The Black God (#2, Damian Eternal Series)

by Lizzy Ford

  Valon roared in pain. He dropped the knife and backhanded her hard enough to send her sprawling onto her back. Ashley scrambled to her feet and charged him, breaking off right before she made contact to snatch the knife and roll away.

  She rose and crushed the knife beneath her heel. It snapped into three pieces. Valon smashed into her before she had a chance to be relieved. Ashley twisted out of his grip and slammed to the ground. He grabbed one leg and yanked her back towards him.

  “Let’s see what it is Jonny finds so interesting about you.” Valon’s eyes glowed. “I hear Watcher blood runs in your family and tastes like honey.”

  “Let’s not!” she snarled and slammed her other foot into his neck. She clawed her way out of his reach and hopped to her feet once more. She was lightheaded, and the faint tremor deep inside her was a warning she’d pushed her luck with the Traveling.

  Valon lay coughing on the ground. Ashley kicked him hard in the gullet and then smashed her knee into the back of his head.

  He went limp, not quite unconscious and not quite awake either.

  She dropped beside him, dizziness and the internal quaking growing stronger. “No, no, no!” she ordered herself. Jonny’s patch was slipping, and she was on the verge of collapsing into a useless, convulsing heap beside a vamp that wanted her dead. And when he was done with her, he’d finish off Jonny. Her hands shook too hard to grip weapons, and her vision was blurring.

  She shook her head and staggered towards Jonny before dropping to the ground beside him. “Jonny!” she called urgently and shook him. “Jonny! I need you to wake up!”

  The Black God moaned.

  She slapped him, and his eyes flew open.

  “I need to know where the other knife is. The one … the one you tossed on the beach.” Her words were slurring.

  He struggled to sit up and collapsed onto his back. “Ash? What’re you doing here?”

  “Not now. Where is it?” Please don’t say the beach!

  Jonny shifted one hand towards his cargo pocket. He fumbled with the button before opening it. Two knives, including the bone one, dropped onto the ground.

  “Okay. You need to … to destroy this … one.” Ashley tried twice to grip the bone knife with clumsy hands.

  Jonny reached for it. Rather than bend or break it, he sent a charge of red power through it. The bone knife shattered and crumbled into dust. He gasped, some life returning to his features.

  “What the fuck just happened?” he asked.

  Ashley checked the wounds in his arm. Her pants were soaked with his blood, and he still wasn’t healing despite the bone weapons being gone.

  “Where is he?” he whispered.

  “He’s here.” Thus far, Valon hadn’t recovered, but he would soon. “You’re not healing.”

  “Too weak. I can heal or use what’s left of my power and hope it’s enough to keep him at bay.”

  She glanced towards the forest, her internal alarms warning her of danger she couldn’t see. Valon had hundreds of vamps surrounding them. Jonny was recovering from the magic of the bone weapons but wasn’t strong enough to hold off an army of vamps. “Can you fight?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You need some uh, food,” she said awkwardly. “Will that help you?”

  “Don’t even think about it, Ash. You’re too weak. You shouldn’t even be here.”

  “Whatever. Charles told me you wanted to send me away. You’re a dick, Jonny.” She lifted the knife to her throat and touched its razor sharp edge to her skin.

  His head flew up, his eyes blazing red. With strength she didn’t think he had, he snatched her by the neck and hauled her close.

  “Whoa! Careful,” she said, flinching as more of his lightning tore through her. “Just …” Anything she wanted to say died on her lips. The man holding her wasn’t Jonny but his inner predator, a creature ruled by instinct rather than logic. He was dying and ravenous.

  “Ash.” Even his voice was inhuman. “You need to leave. Now.”

  Her frame was tense, her instinct for survival screaming for her to run. She reined in her panic. “I’m not going to let you die here, Jonny. You need to feed,” she said. “These woods are teeming with vamps waiting to kill both of us. “And … I’m about to become completely useless to you anyway. I have an episode about to hit me.”

  “I can’t … control …” He squeezed his eyes closed, and his grip on her loosened. “Go. Now.” Jonny sagged.

  “No,” she said firmly. “I won’t leave you like this, Jonny. I won’t let you lie here and die. We need you to fight Valon, and to do that, you need to feed. If you won’t do it for you, do it for me. Look.” She held out her violently trembling hands. “If you don’t stop this episode, it might kill me. Trust me – this one is going to be bad.”

  He said nothing. His body shuddered under his labored breathing, and he shook from weakness. He was a wounded animal fighting the urge to eat.

  She touched the drops of blood on her neck. Her heart beating against her breast, she touched the drops of blood to his lips and prayed he didn’t kill her.

  “No!” He pushed her away, or tried to. He was too weak. “I might kill you, Ash.”

  “You’re the only one who can make sure Valon never hurts Brandon or my family again!” She shoved his hands down and touched his lips again.

  Jonny shuddered. He caught her wrist in a tight grip, and she sensed he was fighting an internal battle. He didn’t want to hurt her, but she wasn’t about to give him a choice. He needed blood to heal, and he needed to heal to face Valon.

  “Please, Jonny,” she said more quietly. “I’m telling you to risk it to save those I love. I need your help, too.” She started to sag, unable to fend off the looming episode any longer.

  Jonny touched her again, this time more gently. He sat up and drew her against him, his eyes brilliant in the night, his focus on her. “This is why I didn’t want you near me. I’m a monster.”

  “I know,” she said. “But it’s kind of a turn on,” she joked weakly.

  “You trust me?” He bent his head and nuzzled her neck, breathing in her scent with a tremble.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  The pause before he bit her was always one of pure misery for her. This time it was worse. This time she suspected he wasn’t going to be able to control himself.

  “I’m sorry for hurting you,” he whispered. He touched her neck with one hand and wrapped the other arm around her. His scent and heat melted her fear. She rested her temple on his shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured.

  “You still hate me?”

  She gazed at his profile framed against the stars. He was gripping her more tightly, and his feral expression did little to assure her she’d live through this. “Yeah.”

  “Liar,” he said. “But you should. I told you I’d destroy you.”

  “And I told you I didn’t care what you are or what happened to me. I still don’t.”

  “I don’t want to lose you again.”

  “You never really did lose me,” she pointed out. This is killing me. If she were going to die, she wanted to die quickly. “I can’t take this anymore. Just do it, Jonny.” She released her breath. “Drain me. Defeat Valon. Protect everyone else.” She was sliding into the seizure, and her body began to convulse.

  The wild expression on his features terrified her. She squeezed her eyes closed. Lightning stung her, but she didn’t feel anything beyond Jonny’s warm breath on her neck. His teeth sank into her without even a touch of pain. He stopped her seizure instantly.

  For the first time, she felt him sucking the life out of her. She soon experienced a sense of dizziness, followed by general weakness spreading throughout her. Tears pricked her eyes and spilled down her cheeks to leave hot trails of moisture, and she fought the primal urge to survive. She gripped Jonny’s t-shirt hard and stilled her resistance, surrendering to him even knowing he was going to kill her. Aside from the occasional lightning, it
was a generally painless process. Darkness closed in around her thoughts, and her body began to relax of its own accord.

  Jonny lifted his head, his eyes blazing with need and his form rippling with power.

  “Finish,” she whispered.

  “No.” The word was quiet, fierce. “I am not an animal.” He rested his cheek against hers.

  “You are. It’s totally sexy.” She smiled.

  “Can you walk?”

  No. But for his sake, she nodded. “Just give me a minute.”

  “So you are a monster like the rest of us.”

  Vaguely, she recognized Valon’s voice.

  “Stay here, Ash.” Jonny settled her gently on the ground. She heard them talking tersely without being able to make out their words. She was floating in her mind, too weak to move, aware of the cool breeze but not much else. Her tremors and quaking had ceased from Jonny’s patch, but she didn’t think it was going to be enough to keep her from sinking into the darkness at the edges of her mind.

  Ashley started to drift away, when the shock of a lightning bolt brought her back to her consciousness. She wasn’t able to move away from it but neither did it leave her in peace. Every time she began to pass out, it returned to prod her back to her body.

  She struggled to either slide into the void or wake herself up fully without success. She was stuck in between. Visions of Jonny and Brandon raced through her head and the anger she often experienced with her life faded into sorrow. Was this what death felt like? Sleep she never awoke from? Or was she more fatigued than she could ever recall being in her life?

  The sounds of scuffling near her came in and out of her mind, and she began to fade away once more, this time unaffected by the zap of Jonny’s lightning.

  Someone wrenched her off the ground, and her eyes flew open. Ashley stared into the dark sky above and managed to regain her balance but not fight off the vamp that had her. Her body was wooden and heavy.

  So I’m not dead yet. The relief fluttering through her didn’t last long once she realized she was too weak to fight.

  Valon was bleeding and furious, his tight grip around her neck enough to send spirals of pain through her. Ash tested herself and was beyond disappointed with her body’s sluggish response.

  Valon ceased speaking words she couldn’t quite make out and shook her hard enough to jar her to her toes and the rest of the way into the world once more. She reached into her pocket to grab the knife Jonny had given her and gathered what strength she had to shove him away when brilliant, burning pain ripped through her.

  His fangs tore into her neck, shredding her skin and muscle tissue.

  She screamed and stabbed the knife into him blindly. Ashley slammed her knee upward into his groin and then managed to drive an elbow into his temple.

  “You stupid bitch!” Valon threw her to the ground, and she hit hard. Her vision blurred, and the darkness started to close in around her. She was starting to bleed out after Valon’s puncturing of her jugular and made an effort to press her hand to her neck. Someone knelt beside her. Ashley didn’t even try to make out who. She wasn’t able to escape, and it didn’t matter what someone did to her.

  “Stay down,” Jonny’s whisper was accompanied by his touch at her bloodied neck. His power seared the wound closed, and she flinched. “No matter what. Stay down, Ash.” His attention was riveted to his enemy, and charged energy made her flinch. He rose and stepped between her and Valon.

  Don’t leave me. She wanted to cry, to scream out of frustration from her paralyzed body.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Any thought Jonny had of being fair, of fighting Valon honorably one-on-one, vanished the moment the vamp laid a hand on Ashley. Already weak, unable to defend herself, Jonny had watched Valon hurt her – and felt his emotion blast through the careful guard he kept it under. He was reminded of the night when Czerno had almost killed his sister. The pain and fear he’d kept hidden away for the sake of learning to rule his domain exploded inside him.

  He hadn’t been in complete control when he drained her, but he’d managed to yank back the animal side of him when he realized how close she was to death. His successful determination to only take what he needed left him a little surprised given his hunger and state. He was stronger than he thought, capable of subduing the animal inside him for the sake of someone he loved. He needed that strength now.

  He stepped between her and the rogue vamp leader.

  Jonny loosened his grip on his magic. Valon had caught him off guard when they initially met, but he wasn’t going to be fooled again. A flurry of arrows and bullets rained from the forest. He stayed near Ashley, his power shielding them both, and gathered up his strength. Taxed from the strange weapons Valon had used, unable to reach full strength when Ashley was injured, Jonny doubted he’d have more than one chance to level the rebellion.

  Red lightning built and pulsed in a protective sphere around him. The air grew charged and thick enough for even him to struggle to breathe. He was intimately aware of Ashley starting to fade again. His lightning wasn’t going to prod her away from the edge for much longer.

  “You kill me this way, you kill your pet,” Valon snarled. “You don’t have the balls, kid.”

  “I’m not a kid,” Jonny said coolly. “I’m the Black fucking God. And you have no claim to my domain or title. If you’re smart, you’ll run.”

  Valon sneered. Ashley had punctured his stomach with the knife that killed Czerno. Valon’s face was covered in her blood.

  Jonny bent and picked up Ashley, cradling her against him.

  Her eyes fluttered open but she was otherwise completely limp in his arms.

  “My power will kill anything living in its path,” he whispered against her temple. “I need you to trust me, Ashley. Can you?”

  “Sure.” Her somewhat delirious response was accompanied by a vacant look.

  “It might hurt.”

  Some awareness returned to her eyes. She touched his face with a trembling hand. “I never hated you, Jonny.”

  He allowed a tight smile to escape. “I know. I never stopped loving you, Ash.”

  “I knew it!” Her eyes closed. “Hurry.”

  Jonny studied her features a moment more, fear flying through him at the one chance he had to destroy the rebellion. He lowered his head to her neck and sank his fangs into her once more. This time, he did drink like the animal he sometimes wanted to be. He drained her as fast as he could, drinking hungrily yet also aware of her heartbeat slowing. The moment it stopped, he did as well and lowered her to the ground.

  He had only a few minutes before her death became permanent.

  Jonny stood over her lifeless body and pushed his power outward. It started at a crawl then began to roll over everything around him, enveloping and killing everything that lived, from tree to vamp to forest creatures.

  But it left Ashley’s body alone.

  Jonny knelt and lifted her. Immune to the destructive power, he nonetheless ducked his head as red lightning sizzled around them and arced away. Even fighting the Others, he’d never unleashed this much power at once.

  “It’s almost over, Ash,” he said. “Hang in there.” He could do nothing for her, not even Travel, until this mess was over.

  Minutes passed quickly, and still his power rolled outward. Terror and anger tore through him as he held her lifeless body, fueling his power. Lightning ripped through the air, demolishing the forest and everyone in it and smashed into the sky overhead. Jonny held Ashley, too aware of the time it was taking for this magic to wipe out every last one of the mutinous vamps.

  He shoved all his energy and emotion into the world around him, unable to expel the images of Ashley crumbling in Valon’s arms from his mind. He’d fought loving her for too long and always lost. Now that he risked losing her forever, he began to see the truth. His weakness wasn’t love but fear. The fear of losing her. The fear of not being able to control himself or his vamps. The fear of accepting all of what he was
. Ashley knew and found a way to love him. He had feared being viewed as too human by his vamps and too vamp-like by the Gods.

  But mostly, he had feared failure too much to ask for help when he needed it until Ashley’s life was at stake.

  He experienced the same sense of emptiness as he did the night he killed the last Other. Valon didn’t matter. He never had. He was a speed bump, a distraction, a lesson Jonny was finally going to learn. Of all the enemies and threats in the world, not one of them was more important than his Ashley and his vamps. Not one of them rated a moment of his time or attention, and not one of them deserved an ounce of mercy or fairness.

  He’d failed to act decisively for fear of Damian’s involvement and judgment, and Ashley was suffering because of it. If he couldn’t protect those he loved, what good was he as a god? What good was all his power if he feared using it?

  His fear, and his ego, had nearly crippled him, and he wasn’t going to let that kind of weakness happen again.

  Jonny felt the last piece of the puzzle click in to place. His fear faded away, taking with it the remnants of the inner turmoil present since he’d taken his place as the Black God. He had chosen to hide rather than face his enemy, and he was never going down that path again.

  He was the Black God. If he had it his way, he was going to remain so for all of eternity.

  The blast of red flame and lightning flattened everything around him in a flash of radiance accompanied by a roar. Jonny shielded his eyes to the brightness.

  Finally, the world around him fell silent and still, and he lowered his arm. Nothing stood for as far as he could see. The world was smoking and black with flares of red lightning.

  Dizziness stemming from fatigue washed over him, and he hugged Ashley to him. She alone was untouched by his power, protected by him, from him, but only because he’d had to render her dead.

  “Ashley,” he whispered and touched her gently. He had no read on her whatsoever. She was, according to even his godly senses, dead.

  Jonny scooped her up. He didn’t hesitate to go where he knew he had to this time. He was never going to hesitate again when it came to Ashley or his responsibilities. He was never going to let his fear get in his way again.