“It was a fucking massacre that bathed the land in blood. The Knight’s, having previously warned the witches of what would befall them if they continued meddling in the lives of mortals, fought back, of course. The witches refused to follow the orders of the Knights, and instead of listening, they became crazed with changing the course of history and began murdering humans relentlessly in front of others, who carried those stories to the Pope and the King. But it wasn’t their fault, not really. You see, demons had been ordered by a very powerful Goddess to inhabit the witches, and rein chaos that would set many other things into motion. As they did, chaos erupted, and that brought every eye in their direction. Their action under the guise of the witches drew the eyes of many officials, sealing their fate. The Knights were called upon to rid the land of the blight the witches had created. To remove them from power, and dispel the humans who had been enthralled by them. Bloody business that it was, the Knights were forced to either do as they’d been ordered by the King and Pope, or stand trial with the witches. The druids, having also been called to help the witches when the Knights had refused the witches, then joined the Knights in driving out the evil that had swept over the lands like a plague.
“The witches were enraged that they were being burned for doing nothing wrong, other than housing demons, then turned their curses upon those who they blamed for the slight against them. They gathered together to have enough power to ignite a curse that would follow both the Knights and the druids through bloodlines. It started with the higher ranked Templars, forcing those beneath them to flee from their homes and hide deep in Scotland. Of course, I’m getting ahead of myself. I forgot the burning Templars, didn’t I?” Fred chuckled as a shiver ran up my spine.
“On Friday the 13th, 1307, King Philip IV ordered the arrest of the Templar Knights. Of course, most people assumed he was trying to escape the debt he had accrued from his war against the English, when in fact, he’d been under an enthrallment spell, spelled by the covens. I can still smell Jacques Dé Molay’s flesh as it burned. The man was more than just a myth; he was a legend among the first Templars who were rumored to hold something evil in their souls. I went to watch him burn, but the man, while on fire, cursed the King, the King’s line, and the Pope himself. Impressive feat while being burned alive, don’t you agree?”
“Sounds disturbing,” I uttered as I stared at him, still holding the forgotten soap in my hand as a chill raced up my spine.
“Oh, it was. Because Jacques Dé Molay wasn’t alone in cursing them that day,” he smirked as his voice lowered with his story. “Unbeknownst to the bystanders who watched the Templar Knights burning, other Knights stood witness to the crimes of the church and King. A group of Knights so feared that not even the King and his armies dared fight them. Sir Callaghan, one of the first Knights of the Order of the Templar, watched as his idol burned alive for crimes that he did not commit. After that, he ordered the massacre of every remaining coven in France and England. The druids, knowing that they would burn alongside the Knights, hid and allowed the world to believe they’d been eradicated. Callaghan was relentless as he brought the witches to task for burning his Knights at the stake. There was a rumor that he sought one female out, someone he’d once loved who may or may not have started the entire mess in the first place. Unfortunately, he vanished before it could be discovered as fact or fiction.
“The witches, knowing that Callaghan was immortal, had to figure out another way to stop him. They called on Hecate to assist them in their greatest hour of need, and she answered their call with a curse. One that could only work if the entire bloodline and Order of Knights and druids were included; a pentagram that needed each point filled to be complete. So the Knights, druids, witches, and two sacrifices to a darker power had to be included in this curse. The witches killed two other supernatural creatures to take out the Knights and druids. To this day, no one knows which or if it is the monsters that the Templars took within them. We do, however, know that it came with a cost, as most things do. To gain the strength they needed to fight the witches’ curse, they agreed to house a greater evil within them. To prove they were worthy, they each had to sacrifice what they loved most in the world on an altar to the evil beings. Once they had proven their worth, they were told what the cure was and how to obtain it, and given a beast to ensure that they succeeded.”
I stared at Fred, knowing his story was off a bit, but then he was a demon. They all told different tales of what unfolded in history, their own version of the truth. He was wrong though, Callaghan had secrets, and he’d merged with it long before the day his idol and mentor had been burned on the pyre. Still, I listened, as often there was truth in their version of the past.
“That brings us to you. The witches cursed the Knights and the druids to a plague that would ravish their people slowly until even the youngest of them suffered from it. This plague, it wouldn’t only turn the immortals to mortal beings, it would start with the weakest of their race, the babes, and then work its way through them until the mightiest of them fell. To escape that fate, they had to make another sacrifice. They knew that they would need a female druid to carry the child of a Templar Knight to term: you. The only issue was, she had to be pure of blood and created of magic that was so evil, no one would ever touch her for fear she would create a likeness of herself and set this world on fire. Apparently, they didn’t realize or think of how far the Knights and druids would be willing to take things during their desperation to survive. There was also the fact that druids didn’t birth females, but they knew how they could accomplish it. In comes the darkest evil this world has ever known.
“They gathered the womb. A female who was of the purest blood of the Order, Jacques’s own daughter. A druid male of great magic, one who was respected and loved by his people,” he hissed as he watched me. “They were forced to drink of the darkest magic in their darkest hour of need. They fucked until they created you, a monster, unlike anything this world would ever know. You were born under a blood moon, left in a pool of your mother’s blood. It was where the Knights found you, born too early to survive, and yet you did. They took you to the druids, to be trained in magic and to become strong enough to endure and survive, through the coming of the witches, for they will come to end you, Erie. Of that, you can be sure. You are the only way that this ends, either with a child buried in your womb, or you buried in the cold ground. But there’s more. You are the Queen of Darkness, mistress. Should you choose to wield it, that darkness inside of you would call to every creature who resides in the darkness, even me. You are everything evil, created from the most evil thing in any world that ever existed.”
“That’s a cool story, Fred,” I muttered as I lay back onto the pillows, considering what he said and then dismissing it.
“Mistress, it wasn’t a story. Should you rise, the riders will come. If you choose darkness, this world will become yours to take,” he crooned as if he was salivating at the idea.
“And where do you fit into this world?”
“Me, I’d be at your side, of course.”
“Of course,” I muttered beneath my breath as I brought the soap up against my nose, inhaling it. I reached over, closing the cooler before I stood back up, pulling down Callaghan’s portrait. My finger touched his cheek, studying the unguarded look in his eyes. My cheeks heated as I realized what I was doing and, setting it aside, I pulled a few bars of soap out of their boxes, placing them along the edge of the room as my heart started to increase its pace, my mind processing the tiny room I was inside. I wouldn’t panic. No, I grabbed the last unwrapped bar of soap and held it to my nose as I laid back on the bed, peeking through my lashes to study the picture as sleep took over, taking me back to the nightmares that I never fully escaped. “The Queen of Darkness, my ass,” I muttered sleepily as I closed my eyes, ignoring the tight confines that I’d chosen to hide from the Knights within.
Chapter 13
I was on
fire, my body a blaze of unsated need as my hand rubbed the place it ached the most. All night long, fantasies had played out in my dreams until the pull to touch it became a need I couldn’t ignore. I swallowed a moan as I found it wet, drenched with the fantasies of Callaghan and his touch that played out on repeat in my head.
It was as if he had used magic, a spell that ignited a need so red-hot and violent within my core that one caress had my fist against my mouth as I exploded. My spine arched off of the exercise pads I’d stacked as a bed, and my heart pounded wildly as the orgasm pulsed through me. Heat flushed my cheeks as I realized what I had just done, and who I had imagined when I’d come undone.
“Flicking that magic bean, mistress?” a deep voice pulled me from the haze of lust as I eyed the cooler with irritation. “If you brought my body to me, I could add the magic beanstalk to it.”
I didn’t reply as I sat up, aware of the sweltering heat of the room and the fact that it shouldn’t be hot at all. We were almost to spring, but it was still weeks away, even with the snow blanketing Spokane, and yet it was so suffocatingly hot in the small confines of the room that my hair clung to my neck. I wiped away the sweat that covered my neck and stared down at the mark on my wrist; it was glowing as if it was the reason my body had been out of control.
Bringing it up to my eyes, I watched as it began to grow, sending a single tendril of what resembled a delicate tattoo of a vine racing up my forearm to wrap around it, like delicate tribal art. He hadn’t just tattooed his signet onto my flesh; he’d marked me in a deeper way than that. It didn’t burn or ache, but it was definitely his fault.
I leaned over, pulling the cooler to where I sat as I opened it, staring down at Fred, who smirked at my flushed cheeks.
“Still alive, I see,” he repeated his usual greeting as he watched me, knowing what I’d done with a dark smile on his lips.
“We need to set boundaries,” I muttered as I reached into my bag, pulling out the only tube of lipstick I owned, and painted my lips as I spoke. “If you hear anything you shouldn’t, pretend you didn’t, okay?”
“You mean if I hear you masturbating, I should ignore it? No.”
“Fred, this isn’t a negotiation,” I grumbled.
“I don’t care,” he chuckled. “Remember, I’m not here because I want to be, I’m here because you cut my fucking head off, woman.”
“Are you still upset about that? I thought we were past that, what, with me being your Mistress of Darkness and all,” I exhaled, staring at him. He looked peckish, and I frowned.
“You are past it, and yet I am still here unable to murder you as I want to do, badly.”
“Friends don’t kill friends, Fred.” I stood, grabbing the jacket from my backpack before pushing my arms through it.
“Where are you going? And we are not friends!” he hissed.
“I’m going to get some holy water,” I announced as I zipped up the pack and shoved the straps up my arms.
“Whatever for?” he exclaimed.
“Because I think you need an exorcism.”
“I am a demon! You do remember that, right? Woman, you’re not right in the head.”
“Don’t stereotype me, it’s not nice!”
“I call it as I see it, mistress.”
“I am not crazy.”
“Are too,” he muttered.
“Am not!”
“You’re infuriating!”
“And you’re a head without a body, asshole!”
“Ouch, that one hurt.”
“Good!”
I pushed through the wall and then paused, turning back to slam the lid of the cooler down as he grumbled some more. Men were so infuriatingly annoying. I’d saved him from being drowned in holy water by those asshole Knights, and he still pretended he didn’t care about me. Men!
I slipped through the walls and paused inside the store, staring into the darkness that seemed strangely off. It shouldn’t be this dark, it was still morning. Some light should have been entering through the store’s glass ceiling, and yet there was no light coming in. Only darkness that seemed inhumanly dark and smelled of magic.
Slowly, I exited the room and walked through the many corpses. Pausing at the exit to the store my hideout was located in, I swallowed hard as a dark shadow moved deeper in the outlet mall. I slid against the wall, following it as it moved further and further away from me.
At the divider, where the escalators moved down to the subfloor of the mall, I watched as the shadow grew larger than life against the candle it had just lit. My eyes narrowed as I tried to make out what it was or who it was. I should have turned around and gone scouring for food and holy water, but instead, I followed it.
My footsteps sounded louder than they should have, but then my heartbeat was pounding loud enough to wake the dead as I hunted whatever was hunting the darkness below. I reached the bottom, stalling my movement as I waited for it to round a corner. My guess was, demons were trying to move into my new home, and that wasn’t happening. Not on my turf; but how could they have bypassed the wards I’d placed to make them feel uncomfortable here?
They were the same wards painted on every church wall throughout history. Humans thought that demons couldn’t enter them, or they’d burst into flames. Not true, they didn’t enter them because they were so heavily warded that the demons would back away, sensing the trap laid to catch them. The demons who didn’t heed the wards or warning went boom, but that was simple science and runes.
I stood on the other side of the hall, blocked by the wall. I prepared to go around it as the light continually moved further away. Stepping past the protection of the wall, hands grabbed me and pushed me against it. I kicked out, landing a well-placed knee to his nuts as a string of curses erupted in a hushed whisper. Turning to run, he grabbed me, yanking me against him as he covered my mouth with his hand.
My teeth sank into flesh, and even more hushed cursing began. I bucked against him as he took me to the ground, blue eyes glowing in the darkness as he rolled us towards the wall. I hissed as his arm tightened over my chest, knocking the air from my lungs while I fought to breathe.
“Erie,” Callaghan breathed against my ear. “There are others here, so stop fighting me, now. Unless you’d rather go with them to breed?” he uttered.
I inhaled his heady scent of woodsy masculinity as something hard pressed against my back. I elbowed his ribs, smirking against the hand that held my mouth silent as voices reached us. A shiver rushed through me as my name was muffled on their words. They were checking each store, searching for me, and fear for Fred flashed in my mind.
The hand over my mouth released it, and I tried to roll away from him. He followed me, pulling me against him as he pushed me into an abandoned storefront. His eyes took me in, and, nostrils flaring, he tilted his head, as if he could smell the shit I’d done earlier on my flesh. A guilty blush covered my cheeks as I slowly stepped further into the store, away from him.
“You smell good enough to fuck, Erie,” he chuckled as he prowled forward, his white cloak with the red-cross of the Templar on it marking him a Holy Knight. “How was your dream last night?” he asked.
“You starred in it,” I hissed huskily. “You did turn me on though, so much that you ended as a splatter which painted my walls. It was ecstasy,” I replied icily.
“You smell like lavender,” he growled as I darted one way, only to have his elbow knock me back as he smashed me against the wall. He held me there, staring into my eyes as something else prowled beneath the surface, watching me. Maybe Fred hadn’t been telling me a story, or maybe I only imagined it because of his story?
“What do you want?” I seethed.
“I want to wreck that tight pussy,” he shrugged with a wicked smile on his sensual lips as a glint of mischief entered his eyes. “I know where you sleep, Erie. I know how that messy head of yours
works. You think hiding with the Fae will save you? It won’t. Nothing and no one can save you from me, of that, you can be sure.”
“Callaghan,” I uttered hoarsely, my tongue darting out to trace over my lips as his eyes burned with need. “You forgot one thing,” I hissed huskily as his mouth lowered towards mine.
“And what is that?” he asked as those lips brushed against mine. His tongue tested my mouth, testing my resistance or lack of as a hungry growl escaped his lungs.
“I’m not your fucking plaything,” I uttered against his lips as the poison began to sink into him from the lipstick I wore. I followed him down the ground, staring at him and tilting my head as his eyes grew hazy. “You don’t know anything about me,” I laughed darkly, pushing his body against the floor and then straddling him, watching him as he struggled to breathe. “I’m unlike anything you’ve encountered, and more pissed off than the Scots against the English pricks who coveted their lands and mounted their wives.” My core rubbed against his massive cock as I settled onto him. A moan left my lips as blood and spit exploded from his lungs. Eyes widened as he watched me use his cock while he died beneath me. “I do enjoy killing you, though,” I admitted begrudgingly.
“Run,” he uttered through the blood that filled his lungs.
I turned, sensing the others as he whispered the order. I pushed off of him, dragging him with me as I slipped through the walls. Once inside, I pushed my hand against his mouth and listened as heavy footfalls entered the store from the other side of the false wall. Eyes heavy with death, he watched the panic racing through me as I once again settled over him, pushing my hand against his nose and mouth, preventing air from getting to his lungs.
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