by RS Black
“You’re turned on, aren’t you?” he asked me, his voice a deep, low growl.
I opened my eyes to see his pupils so wide and open that they nearly encompassed the irises.
He was turned on too.
“Go away,” I whimpered pathetically, hating myself for being so weak. For needing him the way I still did.
His jaw clenched. “You smell like it. I smell him all over you.” His upper lip curled back.
He hated me.
My Asher hated me.
My throat seized up.
“Who are you now, Pandora? Who fucking are you!”
Then his lips were claiming mine and it was a furious assault of teeth and tongue. I tasted my blood as he punctured my bottom lip, but I didn’t care. I wrapped my tongue around his, trying desperately to get inside him.
“You can’t do this,” he growled between heated kisses.
But he wasn’t the only one angry.
I was angry too.
I was pissed.
I clawed his chest, making him cry out with pain and desire.
“I can and I will. I have to.”
“No, you don’t. Everyone keeps telling me to give up on you. Everyone.”
“Then do it!” I screamed, shoving his zipper down.
Yes, we were going to have hot, angry, carnal sex out in the open, in the middle of a dance floor full of doped-up sex zombies, and I just didn’t have it in me to care anymore.
He moved forward, causing my back to be shoved against the lava rock pedestal of the DJ’s booth. My wings were in tatters, thanks to Abdul and now Ash. The rock scraped the flesh off my back, but it barely fazed me.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and swiveled my hips as he slid deep inside me. And this...this was power.
I was a monster.
A beast.
Ten times more powerful than him, but he was the one who could break me.
“You like this?” he groaned, shoving deep inside me, in and out, and making my body tingle with a rush of blood and desperate need.
“Yes,” I croaked, scraping his scalp with my nails. “Yes. God, yes.”
I closed my eyes.
“Are you still my Pandora?” he asked me, but I didn’t want to talk.
Soon I’d have to return to the Triad. Soon he’d be away from me. Soon, I’d lose him again.
I didn’t care about stupid words. They meant nothing. They did nothing.
But this, this was saving me. This was reminding me that I’d once been good. I’d once been needed. Desired above all else.
“My little demon didn’t act like a whore,” he snarled, and I cried out as the barb pierced my heart, even as his cock brought me pleasure.
“She never”—he grunted as his fingers dug painfully into my upper thighs—“would have”—he shoved in deeper, making me moan in desperation as yet another orgasm, more powerful than before, began to build like wildfire in my belly—“screwed another.”
I tipped my head back, exposing my neck.
I understood why the incubus had smiled till the very end. There could be no better way to die. Held in the arms of the one I loved, even as he ripped the soul from my body.
The climax built into such a tight spiral that I felt I would die from it. I trembled upon him, clutching onto his shoulders, wishing like hell I was anyone else but me right now.
That I wasn’t the woman he knew now. The killer. The demon. That I could again be the one who’d rocked a dying child under a blanket of stars. The woman who’d made him believe in hope again.
But this was me now.
“Pandora.” My name was a reverent sound on his tongue. “God, why, Pandora? Why?” He moaned and then it turned into a long, loud groan as his body shuddered beneath me, prompting the release of my own orgasm.
It took me a good minute to gather my wits. I was nothing but a boneless heap.
His warm hand framed my face. “Stop this, please. Stop, before it’s too late. Before you lose yourself completely.”
“It’s already too late.” I shook his hands off me and slowly moved out of reach. I wrapped my arms around myself, missing his arms, his devotion. Knowing I would never again feel either.
He shook his head and the look of utter devastation scrawled upon his face made me want to cry.
“I told you you would hate me. I told you. I warned you!” I stomped my foot, wanting to break something. Someone. Wanting to kill and hurt and inflict unimaginable terror on everyone around me.
I noted the faces around us, looking at us with curiosity and even a trace of fear. But I didn’t care about being quiet.
I had to make him understand.
“Don’t you get it, Asher?”
The muscle in his jaw twitched as his fingers flexed by his side.
“This is me now.” I touched my breast. “This”—I spread my arms out—“is me.”
It took everything I had to turn away from him, but I did it. I still had a job to do.
He grabbed my elbow. “I don’t believe it. I know you. You love me. And I—”
“God!” I snapped at him. “You’re such a fool. I don’t love you, Asher. I hate you.”
I said it.
Couldn’t take it back.
And I couldn’t stand to look at him, to see his world crumble into dust at his feet. I’d be haunted by his look forever if I did, so I turned my eyes down and hoped he hadn’t seen the tear that’d just leaked out of my eye.
Chapter 14
Pandora
There are a rare few moments in life when things are so horrible, so unfixable, that you’d rather die than continue to live this way.
That’s how I felt the moment I stepped back through the Triad’s doors.
Dick stood at the end of the hall wearing a large, proud grin, Dean the traitor beside him.
Dean didn’t look at me. He was a stoic, beautiful man in a long black trench coat, completely removed from the goings-on around him.
Why was he here?
Surely the Triad could see he had his own agenda. Then again, he was a no-good rotten rat, spoon-feeding them just enough information on me to keep them loyal to his services.
I didn’t trust that man not to turn on me and them. Mercenaries valued one thing, the almighty dollar; hard to trust someone when his loyalties could literally shift on a dime.
The building was unusually quiet. The torturers were obviously done for the night. I never really knew what was going on behind the doors. Other than an occasional doctor or nurse who’d come out into the halls with aprons covered in blood, it so often felt like the screams were just perpetual sound recordings; I was so used to them now they were little more than white noise.
It was easy to ignore what I couldn’t see.
Once, I might have tried to save the poor souls behind the doors, but I was barely treading water myself. I had no energy to care for others; I barely cared for myself.
Dick held out his hand. “The map?”
Scrubbing my mouth with my hand, I shook my head. From the corner of my eye I saw Dean grin.
He knew exactly what I’d had to do to get the coordinates. It was all I could do not to turn and glare at him.
“I’ve memorized them.”
“Memorize?” Dick shoved his glasses up his nose. “Why?”
“Because the map only lasted as long as his jizz was fresh,” I snapped, in no mood to sugarcoat my words. “You sent me to a freaking sex demon—where else did you expect him to keep the damn thing?”
Dick’s look was droll. “Give me the coordinates, then. If last time was any indication, it’ll likely take my team a day or two to triangulate the final keeper’s location. And after tonight’s spectacular performance you deserve a little downtime.”
“Downtime.” I chuckled, not that I found anything particularly funny. “How magnanimous of you, oh master mine.” My nose curled up in disgust.
Dick glanced at Dean, who shared a meaningful look with him; clearly the
y’d been discussing me in my absence.
“I see Asher found you again,” Dick finally said after a moment.
I shrugged. “Why don’t you ask Dean about that?”
Dick shook his head, giving me an exasperated smile. “Dean, did you tip off her family?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.” Death grinned slyly. “But if I did, let’s just say it’s because a little anarchy never hurt nobody.”
Doc shrugged. I could never understand Dick’s blithe acceptance of Dean’s rule breaking. Dean was the puppetmaster in this situation and it pissed me off to no end that Dick couldn’t see that.
Then again, maybe Death had pulled some freaky mind swipe crap on ol’ Doc here. I touched the back of my skull.
“You planning to punish me for this one too, Doc?” I lifted a brow.
It was crazy how disassociated I felt from this whole strange conversation. I should care so much more than I did, but there was very little I did care about anymore. Punishment was just pain, and pain was just temporary.
“Nope.” His smug blue eyes drilled into me. “Nothing wrong with a little dirty mambo action. And you know, the part that really got me, though, Pandora, was you telling him you hated him afterward. Such a heartless bitch, just the way I like it.” He stepped into me, his cloying scent of cologne making me want to vomit. “Pretty soon you’ll be exactly what the Triad needs. Your humanity is nearly gone.”
He couldn’t have sounded more proud about it.
His fingers traced my jaw. “Gotta say, I approve of the choice of”—his hot gaze rolled up and down my body slowly—“costume tonight. I’ve always loved Asian food.”
My nostrils flared when he palmed my left breast, squeezing it so hard my nerves zinged with a white-hot flash of pain.
Stepping back swiftly, he rubbed my mark as if to say “Can’t hurt me, demon, I own you.” With a finger wave, he opened his door and turned inside. “Have fun with your downtime and remember, Dora, don’t do anything stupid, because we’ll know.”
I stood stock-still even when his door slammed in my face. So completely numb to everything.
“You didn’t have to let him manhandle you that way, Dorrie.”
I didn’t even respond. What was the point?
Dean stepped into my line of vision and snapped his fingers. “Earth to, demon girl.”
Finally, but only because I knew he’d never leave me alone if I didn’t, I turned my gaze to his face.
“You okay?”
If he’d been anyone else I would have seriously thought he actually cared. Dean was so good at what he did.
“How do you do it, Death?”
His brows gathered into a tight vee. “Do what?”
“How do you live with yourself? How do you not care about anything?”
Cocking his head, he assessed me for such a long while that I was sure he’d ask me another stupid question like “You seem so unhappy, why?” Thankfully, he didn’t.
“Because I wasn’t built to have feelings.” His answer was so honest in its simplicity.
In my head I could still hear the music, still feel Asher’s heat, his hate. The fissure that I’d tried so hard to seal back there was cracking open again, but this time it was deeper, spreading wider, consuming me.
“Neither was I.” My voice cracked.
I didn’t say goodbye, didn’t tell him where I was going. I had a few days to myself, and I was going to use them. I traced away from there.
I was burning up inside.
I hopped from one place to another, all of it random, trying to outrun who I was. But the Triad had their tracker in me. They might not be able to see what I saw, but they’d hear anything I did; they’d always be able to find me.
I could never outrun them.
But that wasn’t what I was trying to do right now anyway.
I wasn’t outrunning the Triad. I was trying to outrun myself.
But that’s the problem—you never really can. You can move halfway around the world and all the baggage you carried with you before, it’s still there, still suffocatingly heavy.
I traced over and over, nothing but particles of atoms, of energy, moving through this world like a wraith, a ghost, and slowly it began to dawn on me that my movements weren’t as random as I’d thought.
Florence, Italy.
Mexico.
New Mexico.
Florida.
Louisiana.
Rapid City, South Dakota.
All places I’d been to with Ash.
And when I stopped, I was in front of a broken-down warehouse in the middle of a business district. Windows were broken out, looking like fractured eyes in a ruined face. There was a rusted-out sign lying on the ground with the words Sanguinary etched into them.
Around me were brick buildings and I knew that if I turned around I’d be able to make out the rooftop of the building Asher had gotten the drop on me on.
I smiled, remembering the babydoll dress. The flat Cinderella slippers. But my smile faded as I walked through the shell of the building.
There’d been music here too. A party meant to mask the horrors below ground. I stepped into the middle of the dance floor, which was now littered with rat droppings and discarded newspapers.
Cardboard boxes had been torn open and lay flat on the ground, beds, obviously, for the random homeless who stumbled on through.
I dropped my head into my hands, squeezing my eyes shut. Why had I come back here?
“You need sleep.” Dean’s deep drawl pricked my ears.
Whirling on him, I exploded. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t have any inkling that I would suddenly claw his face, or shove him back so hard that I made him drop on his ass.
I stood over him like some freaking avenging angel and felt my skin ripple with demonic scales, felt my eyes began to bleed through with pure black. Felt as all the souls inside me roared to life.
But Dean wasn’t scared of me. His eyes were thinned and he was glaring right back.
“I need to hurt,” I snarled.
“Pandora.” He held up his hand. “You need to go back home.”
I punched him. Punched him so hard that his temple caved in a good inch. “Home! You call that home! I’ll kill you, I’ll—”
I was lost to the voices in my head, the visions of violence and gore. So murderous, so full of rage, that the moment I heard the cry of female pain just outside the door I traced.
I didn’t care who it was, I didn’t care, I was going to kill. I was going to hurt everything living and breathing.
I came to a scene that made me smile. A woman was on the ground, a man on top of her, holding a gun to her head and shoving his zipper down with his free hand.
There was no warning, no monologuing. I went straight in. Dived onto his back, wrenched his neck to the side and ripped my fangs into his vein.
The woman screamed, but this time, I don’t think it was the man she was terrified of. I didn’t want to lose her, either. I wanted to break her too. Wanted to hurt her too. I wasn’t saving anybody. I was losing myself to the monsters.
Asher thought I was one now.
So why not be one in truth?
I sucked the man dry.
And when there was nothing more left, I ripped his head off, tossing it over my shoulder.
There were other eyes on me. People staring on in horror at the monster that was me. But these weren’t good people. I tasted their sin immediately. The blackness of their souls and Wrath crowed inside me.
Blood. So much blood. Gluttony needed more. Wrath needed vengeance. And Pride wouldn’t let me walk away.
I snapped necks one after another, jabbing and hammer fisting anything that moved. Drinking from the vein, covered in so much hot blood, I sighed as my violence increased.
I was a monster.
Monster.
Beast.
Creature.
No redemption.
No hope.
All alo
ne.
“Stop it!” Dean’s roar knifed through my bloody haze.
“Go away,” I bit out, heaving and panting, desperate for more and more and more. Desperate to make the pain stop.
To make the agony of possession go away.
He picked me up, his fingers digging into my biceps as he shoved me against the wall, my head slamming against the brick so hard I saw stars.
Bloody, bruised, I laughed.
It was really all I could do.
I laughed until it hurt, and then I started to scream, and then...and then the tears came and I couldn’t stop it.
Dean’s fingers weren’t so hard anymore. They were soft, almost tender. His thumb was rubbing my flesh, breaking me out in a wash of goose bumps. I felt the darkness bleed from my eyes, saw my scales recede until I was again the human embodiment of beauty.
“Let me go, Dean,” I grunted, my stomach heaving violently down to my knees.
“You’ve killed eleven people, Pandora, in a matter of a minute. I won’t let you take any others tonight.”
“Let me go,” I gasped, and then I was wrenching myself out of his arms and dropping to my knees, gasping and heaving as all the blood I’d just consumed poured out of my mouth.
My eyes burned with tears.
I had no idea how long I retched, but it felt like I was expelling the souls from my body before it finally stopped. I ached, I was bruised, and I couldn’t stop crying.
He hugged me tight to him.
I clutched at his shirt and could only whisper one phrase over and over: “I’m not a whore, Dean. I’m not a whore...”
~*~
Dean
I wished I could kill her now.
She wasn’t strong enough to handle this. The possessions, what the Triad was forcing her to become.
Pandora hadn’t been this evil. She didn’t know how to handle it. The merciful thing to do would be to reach into her chest, harvest her soul, and send her to Hell once and for all.
But I had my orders. And I always saw them through.
Feeling more helpless than I ever had in my existence, I murmured meaningless words into her ears, knowing tonight’s eruption had everything to do with Asher and what he’d said to her.