The Uprising: A Companion Novel (The Hunt Book 5)

by Liz Meldon

  Her first step into the hell-gate was piping hot, like descending into a steaming bath—only instead of glittering bath bombs and lavender-scented bubbles, it was algae and moss clinging to her legs and mud squishing underfoot.

  “Ugh.”

  “Takes a bit of adjusting to,” Moira called, only her and Severus’s heads visible halfway across the bog. “Don’t freak out when you get to the other side… We’ll be right there with you.”

  And with that, they disappeared under the murky surface—gone.

  “Are you ready for this, my little vampire?” Malachi rumbled. The spongy, muddy floor of the gate disappeared, forcing her to paddle and kick to stay afloat. His hand left hers, his burly arm curving around her waist instead. Ella cast one final look around the clearing, to the snowy banks and the gloomy forest, to a lonely Alaric and the bright distant gleam of the SUV’s headlights.

  A flicker of excitement tickled her belly, and she rolled her shoulders back, grimacing when a bit of putrid bog water splashed up her chin.

  “Is Hell ready for me?” Ella cocked her head to the side, gazing into the depths of his black stare unflinchingly, her heart oddly full. “Is it ready for us?”

  Malachi’s mouth peeled into a feral grin, one she easily matched. With a final deep breath of the crisp, bitter air of a Farrow’s Hollow winter, they went under.

  A hand locked around her ankle. Her heart leapt into her throat. Malachi held her tighter.

  And in an instant, they flew between worlds as one.

  Epilogue

  One (Hell) Year Later

  “Yikes.” Ella tugged at the frilly lace collar that unfurled under her chin. This… was so much worse than she’d thought it would be. Grimacing, she tried to smooth the intricate, delicate fabric down; you’d think it would do what she wanted, given it was hand stitched, a laborious six-month process from start to finish. Stubborn as sin, the material slowly curled back up to where it wanted to be.

  She gave herself a once-over in the vanity mirror, a surface that she had spent weeks building up the courage to look into after she had first arrived in Hell. Like all her companions, traveling through the hell-gate had altered Ella’s appearance—for the worse, she had first thought. Her hair was wilder, her skin far sallower, her freckles completely gone. Her irises turned from a familiar honey-brown to bright red, the whites of her eyes so freakin’ white they gave Moira’s hair a run for its money. Her talons… Well, they hadn’t changed much in shape or color, but they were hard as granite and required literal sanding tools to trim them.

  But a year had passed in the blink of an eye—three and a half months on Earth, though she tried not to think about the depressing conversion rate—and Ella could finally study her reflection without flinching, without her stomach turning unpleasantly, without her palms erupting in a cold sweat.

  Today, however, she wished she couldn’t. She wished she still avoided the oval mirror over her deep, chestnut brown vanity like the plague.

  Because…

  Ugh.

  Okay. She turned to the side, smoothing her hands down the rigid boning of the lace-up corset. Her waist looked painfully small, her boobs huge, her hips so luscious that Malachi probably wouldn’t make it out the front door, much less to Hell’s capital city Pandemonium, without mounting her.

  But the neck lace collar thing was a nightmare, and she had absolutely no clue how she would walk more than five feet without tripping over the many layers of skirt.

  And that bustle.

  With a bow.

  What. The. Fuck.

  She shouldn’t be surprised. This, right here, was the fashion hill Cordelia had vowed to die on. It was the pinnacle of the witch’s personal style, right down to the tight little kitten heels.

  But why her bridesmaids had to wear it, all of it, Ella had no fucking idea. Punishment? No. Cordelia had been almost as excited for their dresses as she had been about her own, which had taken the full year to construct. The garment was rumored to have a dozen seamstresses working on it day and night, but Ella had stopped believing in the exaggerations of demons months ago. Everything down here was a boast, a show for the crowd, a grand drama that all the upper echelon of demonic society hoped would make the history books.

  Not Cordelia, mind you, and certainly not Alaric. The engaged pair just wanted to be married, and had his father not been a former prince, they probably would have eloped. However, Verrier’s status, his reputation, his connection to Lucifer himself, meant the wedding of his only son would be a magnificent affair encompassing all of Hell’s capital—an event that would make the history books, whether the happy couple wanted it or not.

  Ella smoothed the velvety soft corset ties into the many layers of black tulle and chiffon starting at her hips. Good thing she didn’t need to breathe. Although they lived on separate floors in the Saevitia family home, a palatial estate far, far, far removed from the rest of demon-kind, she could almost hear Moira griping about the ridiculously cinched bodice from here.

  The soft tap, tap, tap at the door across the room couldn’t coax Ella away from the nightmare, and she responded with a distracted grunt, gaze fixed on her absurd reflection.

  Until the door opened and Malachi’s handsome features came into view, catching in the mirror and immediately shifting from his usual smooth confidence to horror. He stared at her for a moment, their eyes meeting in the mirror, and when Ella shuffled around, all that skirt fabric hissing with each stilted step, the chaos demon doubled over with a snort.

  “Don’t laugh.” She snatched her lipstick off the vanity counter and chucked it at him, her aim perfect but his reflexes faster. The little tin of plum gloss clattered on the marble floor somewhere out in the hall, and Malachi straightened with the sort of grin that made her want to both smack him and kiss him. Ella crossed her arms, lips pursed, fighting the urge to stomp her foot and pout. “This isn’t funny. It’s fucking tragic.”

  “You look beautiful, my little vampire,” he rumbled, sweeping into the room in his formal dress robes, Alaric’s choice for his groomsmen far more palatable. She got the full effect of the tailored burnt-umber suit in a single glance, fitted to perfection across Malachi’s broad shoulders, his tapered waist, his muscular thighs. While the ruddy hue would probably work on all skin tones, with all hair colors, Severus’s too, Malachi looked like a god.

  All the fancy cufflinks, the rings, the polished dress shoes highlighted Saevitia status in Hell, one of the top-tier families even if Malachi and Severus’s branch was no longer running clan affairs, but Ella was always most attracted to her chaos demon when he was buck naked, crowned with his golden mane and his large, black demonic horns. Sometimes they got lost in his hair; today they stood tall and proud, curved and thick like a ram’s, maybe even more polished than his shoes.

  Ella hadn’t been frightened when she first saw this side of him. A lot of the crazy shit in Hell scared her, and she would be a fool to say otherwise. But Malachi in all his glory, her towering lover, her ashen block of muscle and fire, had always been beautiful to her. Once they’d crossed through the hell-gate and all the magic had washed away, it had been a case of lust at first sight.

  And the feeling had been mutual. As soon as he saw her and her red eyes, her hair nearly double its usual size, her talons sharp enough to rip into him, Malachi had thrust her up against the side of that arrivals hall escalator and almost made a scene.

  Ella would have let him. Moira, on the other hand, wouldn’t have any of it. No need to draw any unnecessary attention to them—not yet. She and her bestie received enough of it anytime they left the Saevitia estate; Ella longed for the anonymity of those first few moments, but as the women chosen by the Saevitia brothers—Moira with a ring on her finger, a half-angel bound to a lust demon; Ella the obvious apple of Malachi’s eye, a lowly vampire with a chaos demon lover—they were subject to rumor, gossip, and fascination.

  She huffed as Malachi prowled toward her, door shut, hands clasped beh
ind his back and a mischievous twinkle in his black eyes. His brilliant red pupil had taken some adjusting to at first, but she liked that she could track his gaze whenever it raked across her figure.

  And it did a great deal of raking as he stalked the cavernous space that had once been her private bedroom, drinking her in, unabashedly feasting upon her.

  Heat tingled between her thighs, but it was hard to feel worthy of being feasted upon in so many goddamn layers of tulle. She seriously wasn’t tall enough to pull this off.

  “This is insane. I look like a black lace cupcake.”

  “Nonsense,” Malachi purred, closing in on her, his mouth curving into an all too familiar smirk—threatening to most, thrilling to Ella. “I don’t want to fuck a black lace cupcake.”

  She held up a warning finger, stumbling back into the vanity, her assortment of makeup, both from Hell and from Earth, shoved aside by the sheer breadth of this fucking skirt.

  “Malachi…” Her eyes narrowed like that would slow his approach—it didn’t. “I just finished my makeup, and I still need to do my hair, and you can’t rip the dress—”

  “Don’t worry,” he growled. “I won’t.”

  Malachi slammed his wicked mouth to hers, swallowing every last one of her half-hearted protests as he hoisted her onto the vanity. Makeup tins and cannisters of styling product toppled over, most rolling off the counter, the rest getting trapped under her giant skirt. His kiss was brutal, and Ella craved nothing else—she wanted to taste his desire, his need. She needed the blood, the clash of teeth, the forceful savagery as his tongue plundered her, marked her, claimed her for his own as it had done many, many, many times over since she had set foot in his ancestral home.

  Much to her surprise, Malachi navigated her ridiculous petticoats with only minimal difficulty, snarling at the final layer of fabric that barred him from her. That he ripped, a thin slip of cotton no one would see; an innocent casualty, really, but Ella still snapped at his tongue for it, still drew blood, her fangs always out in Hell, and then giggled when he shoved her up against the mirror in response. Her giggles drove him wild, the teasing, carefree little titters she made when he was especially rough with her. The sound told him he didn’t scare her, that she could withstand his brutality and was always thirsty for more.

  That two could play at his game—that she relished the violence.

  Malachi loved her for it. He had told her so months ago, shortly after fucking her on the grand staircase in the estate’s entrance foyer, his hands bruising, his kiss damning, dragging her through three screaming climaxes. Licking the blood from his neck, his chest, his wrist, Ella had said it back without hesitation. I love you too. It had come so naturally to her, high on pleasure and blood. It came even easier later, wrapped in his arms as they watched a storm ravage the landscape through the enormous floor-to-ceiling window in his suite, the gale as brutal as their lovemaking.

  Today he tormented her with his fingers first, stroking her, teasing her, pinching and flicking and rubbing just right as she moaned and squealed into his mouth. Ella crested the edge minutes later, her skin on fire, her climax slamming into her like a fucking hurricane. Dazed, she speared her fingers through his hair, smiling a bloody smile when their mouths finally parted, eyes locked. At the sound of his belt unbuckling, his dress pants dropping, she smoothed those wandering fingertips over his horns, adoring the ripple, like the rough bite of tree bark.

  She loved gripping them tight whenever she rode him—as he watched her, coaxed her on, hands everywhere, whispered words of worship dancing across her skin. Declarations of love, promises for the future. Promises for her and her alone.

  Snarling, Malachi pounded into her with a single, ruthless thrust, slamming her back against the mirror with such force that the glass splintered. Large hands gripped her thighs, forcing them up, deepening the angle of every merciless plunge. Ella didn’t bother to be quiet, to muffle her pleasure; neither did he. Their cries and growls filled the room, swelling the faster her fucked her, the harder he pounded her into the mirror, shards of glass crunching, the wooden vanity groaning beneath them.

  As a second climax hurtled ever closer, she frantically undid the top few buttons of his silken dress shirt and sunk her fangs into the meat of his muscular shoulder. The chaos demon hissed, taking her faster, fucking her, loving her, quick and dirty and vicious as she drank from him, mouth filled with blood as black as a raven’s wing.

  He tasted sweeter in Hell; she would never grow tired of it. Never crave another. Malachi Saevitia was hers and hers alone, and she felt that possessiveness deep in her core, especially like this, when they came as one in a desperate, fierce ecstasy that had her throwing her head back and crying his name.

  This orgasm had the intensity of the midnight sun, a sharp, startling sort of pleasure that Ella felt in her teeth, that would tingle between her thighs for hours after this. The kind that left her desperate for more.

  The kind that would probably have her dragging him aside after the ceremony, after the reception feast, after the toasts and speeches and sacrifices, so he could make her scream at least once more before nightfall.

  Malachi stiffened against her, cursing as he spilled himself inside. He slammed a hand to the wall, just over the broken vanity mirror, a shudder rippling across his impressive frame. Her vanilla-scented hand lotion tainted his skin, just as his masculine scent sunk deep into hers. The wound on his shoulder had already closed, and she quickly licked the lingering smears of blood away, pleased that they hadn’t sullied his shirt.

  Not this time, anyway. But it wouldn’t be the first outfit they had ruined together before a social outing, the fabric bloodstained and telling.

  Her makeup, on the other hand, was probably a lost cause.

  Clearing her throat pointedly, she pushed at his chest, a rock-hard wall of unyielding muscle, and Malachi obliged without a word—but not before stealing one last deep, lingering kiss that made her heart ache and her toes curl. No longer trapped in place, Ella slid off the vanity and ducked into the attached bathroom to quickly tidy up, struggling to wipe herself down with all this fucking skirt in the way. When she returned, she found Malachi tucking his spent cock into his trousers and lazily buckling his belt.

  She shot him a flirty glance through her lashes, then scooped up all her scattered makeup and dumped the armful back on the vanity. From what she could see in the shards of mirror still intact, her efforts had been utterly ruined, lipstick smeared, contouring too blended, her shimmery blush staining Malachi’s thumbs, his palms.

  Twenty minutes ago, she had almost looked human. It really had been some of her most subtle work yet, and now she’d need to start again.

  But a part of her had expected the disruption. She had given herself an extra hour to compensate, just in case the chaos demon who had her heart came knocking.

  Still, the vanity mirror was fucked. Her makeup could be redone, but this would require a trip to the woodworker, a pompous, bulbous demon named Unter who enjoyed openly leering at Ella and Moira when the Saevitia brothers had their backs turned.

  “Stop breaking my furniture,” she admonished, lightly swatting at his arm as he buttoned his shirt. Malachi smirked, woefully unapologetic for the damage to what had once been her furniture.

  In fact, the whole room had once belonged to Ella. Well, originally it had been a guest room down the hall from Malachi’s, but he had given it to her on her first night at the estate, a night fraught with emotion, a whirlwind of ups and downs. Moira had survived her trial in Heaven. The courts had deemed her worthy of life, taking all her past actions, her Truth Touch, as evidence that she would do good for humanity with her heightened angelic abilities, even if she had fallen in love with a demon.

  All that had been amazing news.

  But Ella was still banished. She had her family, yes, but everything else was gone. It had been… a lot.

  While Moira shacked up with Severus immediately, just as they had in Farrow’s Hollo
w, Ella had needed her space. Her privacy. Solitude. Malachi had put her in this huge, cavernous room with a view of the gardens without question or hesitation.

  After the first month, however, she found she spent so much time in his much larger, much grander suite with a view of the distant red mountains that it had just been easier to make the move permanent. This room, then, became a glorious walk-in closet that Ella and Moira shared.

  The pair had spent months refurnishing the entire estate. After Malachi and Severus’s parents had died and all their old servants fled, Malachi had covered their antique furniture with sheets and called it a day. When they uncovered said antiques, none of them had been usable—not by Ella and Moira’s standards. Dark, depressing wood. Hard, merciless benches. Everything was angular and prim and just sad. Nothing cozy. Nothing inviting. Nothing warm.

  She and Moira had rectified that almost immediately. Spoiled by their demons, they had bought newer, brighter, more comfortable furniture from craftsmen across the realm. What they couldn’t buy they had custom-made. Plush rugs spanned formerly cold marble hallways. Fresh flowers from the overgrown gardens outside came in, filling glass vases, complementing the colors from new, less depressing, less scary-as-fuck artwork. Light wood. Comfy cushions. A pool table in one of the many dens.

  The house was a work in progress, but it was getting there. Malachi and Severus hadn’t complained once about all the changes. In fact, the pair seemed to enjoy them.

  Or, more likely, they enjoyed Ella and Moira. The rest was just background noise, unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

  Ella appreciated a comfortable home, especially with all the other changes. Hell itself had gone through an upheaval in the last year with the mass migration of banished vampires. From what she understood, most had ended up in slums, unless they had connections to higher-tier demon clans like she did. Crime had shot up, keeping a fallen angel named Asmodeus and his band of roving enforcers very busy, but apparently they relished the job.