“War’s over, Tibs,” Jax tilts his head to the side. “We’re all just men now.”
The smile that spreads across the reaper’s face is cool, amused even. He drags in a heavy breath and exhales it on a heavier sigh. “Well, General, that’s where you’re wrong. The war’s not over. It’s just beginning.” He turns to his men. “Take them.”
Gunfire explodes around me, and I duck instinctively, covering my head with my hands. Xaine’s arm wraps around my shoulders, shoving me further down into the huddled circle of friendly protection. I can hear footsteps hitting the ground, the sound of pistols firing, of UV charges humming. The world dissolves into chaos, and here we stand, right at the epicenter.
A glance over my shoulder shows me a veritable legion of dark shadows leaping from the balconies as if it’s nothing. Their feet hit the floor, smashing through glass and wood and concrete, leaving spiderwebs of destruction beneath the soles of their shoes. They advance, silent and stoic, their faces half-covered by fabric and shadow. We’re surrounded, outnumbered, but the hard knot of Asher’s jaw tells me that he hasn’t yet given up. Jess aims and fires over and over again, her expression blank, so different than the woman I knew. Tamsyn throws herself into the fray without fear. Unarmed, she grabs the nearest man by the shirt, slams him into the wall, and trails a single finger down the side of his face.
“Hey there, handsome.” It sounds like a seduction, except a dark line of ash follows in the wake of her touch. Like Benicio’s attack at the warehouse, a trail of darkness spreads across the vampire’s face and down his neck. A second after Tamsyn lets go of his collar, he’s reduced to a pile of dust swirling around her ankles. A little more rapid-fire, she dispatches two more Legacy minions by clapping her hands against their wrist and neck, respectively.
Jax catches her by the back of her shirt and slings her at the nearest door. “Stop, before you burn yourself out. We need to get Lore out of here.”
Because it’s about me. Mortal me. Wounded me. Insignificant me. And yet, somehow the reason for all of this.
“Go,” Asher orders us. “We’ve got this.”
Jess is already moving forward, looking like some Lara Croft body double as she shoots a just-landed vampire right in the face. He convulses once and then explodes in a shower of ash that she steps through in order to keep shooting.
Before the dust has even settled, Xaine’s got me by the wrist and we’re headed out a side door. “Stick close to me, all right? Bad shit happens when we get separated.”
Jax slams the auditorium door shut behind us, then kicks the knob so hard with his combat boot that the locking mechanisms activate from the outside. Sword still firmly in hand, he turns to us, his eyes at once terrifying and awe-inspiring.
This is what heavenly wrath looks like, and woe betide any vampire that gets between us and our escape.
Like the ones standing behind us when we turn around.
“Xaine!” I shriek, trying to warn him.
A millisecond later, a bullet directly impacts his chest, exploding with a tiny burst of concentrated sunshine. Xaine goes down, taking me with him to the floor. I scream again, curling around him and waiting for the inevitable, but he only groans and pulls me nearer to the wall, letting Jax and Tamsyn lead the charge. Our champions disappear down the darkened hallway, Jax cutting through bodies with his sword, corpses falling to pieces with heavy thuds right before it all goes to dirt.
“What the hell, Capello?” My hand goes straight to the hole in his shirt as he drags me to my feet. There’s some kind of reinforced plating under the fabric, the flattened slug embedded over his heart.
“You thought I put clothes on for formality’s sake?” He sounds winded, if that’s possible, the consonants clipped because I do believe he just got the crap scared out of him, figuratively if not literally.
Before either of us can say anything else, someone comes up fast behind us. Any hope I have of it being Asher or Jess is obliterated when a heavy hand clamps down over my mouth and its match does the same to Xaine. We’re dragged backward into the oddest group hug ever, sin-eater juice already snaking through my body and turning my brain to mush.
“If it isn’t the bride and groom,” Benicio hisses in my ear.
I want to scream, but everything inside me is molten and shifting. Next to me, Xaine’s arms jerk once, twice, then his body starts going lax. He’s getting the same treatment, no doubt.
“Oh, man, your husband is ten kinds of fucked up, Lo.” The words drip with malice and glee. Benny’s arms tighten down on us, stronger than ever as he feeds off Xaine’s worst memories, four centuries’ worth of sins. “Did he tell you about the redhead?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, nudging me with his nose and licking my cheek.
“Those girls are still tucked away inside him. The one he almost killed. The one he did kill. And then there’s you.” He lowers his voice a notch, mouth brushing over my ear. “I owe you some payback for letting him take me apart in that alley. So instead of breakin’ a sweat, I’m gonna let your sweetheart do the hunting for me. I’m gonna pump him so full of fuck-you juice that he can’t see or hear or feel anything but that pretty little beating heart of yours. It’ll be like watching Wild Kingdom, him chasing you to ground and ripping your chest open. Don’t know if I can stick around long enough for him to snap out if it, but I wish I could be there when he wakes up enough to realize what he’s done.”
Next to me, Xaine’s hands curl over, fingernails like claws. A low, rumbling growl vibrates through his chest and into me. Eyes wide, I start to struggle, kicking and flailing, scraping my own nails over Benicio’s flesh, trying in vain to peel his fingers away from my mouth. I need to run, to scream, to reach out and touch Xaine. Everything’s jumbled up inside my head, a welter of sex and memories. Like Benicio spun me around in circles until I’m dizzy, the whole world spins away into a whirlwind of sound, smell, and fear.
He lets me loose without warning, and I’m struggling so hard that I fall. Pain shoots through my knees, and it takes a second to remember what I’m doing, where I’m going. The next few moments are a blind grab at anything that feels real.
Which is nothing. Not one fucking thing.
Another growl. I peer over my shoulder to the place where Benicio’s got Xaine held back, one set of arms threaded through the other. And the man who’d slay the world to keep me safe suddenly looks as if he’d like nothing better than to tear me apart.
“Better start running, Lo,” Benicio taunts, “I’m getting to the really meaty stuff now. The full-feed, wanna suck you dry kinda stuff. They all get it, you know. The urge. Not gonna be able to hold him back for long…”
I lurch forward, struggling to keep my feet under me, stumbling heavily against the wall as Benicio’s sin-eater juice screams its way through my bloodstream. My eyes won’t focus on anything. There’s nothing ahead but an endless pit of black. I have no choice, so I start walking, then running, keeping my hands against the wall. My mouth forms words, but nothing comes out except small, hoarse pleas.
“Jax… help. Xaine…”
But Jax and Tamsyn are up to their eyeballs in fangs. Too far to hear me. Too far to reach Benicio before turns Xaine loose. Too far to stop this from happening.
Run, Lore. One foot in front of the other.
I have no idea where I’m going, and now Xaine’s coming up behind me, bouncing off the walls because he’s drugged within an inch of his undead life. There’s no sound except the uneven cadence of my feet against the floor, my ragged breath in my ears, Xaine’s snarls getting closer—
One impossibly strong hand finds my waist and tightens down even as the other reaches up to grab a fistful of my hair. Using both our momentum, he shoves me forward, straight into the wall. All the breath leaves my lungs in a panicked rush, and I can’t spare anything to scream for help. Then Xaine jerks me back and flings me into the wall opposite, like a spoiled kid throwing a toy. My back hits the cold cinderblock, and I bri
ng my arms up to protect my neck. His body closes in around mine. I can’t see anything, but I can feel the power of him, my body so hypersensitive that it’s like he’s already touching me. A second later, rough hands grasp my forearms, prying them apart and yanking downward until my shoulder gives a sickening little pop. We’re chest-to-chest, my world reduced to the way he breathes heavily into the dark.
“Xaine, it’s me.” I try, because I have to try. “Please don’t—”
He tears the plea from my lips by sinking his fangs so deep into my shoulder that I feel them hit bone. The pain radiates across every nerve, up into my brain and down my spine so that my legs buckle. He pulls back and strikes again, like a snake. I can feel the blood flowing across my skin before he rubs his face through the sticky-wet trails. One hand lets go of my arm, but only so it can slide up and clamp down on my breast.
There’s a low whistle, like someone taking a stroll without a care in the world. Benicio’s followed us around the corner and into the hallway. “I don’t normally like to watch. More of a participant, really. But this shit I could sell tickets for.”
He’s not going to save me; he’s going to watch as Xaine rips me apart, baptizing himself in my blood.
“Secondhand memories,” I eke out through the haze of pain. “You’re only getting it hand-me-down.”
“Wrong. I’m getting his version of it.” Benicio’s smile is a flicker of white in the darkness. “You have no idea how sweet this is gonna taste when I pull it out of him. Your death. Another soul on his conscience. And then? I’ll put it right back in to fester so I can feed on it again and again. Over and over. I’m going to fuck his mind with your memory until he’s so torn apart by it that he takes a walk in the sunshine just to get away.”
Xaine’s mouth moves to the other side of my neck, seeking out a clean expanse of skin to paint red. He laces his fingers through my left hand, dragging me against him until something gives him pause. We’re so far into this nightmare that I barely notice it, the way he’s touching that ridiculous huge diamond he slid on my finger in Vegas and again in the recovery room at CasDec. His mouth slides up, slicked over with my blood, but his forehead meets mine, and I feel the flutter of his eyelashes against my skin.
Please, please, please, please…
“Bleeding blue and colored red, you’re every thought inside my head.” The words come out thready, wavering with terror. I try to sing them, but only manage a hoarse whisper. “Pleasure plays a ruthless game, all you do is speak my name, and I…”
There’s a pause, a single, indrawn breath before he mutters, “Run to you.”
My heart swells. Mired in madness, he’s still in there somewhere, so I squeeze his hand, pressing the pink stone into his palm. “Yes, Xaine.” My fingers grope for his wrist, searching out my words scrawled on his flesh. “Please remember. I really need you to remember.”
He shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear it. “You’re the dream.”
It’s slurred, but he knows me. The hope that flickers into existence within me is almost as cruel as the sound of silver wind chimes echoing in the hallway.
“What the hell?” Tiberius blurts out. “You again.”
“Hey, fuck you, Jingle Bells. She owes me.” Benicio’s words are laced with harsh venom. “And I owe him.”
Xaine turns slowly, eyes still glinting feral in the half-light, face dripping with my blood. With one last convulsive squeeze of my hand, he launches himself at the sin-eater, ramming his head and shoulders into Benicio’s midsection with so much force that the two of them barrel backward into the hallway. Benicio ends up flat on his back, arms pinned down by the vampire kneeling atop him. Xaine plows a fist into his face, and even from here, I can see cast-off spattering the white walls.
Tiberius is already on the move, his huge strides eating up the space that separates them, hand reaching out to grasp the gun tucked into the waistband of Xaine’s pants. Panic surges through my gut and into my chest where it erupts in a sharply yelled, “No!”
I throw myself at the reaper, plowing into him with my good shoulder and putting all my weight behind it. It catches him enough by surprise that he takes one staggering step to the left. The second he regains his balance, he shakes me off, a sadistic smile slowly spreading across his face.
“Oh, bad move, love.” He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a knife, no doubt the very same one he used on me in Vegas. “I don’t care what your insides are made of, your outsides are still nice and squishy.”
My teeth click together with each shuffling step that I take backwards. I don’t get far; within seconds, my back is once again pressed to the wall. My right arm is useless, wrenched from the socket and dangling limply. I hold it with my other hand, fingers clamped around my aching wrist. Blood runs from the deep bites on my neck, and reality is slowly slipping away again.
“Leave us alone,” I hear myself say. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
“It’s not what you’ve done to me, it’s what you can do for me.” His hand flashes out, closing around my throat. Tiberius’s palm grows sticky with the hot press of liquid beneath his iron grip, but it doesn’t seem to faze him. “The New Order is coming, and the world will never be the same.”
His fingers clamp down until I can’t suck in a single breath. I make weak choking noises, trying to speak. I let my bad arm dangle so that I can pull at his hand, digging my nails in until they break, leaving little gouges across his skin that close over before they even have a chance to bleed.
“Give over, love,” Tiberius says, calm and cold, but with a curious spark of sympathy. “Trust me when I say you’re better off.”
The blood rushes to my face and gathers in my cheeks. They feel swollen, and I’m sure my skin is purpled with the lack of oxygen. My lungs burn, and my eyes shift, one last glance over Tiberius’s shoulder to where Xaine kneels, pinning Benicio’s arms, fists plowing into flesh over and over until there’s nothing left but a meat-grinder sort of pulp. Xaine rocks back on his heels, turning toward me.
Except it’s too late. I feel the pulling, the same as I described it to Jax, like Tiberius is yanking me out. Separating soul from flesh, wheat from the chaff.
“You’re weak, so very weak.” The words are hypnotic. I struggle against them, but as consciousness spirals away, I start to understand… and accept… the hopelessness of everything. “Just a tiny human, and so tired.”
I am tired.
Exhausted, with blood running down my neck and soaking into my shirt, pain overwhelming everything until there’s nothing left but the need to sleep, to rest, to be at rest. Then… then I hear Jax’s hoarse shout. He skids around the corner, and it’s that flashing aura of blue that catches my fading consciousness.
When Pandora’s box flew open and all the evil spilled out, you were a tiny piece of the hope that was left at the bottom.
I am not mortal. Not entirely. My outsides might be nice and squishy, but my insides are made of sterner stuff. Closing my eyes, I focus all my waning energy on that point where the reaper’s skin touches mine. I stop grappling with his hands, stop fighting against my fate. Jax’s words play over and over inside my head:
A soul in judgment. It takes both coins to cross the river.
Charon, keeper of the Styx, ferryman of the underworld. Two coins on the eyes of the dead to pay for passage to the far shore. Two sides to each Scale: a soul’s weight, a soul’s worth, and mine but half-judged.
Two sides to every story.
“What the bloody fuck,” Tiberius mutters, the silver chains that link his nose to his ears jingling in that too-familiar way. “Give it up. You can’t fight it forever, love.”
Except I can. I can fight it forever, staring into his eyes and unable to breathe but somehow too stubborn to give up or give in. If I wait, Jax will come. Xaine will come. I have faith that my guardians won’t desert me. One more minute, one more second, one more—
Something slams into my captor so hard that T
iberius falls sideways. The hand at my throat doesn’t immediately relinquish its hold, dragging me down to the floor and throwing me into the fray for one panicked moment. When tense fingers finally let go, I push backwards, crab-walking on one good hand until my shoulders hit cement. Slumping in the corner, I gasp for breath as my heart struggles to shove blood through my veins. My fingertips touch the puncture wounds at my shoulder, adding pressure, sending out sharp darts of pain that keep me from sliding into blissful nothingness.
“I told you not to call her that,” Xaine snarls out, drawing back his fist. As his arm reaches its apex, a diabolical curl turns up the edges of his bloodied lips. Slowly, so slowly, he wraps a hand around the reaper’s throat, squeezing tight and holding him in place. Then he tangles two digits in the chains connecting that hoop through Tiberius’s septum to the ones in his ears. Xaine’s fist tightens down, his bicep barely straining when he jerks the decorative contraption out of the reaper’s face, rending skin and cartilage. Tiberius screams as Xaine hurls the whole thing aside. Metal charms clang against the far wall, falling in a heap upon the floor and finally going silent.
“I might not be able to kill you, but you sure as shit aren’t impervious to pain.” The words are punctuated by a follow-up shriek when Xaine clamps fingers like vices down on the bloody, bleeding mass that used to be the reaper’s nose. “I think I’m going to wriggle these straight into your brain and scramble you like a fucking egg.”
“Down, Fido.” Tamsyn’s breathless command sounds faint to my own ears, and Xaine doesn’t get his head turned in time to see her coming at him. By then, she’s got her hand pressed against the back of his neck. “Jesus Christ, Xaine, Benny topped you off like a gas tank, didn’t he? Gotta siphon some of this out before… ew… before you do anything else.” She wrinkles her nose at the mess of Tiberius’s face. “Remind me never to piss you off, Capello.”
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