Dirty Deeds: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (Bonds of Blood Book 3)

by Cate Corvin

  “Quit being a quitter, Tori.” James frowned down at me. “She wouldn’t like it. Not since you took her place. She expects more out of you.”

  “Who?” I croaked.

  There was another one here in the dark. A tall woman on my other side, pale as bone, sheets of black hair hanging to her waist. Her eyes were as cold as the plains of Cerberus. I had the vague sense of crows flying above us in an invisible storm, tethered by this diamond-hard woman who seemed so familiar, yet not.

  “A warrior doesn’t die on her back,” she said bitterly. “Know what you are. It will be your strength.”

  A crow landed on her shoulder and looked down at me with a beady, bloodred eye. It squawked loudly.

  “Are you the Lady of Phantoms?” I asked, my tongue going numb, but as soon as I said it, I knew that was wrong. There was a bloody wound over her heart.

  She was the Morrígna who’d once been queen. Eluned Ravensbane.

  “Get up and finish what I started.” Her voice was so cold, there was no ignoring it. It cut through me like ice. James grinned, nodding enthusiastically, my bloodthirsty brother. He knew what he was. I’d always known what I was. It was time to own it.

  The crow seemed to agree with me. “Serpent,” it squawked, its wings rustling. “Snake.”

  I obeyed Eluned. I opened my eyes and took a breath, even as blood spurted out of my broken nose. I somehow knew I’d only been unconscious for a single second. Time moved differently on the other side of life.

  Thraustila raised his bloody fingers to his mouth and licked them. “Good. I didn’t want you to die so fast.” He stood, his hand fisted in my shirt yanking me upwards with him.

  He had his weapons, I had mine. “Càel!” I shouted. The dagger was still there in the open, silver gleaming like frost.

  The white wolf bit down neatly, crunching through a vampire’s arm as it crawled for me, and lunged for the dagger after he spit the limb out.

  He tossed his shaggy head and the blade flew over the throng of screaming warriors. I caught it with preternatural smoothness, the hilt slick with blood, and smiled at Thraustila.

  He smiled back. “Silver against an elder vampire? Your lessons are outdated, gutbag.”

  He was so old the silver wouldn’t feel like much more than a bee sting. But it wasn’t the sting I was counting on.

  I slashed at him, my reflexes a touch slower than they were five minutes ago. Ophiel’s blood was enough to bring me back from death. Once.

  Thraustila moved so fast I wouldn’t have been able to see him with human eyes. Every time I pushed forward, he backed away, laughing at me the entire time. See Tori chase. See Tori miss.

  Desperation tinged my actions and I took a deep breath, tasting the air. It was thick with blood… and laced with fear.

  Thraustila’s fear.

  He knew I was his match right now. I hadn’t gone down when he’d crushed me to pieces. And a scared vampire was a weak vampire.

  I kept him backing up, until I could see Morgrainne and Suraziel over his shoulder. My incubus tossed the red-haired Morrígna aside and lowered his head to charge into Thraustila’s back with his horns.

  The elder vampire barely moved, like he was rooted to the fucking floor, but it was his surprise at being attacked from behind that won me the tiny sliver of opportunity.

  Suraziel immediately spun to hold off Morgrainne, who’d gotten to her feet again, but I drove the dagger downwards, aiming for Thraustila’s heart.

  It skittered off his chest as he ducked aside, leaving a thin scratch beaded with blood.

  “Cheap tricks won’t work here, bitch.” He lunged in, caught my chin in a solid uppercut. My teeth snapped together with a sound like shattering glass. “Silver means nothing.”

  His blood was pumping through his veins like a tempest right now. It was all I needed, that thin red line, a strike from a serpent’s mouth.

  I spat out several shards of broken teeth and gave him a bloody grin. He wrenched my arm backwards, popping it out of the socket and tugging experimentally, like a child trying to pull the wing off a fly.

  He was going to take me apart, piece by piece.

  “Come, Càel.” Thraustila gazed at my face as though enthralled by the sight of its mutilation. “Tear your singer apart. You are still redeemable, son.”

  The white wolf raised his head. His muzzle was painted black with blood, pale eyes focused on me. The dense fur along his spine rose up in a ridge.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  The song in my head was strained, a deathly march as Càel fought his Maker’s demand.

  I spit a crumbling fang out, and another one slid forward to replace it. Ophiel’s blood was nearly gone, the last of the icy inferno working to repair my body.

  My captor pulled me closer, cocking his head. He never looked away from my face.

  Thraustila touched my cheek, his pupils widening. “What are you?” he whispered, his thumb finding my lower lip. “I need you.”

  He’d gone still, but it wasn’t the calm before the storm. The tension that radiated from him now was of a completely different sort.

  I fought the urge to tense up when his head snapped forward and he buried his face in my neck. Instead of fangs, I felt his tongue, warm and wet, and his arms slid around my waist like an iron vise.

  Suraziel’s saliva, delivered on the edge of a coated blade, had him in its hold.

  I had no last words for Thraustila. I was just exhausted, my body wringing the last bit of energy out of the fallen angel’s gift, and the pain was a constant hum in the background, waiting to take over as soon as the last of it was used up.

  I cupped Thraustila’s face, wishing him an eternity in Hell, and slid my hands down to his throat.

  He sighed, and let his head fall back, expecting a kiss, a touch of fangs.

  I dug in. Bones cracked, dark blood sprayed over me in a fountain, and a white-hot blizzard filled my chest and limbs as I pulverized his spine in my bare hands.

  A loud rip filled the sudden silence as I took Thraustila’s head from his body, his mouth still trying to kiss me, hands still digging into my back in ecstasy.

  I pushed him aside with the last of the unnatural strength Ophiel had given me, and his body fell to its knees. I gripped his head with a handful of black hair and carried it to the dais, to one of the braziers roaring with Fae flames.

  Blood dripped, leaving a gory trail behind me. I held his head aloft. Thraustila’s teeth gnashed, his tongue lashing out, looking for me.

  “I took Queen Eluned’s life. I am the third of the Morrígna.”

  My sisters knelt before me. As soon as their Maker had been torn apart, his hold over them had dissipated. They were barely upright, trembling from the pain of a thousand injuries.

  Rhianwen had told me I would know my name when the time came. I had an idea of it now, a fear turned strength, treachery turned weapon on the tip of a knife. Eluned told me to know what I was, and that was the baddest snake in the grass. I could claim it with pride.

  “I claim this court as Queen Victoria Serpentfang.”

  I held Thraustila’s head aloft a moment longer, then dropped it on the brazier of violet flame.

  It charred, his eyes rolling and teeth snapping, then caught fire. Sparks flew into the air as it was consumed.

  Everything hurt. The pain was unreal.

  I slumped onto the throne, pain ripping through me down to my bones. Ophiel’s blood was completely gone, leaving nothing but this agony behind.

  But we were alive.

  The Clouded Court was ours.

  Twenty-Two

  Tori

  Chapter 22 Tori

  “Tori.” Will breathed my name as he knelt next to me. He touched my face and forced me to look up at him.

  His hands came away wet with blood.

  My teeth ached as they re-grew to replace the shattered ones. If I hadn’t taken the three drops of angel blood, I would’ve been a wet smear on the floor right now. The fl
oor currently covered with at least thirty kneeling vampires, all declaring their fealty to the slayer who was the Podunk Princess only a few short months ago.

  Life was funny sometimes.

  “What do you need? Blood? I’ll get you anything. Anyone.”

  Suraziel tossed aside a sword he’d just used to behead a defector and stumbled up to the dais. The look on his face told me how bad it was, as if the pain wasn’t doing a good enough job of reminding me.

  “Go stand in the freezer,” I rasped out. My throat felt like it was caked with dust. I’d fucking died for a second. Only the angel’s gift had kept me alive.

  “What?” Will stared at me incredulously, clearly wondering if I’d gone insane. Shit, I might’ve.

  “I need a blood slushie.”

  Some of the incredulity left his face. If I was joking, I clearly wasn’t dying. “That’s not how it works, Tori.”

  “You said anything, Will. Blood slushie.”

  “For Satan’s sake, someone get the woman a blood slushie,” Suraziel said. He smoothed back a piece of hair that was threatening to congeal to my face. Lula Fray drifted down from the ceiling and landed on my shoulder, looking horrified at what was now coating her feet, but there was no way she’d leave me alone now. She had a Barbie Dream Mansion or three to collect on.

  Càel had herded the last of the vampires loyal to Thraustila to the back of the throne room. They’d refused to kneel, glaring at me from blood-smeared faces, eyes promising retribution that would never come.

  He dispatched them one by one with cold, brutal efficiency.

  When he was done, he looked up at me. Crowned in Blood, he mouthed. Mo shíorghrá.

  I was more than just crowned in it. I felt like I was wearing the entire contents of someone else’s body. Technically, I guessed I was.

  Will remained kneeling at my feet. “Will, what are you doing down there?” I asked, feeling almost delirious. I needed blood badly. There was no way I was drinking any of Thraustila’s. I wanted to take a shower, wash his remains down the drain, and burn what was left of his body.

  As soon as I could stand upright without falling over, which probably wouldn’t be anytime soon.

  “Making sure you don’t pass out,” he muttered. Good call. Vampires didn’t need sleep, but with the ache of newly-healed ribs, freshly re-inflated lungs, and a brand-new set of teeth, I was seeing black at the edges of my vision.

  Damn angel blood. There was a heavy price to pay for the trade-off of an angel’s strength and healing ability. That brush with divinity was more than enough for me, no more, thank you very much. Under the pain, there was an empty ache in my bones, like my cells knew how close they’d come to the glory of Heaven and regretted its absence now.

  How long would that feeling take to fade? Or would I always feel like something other now?

  Everything shimmered. I was close to bled out. My Court left the throne room, rising one by one and streaming through the doors. Just another day, another monarch for them.

  I watched Càel pick up the heavy doors and prop them over the open doorway, my throat burning. So much blood everywhere, and not a drop to drink. He looked up at me, and something in my face caused him to dart towards me.

  “I’m not gonna pass out,” I scoffed, and passed out.

  Waking as a vampire wasn’t the slow, drowning climb out of sleep that I’d experienced as a human.

  It was unconsciousness one moment.

  Complete awareness the next.

  I was in Càel’s bed. I was no longer dying of thirst. And I hardly hurt at all anymore.

  A huge arm snaked around my side as soon as I opened my eyes. I stared up at the ceiling for a moment, taking in the dangling ivory points of Càel’s war-chain until my brain caught up to speed.

  “How long was I out?” I asked. My voice sounded normal and smooth, no longer raspy. I licked my lips, tasting all three of them there. They’d fed me.

  “Only for the night,” Càel murmured, cradling me closer. The one thing that bothered me about this situation was the fact that they clearly hadn’t been able to prop my unconscious body under a hot shower, because I was crusted with flaking blood.

  “I need to get this off me,” I said, and Càel, perfect to the core, picked me up and carried me to what was currently my favorite room in my court: the bathroom.

  I showered for a long time, mostly because Càel was a very distracting addition to the main event. “Did you get all the flaying out of your system?”

  He was making sure I was very, very clean. Especially my breasts. I was going to have the shiniest, most exfoliated boobs in New York by the time he was done. I draped my arms around his neck, letting the hot water run between us.

  “Morgrainne was in favor of making you a patchwork quilt from the skins of our enemies, but I convinced her it was a poor idea. Google tells me women prefer blood, dark rituals, and chocolate.”

  “Wise magician, that Google,” I said, letting my fingers trail over his chest. It was finally done. I could breathe for once, enjoy life and my guys one day at a time without fear of waking up dead.

  Càel sighed. “I’ve been told he has competition in the Grand Wizard Bing.”

  “No.” I opened my eyes again. “Never Bing.”

  A small smile touched his lips, and for the hundredth time I wondered how much he was fucking with me when it came to his knowledge of the modern world.

  “As much as I would love to keep you here all day, the demon has prepared something for you, and the brotherhood will be very disappointed if you don’t get to enjoy it.”

  I held back a small groan. I had eternity, not having sex one time wouldn’t kill me. Maybe.

  But Càel’s insistence on getting out of the shower turned out to be worth it.

  I pulled on clean clothes- a silky dark green dress with thin straps and a slit up the leg, I was really going to need to have a chat with Rhianwen about my wardrobe- and stepped out to Suraziel and Will, sitting on a bed with unbloodied sheets.

  My eyes went to their wrists first. In my bled-out stupor, I hadn’t been gentle when I’d fed from them. Savage new marks marred their skin.

  “Oh fuck, I’m sorry,” I blurted out, but Will just shrugged and Suraziel held up a glass of scarlet slush, with a little umbrella and neon pink twisty straw in the top.

  “Blood slushie for the madame,” he announced.

  I was across the room in a heartbeat, cradling the icy glass. “You got me a blood slushie? Who is it?”

  “All of us,” Will said, leaning back. He was delectably shirtless, all golden skin and ridged muscles.

  I slurped my blood slushie. Being queen had some perks.

  I wasn’t going to tell them after all the work they’d gone through to make it, but it was nowhere near as satisfying as feeding from the vein, mouth to skin. Give me a naked guy and my mouth on his neck any day.

  I idly wondered if Will would let me stick the paper umbrella in his hair while I fed.

  “You guys are the best,” I said, putting the empty glass on an end table and folding myself on the bed between them. “I didn’t mean to scar you up, though.”

  “I’m sure there’ll be more,” Suraziel said, yanking me onto his lap. Will pulled up my legs and draped them over his thighs. “Don’t apologize for what you are, Victoria the Majestic.”

  “Majestic?” I snorted. “Please.”

  “Victoria the Exalted?”

  “Nope.”

  “Victoria the Badass.” Suraziel raised an eyebrow, waiting for my response.

  I pretended to mull it over. “That one can stay.”

  “You drank angel blood, tricked and killed an elder vampire with your bare hands. Pretty sure Exalted gets to make the cut, too.” Will gripped me around my ankle, rubbing his fingertips over me.

  “Yeah, never doing that again. I’ve had enough angel blood and elder vampires for one immortal lifetime.” I stretched out over both of them and crooked my finger at Càel. “Com
e here and snuggle.”

  Suraziel glanced at the knight, who was finishing toweling off. “Do thousand-year-old vampires really snuggle? I was under the impression it was all death and destruction.”

  Càel climbed over the opposite side of the bed, prowling towards me like a tiger. “We’re the best at destruction and snuggling. I’ve had centuries to perfect all techniques.”

  He rested his head on my stomach and I ran my hands through his damp blond curls. A comfortable silence fell over us.

  The first time we’d met Thraustila, he’d told us he wanted to forge new bonds. Bonds of blood.

  He hadn’t forged anything, only managed to take and kill. These were true bonds, each of us linked to the other by years of machinations set in motion by others. If not for Thraustila and Sitri’s greed, I might never have met any of them. I could’ve lived and died in Port Leona, never crossing paths with Càel, never meeting Will or Sura or so much as thinking about Libra Academy.

  The throne was a bond of blood, too. I’d won it through death, however inadvertently, and I’d kept it by spilling more.

  I was tired of killing and vengeance. I’d been submerged in a pool of death and hate for so long, I hadn’t thought about what I wanted.

  “What do we do next?” I asked, breaking the silence.

  Everyone looked at me and spoke at the same time.

  “Take inventory of the Court’s funding and establish a solid power-base.”

  “Sniff out the remaining defectors and mount their dripping heads on our walls.”

  “Import twenty tons of sand and hire a Faerie to turn the basement into a nude beach resort.”

  I wasn’t really sure what I’d been expecting. Some things would obviously never change.

  Càel slipped a hand under my knee, stroking the inside of my thigh. “I will mount their heads later, shíorghrá. You have us, and all the time in the world to choose what you’ll do with it. What do you want to do next?”

  I settled back against Suraziel’s chest, enjoying the warm hum of his presence in my nerves. There was nowhere pressing to be. No one to hunt down. No authorities to duck. No kings to murder. No moms to save.