Thank God the sword seemed to be possessed of a life of its own. Any stab she made was true. She didn’t even need to think or aim—like a sentient being, the moment it noticed her intent to kill, it did.
Every strike, every stab was lethal, dropping the nameless faces like flies. Flint swallowed the revulsion, the knowledge that she was killing. And doing it ruthlessly, without remorse or even thought.
Survival was all that mattered. She couldn’t even look around to see if Rhi or the twins were safe, or whether Adam had finally come back. To look away for even a second would spell disaster.
A volley of arms and legs came at her, causing her to stumble, to hiss as a fist or a claw connected with her.
She felt each slashing strike like a burn. But the fear inside her only caused her powers to bloom. The storm was a fury. Tree limbs cracked like thunder as they fell to the ground, pinning bodies beneath them.
Straight ahead, she spied a clearing—that’s where they needed to go.
A woman with hair a blazing orange color latched onto her shoulders then, her face a contorted mask of human and the macabre. Thick hunks of flesh flopped over her cheeks—she’d been sliced through. Looked like someone had taken a meat cleaver to her. The sight of it made Flint’s throat work with revulsion.
Green eyes sparked, and the woman’s face was a twisted mask of shock, rage, and fury. The intent to kill was so evident that Flint didn’t stop to think. She reacted on instinct alone.
As the soldier thrust her claws out at Flint, she twirled just out of reach, blade swinging in a wide arc. A twin arc of lightning cradled them both in its violent bosom. The stink of ozone lined her nostrils as the sword struck true and the guard’s head rolled from off her neck.
Flint stared at the face, the mouth still open as though in a silent scream, and she screamed herself, dropping her blade. Vines wrapped tighter around her body, cocooning her, as though aware of her inner turmoil.
She’d killed, she’d hurt so many already, but what she’d done tonight, there was no going back from.
“Flint! Watch out.” The warning came a second too late.
Before she even had a chance to turn at the sound, she was tossed into the air. It felt a lot like being hit by a big rig. Fire consumed her battered lungs when she landed with a violence that rang through her very bones.
Dazed and very disoriented, she shook her head and made her way to trembling feet, swallowing hard as she came face-to-face with the very demon itself. The black pillar was a man. And in that exact moment, her brain clicked with the horrifying truth of just what it was.
Covered in blood and gore, it was easily three times the size of Cain, with hair as thick as hypodermic needles poking through its grotesquely large biceps, and it carried a bundle under its arm. A lumpy sack with hair of deepest ebony was dragging along the ground.
It grunted, the sound inhuman as it advanced on her slowly, all while sniffing at the air.
“Abel,” she whispered and shook her head. Panic couldn’t even worm its way through her shocked brain.
Her mind was empty. There was no battle raging on around her. No guards being batted aside like insignificant bugs to the ground. No sounds whatsoever.
The creature that had once been her best friend just stared at her with eyes that knew nothing save for its bottomless pit of rage.
It dropped the woman in its arm, and Flint had just a moment to glance down. The sight of a moaning Layla covered in bruises and open cuts was the straw that made Flint’s survival instincts finally come roaring to life.
Abel was chopping at the vines trying to pierce his thick-as-dragon-scale hide. The lightning bouncing off his skull might as well have been nothing but a little spring drizzle.
“Abel, don’t.” She held up her hands, taking a step back as he started his slow advance. “You know me, remember? I’m Flint. We’ve been looking for you.”
She talked slowly, casually, as he continued to press forward. A smile cut across his demonic features, revealing twin rows of spiked fangs more than capable of ripping into her puny neck.
There were roars, screams of her name. Somewhere she heard Adam and Cain, Seth and even Eli, but they were fighting for their own lives—there’d be no chance of rescue from them.
Then he sprang.
And she ran.
Spinning on her heel, she looked neither left nor right, uncaring of the branches that slapped at her cheeks. She’d stumble over an exposed tree root and hop back up, feeling his fetid breath wash across her skin.
She was going to die.
Trees exploded around her. He was slapping them out of his way, wooden shards flying like missiles at the back of her head, a few even embedding in the backs of her thighs. But she didn’t dare stop.
Take him below…
The voice cried out, and she recognized it as the robed fae from her visions. It grew louder and louder in her head.
Take him below. Take him below. TAKE HIM BELOW!
With a cry, she sprang around the thick base of a tree, gasping as she rested against it. There was nothing else, either she took him down into the ground or she’d die. She didn’t question what the voice was telling her—she had run out of options.
The sudden shock of silence was what finally made her peek around the corner. Abel was gone. Just gone.
Shaking her head, she couldn’t understand what’d happened. He’d been there one second, and now he was gone. How had he done that? What had he—
She might have been tempted to seriously consider the fact that she was totally certifiable until she saw the struggle of shadows several yards away, the big, burly bodies of her friends bringing down the ebony pillar that was now Abel.
Somehow, by some miracle, they’d managed to survive this night. All of them. Behind them lay a slaughter of shifters and guards.
But there was no time to relax, no time to rejoice that she’d not lost any more of her friends, because Layla had just limped out from behind a tree.
Her blue eyes were wide, her hair wild and matted with mud and blood. Deep claw marks were grooved into the mottled side of her face. She clutched at her chest.
The woman who’d caused it all was trying to get away. Flint snarled, hands tingling as she called her vines. Abel might have been immune to them, but Layla wouldn’t be.
“You did this,” she snapped. “You made him a monster.”
Adrenaline made it easy to not think about the fact that her legs were coated in her own blood and her lungs ached when she took a deep breath.
Layla’s smile was unrepentant. “He will save us all. I regret nothing.”
“Why’d you do it? Why’d you hurt him that way?”
“Because Armageddon’s coming.” Layla stared down at her bare feet, muttering more words under her breath that Flint couldn’t make heads or tails of before she finally glanced up. Her blue eyes were such a replica of Cain’s that Flint lost her breath for a moment.
“Can we fix him? Can we make him right?”
Tears dripped thickly from Layla’s eyes. “He opened the box.”
Forgetting for a second about all the terrible things Cain’s mother had done, Flint rushed her, latched onto her wrists, and shook her hard. “What does that mean? What box? What did you do to him!”
Behind them a twig snapped.
With a yelp of fright, Layla shook her head. “Have to get away. They will kill me. It will all make sense one day. This will all make sense. Sorry, Flint, I didn’t hate you.”
And then, moving so quickly that Flint hadn’t even been afforded a second to realize what was going on, Layla tore into the side of Flint’s neck. Her teeth were razor-sharp. Too stunned to think, she could only scream as a thick, noxious odor began to emit from Layla’s very pores.
The stench was hive, and Flint was now bathed in it.
With a cry, Layla released her and stumbled off just as another body came barreling through. Clutching her neck, Flint twirled, dizzy and in shock tha
t she’d been bitten.
Terrified it was a shifter, she went on full alert until she realized it was Cain, and she sagged with relief.
“Flint,” he cried. “Adam’s got him. Abel’s been captured. He’s sa—”
His words suddenly stopped, and the eyes that’d been so blue just a second ago now gleamed an unholy red. His body thickened in the blink of an eye, and from one second to the next she realized she’d just become prey.
Chapter Fifty-One
Doing an about-face, Flint ran. Lightning struck in jagged arcs behind her. Trees shook as her powers manifested from the turmoil of her mind.
But she couldn’t hurt Cain, even though he was roaring, tearing after her like a hellhound on the hunt. Whatever Layla had done to her, he didn’t understand. When Cain raged, he went primal. If they’d bonded, this probably wouldn’t have happened.
The thought immediately caused an idea to spring to mind. A dangerous, stupid, incredibly idiotic idea. But it was the only one she had.
Now she just had to work up the nerve to do it.
She would not hurt him, and she wouldn’t let him hurt her. Running for what felt like miles through thick forest, she knew at some point she’d have to stop. Blood loss coupled with exhaustion had drained her reserves of energy down to nearly nil.
Praying to God that what she was about to do wasn’t as stupid as she thought it might be, she made the conscious choice to stop and turn.
Holding out her arms, she cocked her head and stared at him. He breathed heavily, not looking nearly as frightening as Abel had, but he was fully berserker with energy for days.
Terrified out of her mind, she murmured to him. She didn’t have a clue what she was doing. But she was doing it anyway.
“Cain.” She said his name slowly and almost squeaked when he took a menacing step closer, his flaring nostrils making her more than just a little anxious.
Brief flashes of lightning highlighted the sculpted, almost demonic dimensions of his face. He’d completely lost all rational thought. To reach him, she’d have to put herself directly in harm’s way. He’d kill her if he knew what she was about to do.
If he’d been sane, anyway.
Not like she had much choice though, it was either calm him down or die.
The way he was looking at her now, scenting the air of the night, nostrils flaring, madness burning in his ember-red gaze, she knew she didn’t have much time left.
“Cain, baby.” Flint held up her hand, and her skin glowed like moonstone.
A flash of lightning caught the color, making it disperse light with banded waves through the night almost like a mini aurora borealis. For a second she’d forgotten just how different she looked.
Cain gulped, his eyes glued to her flexing fingers.
“Hey, big guy,” she crooned with a tongue swollen with a whole lotta fear and just a smidge of faith that some primordial place inside him might still recognize his compass. “Remember me?”
He took a slow step toward her, his fingers flexing, his knuckles cracking as he obviously fought his instinct to rip her apart. She reeked of hive. The rain was helping dilute some of the scent, but only a little.
Normally Cain wasn’t able to smell hive, but with the amount of pheromone Layla had just doused her in, even a plugged-up pug would have had no problems sniffing it out.
He cocked his head, making her think of a wild wolf who was confused as to whether she was prey or not.
“It’s me, Cain,” she whispered to him, beginning to shiver from the icy clothes now plastered to her body. Flint fought her instinct to turn and run, or better yet, slip into the earth itself and never come back out.
But she wasn’t a worm that could tunnel through the earth—Cain would wait her out, and when she came up, he’d still be there, ready to rip her head off.
The only way to tame a predator was to not act like prey.
“Cain, I—”
She screamed as he jumped her, his hands gripping her biceps so hard she knew she’d be bruised in the morning. He’d moved so fast, faster than she’d ever thought possible.
No matter how hard she tried not to tremble, she couldn’t seem to stop as he tracked his nose up the length of her neck. Her heart shouted to trust him, to remember that beneath the monster was the man. That he’d know her if she just gave him a second.
But her rational mind warred with her heart. Her body tingled with a rush of blood, a rush of fear, wanting to get away from him, as far and fast as possible. Because standing in front of her was the berserker of legend, the myth come to life. A killer with no heart, no soul. This was the beating heart of the monster.
This was the demon. The one they’d spoken of in her trailer that night. How sad and haunted he’d looked when he’d confessed that sometimes the devil inside got the better of him. His fingers curled in just a little bit deeper.
Biting her bottom lip, she swallowed the whimper, and as she did so, a tiny sliver of a thought wormed through her.
The man and the monster, they were one and the same. She’d tamed the man. If Cain was truly hers like he claimed he was, then she’d be able to tame the beast too.
Ignoring her nearly crippling fear, she forced her feet to move. Not away from him, but deeper into his body. Until her own molded to his so completely that not even a drop of rain could pass between them.
Horrible growling sounds spilled from his throat. But he didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. Cain simply stared at her with his unnervingly beautiful red eyes.
One of her all-time favorite fairy tales was “Beauty and the Beast.” Especially how the moment Belle tamed him was the moment she’d been fearless in the face of his fury. So Flint stood there and let Cain breathe her in.
And soon she felt his muscles tremble. Felt his fingers flex.
“Flint.” His voice was deep and guttural and terrifying to hear. “Can’t hurt my Flint.”
Moving slowly so as not to spook him into reacting, she loosed herself from his grip and then moved her hands up the side of his rain-slicked neck to his cheeks.
“I know you won’t, Cain. Because I love you.”
His eyes closed and a violent shudder ripped through him.
“That’s right, beast, I love you. And you can’t hurt me. You won’t hurt me, because you’re stronger than this.”
A whimper spilled from him. She could still smell the blood on him, feel the violence riding him hard, but now she sensed something else too…
His hands moved to her hips, and something prodded into her leg. He was hard, and her stomach bottomed out with nerves. She knew what the final step was to being fully bonded to Cain. What, even in this manic state, his beastly side was trying to do.
The same thing she’d wanted to do forever. The thing that utterly terrified and yet compelled her. This was all sorts of wrong. Just a few miles back they’d waged a battle she’d never thought they’d win. Bodies were everywhere, the stench of blood thick in the winds. The others would likely come searching for them soon. Adam would need to return to take them back home.
But even though every one of those thoughts was valid, she also knew that she’d managed to calm him a little but his beast was still fully roused and in control.
And yes, it was primeval, and on the one hand it did totally scare her to think he would be her first and last, but…
Stretching up on tiptoe, she took the lead and gently kissed him.
Living was only worth it when you actually got to live, and with Cain she’d never been more alive.
He didn’t even move. His entire body had frozen up on her. Cain didn’t even kiss her back. He might be calm on the outside, but inside he was a stick of dynamite ready to blow.
“Open your eyes,” she commanded him.
When he finally did, there was red in his gaze, a licking of flame at his pupil, but there was also blue. That beautiful deep blue that mesmerized and took her breath away.
“Say it again,” he groaned with a voice
that sounded slightly more like him. “Say you love me.”
She smiled. “From the moment I laid eyes on you.” She traced the corner of his lips.
He nipped at her finger, and her blood sang with powerful, overwhelming, and all-consuming passion for him. Her big, beautiful, terrifying berserker male.
“I love you, Cain.”
With a hungry moan, he stole her lips, and from there things became a blur of movement. He lifted her off her feet, moving them swiftly toward the large base of a tree trunk, and somehow he’d maneuvered them so that he was resting his back against it.
Knowing it was game on and nothing and no one was around to stand in their way, she tore at his shirt, not moving away from his hungry kiss until she no longer had a choice because the shirt needed to be yanked over his head. But the moment he dropped it, they crashed violently back together like magnets.
His hands were frantic too. He shoved off her jacket. Then, without taking a moment to even attempt to unbutton her blouse, he ripped it open, sending buttons to shoot out into the forest floor like projectiles, lost forever in the thick carpet of grass beneath their feet.
Her hands were on his jeans and his on her bra.
The rain was still lashing at them from all sides. Like the earth itself was trying to stop them.
But it was in vain. Their hunger was ripe and frenzied, and God help anyone who tried to stop this now.
“Oh, Cain.” She groaned when finally her bra was tossed aside and his big, callused palm covered her left breast, kneading it tenderly while at the same time hard enough to increase the madness inching through her veins.
Somehow, maybe magick—she couldn’t honestly say—she’d managed to get his jeans unbuttoned, and doing what she’d wanted to do since the moment she’d met him, she slipped her hand down his boxers.
Cain shuddered when she latched onto his velvety hardness. He blinked hard, the fire in his eyes flickering in and out like a sputtering flame. “We do this,” he said in that half gritty, half-man voice, “there’s no going back, for either one of us.”
But even as he said it, he undulated his hips in her hand, his breathing growing more and more erratic with each breath.
The Complete Tempted Series Page 59