by R. S. Black
I grabbed my head. His presence sank in like black mold taking over my body.
I was bone, but now there was a heart beating inside my ribs.
“Ya-el,” he whispered again. “At last you are mine.”
Evil. Dark. Pure. That voice shivered down my spine with its soul-sucking cold.
I gasped, clutching my chest as my heart went into cardiac arrest. Finally Lust seemed to snap out of her catatonic state. She curled her soul around mine, sinking her claws into my already frayed and battered consciousness. For the first time I not only welcomed her, I sobbed with joy to feel her return. Like it or not, she was a part of me. A part more vital than I’d ever believed was possible.
The feel of her was like a warm blanket on a cold night. I drew from that warmth and wrapped myself in it. I winced, fighting Wrath’s voice in my head. Fighting his insistence that I get up and follow him.
But there was a physical rending to do it. I hadn’t even realized I was still moving forward, but now I could make out the vague outline of his body. He was large, masculine, completely alluring.
And that voice... “Ya-el.” I shivered. How could I continue to fight this when every instinct inside me wanted to obey?
“Come to me, beloved Ya-el. My favorite. You were always my favorite.” That voice intoxicated me, like heroin—it shot through my veins in a glorious rush of pure white ecstasy.
I curled my bony fingers into the ground, battling every instinct to get up and throw myself at him.
“Ya-el, do you not desire me?” His words were soft, tender. So very gentle. I bit my lip and whimpered.
Ya-el, my true name. There was power in a name. I remembered that. The last bit of sanity left in me whispered this was wrong. I tried to understand why, but he called me again, and that voice fell silent.
As if there were a thread connected from his body to mine, he dragged me closer and closer toward him. I groaned, writhing with the beginnings of desire.
“Ya-el.” He shoved more of his power into his voice, wielding my name like a sword and cutting me in two. Like a thin sheet of ice, the last of my frail resistance snapped.
Oh yes. Pleasure coursed through me. Lust flared to life, filled me with longing so profound it was like a little death. “Anything,” I whispered.
“Come,” he said with the seductive burr of a lover.
I stepped toward him and heard the heavy clink of chains. Adrenaline rushed through me. I could no longer remember why I’d ever thought to resist him. He was glorious. Beautiful. Suddenly all I wanted was to please him. Feel him wrap me in his large arms and take me. Even knowing that taking would kill me, it no longer mattered. It was him and me. There was nothing else.
He laughed and repeated my name. Each time, I stepped one foot closer.
He was so beautiful.
I moaned. Lust sighed.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he said, curling his full, firm lips. His long black hair fell in waves down his nude back, gleaming differing shades of twilight in the hazy orange light. An overwhelming desire to run my fingers through that hair and wrap it around my body crowded my thoughts. My fingers curled. His green eyes flamed, and in them I saw the beginning of time. The stars, the heavens, all creation.
“Come to me.”
I smiled. I wasn’t hurting anymore. It was okay. This was good. This was right.
He was so beautiful. Too perfect. It was an almost physical pain to gaze upon him, and yet I couldn’t look away. Because to do so would only make it hurt worse.
The roped muscles of his body flexed as he leaned toward me. Thick steel chains bound him to the rock wall. I frowned, wanting to take the chains off. Free him, hold him, and worship all that masculine splendor.
“A kiss,” he said, lips curving.
“Yes.” I tried to think, to work up some emotion outside this moment. But it was as if I’d never existed before this. My life was a blank. I should have been terrified. But I wasn’t. There was nothing but a hard certainty that I belonged here with Wrath. I lived for him. And I’d die for him.
“No!”
I stopped, my left foot suspended midstep.
“She’s mine.”
The voice was so familiar. It tugged at me. At some hidden thought buried deep in the central core of my very soul. It pulled me back. Made me pause.
“Come to me,” Wrath roared. I blinked, frowned. An internal battle waged inside me, the obsessive need to obey and the tiny fluttering memory trying desperately to make itself known. I edged my foot forward.
I was grabbed from behind and flung to the ground. The jarring impact snapped me violently back into the present. I screamed, writhing and bucking and able to turn my head to the side long enough for me to see who held me down with such force. Billy sat on my back with his hand pinned between my shoulder blades.
“Get off,” I grunted.
“Shut up,” he growled through clenched teeth.
“Get him,” Wrath commanded.
Then bodies were on top of us, dragging Billy off me. I jumped up only to have the furry, maggot-faced LCD of earlier fling himself at me.
He wrapped his claws around my neck, bloodlust dripping from his eyes. But I was bone now, not flesh. I shoved my arms between us, broke his hold, and slammed him to the ground. I punched through his chest. My fist sank through muscle, gristle, and between the LCD’s ribs as if he’d been made of sand. I grabbed his heart and ripped it out, throwing it away.
He snapped at me, his fangs gnawing at my arm. I seized his head and twisted it off, killing him in the style of a Neph.
But he wasn’t Neph, and I was unprepared for what happened next.
“Pandora, no!” I barely heard Billy’s anguished cry. But it was already too late.
The furry body exploded in a shower of blood and bits of gore. A black oily substance floated out and then slammed into me.
I screamed and curled into a tight ball as dark madness consumed me. Hair tore through my skull. Muscle formed to bone. Veins ran with blood. Flesh knit itself to me.
My brain ran with memories of something dark, something evil. A new presence lurked inside my mind. A canvas of bitter hate dwelt in a dark corner, infecting me with its poison. Memories, not my own, ran in a constant blur of motion.
Distorted limbs and bloated bodies. Blood everywhere. Disease. Waste. Famine.
In that moment, realization dawned. The LCD I’d just killed was Pestilence, and it was his tainted soul consuming me.
I was dying. Lust screeched, battling for dominion against the foreign body invading us.
I fell to my face. Tiny pebbles gouged my cheek and cut me open. Sweat bathed my body. I curled into the fetal position. The pain, like a living entity, ripped me apart from the inside out. I couldn’t think to move. To do anything other than moan.
The cries and grunts of fighting went on around me. Why was I here? How had I gotten here? I needed to get away, but my body wouldn’t obey my command to move.
“Ya-el.” Wrath again.
I moaned, cupped my ears, and rocked back and forth. “No,” I croaked with a voice I hardly recognized.
The world tilted. My stomach heaved.
“Ya-el... Come to me.”
“Nugh,” I muttered nonsense. Resistance slipped as the new monster inside demanded I obey the Master.
Pestilence took hold of my limbs, Lust was losing ground. I hadn’t fed her in days, and she was growing weak. Something wet leaked down my nose.
I started moving. Pestilence exerted his will, forcing me to use limbs unable to sustain my weight. I dragged myself, inch by bloody inch, my fingers split open and a bloody mess as I continued to scrape them along the rock.
I bit my bottom lip. “God, please—” My voice broke.
“He won’t hear you down here,” Wrath mocked me, derision-filled laughter echoing around us. The screams of the tortured rose in crescendo at the sound of his voice.
“He doesn’t respond to dogs,” he spat. �
��You want me, Ya-el. Inside you. Admit it.”
“No.” But even as I denied it, my broken body responded to the black death of seduction in his voice. I whimpered and turned my face away. He was too beautiful to gaze upon. Too perfect. My breasts were heavy, my thighs wet. And even though every inch of me screamed in agony, I knew if he touched me I’d let him take me and gladly die in his arms.
Dancing fire caught my eye. Not the liquid heat of lava, but pure white light.
It was Billy, wielding a sword of flame. He parried and thrusted, felling many demons. Then he twirled, brown eyes glittering with rage as he advanced on me.
I urged my body to move, but all I could manage was the slow crawl of death.
Everything happened so fast. Billy was upon me, his face a cold mask of hatred. Sword lifted.
“Mine,” I heard Chaos screech.
“Billy,” I croaked with a voice grown hoarse. Now I knew Luc had been right. Billy had meant to kill me all along. In that moment I knew how Kemen must have felt. I was too tired to fight, too tired to care. A small smile tipped the corner of my mouth as I waited for the blow that would finally end my wretched life.
The cold fingers of death shivered through the air, its presence like an electric current sliding against my flesh. But it wasn’t my body death pricked.
A flash of silver sliced through Billy’s chest. His eyes grew wide, as if shocked. He stared at the spike jutting from his stomach as a bloom of crimson began to spread against the white of his shirt.
Those big brown eyes of his I’d always found so mesmerizing looked at me with an inexpressible depth of sorrow. He mouthed something I couldn’t understand and then dropped to his knees.
“Billy.”
Then he disappeared in an explosion of color.
Fingers of light—pearl and gold—stretched the length of the room and snatched the darkness out.
There were groans and howls of pain all around.
“No,” Wrath roared. “Not possible. He can’t...”
I jerked as the light touched me. The demons inside me shrieked, shrinking back. But the light sank in deep, stripped away the darkness and quieted their voices.
I gasped; the pain in my body choked me. Was I dying?
I could no longer hear Lust or Pestilence. For the first time, it was totally quiet inside my head. I wanted to cry, but I laughed instead, swallowed in the warmth of that light.
Peace.
Beautiful peace.
I smiled, even as the agony of my wounds slowly leached the life from me. My heart thumped slowly.
This was what Kemen had sought. Kemen, my beloved friend. “I’m... sorry.”
Everything started to turn fuzzy.
Thump.
Tired. So tired.
Thump.
“Hang on.” Strong arms scooped me up.
My lashes fluttered and for a second I saw gray. “Gray... Ma... ?”
He touched my forehead and whispered words I could not understand. When he moved his hand, the pain was gone. I was whole, but now the pain was replaced by lethargy so deep I couldn’t resist its pull. I passed out.
Something shoved hard against my shoulder. I cracked open an eye, unsure how long I’d been out, but I had to squeeze it shut immediately as an overwhelming sensation of vertigo rushed through me. Was I floating?
I groaned. So tired. Air rushed past me in an ear-splitting whistle. Everything was still black and empty, but I was warm, cradled in strong arms.
Who was holding me? I couldn’t remember.
Sleep dragged me under again. Kemen’s smiling face danced behind my closed eyes. “Sandman.” I gave a happy sigh. “Is that you?”
He touched my cheek.
“They weren’t children. LCD.”
“I know.” The deep voice dragged me under, made it hard to think. But I had to tell him. He had to know.
“Thought... killed you. So sorry. So, so sorry.”
“Sleep, my beauty.”
I snuggled in his arms. Eyelids weighted down. It’d been a dream. A bad dream. “Love you, Sloth.”
“I... do too.”
I smiled at the love trembling in those words. He hadn’t said, but I’d heard it all the same. I would be all right now, because Kemen was holding me. All was right with the world. It’d been a dream. Just a very bad dream.
Chapter 25
Birds chirping. Bad taste in my mouth. I grabbed my head. Too much light. I winced and sat up. Where was I?
Then my hand brushed something hard. I glanced down.
I was on my bed, in my room. I licked my lips and picked up the small tape recorder. There was a note taped to the front with one word scribbled on it: listen.
It was signed G.M.
I clenched my jaw until my molars ached. Instinctively I knew, whatever this was, I wouldn’t like it. But curiosity... I clicked Play.
“I don’t give a bloody hell what ye have to do to bring Kemen to that club, ye do it.”
Sweat beaded on my brow. The voice was Grace.
“Let me worry about Pandora. Stupid chit believes anything I tell her. She sucks up me crumbs of love like a starving child. She is utterly blinded to me. Do not worry about her.”
I gasped, hyperventilating, unable to believe my ears. It hadn’t been a dream. “Oh God.” I swallowed the bile.
“I don’t effin’ care how ye make it happen, ye just make it happen. She believes the Neph is rogue, she’ll kill him. Trust me on that.”
I covered my mouth with my hand.
“Aye, she’s got the ring.”
I started shaking and fisted my hand into the blanket.
Her terrible laughter pelted through the tiny speaker. “If she is the woman of prophecy, we’ll know tonight. If not, she’s expendable.”
The loud buzz of static filled the room. The recording stopped.
I shoved my hand into my mouth to keep from screaming and ran to the bathroom. I turned on the shower to the coldest setting. Stripped off my clothes and sat down, swinging the curtains shut. I hugged my legs to my chest as I rocked. The water was like shards of ice as it touched my skin.
A black bottomless pit of raw and awful grief welled up inside me. Sounds spilled through the room. Hopeless, empty moans.
Visions of that night filled my head with the awful agony of truth.
“Not a dream. Not a dream.” I couldn’t seem to say anything else. My brain was stuck in one gear in that awful, lonely place.
I groaned, growing louder and louder. Heat crept into my eyes. “Kemen.” My voice was reed thin. I swallowed hard. My vision grew blurry.
The dark void stretched long fingers throughout every part of me. It started in the pit of my stomach, ran up my arms and down my legs, and then finally filled my head. It ate me like a slow-leaching cancer. I rocked faster.
“Kemen. Kemen. Kemen!” I screamed the last, the sound like a mournful wail. I threw myself forward and shook as sobs wracked my body.
For the first time in my life, I cried.
I don’t know how long I stayed that way, screaming and mumbling, drowning in her betrayal and the anguish of his loss, before I smelled sulfur.
“Pandora!” Luc threw back my curtains.
I shook my head and sobbed. “Oh my God, Luc. Oh my God, I killed him. Oh my God.”
He grabbed me, hugged me to his body. I clutched his shirt. “She lied to me. She lied to us. Oh God,” I moaned.
Then I was on my bed. He was hugging me, fingers digging into my back. I didn’t let him go, just squeezed harder. His hands were on my face. He wiped away the tears, but still more came.
“I killed him, Luc. She made me kill him.”
“Dora, ssh.” He patted my face. “Kemen was rogue.”
“No,” I yelled and hugged my arms to my chest. “She lied. She lied. It was LCDs. He killed LCDs, not children. She set us up. Play it.” I pointed to the recorder, then covered my eyes with my hands and rocked back and forth.
I hicc
upped, great sobbing, stuttering breaths. Luc played the recording several more times, seeming as shocked as I’d been. But with each playback his anger grew and morphed. He looked at me.
Luc grabbed me by the back of my head. “She would have killed you. I’ll kill her,” he snarled, his anger stirring mine. “I’ll tear her limb from limb.”
“No.” I slammed my hand on his chest. “She’s mine. She betrayed me, betrayed my trust. She’s my kill.”
A muscle worked furiously in his jaw.
“Luc, she’s mine. Do you hear me? Mine.” I brooked no argument. I would take none. Yes, Grace had betrayed us all, but she’d used me to do it.
He glanced away, eyes a dangerous shade of purple. I hugged his neck and kissed his cheek. His fingers dug into my waist. Mint of his warm breath fanned my neck, washed my skin with goose flesh.
I was so cold inside, so empty. I needed his warmth. His touch. Something to let me know I was still alive even though every beat of my heart made me feel I was slowly dying.
He nuzzled my neck. “She nearly killed you, Dora.”
I trembled. His strong hands kneaded the stiff muscles in my back. I groaned and turned into him, pressing myself against his hard chest, greedily sucking up his warmth.
“I’m so cold,” I stuttered, squeezing his neck harder.
He kissed my cheek. Then my nose. My closed eyelids. I moaned, and he groaned. His lips touched mine.
I kissed him back. But the kiss was more than sex, or desire. It was the breath of life, of the knowledge that I was alive. Not whole. Not the same. But I lived.
My hands were frantic as I ripped his clothes off. He laid me down on the bed, mumbling incoherent words I couldn’t understand. Then he was inside me.
I arched my back, and for a second there wasn’t pain—or death, or anger, bitterness, or even the self-loathing of taking a life that mattered more to me than my own—there was only now and the pleasure Luc’s body could bring.
His desire swept through me, raced down my skin with its fiery brushstroke, shifting my body into his blond bombshell. I wrapped my legs around his waist, matching his rhythm and groaning as I reached the peak of the spiral. Then I cried out as the orgasm violently ripped through me. And for one glorious moment, I forgot it all.