Wicked Soul

by Nora Ash

  We didn’t have to go far, though. As Roy scanned the offices for signs of life, a weak, rhythmic thumping drew my attention to the boiler room.

  I tugged on Roy’s sleeve and pointed. He listened, then pushed ahead of me, wrapped his hand around the knob, and tugged it free from the door as easily as I might pull a ticket for the deli counter.

  The door swung out. Two familiar faces, and three unknown, stared up at us, eyes wide.

  Raven stopped kicking the wall. Behind a silver swath of duct tape, she said something that might have been my name.

  “We’ve got you,” I promised at a whisper, eyes filling with tears of relief as I stooped to begin seeing to the witches’ bondage. Their wrists were all cinched tight with two layers of zip-ties. Joanna’s fingers were a deep purple at their tips. “Roy—do you have a knife?”

  “Do I have a knife?” he snorted, as if the question were absurd. He plucked one from his jacket pocket, flicked it open, and—

  The wall outside the boiler room exploded in a cloud of plaster. An inhuman howl went up from inside the new hole a skinwalker had made in it, followed by a wet gurgle.

  My jaw hung slack. Roy shrugged and said, “One down, too goddamn many to go.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said to my friends as I tore the duct tape from their mouths. In the meantime, Roy set about freeing their hands, though he eyed them warily each time he did so.

  Raven winced when the tape pulled, then wiggled her nose. “Shit, it could be worse. I needed an upper lip wax, anyway.”

  Another crash, this one more distant, blew debris down the hall. An animal snarl rippled in reply. Roy abandoned Joana’s hands to peek out past the door frame.

  “They’re takin’ the fight out into the hall,” he said grimly. “The skinwalkers are on the retreat.”

  “Good,” Raven hissed, spitting on the ground for emphasis. “Bastards.”

  “We gotta hurry,” Roy continued. “C’mon, let’s—”

  A hot lance of pain tore through my shoulder, and for a moment, I thought I’d been shot. I screamed, clutching at an invisible wound somewhere deep in my bones. My vision blurred as a second wave of agony rolled up my spine, and I doubled on myself, one arm hanging uselessly at my side.

  “Liv!” Roy bellowed, trying to turn me toward him, but moving even an inch hurt. “Liv, what’s wrong?”

  My lower lip split, blood gushing down my chin from it and my nostrils. I was so small in Roy’s massive hands, and I thought maybe I was safe too, but that illusion was quickly dispelled as my knees and elbows cracked like I’d just slammed face-first into the floor.

  “I don’t know!” I whimpered, pulse hammering, tears streaming down my face in cold trails. “What’s happening to me?!”

  Fingers curled around the door frame from the opposite side. Roy pulled his gun, aiming it at the bloodied face which appeared next.

  Kevin. He was dragging himself along the floor, leaving a thick trail of blood behind him. One of his arms was clearly broken, tucked against his body on the same side as my own injured arm dangled.

  Joana began kicking at the wall now, and she didn’t stop until I braved my own pain enough to free her from the duct tape across her mouth. As soon as I did, she shouted, “Warin! No! You can’t hurt him! Kevin’s still part of the coven!”

  And that was when I knew. When I understood why I felt like I was dying.

  It was because Kevin was dying. And Joana’s curse still linked me to the coven.

  30

  Roy looked back at Joana, arching a brow. “You got funny priorities, lady.”

  “Joana,” I croaked, desperate for her not to tell. Even though my life was on the line, I really didn’t want Warin to know what I’d done. Some part of me trusted he’d save me, and that part didn’t want to deal with the fallout of what he and his court would surely see as a betrayal.

  But while Joana’s priorities weren’t exactly what Roy assumed, they were vastly different from my own. She shot me a sympathetic look before continuing, “Olivia made a pact with our coven. If Warin hurts us, any of us, it’s Olivia who will bear the pain.”

  Roy’s brows both lifted this time. Disappointment flickered in his eyes, but it was swiftly subsumed by horror. “Oh, shit.”

  “You bitch,” Kevin rasped from the floor, pulling himself up to his knees. I looked up at him, at the red coating the bottom half of his face. Just like mine. “You weak, simpering cunt.”

  “Go to hell, Kevin,” Joana countered, lip curled in a sneer. “After what you’ve done here, it’s the least you deserve.”

  “What I’ve done?” Kevin spat blood onto the floor. “You did this! You and your waiting, your wishful thinking about the vampires. I used to worship you and your wisdom. It took me far too long to see you’d always been soft. Incompetent. Unfit for you position as our High Priestess. Our blood is on your hands.”

  Cutting words, especially coming from one of the coven’s own. But Joana only regarded him evenly, offering a slow blink. “You started a war, Kevin. Did you not think there would be casualties? Or were you just arrogant enough to believe one of them wouldn’t be you?”

  “I can shoot him,” Roy offered, pulling the hammer back on his gun with a shrug. “I ain’t Warin.”

  Kevin bared his teeth. But before anyone could do anything else, his eyes widened and he screamed as he was yanked back down the hallway by his broken arm.

  I screamed too, the agony enough to make my stomach turn. The edges of my vision blurred, then blackened.

  “C’mon,” Roy said, forcing me to my feet. I tried to sit back down, but he pulled me in close and added, “Liv, we gotta tell him. He’s gonna kill that guy. He’s gonna kill you.”

  Roy was right. Warin was going to kill me. And he wouldn’t even know. Not until it was too late.

  Leaning against Roy for support, I let him guide me out into the hallway, now slippery with blood. Drywall dust choked the air, whole pieces of it crumbling beneath our feet as I staggered toward where Warin and the others were fighting.

  Carina had a skinwalker on the ground, straddling his enormous wolf form with one hand on each of his jaws. He bucked and writhed beneath her as she pulled in opposite directions, the dark glint in her eyes telling me she could be breaking him apart faster, but that she preferred to do it slow. His eyes bulged as she snapped back his snout inch by inch, bringing his lower jaw all the way down to his chest. Blood rattled in his throat, spraying over her face as the skinwalker desperately tried to keep breathing—and then stopped.

  Aleric was humming as he tore through bodies, lithe body slipping easily between combatants to come up behind them and go in for the kill. Throats dislodged. Severed jugulars sprayed in wild arcs. And when Aleric did suffer a scratch, he gasped, looked offended, and then proceeded to give new meaning to the term “slaughterhouse.”

  But Warin—Warin was the most terrifying creature of them all.

  He held Kevin by his broken arm, staring deep into the other man’s eyes. Kevin must have felt he was gazing into the abyss, because I could feel his horror as if it were my own, could see even at a distance the nothingness reflected in Warin’s eyes. That eerie blankness spread over his entire face as with his other hand he closed his fingers around Kevin’s throat, lifting him up into the air as he helplessly kicked several feet above the ground.

  I immediately gasped for breath, hands flying to my own throat as oxygen refused to come. Pressure pounded in my head, my face flushing with constricted blood flow as Roy called out.

  “Boss!”

  Warin stopped. He looked our way. And when he saw me…

  He dropped Kevin to the ground. A new pain bloomed in my tailbone as he connected with the pile of bodies at Warin’s feet, but at least I could breathe again, and I was so relieved about that I too crumpled to the floor.

  “Liv!” Warin roared, and as our eyes met again, I saw a spark of humanity return to his gaze.

  Just before Dennis, half-shifted, le
aped into the air, and landed upon Warin’s back with his lupine jaws in his neck.

  Despite the rawness of my throat, I screamed. “No!”

  Warin stumbled forward, then twisted, trying to throw Dennis off, but Kevin surged forward at the same instant, tackling Warin around his knees with a roar. My knees threatened to buckle again as the pain of Kevin’s exertion filled me, but I had to stand up. I had to do something, or Warin—

  He went down hard, on his side, with a wolf tearing at his shoulder, and Kevin began his full shift.

  No!

  I saw those powerful jaws snap around Warin, and I didn’t pause to think.

  Tethering myself to Roy for strength, I got my feet beneath me, and with a cry summoned from the deepest well of my being, held my hands before me and called to my magic—to what had been inside me all along, the weapon and the miracle which had always had the power to save me.

  Verdant energy crackled between my fingers, snapping and hissing, trying to strike a spark. I poured everything I had behind it, thinking of Warin’s eyes when he smiled, his lips when he kissed me, the way he’d gazed so adoringly at my sunset painting… and later, at me.

  Tears scalded my face and copper bit my tongue as all my love, all my rage, burst from my palms and across the hall, one torrent striking Dennis, the other Kevin. Dennis caught air in a spin as the green enveloped him, turning him in seconds to a whirlwind of ash that crashed over the other vampires like a tidal wave, while Kevin arched, howled, and disintegrated in a white-hot flash, atoms dividing so violently it painted the wall with a nuclear shadow.

  Warin gaped at me, but I couldn’t hold his gaze. He’d seen. They’d all seen.

  The light flickered, then faded as I started to go down again, Roy’s embrace the only thing that kept me from meeting the floor head-on. The pain from the curse linking me to Kevin no longer pulsed through my body, and even my split lip had stopped bleeding, but the energy expenditure had taken its toll.

  I clung to Roy’s arm as I stared at the carnage. Warin and his Guard were busy dispatching of the rest of the skinwalkers with indiscriminate fury, but I saw the glances they threw in my direction. His court knew I was a witch. A witch who’d drank of Ancient blood.

  As Warin stood over one of the skinwalkers, using his Compulsion to extract what he needed to know, Aleric met my eyes. There was a distant respect somewhere in his expression, far-off though it may have been, but mostly, what I saw there was disgust. Rage.

  He had told me what would happen if anyone found out. He had warned me of my fate, and worse, of Warin’s.

  I couldn’t let those awful things happen to him. I had saved his life, and maybe that would be enough to spare him in the court’s eyes—if I turned tail and ran, right now.

  Again. Right after I’d promised that I wouldn’t.

  The skinwalker Warin had tried to Compel slumped, skull cracking against the floor, eyes rolling back as blood-flecked foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. Warin huffed, kicking his corpse.

  “Fuck!”

  Aleric came to his side, but Warin waved him off. “Nothing. We’ve got nothing. The damn thing couldn’t talk.”

  “You pushed too hard,” Aleric observed carefully.

  Snarling, Warin rounded on him. “I’m tired of being in the dark on this! I am done reacting to the skinwalkers’ and witches’ attacks. We must get ahead of them. We cannot continue on like this.”

  Raising his hands, Aleric offered an emphatic nod. “I hear you, brother. But we need to regroup first. We have…” His gaze slid to focus on me. “...other matters to discuss.”

  Before Warin’s eyes could find me too, I turned from them both, extracting myself from Roy’s grip. I had to get out of there, before it was too late. Before my magic doomed the man I loved.

  31

  I made it to the car Roy had driven us in, Warin’s silver Lexus, and hauled myself into the driver’s seat. Thankfully, Roy had left the keys in the ignition, and I twisted it and slammed the car into reverse, pulling away from the slaughterhouse as fast as I could.

  I didn’t think as I barreled down the deserted road leading away from the industrial estate—all I knew was that I had to get away, had to keep Warin safe. They’d all seen me—his Guard, Carina… Warin. They knew what I was, and what I was was a danger to the man I loved.

  I’d only made it maybe two hundred yards down the road when, out of nowhere, a figure dropped from the sky ahead of my car, landing in the middle of my path like an unmovable boulder.

  I screamed and slammed on the brakes, my seatbelt cutting into my shoulder as I lurched forward from the sudden stop. The car skidded to a halt inches from the figure.

  I wheezed as I caught my breath—and finally saw who had dropped from the sky.

  He was covered in blood, dark eyes flaming with feral fury in the Lexus’ headlights.

  Warin.

  He looked… wild. Like an animal, as he stared me down. Not moving. Not even blinking.

  The hairs at the back of my nape stood on end, an instinctive response to being faced with a primeval being. He was my lover, the only man I would ever trust—but right then, he was also the monster he’d warned me about so many times.

  Slowly, so to not make any sudden movements or perturb my arm further, I undid my seatbelt and opened the door.

  Warin’s eyes followed me as I crawled out of the Lexus and held out my hands in a calming gesture.

  “Warin,” I whispered. “Warin, I have to go. I’m a danger to you, my love. You have to let me go.”

  “No.”

  “Please, just listen—“

  In the blink of an eye, he was in front of me, and then his hand snatched my jaw in a firm grip. He pushed me backward, making me stumble a few steps until the hood of the car pressed into my hamstrings. He kept pressing my head back, until my throat was exposed to him.

  “Warin,” I croaked.

  “Submit.” It was a low hiss that had goosebumps crawling down my arms, and a not entirely unpleasant shiver traveled up the length of my spine.

  “Love—“ I stopped speaking when his hand constricted ever so slightly around the top of my throat. A clear warning.

  “Submit. Now.” His voice was dark and dangerous, and despite my panic to save him by fleeing, something stupidly primitive in the baser parts of my brain responded without my consent. My body went lax in his grip, and a thrill of sexual excitement coursed through my abdomen. I panted, not expecting the rush of need as I stared into this wild being’s furious gaze.

  Warin growled low in his throat at my submission, and equal amounts of adrenaline and arousal spiked in my blood in response. Which was fortunate, because the next second he buried his fangs in my neck, his grip shifting from my jaw to my hair.

  I moaned brokenly, whimpering in surrender and my nipples hardening to points as Warin pierced my skin, his soft lips pressing against my throat. I sagged in his arms as he drank from me, abuzz with shock and sheer, unadulterated arousal. Some faraway part of my brain was outraged at my body’s easy submission—this was so not the time to get all Fifty Shades of Vampire. But the longer I remained in Warin’s embrace, his tongue lapping at my throat and his body dominating mine, the more muted the protesting part of my mind became.

  When he pulled back from my neck, I saw dark possession in his gaze as my blood dripped from his lips. Then he spun me around and forced me over the hood of the car. I managed to break my impact with the Lexus with my hands, grunting from the force of it and the pain that radiated through my shoulder. Then again, when Warin ripped at my jeans, breaking them as if they were made of paper as he tore them and my panties down my hips .

  His knees pressed against the insides of my thighs, parting them as much as my ruined jeans would allow. One hand slid up between my legs, opening me. Then, growling like a beast, he drove his cock into me. Fully.

  I cried out, my voice echoing brokenly through the night as Warin seated his thick length inside me. I was aroused
, but I hadn’t been prepared for him, and it hurt. I reared up, instinctively trying to get away from the pain of penetration, but Warin pressed a strong hand to the back of my neck, forcing me down onto the hood again. His other hand clamped down over my mouth, silencing my screams.

  “You tried to leave.” Warin’s voice was gruff and raw, so unlike his usual silken tone. “You left me once—never again. You. Are. Mine!”

  He began to move then, dragging his cock halfway out of my trembling pussy only to slam it back in. I whimpered against his palm, then screamed when he began to fuck me, hard and fast… so, so fast. He used his supernatural strength and speed to pummel my still unprepared pussy while I sobbed and clawed at the car.

  I’d thought our first time together had been rough. I’d been wrong.

  The ache in my too-tight sheath echoed through me for every brutal slap of his hips against my ass, but underneath the pain was an unmistakable flood of mind-bending pleasure rising. The friction of his fat cock pulled deliciously at my now fully slick channel, every push inside of me pounding into my G-spot, and soon I was climbing toward a desperate release.

  It hit me like a tidal wave, crashing over me and flooding my nervous system as my entire body convulsed underneath the vampire fucking me for all I was worth, my poor pussy clutching and milking his punishing girth until every muscle in my body relaxed with a shudder.

  Warin stilled his hips and removed his hand from my mouth.

  “Don’t ever leave me again,” he whispered, voice still rough but somewhat less aggressive now that I had given in to his dominance so completely. “I cannot bear this life without you.”

  “I’m a witch,” I croaked. “And now everyone knows. I can’t risk your life—ungh!”

  He thrust back into me. Though he was still rough on my battered pussy, he set a more human pace this time, and his hands found the swell of my hips rather than the back of my neck and my mouth.

  “I don’t care! You are mine! You’ll always be mine.”

  I grunted again, too lost in the sensation of his body moving against mine to object. And… I didn’t want to. He was right. I was his, as he was mine. I belonged to him, with him. Everything inside of me sang as he merged his body with mine in hard, firm thrusts that brought me to the edge of ecstasy. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to punish me, or if he was just working out the primal fury sparked by the fight and my attempt to flee—but if it was the former, he was failing miserably.