“You bitch! It was in my mouth!” I threw up what little food I’d eaten. Raw pieces of creatures and dick splattered the ground. “Oh, gods, that was so gross! You nasty bitch! You get back out here and clean us up! You made me eat a dick!” I gagged again.
“Next time, I’ll eat more dicks if you don’t get one into my vagina!” she chirped in a singsong voice. “He’s right there… in case you hadn’t noticed. Alpha dick, Aria. Our alpha dick, or more limp dicks get added to the menu.”
“He’s not our anything. He’s only a dick!” I continued to gag, moving toward the witch with large white eyes, wiping my face on her dress, only to barf all over it. “I’m so sorry, but I think that was some of your friends.” I offered, shrugging before I threw up again.
Laughter sounded from the other direction, and I turned, finding Lore bent at the waist, slapping his leg as he laughed uncontrollably.
Greer held up a white cloth, waving it in the air, just out of reach of the barrier. I perked up seeing Greer, but white light rushed at me as Knox howled a warning too late.
Pain shot through me, and I groaned, touching my hands and feet on the ground as the remaining witches attacked in a well-planned magical assault. My ears rang as my heartbeat slowed. I stopped breathing, conserving strength until the assault stopped. They began to cheer, and I smiled coldly, standing as the light dissipated to reveal my unscathed form.
“Mother!” one witch shouted, and I watched as she rushed toward her mom, who turned, staring at me and the mark of Hecate. It covered my forehead, lighting my face with the magic of my bloodline in a silverish glow that caused my hair to float while glowing silverish-blue.
“My turn,” I laughed coldly, holding up my hands as the witches began to burn from the invisible flames consuming their flesh, wafting more ashes and embers into the night. The head witch howled, rushing toward her daughter, who was becoming ashes along with the others. “You were judged and found guilty. Your magic will return to the Nine Realms, your souls forever forfeited to the Void of Nothingness. Blessed be, bitches.”
My fist closed, and embers shot into the night like fireworks. The witch who allowed monsters to rape and breed innocent women like animals, fired white orbs of magic at me in her grief. Each one slammed into me, but I effortlessly absorbed them and stored the magic while slowly walking toward her, bathed in blood and glowing glyphs of magic covering my arms, belly, and legs.
“Don’t make this harder than necessary. I have other castles to visit this week, and you’re boring me. Come,” I smiled, lifting my hand, dragging her to the altar that rose from the dirt, pushing corpses off to the side onto the ground while candles appeared on the altar, leaping to life.
My other hand rose, and the corpses on the field became nothing more than dust. I was eco-friendly, if nothing else. My army of the dead stood silently, their heads lowered. I clucked my tongue three times, and they dissolved into embers drifting through the air, returning to their corporal forms, hidden behind the keep.
I’d learned a lot about myself since being on my own for months in a strange land. Like the ability to call the dead, and that my magic wasn’t just more potent here, it was intensely amplified until it scared me. I’d learned that when evil was present, I needed to remove it, cleaning the land of its presence. It wasn’t just something I had said I would do. I had to do it as if compelled by something more profound than I could understand.
The protection barrier around the altar began to glow, exposing the witch’s circle the moment I stepped through it. I slammed the witch onto the altar, standing above her crying form as the candles flared, sending flames shooting into the air around us. When I touched her, she went limp, paralyzed.
My eyes lifted to Knox, who studied me silently, his anger palpable. I raised my hand and smiled as the dagger from his sheath landed in my hand. Before he could respond, I sliced through my palm, using the blood to paint the mark of Hecate on the witch’s forehead.
“Thank you for your sacrifice,” I whispered, slicing through her wrists before hanging them over the edge to feed the protective barrier.
I silently observed her blood pooling over the edges of the altar to fill in the circle surrounding us, touching the crystals as they hummed with magic.
“May the goddess forgive you from your trespass, witch. I sure in the hell won’t!” I stated in a singsong voice.
Stepping away from the altar, I walked toward Knox, who watched every single move I made. His eyes slid down my bloody mouth, to the dress covered in crimson, reeking of copper. My nipples pebbled beneath it, hard from both arousal and the wetness of the fabric.
“Did you miss me?”
“Drop the barrier, Little Monster. Let me in,” he ordered.
“I don’t think so,” I whispered. My hands went flat against the barrier, allowing myself a moment to admire him. “Are you ready to see what real magic looks like?” I laughed, tilting my head as Knox lifted his hands, slamming them against mine on the other side of the barrier. I inhaled his scent, running my fingers over his before closing my eyes.
“Enough fucking playing, woman,” he hissed, and his eyes turned black, swimming with glowing sparks of heat. “If you are a good girl and do as you’re told, I’ll only hurt you a little. Make me fucking wait out your magic, and you won’t like me.”
“Too late, I already don’t like you,” I grunted with a smile playing on my lips. Slowly turning my back toward the barrier, I rested against it. The blood continued to pour from the witch’s body, and my smile faltered as a pang of regret filled me. “I do like your cock, though. Such a waste that it’s attached to you, and not someone more… alpha,” I taunted, knowing it would piss him off.
“Oh, Sweet Girl,” he laughed darkly, as I turned to face him. Power sizzled against my flesh, and his scent hit me without warning as he rattled loudly. “I am the biggest fucking alpha in all the realms, and you’re mine.”
I swallowed against the multitude of sensations his rattling created. Sweat pooled between my breasts, and my hand lifted, rubbing my fingers over my throat as his eyes locked onto the motion. Naked desire burned in his knowing gaze. I moaned, hating that my body heated for him from the noises he made.
“I’m not yours.”
“Tell me this,” he urged softly. “How much does it hurt you when I rattle? Right now, your pupils have enlarged, and your spine has arched for me. Your nipples have hardened, and those pretty rosebuds need sucking to ease their throbbing, don’t they? I’ve smelled your arousal beckoning me to soothe your body’s needs. Everything inside you, including your creature, has told you to come to me. Hasn’t it? Hell, even you want me, and that hasn’t changed because you hate it. You’re mine. The way you respond to me, and me alone? That’s called ownership. All I have to do is wait you out, Aria.”
“You suck! You know that, right?” I groaned, peering up at him, noting how his eyes sparkled and danced with silent victory. “You claimed ownership. Why? To use me, to fuck me whenever you want? I’m not a plaything, Knox. I’m unlike anything this world has ever seen, and now I know that too. You’re not the only dick in the Nine Realms. My body may want you, hell, my creature wants you. I don’t. I control who I fuck, and that won’t be you.”
“Keep telling yourself that. Hell, you may eventually believe it too, Little Witch. Now, bring down the barrier because the longer I am forced to wait, the longer I intend to hear you scream while I wreck that pretty pink flower of yours.”
“That’s an incentive not to bring down the barrier,” I snorted, crossing my arms over my chest as the witch started crying and whimpering behind me. “Are you ready to watch me rock and rattle the Nine Realms? I’m about to show you what a real witch can do. I’m about to rattle you, Knox. Pay attention. You may learn something.”
“You aren’t strong enough yet, Little Girl.”
Power erupted into the courtyard as I smiled at Knox. I lifted my hand, catching my bag in the air. Slowly, the dress I wore bega
n unraveling, the scraps of fabric decomposing as they dropped outside the circle and onto the ground.
Once I was naked, I turned, allowing Knox’s fierce gaze to slide down my bare hip, hearing an angry growl as I stood with my back toward him.
I turned a little more, letting him get a good look at my very erect nipples. I brought my finger to my lips as the witch began screaming, the power of the Nine Realms coursing through her, taking back what no longer belonged to her.
I laughed at the sound of her pleas and screams that mirrored the women I’d saved from her. I should have felt like a monster, but in the months since coming here, I had learned to embrace that I was the monster righting the wrongs of the race, who was supposed to uphold the laws, not abuse them.
Knox rattled, and my spine arched for him. I let my scent linger in the air between us, worrying my lip as I peered over my shoulder at him.
We both knew he was right, and sooner or later I’d have to either go to him or club him over the head and take what I needed. I was leaning on option number two, with him tied to a bed and me riding him whenever the itch arose. It was a very tempting thought, one neither of us would mind in the end.
Chapter Sixteen
I washed the blood from my hair and body before pulling a sheer dress over my head and tying a belt around my waist. Frowning, I winced at the idea of what was to come. Each witch charged with holding land had slivers of power within their bodies removed, returning the magic to the earth.
Tediously, I sliced the witch’s arm open, retrieving the fragments of the crystal from her flesh. Her legs, hands, arms, and forehead bled freely as she cried, pleading for her life.
I’d have felt bad for her if she hadn’t been a coldhearted, murderous bitch. It seemed to be a common theme for those who ruled to be vile, heartless creatures. Knox was guilty of it too. I could hear him rattling low, and it was soothing even though it shouldn’t have been.
Setting the crystal shards into the cauldron, I leaned over the altar, rolling my head on my shoulders as I stretched. I’d gotten little to no sleep lately, with Knox intensifying the hunt when he wasn’t out burning down villages and shit. Ever since the silver-haired men started appearing, he’d gotten more brazen, amplifying the search to capture me.
Moving back from the witch on the altar, I flicked my finger, watching as the upside-down cross rose from the earth, and her body floated to it with a wave of my hand.
Sidling closer to the cauldron, I peered over the rim, watching the crystals’ slivers as they formed into one shard again. I reached into the boiling water, withdrawing a crystal skull that I cradled in my palm, watching the rainbow hues that danced within it.
Turning toward Knox, I paused, finding his mouth close to his witch’s ear, whispering against it. Anger and jealousy rushed through me, causing his blue eyes to slide toward me as they narrowed on the skull.
I closed my fist around it, glaring at him as he pulled her closer against his body. The skull vanished in my palm. I flattened my lips, watching her hands sliding up his chest that was now bare and free of his heavy armor. On her wrist was the exact symbol that adorned the chest plate of his armor. His personal insignia branded onto the inside of her wrist, marking her as one of his witches.
Bastard.
Exhaling the fury, I closed my eyes as the cross vanished, and the witch slammed against the ground. Dismissing Knox and his weak-willed witch, I crept toward the witch in my circle, crawling through the dirt as she tried to escape. Her sobs made my stomach tighten with unease, knowing that I’d murder outside the heat of battle. It sat ill within me.
The moment she crossed the circle’s barrier, her body began the slow process of aging and decomposing. Her skin turned leathery, darkening until it stretched wrongly over the bones beneath it.
The stench of death clung to her body, pronouncing her rotten insides had turned putrid. She rolled onto her back, howling as she revealed sunken eye sockets and a rotten tongue liquefying. Lips pulled back as the skin grew taut, and her lungs released the last sigh before her body caught fire.
As I watched, she turned to ashes picked up by the wind and blown through the air, returning her to the land. When we died, our ashes turned into magic particles that returned to our homeland. A newly born witch would inherit her powers if she were born lacking, which added hope to our race.
“Aria,” Knox’s deep, husky voice disturbed the peace, causing irritation to add to my growing emotional overload. “You need to stop and come to me. Now,” he demanded.
“Fuck off,” I hissed, fighting the inner turmoil.
“Jealous, Little Monster?”
I snorted, rolling my eyes. “You know what, Knox? If you want that basic bitch, you have my blessing,” I growled indignantly, using my fingers to call forth the Keeper of Lightning, the elemental I’d come to collect today.
The sky above me cracked with thunder as lightning slammed down around me. My hair lifted from the electrical current that rushed through me. I listened to the world howling as lightning began to pulse with the threat of the impending storm.
I leaned against the altar, sensing the presence behind me as it leaned against me, inhaling my scent, bringing its nose to brush against my throat.
Doubt and fear rippled through me.
That moment of clarity where you do something and then instantly regret that you were stupid enough to try it? Yeah, that was rushing through me as something very masculine pushed against my backside, and lips brushed over the scar on my shoulder where Knox had bitten the ever-loving shit out of me. My eyebrows shot to my hairline as raw, unguarded power slithered around me, wrapping against every inch of my body.
“You summoned me?” a multi-layered voice whispered against my ear, while hands cradled my hips precariously.
“I did,” I squeaked.
A deadly rattle sounded from behind the barrier as power pushed through it, slamming into me while the being behind me chuckled like he found Knox’s warning cute. The creature sensed it, the tension in the air, and the scent of death that clung within it.
I was shoved down hard onto the altar, and an elbow pushed into my spine. I didn’t speak, didn’t make as much as a whisper of noise while the Keeper of Lightning sniffed me. Fingers slid up my back, curling into my hair as I was yanked up and turned to face him. My mouth opened to explain my reason for summing him, yet no words escaped through my lips.
My breath caught in my lungs, becoming stuck there while my eyes grew large and rounded. I stared into striking violet eyes the color of lightning during a great storm as they scrutinized me.
The male before me had silver hair, pulled back and secured in a ponytail that most men couldn’t pull off. However, he had done it splendidly. His chest was bare of clothing, exposing violet light visible beneath his skin as if he contained lightning within his soul. He wore white silk pants, revealing a very thick appendage that the silk outlined right down to the veins of the monstrous cock they failed to hide.
The sight of him and his aroused state caused my body to grow heated, and a heaviness settled on my tongue. Swallowing past the moan that danced on my lips instead of the words I needed to speak, I exhaled a breathy sound of need, which caused his generous mouth to curl into a darkening smile.
My head tilted to the side, and I blinked wide, owl-like eyes before slowly sliding them up the beautiful creature. Wings unfurled at his back, and I shivered, wondering if I’d just really screwed up with my choice to call this being out on his home turf. He was one of five creatures that my bloodline had cursed to remain here for all eternity as Hecate’s punishment.
“Blessed be,” I swallowed past the dryness of my tongue.
“Blessed be,” he echoed, sliding his gaze to the warriors that watched us. Turning, he tilted his head at Knox, who continued rattling the low, angry warning of death as he watched us. “I unsettle your mate with my proximity to you, woman. I would ask why you’d keep him outside your barrier while calling me within
it.”
“He isn’t my mate,” I whispered roughly, fighting the urge to touch the larger-than-life Adonis, who grinned as if he could sense my inner battle. I was losing, which wasn’t a good thing considering it wasn’t what I wanted or needed from him.
“Good to know,” the creature cackled, sending a shiver racing up my spine to wrap around my throat tightly.
He grabbed me without warning, turning me to face Knox as his arms wrapped around my waist. His large silver wings expanded, growing until they created a shadow around us.
His mouth brushed over my mark, causing Knox to slam clawed hands against the barrier in a warning. His eyes turned black, and his teeth elongated as the creature continued holding me. Knox wasn’t enjoying the shoe being on the other foot.
“He thinks you belong to him,” the male laughed wickedly. His mouth kissed my shoulder, and searing heat slid over my skin as lightning rocked through the bite marks.
A sob exploded from my lips as Knox snarled, slamming against the barrier, watching the creature sear my flesh. Tears burned my eyes, rolling down my cheeks. I opened my mouth, hating that he was removing the mark.
I felt it to my soul, felt the effect that removing it was creating within me. Knox didn’t even look human as the sharp features in his face changed, and he rattled loud enough that I felt him. I wanted him to replace it, to mark me as his, the moment the creature had touched it and defiled the scar Knox had left.
To remove it felt horridly wrong, and everything within me felt… empty, and broken without it there. Knox turned to his men, screaming orders before he swung back, staring at me as if he had felt that same nothingness. His hands balled into fists at his sides, and his eyes condemned me for removing his mark.
“Stop,” I stammered through chattering teeth, trembling as denial rushed through me.
“You want his mark? You, a witch, want the mark of a male who wishes to own and end your kind?” the creature asked. “Interesting choice, since you’re a daughter of Hecate’s womb. Seeing who marked you, you may want to reconsider.”
Ashes of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms Book 2) Page 12