Flames shoot out in the wake of the chakrams, as they finally catch up to their running targets.
“I bet they wish the arena was bigger right now,” Lilith says around a small laugh.
The first one slams into Pico’s back, and the flames consume him as he screams out in surprise.
“Flames so hot they scorch Pico?” Cain asks, his mouth sounding full of something.
I don’t want to know what.
“That’s new too,” Lamar states quietly.
Caesar screams behind tight lips, too prideful to announce his own pain with the same disgraceful cry his twin released, after the chakram slams into him and his body erupts into flames as well.
The chakrams leave a flame trail behind them as they hurry back to her hands, and Paca effortlessly catches them, as she begins to strut through the sea of roses.
The roses quickly wilt near her feet as she walks through them, rapidly decaying to dead roses, even though they’ve stood up to the heat until now.
A few collective gasps sound from behind us, and Lilith races with Hera to block our view as they lean over the edge.
“What?” I snap, trying to see around them when some of Lucifer’s spell wanes, allowing me to move my head.
“Paca’s decaying roses from Eden. Those roses don’t wilt under any circumstances, and they’ve survived Hell’s heat for centuries, even hellfire,” Lamar tells us in the same awed tone.
“Her fire’s hotter than before?” Cain asks in confusion. “How is that possible?”
My heartbeat thunders in my ears when I finally manage to stand at last, and I hurry to the edge to look down. Jude, Kai, and Gage join me quickly, as we all watch with less apprehension and more desperate intrigue.
The roses continue to wilt, as the twins continue to get pummeled by the chakrams she throws, catches, and throws again.
She does it gracefully, as though it’s all common knowledge.
“Does she remember now?” Lilith asks, leaning forward next to me, her arm brushing mine.
The chakram flies out of Paca’s hand, and it soars straight up, as Wrath’s territorial gaze lands on me.
There’s a shattering sound when it crashes through the invisible barrier, and Lilith squeaks out a sound as it slashes across her arm…that was touching me.
Flames shoot up her arm, and she cries out as her fresh harem hurriedly rush to put out the flames.
“Touch him again, and I’ll remove your head from your shoulders!” Paca threatens as she catches the chakram on its return.
Lilith’s eyes are wide and horrified as she takes a few quick steps away from me, and she nods as though she’s quick to comply. Her arm is singed and smells awful this close.
“It’s really hotter,” Lilith whispers. “Much too hot to even be an unnatural phenomenon. It’s not possible.”
Paca returns to her unrelenting strike on Pico and Caesar, her smile and concentration on her revenge, as she spins and does a few of her own showy moves the way Pride did when she was at their mercy.
“I told them not to take it too far. After all, our dear sister is Wrath,” Manella says around a loud yawn.
Paca catches one of the chakrams behind her back, and she does a side aerial before throwing it again, just in time to catch the other. Her laughter dances on the winds of her hijacked storm that starts shaking the entire stadium harder and harder.
The lightning crashes down on them in stronger and stronger pulses, even as Lucifer once again reseals the hole she tore during her attack on Lilith.
I never felt the heat from the chakram, even though it was right beside me. The fire never even singed the fabric on my clothes, but it burned hell-spawn.
I try to take in the overwhelming information, but it’s hard to take my eyes off Paca while she’s in the zone after the spectacular beat-down she endured earlier.
She starts throwing the chakrams so fast and repeatedly that it’s hard to keep up with until finally—
“Stop the match! You’ll kill them!” Lucifer shouts as the entire stands lean and rattle so hard that more denizens fall over the edges, screaming before they erupt into flames and ash.
Pico whimpers, barely managing to plead, “No more! Please, no more!”
Paca doesn’t let up, even as Lucifer shouts for her to do so once again.
Until Caesar finally screams, “Mercy! Mercy!”
All the fire ceases at once, and Paca’s chakrams disappear from her hands. She makes two guns with her index fingers and thumbs, and blows them.
Smoke actually billows out of both fingers, and she cuts a grin toward him.
“Pride always comes before the fall. I just wanted to see it with my own eyes,” Paca states as the entire place goes eerily silent, allowing her voice to echo around as though the tail has been hollowed out.
Lucifer runs a hand over his face, as Paca laughs and skips in a circle, enjoying watching all their roses decay in her wake.
Pico and Caesar simply roll to their backs, as their charred, almost putrid bodies lie burned to near crisps.
“Someone help them heal,” Lucifer states quietly, almost a ghost of his malevolent self now.
He turns, and in the next second, he disappears from sight.
Lamar eases in beside me, and he clears his throat as though he’s slightly concerned and enamored at the same time.
“Fire so hot she can burn hell-spawn and roses from Eden. Her infamous chakrams that now never miss, no matter the lack of skill. And she’s not even at full power yet,” Lamar states in a hushed tone. “She planned on defeating Jahl. She redesigned herself, and somehow tied it all into a death, as though she genuinely planned it step by step.”
Jude leans over the railing, his entire body strung so tight it looks as though he’d break under any amount of pressure right now.
“I made Pride fall! And I made Greed beg for ‘no more.’ Get it?! You’re supposed to be cheering for me!” she shouts at us.
The silent stadium suddenly erupts into applause and rancorous cheer, as though she was commanding them instead of us.
Paca puts her hands on her hips as she eyes the silent and stoic four of us. She starts tapping her foot impatiently, while we all deny her the celebration she demands.
She’ll take it as permission to do this shit again.
“She really needs to stop thinking she’s funny,” Jude bites out.
Pride seems to wheeze on the ground, though the crowd is too loud for me to be sure, as Greed stays presumably silent and visibly limp.
“What?” Paca shouts over the roar of the crowd as she nears them, crushing the last of the roses under her foot.
I’m not sure what Caesar says, but she smiles.
“We’re hell-spawn. You can’t take things too seriously. Learn to laugh it off,” she chirps as she pats his crisp shoulder.
Ashes fall of it, and his arm severs with just that touch.
Her eyes widen, and she grimaces. “Oops. Hope that damage isn’t permanent. Otherwise, you’re going to have a hard time keeping your dick attached when someone tries to suck it,” she adds with zero tact or sympathy.
With one hard kick-off, she leaps into the air…and drops back down on her feet.
“I wanted to see if I could fly!” she shouts up to us, making her voice carry over the crowd. “I can’t!”
Cursing, Jude pushes away from the railing, and he stalks off, siphoning away in the next instant.
Kai does the same.
Gage and I stare down at her for a moment, and he shakes his head before he siphons out.
My eyes hold hers until she blinks the volcanic stare away. When her eyes return to normal, they’re no longer the same color. Now they’re the same gold ours once turned on occasion when we were with her.
She smiles up at me as though she’s on a high from the battle rush.
I siphon out.
I need to cool the fuck down before I speak to her. Otherwise, we’re going to be forced to endure th
is again.
It wasn’t punishment after all.
It was just Paca keeping fucking secrets and making decisions on her own. Her screwed up head thinks she’s matching us step for step, because she’s fucking obtuse as hell.
I can’t do this ever again.
She’s found our only weakness. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to realize that weakness is her.
Chapter 11
PACA
Everyone is avoiding me.
For hours now, I’ve been able to track down…no one.
Lucifer is sulking behind a bolted door with a “Keep Out” sign, refusing to speak to anyone. That doesn’t particularly bother me.
What does bother me is the fact I still can’t go phantom, because that son of a bitch locked my form. I had to walk my ass all the way from the tail to the heart, and it was a long, lonely freaking hike.
Even the monsters avoided me today. Not that it bothered me. I’m a little tired after delivering that final ass-whooping.
My siblings are all missing as though I’ll turn them into cinders. That doesn’t particularly bother me either.
The guards seem to scramble away from me in more fear than they showed just this morning. That also doesn’t bother me.
The guys are missing, and there’s no note telling me where they might have gone. Aside from Hell’s Black Heart, which I have no idea how to enter, I don’t know where they could have gone.
This bothers me. I expected champagne, roses, and gifts for my amazing feats of the day, damn it.
I couldn’t even get a little applause.
They’re such raging assholes sometimes.
Lamar is also missing, and that surprisingly bothers me as well. I expected him to come sing me praises for my glorious showdown.
I wonder if they got Caesar’s arm sorted out.
That was a total accident, and it’s his fault for not crying for mercy sooner. Pride must be a bitch of a sin to embody. Same for Pico with his greed.
I still need to give my huge unveiling to the guys and explain how much about myself I’ve figured out.
I glance at the time, seeing it’s now been several hours. Between the battle and the cumbersome, exhausting hike through Hell, I’m exhausted.
After stripping down to my underwear, I flop onto my enormous bed and curl up in the soft covers.
The guys are definitely pissed.
They’d be here otherwise. I expected some ire, but not total avoidance.
Sighing, I toss and turn forever, unable to go to sleep for fear of what nightmares may stalk me without one of them next to me. When I was passed out, I ended up blasting the room a few times, and Lamar sort of almost died after being commanded by them to look after me.
Looking over at my pretty crown, I tell it, “I’m not sure what the guys were thinking leaving me here on my own to sleep off the orgasm coma. They’re so thoughtless toward me, yet so thoughtful with each other.”
The crown stares at me with some mild disapproval. I swear. It’s legit.
“I’m serious,” I tell it, moving closer. “They’re keeping secrets, constantly leaving me behind, while they wander around the Black Heart from their nightmares, having those infuriating silent conversations with their eyes, and still acting as though they’re the unit, and I’m just the girlfriend.”
Clearly my crown is stubborn and needs more convincing. I have no choice but to oblige.
“Then they left me after my huge victory, while my phantom was stunted, and I had to walk all the way back here. Do you know how confusing Hell is? Do you have any idea how many times I got lost? No one stuck around long enough to give me directions. Even when I got to the belly, the blind tribe actually ran from me. The. Blind. Tribe. Seriously, though. This day was supposed to be—”
“Tell me you’re not talking to your crown,” comes Ezekiel’s voice, causing me to squeak and startle as I whirl my head around.
All four of them are giving me a disbelieving, somewhat concerned look.
“You weren’t supposed see that,” I deadpan before swallowing thickly, sitting up as I try to regain my cool points.
Little hard to do after being caught arguing with a crown.
Jude sips from a jar, eyes intently trained on me. Kai has his hands resting on his head, looking freshly showered. In fact, they all look freshly showered.
“What secrets do you think we’re keeping?” Gage asks me, narrowing his eyes as he examines the blade on his sword, as though this conversation is tedious.
He’s supposed to love me.
I’m starting to think love is even more complicated than it was in Ghost.
“For starters, there’s the day Jude went missing, Ezekiel disappeared—”
“I dove in a tar pit to fish out your inanimate companion there,” Ezekiel states, arching an eyebrow as he gestures toward my crown. “Tell me you didn’t put us through that just because you didn’t know that’s where I went.”
I bristle in my bed.
“You also all started acting weird after Gage and I shared the ‘I love you’ moment,” I state in my defense, staring directly at Ezekiel. “You more especially, and you got quiet for a while.”
If looks could exercise one’s true amount of frustration, his look would definitely convey that with an excellent amount of clarity.
“Because I didn’t know what was wrong with me, until we had our moment,” he states with a notable amount of annoyance. “Fuck’s sake, girl, this better not be your reasoning.”
My mouth opens and closes a few time as I blink.
“I’ve simply been worried about if we’re destroying the world or fucking saving it,” Jude states evenly, eyes narrowing. “As we all have. Some of us take shit seriously without getting a nosebleed.”
How did this get turned around on me?
“We don’t take you into Hell’s Black Heart because it’s a place of nightmares, and if you see it, with how certifiably protective you are of us, you may blow Hell to bits just imagining us in that place a little more helpless than we are now,” Gage tells me, still not looking at me. “We’ve learned to find the twisted sense of humor in the place, though it’s only because we’re far more resilient than we apparently were before we became the Horsemen. The prisoners there find nothing humorous about it, and I can’t say I blame them.”
Feeling really stupid, I hold up a finger, reminding them, “I leveled up.”
No one seems overly thrilled with that.
My bubble deflates a bit.
“You could have told us your plan,” Jude drawls, returning his attention to the jar in his hand as he staggers a little.
He catches himself on the edge of the dresser, blinking a few times.
“Is he drunk?” I ask, finding the concept oddly appealing.
Death drunk? Who wouldn’t find that appealing…and amusing.
He staggers again, and when he attempts to sit in a chair, he misses it and his ass slams onto the floor instead. I don’t think he notices he just fell. It seems he thinks he did that on purpose, because he doesn’t even blink before taking another sip.
“You went off to get drunk without me?” I ask on a gasp, staring over at them. “When you knew I wanted to celebrate?! Why? Just why do you still act like assholes?”
They all level me with a glare.
“Someone strangle her for me. I’m gonna sit here a minute,” Jude says, as he sighs harshly, drops back, and points to where he’s sitting.
“For weeks now, we’ve endured your one-sided fights with Rafael. That was bad enough,” Kai says as he pushes off from the dresser. “Did you say your phantom form is inactive?”
Rolling my eyes, I wave him off. “I told you I need to learn to take a beating. Jahl isn’t going down with just one hit. He’s going to get plenty of hits in of his own. And yes, Lucifer is the Devil, after all. And he’s sulking because I kicked ass and took names, while he betted on me to fail. Being robbed of the only form I can use to siphon is appa
rently my punishment.”
Kai nods, drawing closer as he starts undoing his belt. My eyebrow lifts.
Am I finally going to get to celebrate?
“Are we about to do a group thing? Because that would be great,” I state with a growing smile that starts to hurt.
“The torture of enduring those fights with Rafael was mild in comparison to what we suffered through today,” Ezekiel tells me as he pulls his shirt off and starts moving toward me as well.
We’re totally going to do a group thing. I’m certain of it when I see Gage helping Jude stand.
“Please punish me,” I say with my most wicked grin as I try to strike a subtly sexy pose.
I mean, I don’t want to look like I’m trying to hard or anything. That never gets me anywhere with these four.
My underwear doesn’t exactly cover my ass or anything, so it’s on display, and a mild shudder rakes over me as Ezekiel leans over and actually nips a cheek.
Leaning up, I wrap one arm around his neck, and he comes willingly as our lips fuse together.
“We’re going to do an experiment,” he murmurs across my lips as someone wrenches my arms over my head.
“What?” I ask, half dazed as someone else jerks my legs open, and both of my ankles get bound, as my wrists also get tied up.
Stretched on the bed, a sense of excitement courses through me. I can’t go phantom. I’m at their mercy right now. It’s almost the best present they could reward me with.
Ezekiel teases my lips with his as he starts kissing his way down my neck.
“W-what experiment?” I ask as my eyes flutter shut so I can better absorb and appreciate all the sensations that are sure to come.
The underwear is ripped off me, and a silky material brushes over my face as someone ties the soft fabric around my eyes.
Lips come from a different angle as someone kisses up my leg, and I swallow down the wad of excited nerves, as I squirm under their gentle touches, all of them putting their hands on me at once. Two sets of lips, four sets of hands, and something tellingly blunt pressing against my thigh, as someone settles between my legs.
My legs widen to accommodate the unknown horseman, as soft hair teases my inner thigh, and a mouth fastens on.
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