My gaze roamed over Lucian’s wide shoulders, following him up the staircase and then down winding hallways until we lingered before a door. My mouth watered as my nose greedily sucked in his earthy, woodsy scent. Something about this creature made my emotions stir, ones I’d thought had been snuffed out with my life. My teeth ground, hands fisted at my sides as I waited for him to open the door he’d paused in front of.
Of all the shit to deal with, couldn’t I get a break? Why did everything inside of me scream to push this man against the wall and devour him until I’d taken my fill? I wanted to rip him bare and ride him like a beast in heat that wouldn’t stop until she’d soothed the ache he’d created.
He turned slowly, those sinful bedroom eyes slowly lowering to my clenched jaw and then my balled fists as if he sensed exactly what was running wild through my mind. I lifted a dainty brow as he mirrored it, so I flipped him off and then slowly crossed my arms.
“Is that an invitation, Lena?” he asked huskily.
“You wish,” I grumbled. His eyes darkened as they slowly dropped to my mouth and then lower, flinching as they landed on the ugly scar on my throat. I’d somehow managed to sound uncaring, cold even. I didn’t care what he thought, or if it turned him off. Caring took effort, and I didn’t plan to waste my energy on him.
I hated that my body wanted him, and it had since the moment I saw him standing on the steps of this Guild. It had heated, which was new since I didn’t radiate body heat unless I put effort into it, and yet it had. It was unnerving. The fact that I’d wanted to taste his lips, to feel the heat from his body as my fingers wrapped around his massive cock bothered me. His mouth was a drug, one that I wanted to taste. Worse than that, I wanted him to look me in the eye and tell me that I wasn’t this emotionless animal I’d become.
Becoming his Monster Page 6