“Give me my clothes,” I uttered thickly.
“You have no idea what I am, but you will soon. I can feel you, which means we are connected now. Whatever you are, you’re strong, but I assure you, little girl; I’m still fucking stronger. And there’s a thread connecting you to me, and them to me. Whatever you are, you’re mine still, not because I demand it, which I assure you, I do, but because whoever brought you and the others back made it so. You feel me, Lena. You stand outside this place protecting something inside. Whether it’s the seal connecting you to me, or the fact that someone high up brought you back is to be determined. It doesn’t change us one fucking bit. I held your lifeless corpse in my arms and had to let them take you from me. I will never let anything or anyone take you from me again.”
“I’m not yours. That weak being who gave you those doe-eyed stares? She’s dead.”
“Good, because you’re unbreakable now,” he chuckled. “You’re sexier, colder, and pissed the fuck off, just the way I like my women.”
Chapter 11
I stewed at his words, hating that no matter how much I ignored them, it replayed in my head on repeat. Was he the reason we remained here, stuck to this place unwillingly? I’d assumed it was our family, which it could be, but the others who served Joshua seemed unwilling to leave it either.
It ruffled my feathers, and as I marched into the huge conference room, it didn’t help that his smug ass was there to greet me. As if he hadn’t just floored me with words or knocked me on my ass with them, only to walk out and leave me with my mouth doing a fish out of water impression. Asshole.
Taking the seat beside him, I turned, staring at my mother and Kendra, who eyed me warily. I shut down the emotion and turmoil that stewed inside of me and allowed the darkness and its calming effect it had on me to slowly rise. It wasn’t until Joshua joined us that I stiffened. I glared at him, wondering what the hell he was doing here as well.
My grandmother stared at me, her matching blue eyes trying to see past the shield I’d slipped into place. Lucian being so close had butterflies I’d thought I’d ripped the wings off of soaring inside of me. Joshua sitting on the other side had a hurricane of anger mixed with pain that we had come to this place and time, and now had to explain how we’d gotten to it.
“Benjamin,” my grandmother whispered thickly, choking on emotions.
“I am not Benjamin,” he declared gently as he folded his scarred hands in front of him. “I’m Joshua, you buried Benjamin.”
“Impossible, we did the spell to be sure of who we’d buried,” she argued as power rippled through the room, a warning of her own turbulent emotions flaring.
“We were exactly the same. The spell used to create us, and the soul we shared, was Katarina’s first attempt to close a twin with a fractured soul in it.”
“Then she’d have died when you separated and it fractured,” she said pointedly.
“Had it been her own soul she had used, yes. She hadn’t talked Drake into it yet and had to be sure it worked first. She was able to pierce the veil and met him long ago, and once she’d sunk her claws into him with the promise of untold power, he did whatever she asked of him, including murdering the seer in the woods. Or more to the point, the woman you thought was a seer. He’d set up everything, done all the legwork and spells as she’d told him to, and the results of it were Benjamin and me being born from one soul, split into two.
“When he found me, I was in Afghanistan. My unit was assigned to join with another on a mission outside a town. Imagine my surprise when he was the leader of the second unit I was to find and help. He explained where he was from, who he was, and what you had done. He told me we were meant to be one person, and that the only way to manage it was for me to die. The next day we were supposed to be in the center of Kandahar, so I used runes to paint my flesh before we set out. I was prepared to die, but not ready to allow it to happen. So when he lured me to the bomb someone had set in the middle of town in the heavily visited shopping area, I murdered him. Unlike Lena, I do not have a fractured soul because I was the light. The spell they used to create us was to balance Yin and Yang, to eventually become one. My soul was stronger than his, so when I left my tour, or his tour, after they’d sent you back his body instead of mine, I became him. I reported back to my father that it had worked, that all his effort and time hadn’t been for nothing. When he’d gone to tell the soul of his lover the truth, I waited. When Drake returned, I murdered him and for all intent became Benjamin. You had already buried me by the time I’d returned. Lena had left town, and even though I watched her, I had to wait to see what would happen. Drake had told me his plans, how Lena and Kendra were carrying the dormant soul. The moment I returned, it began to unravel.”
“You met him?” my mother whispered through eyes shining with unshed tears. “Was he, was he evil?”
“No, misled, but not evil. He did what he had been told to do, and while I don’t think he would have hesitated to end my life to finish his goals, he wasn’t evil. He told me about his father, and I told him about his mother. I told him of the sisters he’d never meet, and how much the coven needed him but Drake had beaten him, snuffed out any humanity he could have had. I am dark, mother. I was the moment his soul met and dissolved into mine. His magic became my magic, and his secrets became my truths. I knew his past, his horrors, and everything he’d been told. It was how I knew that if Lena ended her life, she would come back.
“The plan was to break the spell Katarina had placed on Lucian by making him fall for the darkness in Magdalena. Making him care for her before the solar eclipse was crucial. Lucifer had used his abilities to ensure she was fertile, that her womb would take his seed. They planned everything, right down to you sending her to that club outside of Portland. That was where he allowed his barbs to plant the potion into her womb. Then he allowed them to escape, to rush back here where he knew Lucian would be waiting. The only thing they didn’t plan on was how far a mother would go to protect her own child. I’d told Lena what to use to ward her womb, to protect her child. I told her what she held inside of her and what it could do to her son if it lived. How it wouldn’t ever be a child but rather a monster, the true Harbinger of Doom. They’d wanted to force Lucian to murder his own child, and the only way he could save this world would have been to do just that. They wanted to hurt him, for what I’m not sure. That part was never told to Benjamin. But Lena would have lived under the control of the monster inside of her, had she lived. Once she gave birth, she would have ceased to exist. Just an empty, soulless corpse, but the man who came to me promised she’d live if she did as he instructed us to.”
“Who was the man?” Lucian growled thickly with his question.
“I don’t know who or what he was, only that he promised me Lenny wouldn’t die for having ended up in the middle of a game she hadn’t agreed to play in. The others were with him, the soulless as we call them, informed me of his truths, and I asked him to show me. To show me what she would become. And so he did, and I became first. Everything he said would happen played out, and no matter what we did, it didn’t change the path Lena dove headfirst into. So I told her the truth. I told her if she was strong enough to do it, I’d save her.”
“You knew you wouldn’t die?” Kendra snapped heatedly.
“No, we didn’t know for sure,” I answered harshly. “I knew you would live. When I met Lucifer at the house, I knew I would die, and that you would go on. I knew one of us had to die to fracture the soul. My son was cursed; he held pure evil within him. My first and only decision as his mother was to take his life with mine. To free him from the monster they’d intended him to be, and to give his soul back to Hecate so that he may be reborn again. By taking my life, I saved yours. One of us was not living through that night, and you weren’t the one with the cracked skull. You ended up in Hell because of me, because of my choices and who I had been with. You didn’t deserve
it, nor can I ever make up for it, but I could sacrifice myself to save you. To protect the world from what my son would become. I knew I’d come back; I’m not sure how or why I trusted the word of a man who wouldn’t even show us his face, but I did. I felt it. So I took my life, ending my mortal one for whatever I have become. I do not regret it. This world doesn’t need more heroes; it needs monsters that can do what is needed when needed without having to worry about the hindrance of a soul that stands in the way.
“You see, I knew dying wasn’t the end because, without a soul, heaven wouldn’t take me and Hell couldn’t hold me. I just existed now. I don’t run based off what my heart tells me to do, something else controls me now. I don’t know what it is, or why we are drawn to this place where you and these creatures dwell, but neither do I care as long as I can kill. I’m not your daughter, I’m so much more. I think I love you still, but I no longer care if I do or if I don’t. That should scare you because it also means that I do not care if you live or die, but I think I should, so I protect you. I am not bound to the coven, nor do I use your magic. I use something greater, stronger than your coven could ever offer me or us. We are evolving into what remains a mystery to even us. The man who created us, he has not returned, nor does he beckon us to him.”
“And if he told you to kill us?” Kendra asked.
“You’d die,” I said without hesitation.
Chapter 12
Time held no meaning, and since we’d left the meeting where they’d drilled us for hours, I’d stewed. I’d ran my answers through my mind a thousand times since I’d walked out, leaving them to determine if they’d ask us to leave or stay. If I were them, I’d tell us to go or fight us. We were dark, deadly, called by the night and the endless blackness that bathed the skies above the Guild. We were an unknown threat no matter how you chose to look at it.
“You shouldn’t have told her that,” Joshua said from where he stood beside me.
“It’s the truth,” I argued. “Should I have pretended otherwise? I do not want them dead. I fear him coming back and using us for whatever purpose he created us for. Do you not?”
“I don’t think he created us to kill our coven, nor those we love, Lenny. I think he created us to protect something, maybe even Lucian. You said he felt a thread; I felt it in that room with him. We need to figure out what he is so that we can figure out why the fuck you grew wings and what we are,” he muttered as he scrubbed his palm over his face and shook his head.
I shrugged. “What does it matter what we are? We’re not dead, and that’s exactly what I would be if he hadn’t told you how to save me. Everyone here has sacrificed something to be here, even you. You had to give your life to be sure mine wouldn’t end. You trusted him enough to do that, so who cares who he is?”
“You’re not seeing the bigger picture. What if he made us kill this world?”
“Don’t go there,” I frowned, rubbing the crease between my eyes. “I have yet to feel a pull to anything but this place, and yeah, maybe Lucian but that could be because I’d thought I loved him.”
“And now?” he scoffed as the question came out guarded.
“Loving him ended my life; it ended my son’s life. I cannot go back there, or ever be the girl I was before this happened. Life isn’t black and white; it’s muted in the undertone colors of what forges you into what you become after it’s fucked you. I was filled with color, hope. I thought if I loved enough, if I sacrificed enough, I’d save the coven and everyone. I was wrong. I don’t know about you, Josh, but this second chance is more than I expected when I slit my fucking throat. I’m with you, the brother I buried, and yeah, there’s a huge piece of me in that coffin with Benjamin. Or the old me. I don’t feel the weight I used to carry on my shoulders. We’re stronger now, able to protect the coven more than we ever could have managed before.”
“But we don’t care if they live, and there lies the problem.”
“I’m still me,” I muttered. “I’m still one of them, and I know you feel it too. I don’t carry the obligation, but I love them enough to know I’d die for them still. Dying didn’t change that for me. It didn’t change it for you either, we just don’t love them the same. It’s like an echo in my mind, telling me that I do, even as the darkness says to let them go. You?”
“I wouldn’t watch them fucking die, I’d fight for them. You just told them otherwise.”
“I told them the truth, and yeah, the truth fucking sucks, but if the man who created us told us to, we could very well slaughter them. That scares the fuck out of me, so yes; I wanted them to fear us. If they fear us, they will take precaution around us, and they will ward themselves against us. Better they let go and fear us than cling to the hope that we are what they lost because let’s face it: we’re not fluffy fucking bunnies anymore. We’re created to kill, whatever we are, we aren’t something they should want to hold close. Fearing us might just keep them alive.”
“I’m going to go on patrol,” he mumbled as he stepped out of line and another fell into it beside me.
My head ached from the endless questions along with Lucian’s touch. Mid-explanation his hand had gripped my leg, slowly pushing the skirt I’d chosen to wear up until he’d grazed my sex. It had taken everything I had not to moan or rip his clothes off and ride him until I fucked that man out of my system. That man was the bane of my existence, and now we had forever to play cat and mouse, which just pissed me off.
“I’ll patrol the back of the Guild, see if we can find any fuckers willing to dance,” he informed me before nodding at something over my shoulder. “He isn’t going to let you stay out here. He’s about to come fetch you, Lenny,” he laughed, and I growled.
I turned to look over my shoulder, frowning as anger shot through me. Fetch me, would he? I felt a ripple of power that shot through me without warning. Feathers exploded into the air, slowly floating down as I turned left, and then right…slowly. A frown tugged at my lips as I winced at what I’d done.
“Jesus H. Christ, Lenny,” Joshua groaned.
I’d impaled both soulless beings on either side of me, right through the temple. I swallowed hard as I started to turn, dragging bodies on my wings. “Oops, my bad,” I winced as I shook my wings, hearing the dull thump as the bodies slid from the razor-sharp bones of my wings. “Those are lethal.”
“You need to figure out how to control that,” he warned, and I eyed Lucian who stood on the stairs amidst the others who’d all sat on them, watching our silent vigil into the midnight sky. Synthia covered her mouth, but the way her eyes shone and crinkled told me she was laughing. Ryder beside her was shaking his head and chuckling at me openly and Ristan, the silver-eyed demon, well, he just wiggled his brows and muttered something to Olivia who he had finally brought out of hiding.
Probably not a smart move considering we were hanging around unwillingly. I pointed to my spot line, and another person moved in, taking my place with a worried glance as the others had yet to fill the vacant spots beside me for fear I’d impale them as well.
Like I’d tried to do it…
I had zero control over what these fucking wings did and no idea of how to even begin to control them. I felt them ripple at my back as the wind ruffled the feathers. I strode towards Lucian, wondering if my wings would work on him, but they vanished on the trek to him.
“You control them,” Ryder laughed, and I tossed an irritated glare in his direction. “They do as you want them to, or react to your mood.”
“I have no idea how I even did that, let alone how to control what they do. I just thought of how I’d like to impale Lucian and ended up sticking them into Lar and Kaden’s fucking skulls. Yay me. We need to talk,” I said pointedly at Lucian.
“Talking isn’t what I want to do to you, little witch.”
“I’m not a witch anymore, asshole. Inside, please,” I said impatiently,
tapping my foot on the pavement.
“Fine, we’ll go inside where we can speak in…private,” he mused, his eyes flashing liquid flames as if he no longer cared if anyone knew what he was.
“If you think it means something else, you’re wrong. I need to pick your brain, and either we can do it here in front of everyone, or alone. You tend to like to keep your secrets. The choice is entirely yours to make, Lucian.”
“Inside,” he growled, his hand snaking out and slipping his fingers through mine, and my body jerked in reaction. My wings unfurled as my eyes slowly rose to hold his. “They don’t scare me, little witch.”
I turned back to the others, nodding before I winced at the two dead bodies I’d accidentally created and then back to Lucian, only for the air to thicken with danger around us. Everyone braced to fight as shadows swirled around us, bathing the Guild in a thick, dark mist.
“Hello, Lucian,” a deep, disembodied voice said silkily. “I see you found my gift.”
Chapter 13
Every soulless being present except me dropped to their knees. The crunching sent a chill racing down my spine as I turned my gaze back to the bodiless voice. I knew that voice, on a physical level. I swallowed hard, as my heart erupted as chaos slithered through my mind, racing down my spine. From the midst that surrounded us outside the Guild stepped a man with black hair and violet eyes that smiled as he held his arm out, extending it to a small, petite midnight-haired beauty. I stared into the purple-blue depths and expelled a shaky breath because I knew those eyes, knew them with carnal knowledge. Full lips tipped into a beautiful smile, telling me he knew me as well; memories flowed between us and I trembled as images flashed in my mind.
I’d watched those eyes lock with mine as his wicked tongue had tasted me, forcing orgasm after orgasm to shake me to the core. He was in that room, the one I thought had been no more than a dream. It felt like a lifetime ago, but it hadn’t been.
Becoming his Monster (Playing with Monsters Book 3) Page 9