“What up, Lenny?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” I lied, rolling my shoulders. “They’re getting better,” I acknowledged and stared up at the blistering sun. It was fall, and hot as hell. The weather was wonky. But then the whole world was in the shitter. “You’re keeping the new ones on track?”
“They’re still adjusting, but worth keeping.”
“I’m not sure we can send them away,” I frowned as I rolled my left shoulder, noting the strange pain in it.
“What the hell is going on, Lenny?”
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “I ache like my body needs nutrients, and yet we don’t hunger. I’m afraid to even ask if we eat and what the hell it would be. We have not eaten in months and we’re fine, so why would I feel like this?”
I listened around us as the weapons stopped meeting and turned around to find the others staring at me. I swallowed as my eyes narrowed on them, zeroing in on the weapons they still held. I watched Catalina move, her eyes never leaving mine.
“Get back in line and train,” I demanded.
“Make me,” she hissed as she watched me closely, as if she planned to attack. My hackles rose as I stared at her.
It wasn’t her who approached, closing the gap between us. It was Philip. He drew his swords, approaching with swift, precise moves that forced me to lift mine to defend or be decapitated. His lips curled into a sneer as his eyes turned as black as the sky that turned to midnight above our heads. My brow creased as I stared at him, watching as he lifted his swords and leered coldly.
“You want to lead us? Prove you are worthy. Prove to us you’re strong enough to lead,” he challenged, and I swallowed hard as our swords slammed together. “Your pain is a weakness, one that holds you down. You’re weak, Magdalena. So fucking weak, pathetic, and broken that you’re not fit to lead us into battle,” he snarled as he continued sending blow after blow against the weapons I held.
“What is your fucking problem?” I demanded.
“You will never lead us,” Catalina quipped, her own weapons flying in my direction as I cried out as the others started towards me as well. “Fight us!”
“Rules?” I offered as sweat dripped down my neck; my arms burned, a fire rushing through me as the adrenaline spiked, and I waited for them to state their rules. Typically, it was nothing fatal. Adrenaline was seductive, like Lucian’s cock when it was pounding into my body. I couldn’t get enough, and I never wanted it to stop once he’d started.
“To the death,” she snickered.
“Then die, bitch,” I snapped as my swords crisscrossed, sending her head sailing across the vacant street we stood on. I spun around as Philip’s blades cut through the air, whistling a warning as they rushed for my neck. Seconds, seconds are what it took for my blades to block his, sending one blade into tiny pieces as the metal exploded as power ignited into mine.
My swords hummed with it, lighting to an iridescent blue as I moved in a blur of speed and feathers. Blood splattered against my face as I severed his arms, and then cut his body into two pieces as I bent sideways to escape another attack.
“Next,” I uttered through clenched teeth as I turned to face the others, sensing the array of magic as it was directed at me. They swarmed me, encircling the space I stood in, and I smiled coldly, wondering if I should point out the stupidity of that idea. No, I’d let them learn it the hard way.
I sent my swords in a wide circle, pushing magic through me into the weapons as I took the first few who’d been stupid enough to stand that close to my blades. I stepped over the remains, moving towards the larger males who slowly backed up, thinking to lure me towards the largest to become victim to the others who stood back, hoping I fell for the ploy. I didn’t, I’d had a damn good teacher. I watched as one moved, sending his blade out, towards my midsection. I flipped mid-run, twirling through the air with my blades like a boat propeller, landing in front of the largest as I tossed one blade into the air, using my wings to pin him into place before I brought my blade down hard, cutting him into two separate pieces. My left hand reached, grasping the other sword as it came back down, and sent my blades between my arms, backwards. Grunts erupted, and I turned, peering over my shoulder with a saucy smile curving my lips.
It was endless; they came against me in pairs or more until their bodies littered the street like discarded trash. Blood ran from the street in a river, following it down until it hit the sewer drain. A coppery tang filled my mouth from taking a few elbows to the face, and yet no blade had touched me. I exhaled as I took in the carnage, hating that it was my people that lay in severed, bloody pieces on the street.
I turned to face the last one, and my sword tips skidded to the ground, scraping across the road as I stared into midnight eyes that had filled with hatred. I watched as he bent to retrieve the blades he’d lost earlier in practice before everything had gone to hell.
“No, Joshua,” I snapped, but he didn’t listen, as if something else was controlling him. My chest ached as I watched him slowly approach me. My gaze swung to the Guild, and the people who watched us in silence. “Don’t make me do this, I beg of you!” I pleaded. Lucian was arguing with Synthia, his hands fisted at his sides while the others watched us, silently taking in our moves, studying us. Nobody was planning on intervening and stopping this from happening. No help was coming to prevent this fight that I would give anything not to be a part of. “Please!”
“Fight me, Lenny,” he chuckled, the sound eerie and causing my hair to rise with the wrongness of it. His blades crashed down, and I brought mine up, but not fast enough to defend the blow that cut through my arm. I screamed as I swung out, sending his blades away from my body. I didn’t want to do this; I’d had to watch his death echo, which to me, was the worst one.
I had watched it for the first two full moons, and then I’d been unable to stomach seeing it again. I’d observed him standing in an open field with a dark shadow; that shadow had explained his deal, explained what would happen to him upon accepting it. I’d stood there, frozen as he’d explained that it was for me, because of me, but Joshua hadn’t blinked, hadn’t hesitated. I’d had no idea it was Hades, or that he was trying to help us, to help me, which now made sense, but the pain of watching it was unbearable. Joshua had died to save me, to be sure I’d come back; he’d gone first. He’d died and become this monster because Hades had found him and explained what would happen once he entered our world again. It was why Joshua had never come home after he’d killed Benjamin. Because he’d lived. He’d survived until my life had been placed on the line. And now I was fighting him, my hero. My world.
“I’ll drop them,” I warned, knowing if it were Joshua in control, he’d yield to me. He didn’t, and I fought the tears that rolled down my cheeks as my eyes burned with anger. “Fuck you! Fuck you to Hell!” I screamed as anger thrummed through me, making my hair rise with the power that exploded from my pores. I brought my arms up and fought with vigor, watching as his blades clattered to the ground as I landed blow after blow against his body. Once he was teetering on his feet, his body a sliced up mess, I expelled the scream that had built in my lungs. “Enough! It’s enough! Please…”
It wasn’t. He reached down, his body a mangled mess as he retrieved the swords and turned around, slowly, his balance as much of a mess as the tattered remains of his torso. Blood oozed from his wounds and yet he continued to come at me. Over and over, he swung his blades, and I easily deflected them with his clumsy movements. Anger rippled red-hot through me, and I knew, I knew it wouldn’t be enough until he lay in pieces with the others. My wings unfurled, and I stared at him, waiting for him to swing once more, and then I lunged, severing my brother in half.
“I can’t do this!” I screamed until I was hoarse, my voice little more than a rasp that escaped my dry throat. I shouted at whoever had forced this fight, forced my hand. I dropped to my knees and waited there, w
aiting for them to come back. To be put back together again, whole. They didn’t, and after hours passed, people on the stairs departed as night fell on the macabre scene. The sun came and went, flies swarmed the bodies as the blood dried and the stench of death lingered in the sun’s heat.
I put them back together, finding the part to the body and placing it close to it. Panic began to swallow me whole as the knowledge of them being really gone started to eat at my mind. Hopelessness began to consumed me, the never-ending dread that I’d slaughtered them all, along with my brother, raged inside of me. I screamed, I shouted, I begged, boy, did I fucking beg them to bring them back to me. I cursed the Gods, and in the next breath, I begged them to just give them back to me whole.
I stood, staring at Lucian as I dropped an arm next to a body. I was covered in dried blood that felt like it would never wash off. It was sticky, coating my flesh and clothing as I inhaled the sharp, nasty scent of decaying corpses. They were bloating, disintegrating around me where I stood, lost without them. I’d done this to them. I’d killed my army and my own brother. Panic began to choke me, and then the music started to play softly.
That song.
My eyes rose to the sunlit sky, feeling the heat of it against my flesh as I stared into the beauty of it. There was no full moon tonight, no phase that should bring about my echo of death. I dropped my eyes to the gore and heard it.
My son’s beautiful wail; his cries that haunted my every wakeful moment. My throat tightened and my hands fisted against my sides. It wasn’t real. I exhaled deeply, lifting my eyes to the stairs, and frowning as I found Lucian watching something behind me.
He started forward as if he was haunted, and then his actions slowed and uncertainty played across his rugged features. Then Nyx was there, appearing beside him as she pushed him back as she shook her head. They argued, and he pushed her away, and I watched as she landed on the ground, lifting her dark eyes up at him before she was rising, moving towards him with a warning in her eyes.
“It’s her fight, not yours or mine. Only she can decide what happens here, Lucian. You cannot choose for her, and neither can I. It’s her pain, her weakness to overcome, and she alone has to choose which she is willing to sacrifice to remain strong, to remain here with you.”
“She already did! This is fucking torture, Nyx. You know it, and I know it. Do you have no fucking heart, woman?” he demanded coldly.
“No, I don’t. I’ve never pretended to have one either. I refuse to be weak,” she hissed. “That loss is holding her back from what she must become. Furies are born of rage, vengeance, and anger. Lena is dying because there’s so much fucking pain that she cannot grow into what she must to survive. She has to find a balance and quickly. Right now the only thing keeping her alive is the pain, but every moment she feeds from it, it takes more and more of her until it will consume her. This isn’t something you can choose for her, or take away from her. One option holds the future, the other is certain death. She knows what she will choose because she can feel it. She deserves so much more than you or what she has been given. To find a woman like her with so much strength is rare these days, but to find one who does as she has, well, you are aware of how rare a breed she is. This place seems to be a beckon for them, though…” She paused, eyeing the women who stood shoulder to shoulder, staring at her through narrowed gazes. “I would enjoy finding my Furies here, would I not?”
“They’re not interested, Nyx. Let it go,” he snarled as he placed his hands at his sides in balled-up fists. I watched them flex as if he was fighting to hold what I knew was behind me. His son, the unborn child we’d created together. I’d thought I was releasing an unborn child, but he hadn’t come out as a fetus. Instead, he’d been fully formed and aware of what I’d done. They’d pulled him fully formed from my womb, and I’d felt it. I’d known it the moment they’d removed him that he was aware.
I turned, staring at the woman who held him covered in a blanket. His little arms stretched, jerking as if he sensed I was near. I wanted to scream at her to hold him tighter, to stop his struggles and fears, but I couldn’t. I walked towards them, my heart filling my throat as I started past the endless body parts that rotted at my feet. I paused as I reached out for him, watching as she lifted my son to me.
Everything inside of me screamed to take him; to hold him one fucking time before I released him. Tears slid down my cheeks, and I wailed; something inside of me broke to pieces, and I screamed in frustration because I knew, I knew I wouldn’t ever touch my son. I would never know the feel of him against my arms, or cradle and soothe him. My outstretched hands turned into fists as I dropped them at my sides. I swayed on my feet, emotions warring with my need to touch him once, but once would kill us both. His cries lessened, and he stilled, and his fist went to his mouth as a tiny noise started. The blanket fell away, and I stared into midnight eyes, as he sucked his tiny fingers as he stared at me.
“I love you.” A sob escaped my throat to bubble up as I shook my head. “I love you so much, but I can’t choose you.” It escaped as a broken sob, and pain lanced through me, shattering what little heart I had left. “I’ll always love you, my little Harbinger. Always and always, until I am no more; until I turn to night, and I’m given to the earth,” I reassured him as he watched me through innocent eyes. I turned away from him, staring at Joshua’s corpse. He still hadn’t risen, nor had the others. My head swung back to where my child had been, finding the spot vacant and empty. He’d had midnight curls of hair, and matching eyes just like his father’s. Endless depths of midnight darkness had watched me. His flesh had held the runes which matched mine, placed there to protect him and mark my sacrifice. Runes to protect him in his next life, to show the world that he would rule it. He would have been beautiful, had he not been cursed to be born as my child.
“Get up!” I demanded as something inside of me slipped into place. I screamed at them, baring my loss of the son I’d lost all over again. Everything inside of me turned to rage, abandoning the pain that had once eaten at me. The buildings around me trembled as my power shook them, threatening to level the entire place if my warriors didn’t heed my call. I screamed again, letting my newly found rage ride through me to reach them. I screamed until my voice cracked like thunder through the sky as I released the last of my anguish and embraced the growing rage. It bubbled up like a shaken can of soda, shooting through me until the ground vibrated and whined against the pressure I released. I dropped to my knees in the middle of the corpses and slammed my hands flat on the ground as I sent my power searching for them. Power rippled around me, and I felt its deadly cold as the day turned to night and thunder snapped and rumbled above us. “Rise!” Lightning flashed across the sky, followed directly by thunder.
“Shit, that’s unfortunate,” Nyx exclaimed as my eyes lifted to hers over the dead that littered the streets. In the next instant, she was beside me, placing a calming hand on my shoulder. “Pull it back, little one. Lucian, she needs to be trained. She’s more powerful than I imagined she would be,” she hissed as her hand tightened against my shoulder. “I suggest you use your normal methods on her. If you choose not to, Styx will be my next choice. You and I both know he’d love her unblemished flesh.”
“Train her how?” he demanded.
“She has to learn to control the rage, or she will level more than a few city blocks. I’ve underestimated her. She is not a Fury, she is the Furies. She is three in one, Lucian. It’s unheard of, but she took all three into her body when I created her. I’d assumed others would take pieces of them from her, but she prevailed and seems to have contained them all. To me, it doesn’t matter if she learns to control them, but to her, it does. If she cannot control them, she will end up killing others, and I’m certain she still cares for the weak mortals she loved. They’re weak, useless, but she cares for them.” She flicked an invisible piece of lint from her dress as she rose to tower above me. “Styx is waiting, sal
ivating for a chance to teach her if you’re unwilling.”
“You’re a fucking sadist,” he snapped.
“You are one too, and I know she enjoyed the pain you inflicted on her. Did you think we wouldn’t watch to see who won this last game? We were always watching you. That little shack didn’t have thick enough walls, and you knew it. You enjoyed us watching you fuck her flesh, claiming her so that we all knew she was marked. There’s also the fact that bringing her back meant I had to sit through every fucking boring and not so boring parts of her life. I had to relive them all, every fucking mundane emotion she’d ever experienced. Do you have any idea how tedious it is to go through them with them unaware that you’re beside them, reliving their life?” she frowned as she eyed me. “It’s why I have not created new Furies in centuries. But then it wasn’t really my choice, either. Choose.”
“I’ll do it,” he growled. “If Lena agrees,” he hissed as his midnight eyes dropped to hold mine with a warning in their seductive depths.
“Lena, it wasn’t a question that takes thought. Styx is a fucking monster, he enjoys taking pretty things apart,” she hissed as she knelt down, staring into my eyes. Her platinum eyes stared into mine, glimpsing the indecision playing in them. Her smile turned dark, her lips pulled back, exposing serrated teeth that looked like lethal blades. “Torture or pleasure, pick your poison. One will only break you, the other will fucking devour you. You will not enjoy Styx’s brand of pleasure; that much I promise you.”
“Lucian,” I uttered through clenched teeth. “I choose Lucian.”
“I thought you would, smart girl. Have fun, and pay attention to what he shows you. I can’t have you focusing on pain if you murder what little of your family members remain. Your army is now yours to lead; the pain is no more standing between you and them. The cries that torture you will cease now, and he will be reborn. Had you chosen him, he would have killed you. He was your death. He is not of this world, nor will he ever be. When he is reborn, this world will tremble with fear. He’s been chosen for a reason. If he wants to, he will find you again when he chooses to. If we survive the war that is coming,” she uttered softly, her eyes gentling as she watched me.
Becoming his Monster Page 12