It was an image of two faces. Arach’s and Eva’s. One of them was unconscious. The other was grinning an absolute evil, be-fanged smile, and waving good-naturedly to Calidum.
The message attached to the picture was simply, Wish you were here.
Chapter Twenty-three
The world intruded on Eva’s quiet, dark, and warm oblivion little by little, unwelcome and wrong. As always, first came sound. But there wasn’t much of that. Only the recognizable sounds of leather soles on a hard surface, the crackling of a controlled fire, and the chink of ice cubes in a glass container. It wasn’t enough for her to get her bearings.
The next thing she noticed was the smell. It smelled like sandalwood again, like that indescribable scent of night, and of the wood smoke from the fire. There was also the scent of leather. And, more subtly… of blood.
It was her blood, she knew. She must be injured.
The pain of those injuries was the third thing she noticed. There was a dull but persistent ache in her shoulders, running through both arms, and a sharper but equally persistent throb at each wrist. Her muscles ached. She had a bit of a headache, but thankfully nothing as bad as the migraines humans often talked about. Dragons didn’t get those.
The pain in the rest of her body was getting worse, though. Her brow furrowed, and regardless of how badly she wanted to keep her eyes closed to block out what she was so afraid she would see, she knew she needed to open them and assess her situation.
With a steadying of her will, she did just that. She opened her eyes, blinking against the dim light of the fireplace and recessed lighting of the very same apartment in Japan that Arach had taken her to previously. The only differences now were the two thick and sparkling chains that connected her wrists in a wide “Y” to strong metal beams in the ceiling of the living room. How had she not noticed those before? Or the thick metal hooks that hung from them?
Because they hadn’t been here before, her mind told her in resignation. Arach could probably create things at will. He was stupid strong. She had never gone up against an opponent like him. She had no idea what the fuck he was, but she knew he was probably going to be the death of her.
Automatically, she attempted to call up a bit of magic to free her wrists. As she expected, it didn’t work. And as she also expected, her battle with the Traitor had seen her once more drained of most of her power.
With palpable trepidation, Eva’s gaze followed the lines of the chains to her wrists, where equally thick and shimmering cuffs had been tightly secured. A thin trickle of blood descended from her right wrist. She’d obviously been hanging for a while, and the edges of the cuffs had not been smoothed down. They were cruel and harsh. Like Arach.
Now she looked down at her body, not knowing what to expect, but knowing it would be bad. She was unduly relieved when she found she was still fully clothed. More or less. She wore everything but her leather jacket. Scorch marks, rips, tears, and ash marred the once fine clothing, a road map of the trip of pain she’d taken in her battle with the Traitor.
She could feel his eyes on her, and her stomach was tight with horrified apprehension. I’m trapped, she thought. I lost. This is it.
A rainbow hue of images flashed before her mind, each one a painful thing he could do to her, each one worse than the last. She wondered what he would start with. Would he rip off her fingernails? Dismember her? Skin her? Peel off her eyelids, rip out her hair, or cut out her tongue? And she wondered how much she could take before she went mad.
Look him in the eyes, Eva, she told herself. At least you’ll know who to haunt when it’s over.
Finally, Eva raised her head and met Arach’s gaze.
He had been watching her all along, and with quiet and keen interest. He seemed fascinated by her gradual realization of her current situation. He was taking great pleasure in the play of emotion on her face. He’d witnessed her attempted spell to escape, and he continued to watch her now as she was obviously realizing there was no escape.
He was sitting on one of the leather sofas, his ankle on his knee, his arm draped over the back of the couch, his demeanor utterly and sickeningly relaxed.
“Comfy?” he asked.
“Fuck off, dick pus.”
Arach laughed. He actually threw back his head and laughed. Then he sat up, all grace and insanity, and strode rapidly toward her on long legs. Eva tensed up, readying for the worst. But a few feet away, his eyes slipped from her face to her neck, and then traveled up her arms to her wrists and hands. His gaze narrowed. Eva glanced up at her hands. They were steaming.
What the hell?
She was actually steaming. Holy shit, she thought as she looked down at herself. Her skin was so hot, it was boiling the moisture in the air into vapor. Thin, wispy streams of heated, foggy air curled up from every exposed bit of flesh on her body. She blinked as she realized her eyes were burning and tearing up too.
Every exposed part of my body including my face.
“Interesting,” said Arach with a curious expression. His eyes glittered with bad ideas. “You are just full of surprises, little Legendary.”
Oh gods, thank you, she thought helplessly but hopefully. She had no idea how she had triggered this defensive mechanism; she’d thought she was drained. But whatever had caused it, she was whole-heartedly relieved for it. Please don’t let him touch me. Maybe he won’t touch me!
He turned and slowly moved around her like a shark circling its prey, and when she could no longer see him, she felt her heart hammer against her ribcage. She was sure it would leave it bruised.
The sound of his shoes on the marble stopped directly behind her. Eva immediately tried to turn, but the chains were tight and widely spaced, effective in their restraint. So instead she glanced up at her right arm. The stream of blood had grown thicker and dripped faster in the ambient heat of her body’s new temperature.
She watched it for a moment, then winced when Arach moved in to gently run a finger up the length of her arm, taking the blood. His touch was cold against her magically fevered skin. She gritted her teeth and bore it out.
Then he moved away, and she closed her eyes as all signs of him once more disappeared. But she heard him. She heard him taste her… and the low growl-like sound he made just behind her right ear was enough proof that he liked it when she bled.
“I have a proposition for you, my beauty,” he told her, that underlying hunger still darkening the edges of his voice. “Are you interested in hearing it?”
He’d moved closer, and now she could feel him only inches away, towering over her from behind like a shadow.
“Sure, I’ll give you a curling-iron colonoscopy,” she told him. “All you had to do was ask.”
He chuckled, the sound strange because he was so close, a mere breath from her ear, and his arm was beginning to slide around her waist. Clearly, the unnatural heat of her skin wasn’t scaring him off.
“You should not so freely give me ideas, little one. Besides… do you know how hot your skin is right now?”
She knew he meant that if her skin wasn’t burning him, much less bothering him, a curling iron wouldn’t either.
He stepped back from her, removing his hand, and Eva closed her eyes in quiet thanks. “No, I’ve got something a little less invasive but far more effective in mind,” he said as he again paced around her. But this time he looked at the floor as if lost in thought. “I want you to freely turn your fated king away. Spurn Calidum and agree to wed me instead. If you do, I will let him live. And I will let your young friend Mimi live. And so on and so forth. You get the picture.”
Eva looked at him sidelong. “Why in the gods’ realms would I ever agree to something so stupid? We both know you’re going to try to hurt them anyway – and I do stress ‘try.’ You must be off your meds.” She sent feelers of her magic out as she spoke, hoping to multitask her way to an escape. She was looking for a weak spot, any spot, something she could focus on and hopefully get through. But said feelers were
as thin as cotton candy. Again, she had no clue how she’d heated up her skin, because she appeared to be running on empty.
Arach stopped in front of her and said, “No, Eva.”
His words had an echo, they were so powerful. The blood drained from her face, all attempt at magic stopped. He drew near, one step – two – and he was towering over her, and she was looking up at him in undiluted fear.
“I am going to hurt them. All of them. You have no choice in that matter. You only get to decide whether I end their misery when I’ve finished with them….” His hand cupped her cheek. It was cold as ice against her fevered skin. “Or let them live with the scars.”
Chapter Twenty-four
The mansion was destroyed.
That was putting it lightly. The last time Calidum had seen destruction on this scale had been thousands of years ago… when the Great White had died.
His eyes were already red with the blood of rage, and though he moved through the destroyed manor with perceived outward calm, he was already beginning to shift into his true form inside. He could feel his hearts forming, his blood changing. The taste of dark magic sat on his tongue, charcoal gray and shimmering like stars. His clothing had already altered, shifting into the nearly black leather armor that was a reflection of his dragon scales. They were impermeable. He was ready for a fight, and just short, tense seconds away from transforming entirely.
The disaster around him was beyond alarming. Legendaries were filled with fire. Not literally, necessarily, but figuratively to be sure. This fire, this over-heated and volatile magic, released itself upon death in a manner that took out everything around it like an atom bomb. When Anharidan had died, he’d taken their entire village with him. And the surrounding forest. And everything living and dead within a twenty mile radius. It had marked the end of an era.
That was the last time Calidum had witnessed devastation of the magnitude he was looking at now. Granted, this was on a much smaller scale. But only because the walls of the cliffside that the mansion was embedded in had stopped the destruction from spreading. Otherwise, it was equally harsh and likewise complete.
The furnishings were all gone – incinerated to ash. The ceiling was black. The marble floor had been subjected to such intense heat, it had melted in places and turned to glass. The stainless steel appliances in the kitchen had been liquefied, and were now mere hardened puddles of silver-black metal. Anything once living in the apartment such as plants or food was long gone, burned up and disintegrated.
The struggle must have been immense, and the powers used, incomprehensible. Either that, or… she was dead. This was the kind of destruction one would expect from the death of a Legendary.
You’re an idiot, he told himself. You know damn well she’s not dead. That was why he was able to so much as think the thought. He knew it wasn’t true. But there were consequences to that truth.
You let him take her.
“What in the name of Tartarus happened here?” came the mystified question behind Calidum. He turned, not at all surprised that someone was there, but a little concerned that it had happened without him realizing it. He was lost in the thoughts of his fears.
It was Thanatos. He’d just stepped from a portal. Calidum had been expecting him.
“The others are on their way,” Thane told Calidum as his gray eyes scanned his surroundings, his expression grim.
The other kings would be on one end of a void portal, ready to cross dimensional barriers with combined magical strength and perhaps the help of an actual Nomad – Lalura Chantelle – to hurry them along their way.
“Tell them not to bother,” Cal said quickly, his deep voice tight with draconic fury. “Arach has taken Evangeline. All that matters now is tracking them down.”
*****
“I had the girl for two weeks,” Arach was telling her, his tone amiable but his words like poison as he slowly undressed her, using a knife to slice through her clothing inch by dragged-out inch. “I took great pleasure in those two weeks, though I doubt she did. My focus was on a single breast. Not both. That was the important thing.”
Eva wanted to shut her eyes. She didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to look upon him, did not want to unintentionally memorize his features as he told her his horror stories. But to close her eyes would have been surrender. It would have been weakness. She knew that above all, weakness was something she could not afford to show her captor.
The truth was, she was weak. She’d thrown everything she had at Arach, and he’d given her as good as he’d gotten. In the end, they were each miraculously, though inexplicably alive. She had no idea how or why. One of them most certainly should have killed the other. They should have both died. She’d been willing to do it. To stop him? To put a dent in the Entity’s plans? In Amunet’s plans? Yeah. She’d lived a very long life. And besides, she was half Nomad. There was a strong possibility she would simply be reborn.
But rather than face death or even rebirth, she was left drained and unconscious. Arach had been lucky enough to remain on his feet as she’d passed out. Whatever he’d become, he was just that much stronger than her.
Still, she had to wonder why he was taking her clothes off rather than just willing them away with more of his ill-begotten magic. And when she looked closely, she could see a hollowness under his shimmering emerald eyes. To be honest, he looked a little drained too.
That was hopeful.
“I used nearly all of my tools on her,” he told Eva as the razor-sharp edge of his blade gradually sliced a clean line down the inside of her left sleeve and cool air caressed her skin as her shirt finally fell away to join the rest of the clothing pooled at her feet. There was nothing left on her now. No barrier remained between Eva and her captor.
“The clamps, the flogger and eventually the needles. I took my time; there was no hurry. Well, not for me, anyway.” She heard him shrug, but he was behind her now, so she couldn’t see it. “I was eventually rewarded for my efforts when, rather than continue to beg me to stop the torture as she had been, she at last begged me to switch breasts.” He gave a low and spine-chilling laugh as he made his way back around to stand before her.
“Human nature is an interesting but ultimately base thing,” he told her, slowly looking her up and down with stark and hungry eyes. “It’s easy to break someone, to tear them down to the point of wanting something decidedly unpleasant – as long as the alternative is worse.” He took a slow, deep breath as if he were inhaling her body, or perhaps her very soul. Then he shook his head in wonder. “You really are beyond beautiful.” His gaze was resolute and shining. “It almost seems sacrilege to tarnish you as I plan to.”
“Arach,” Eva finally said. He looked up, catching her eyes. “You suck.”
A brow lifted.
“But that’s not what I wanted to tell you,” she added quickly. “As far as doms go, your BDSM stories are not even slightly original.” She made a sympathetic gesture as well as she could strung up as she was. It brought pain to every part of her body to move it like that, but it was worth it. What he wanted was to scare her. So she strove to make him believe he was failing. “To be honest, you’re boring me.”
But Arach wasn’t fooled. Not for an instant. The only thing that passed over his handsome features in fact, was anticipation – and something like pride. “My beauty, you misunderstand me. The art you speak of is founded on a basic tenet of consent.” He smiled, showing her his gleaming white fangs, and shook his head. “Something I could not possibly care any less about.”
And just then, Eva realized that the woman he’d been talking about all this time had not been a willing participant in his cruel games. She had been his victim.
All this time – all this goddamned time – Arach had been the Dragon King. He’d had a seat at the Table of the Thirteen, mixing and mingling with the realms’ finest, with their best and bravest souls, with the men and women who would die for one another and even for the worlds they protected, and Arach
had been amongst them – hurting people. A sadist. A killer.
The Traitor. In every sense of the word.
She wasn’t sure it could possibly get any worse. But of course, one should never wonder that. Because an answer always comes hopping happily along directly after, as it now did for Eva. Not only was Arach all of those things, Evangeline was chained up in his living room, he’d just rid her of her last strip of clothing, and he absolutely meant her harm.
Dizziness moved through her like a sickening drug. No, Eva. No. Don’t you dare give in to him. He pretends to want you to be strong, but he’s really afraid of you. He wants you to give in. He wants you to surrender and to accept his terms.
She knew it was true. She knew that was how men like Arach bolstered their self images. They had to be stronger than girls. A part of her laughed at that, despite everything. Because they could only dream of being stronger than women. Women like her mother, who’d had to let the bastard kill her.
My mother, she thought suddenly, and an idea blossomed like a rose of hope in her mind.
Chapter Twenty-five
Eva opened her eyes and locked gazes with the asshole who held her captive. She smiled, and low and behold, felt a spark of fire in her vision. She knew he’d seen it the moment the flicker of doubt crossed his features.
“Did you know, Arach, that Nomads can’t lie?” she asked softly, almost wickedly, because she was letting the strength of her conviction lace her words, and the new idea fueling her mind was like an injection of happy juice.
He didn’t say anything. But then, she didn’t expect him to. This was a new line of conversation, and one that he hadn’t begun. Hence, he wasn’t in control this time. But she was betting he did know Nomads couldn’t lie. The Entity couldn’t lie, after all. That was why he’d done whatever he’d done to Arach, making him powerful enough to claim a queen. That was why she was in his living room right now.
The Dragon King Page 12