When Darkness Reigns

by Trina M. Lee

  Once I reached the now empty dance floor, I came to a halt, holding my ground. My hands were alight with power that crackled and writhed.

  Lilah’s arms came up and her wings flapped. She spoke a command in the immortal language, and a burnt-orange glow enveloped me. It wrapped tight around my body, squeezing.

  It suffocated not me but my power, trying to stomp it out. But that was like trying to stomp out a bonfire while wearing sandals. My head felt tight, caught in a vise. With a little focus and intent, I pushed back, destroying the spell’s hold.

  Brows knit together in disappointment, Lilah couldn’t hide her irritation. It drove her to come at me again, getting close enough for me to sweep her with a leg. I hooked the back of her calf with a foot and jerked hard, ensuring she went down.

  A frustrated cry ripped from Lilah when her back hit the floor.

  Before she could get up I slammed a booted foot down on a wing, pinning her in place. Then I fed her a blast of pure dark flame energy. All Arys. All pain. Just a taste of what I was about to do to her.

  Her shriek slashed my eardrums. Angry and desperate, Lilah grabbed my ankle with both hands and twisted while also rolling to one side. It threw me off balance. The only way to keep my ankle from snapping was to go down and roll with her.

  Likely a wet dream for several guys present, we grappled on the floor. Lilah thrashed about, doing all she could to keep me from getting my hands on her. She slammed my head with her elbow, pounded her fist in my face, and did just about anything she could to loosen my hold whenever I grabbed her.

  She tried to scramble away.

  Lilah had gone over and above to avoid touching me in the past. Before I’d become a vampire. Before I’d faced death twice. Lilah feared the light flame.

  So I summoned it forth, shaping it with my intent. With an angry growl I blasted her. Golden light exploded in Lilah’s face.

  Her knuckles pounded into my face from her momentum, but her mouth dropped open. Flung back, she landed in a tangle of limbs and wings against the stage.

  I held the flow, kept it going, pinning her down.

  Although it most certainly took some exertion, I wasn’t having a whole lot of trouble with Lilah. Yet.

  I knew better than to get cocky.

  The only way to drive it home that I would not be relinquishing my hold on anything, most especially not my dark flame, would be to drive Lilah back to the other side. To kick her ass so thoroughly with the light that she could not stand to think of coming near me.

  While Lilah fought to block or deflect, my light blasted right through her every attempt to save herself. Splayed on the floor, her back against the front of the empty stage, she wailed. The beam of light poured into her, filling every part of her. I could feel her hovering there, so close to being overcome.

  Salem’s name became a scream on her lips.

  I’d proven Lilah couldn’t take me one on one. Perhaps she’d always known that. I didn’t think she’d come to play fair at all.

  Before I could overload her, destroy her physical body, and force her back to the other side, Salem stepped in. Suddenly just there, he slammed me with a massive black wing. Like being hit with a chunk of concrete, it dazed me, crushing the breath my from lungs.

  Salem didn’t let up with one hit. He was on me fast, slamming my head against the floor. Those fascinating eyes were wild with a darkness that had never been meant for him. Even with his big hands grabbing me, throwing me around, I felt sad for him. I suspected that he knew it too.

  Then he was pulled away from me. Arys grabbed him by the collar and smashed a fist into the former angel’s face. One on one became two on two.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  On my knees, a hand on my head, I squinted through the pain. Arys swung Salem away from me, feeding him power laden fists until blood drizzled from the demon’s nose.

  Salem took half a dozen punches before he brought a hand up to block.

  Across the dance floor from me, Lilah spat ashes. Her face was blistered and soot stained. On shaky arms she sat upright. Once she saw Salem and Arys throwing punches and psi balls, she moved with urgency. Painfully though, like every movement hurt like hell.

  Not knowing what went through her head but knowing she was unpredictable, I pushed to my feet as well. I was starting to feel the exertion and the physical pain, but adrenaline kept me fighting. My desire for victory guided my steps.

  I expected Lilah to come at me. Because that would fall within the parameters of a fair fight. Instead, she rushed Arys.

  Throwing myself at her, I grabbed Lilah around the waist and tackled her to the floor. A few feet away, Salem and Arys traded shots and dodged blows. In my peripheral view Shaz and the others drew closer, waiting for the right moment to jump in.

  I brought a clawed hand down, aiming for Lilah’s creamy white throat. Uttering something otherworldly, she released a puff of black dust into my face and knocked my arm side. Immediately I recoiled. The wolf within panicked, and I threw myself off her.

  Wiping at my face, I tried to brush away the dust clinging to me. But it didn’t just stick to my skin. It latched onto my darkness. Like a metaphysical leech, drawing it forth.

  She wanted to manipulate my darkness, to push back the light.

  But my wolf came back harder, so hard that I had to struggle to keep from shifting. I wanted to tear her throat out. I saw through wolf eyes. Wolf fangs filled my mouth. My hands twisted into claws, hands that glowed with pure golden light. It crashed through her spell, making it slough off me and fall away.

  A chuckle bubbled up from deep inside me. Perhaps if I hadn’t restored my and Arys’s balance, that little tactic would’ve worked. Lilah didn’t know what she was up against.

  Across the dance floor Arys took a power-loaded hit that left him spitting blood. His counterattack pegged Salem with a hit that should’ve been blocked. The former angelic warrior had the time and ability. But he took the hit.

  Did Lilah know that his heart wasn’t totally in this? Of course she did. He was merely following her lead, bound too completely to ever walk away from her.

  I didn’t give two shits about Lilah, but I felt fucking awful for him. Salem was everything Willow had saved me from becoming. Another pawn to the dark.

  Lilah tore my attention from our other halves when she nailed me with a psi blast that threw me into a nearby table. I fell against a chair, claws digging into the wood as I tried to catch myself. She came at me fast, trying to gain some advantage from having me down.

  But I was up in a blink, light bursting from my palms to send her reeling.

  “You’re too much of a pain in the ass to keep alive,” she spat, kicking the chair I’d just clung to seconds before.

  I backed toward the center of the dance floor, giving myself room to go in any direction. Letting her box me in would put me in a vulnerable position. “Me? If any demon deserves to be able to die, it’s you. Just so we can finally be rid of you. All you’ve done is hurt anyone who’s ever cared about you, trusted you, or worked beside you. I don’t know how Falon got labeled a traitor. You pretty much wrote the book on it.”

  Irrational and careless in her anger, she got too close. My claws slashed the side of her neck, spilling blood down the front of her slinky dress. But because my hands were lit with light-flame energy, the wound spurted in an uneven font, not healing as it should have.

  Seeing that fueled me. No stopping now. This ended tonight.

  Lilah clutched her wound, eyes bulging. Blood spilled between her fingers to spatter the floor. “What the fuck are you?”

  I don’t think she meant to blurt it out that way. So many people had asked me that, I’d stopped counting. She might end up being the most memorable though, because this time I had an answer.

  “I’m the Queen of Light and Dark, bitch. I’m going to make you wish you’d never met me.”

  “I already do.” She coughed and bloody spittle flew from her mouth. That didn’t stop h
er from grinning through reddened teeth and uttering the one word in her language that even I recognized.

  Chaos.

  Shya had warned me once that Lilah was a chaos demon. She did a great job of bringing about chaos with her mere presence. I didn’t think I wanted to see what she could do by actually trying.

  Too bad for me.

  At that one-word command, spoken in a language as old as time, the entire place erupted. Chaos struck the remaining vampires and the humans who’d dared to stick it out. Even my guys. Everyone fell victim to her dark demand.

  Everyone except Willow and me.

  Fights broke out all over the building. People turned on each other. They also turned on the building itself. Tables and booths were trashed and overturned. The bar once again rang with the sound of shattering glass. Voices rose in anger and anarchy.

  Lilah’s power didn’t seem to affect the two of us who held light. I had no room to doubt Willow’s status now. He tried to break up Jenner and Gabriel before their fight could grow deadly. Shaz was throwing punches with a group of guys clustered on the edge of the dance floor.

  So many fists flew I couldn’t tell who was who.

  The shots being thrown by Salem and Arys were nothing less than wholehearted. Salem fought with spirit now, lashing out at Arys with a fist full of power and following with the other. Arys blocked the first and ate the second, but the warrior’s blows came too hard and too fast.

  Scarlet smears marked my dark vampire’s face. In my core I could feel every attack he launched. All of them countered by the man who’d been an angel for more lifetimes than we could imagine. Until recently.

  For the first time since Lilah walked into my nightclub, I began to panic. Perhaps maybe not as much as Lilah though. When she realized her chaos curse didn’t affect me, she abandoned magic and opted for a good, old-fashioned blade. A dagger the length of her forearm appeared in one hand.

  Yeah, she definitely planned to kill me now.

  I had to get to Arys and bring my vampires back to me, free them from the demon queen’s madness. Forces bigger than me seldom deigned to guide my way. When I just knew precisely how to overcome Lilah’s hold, I recognized this as an exception to that rule.

  Throat bleeding, the bitch lunged and slashed with the dagger. I booted her in the middle hard enough to make her slip in the blood puddling beneath her.

  Was this chick going to bleed out? Because that would be great.

  I darted toward Arys and Salem, throwing a basketball sized psi ball that took Salem’s legs out from under him. Arys saw me barreling toward him and turned, ready to nail me with the blue fire burning in his palm.

  He couldn’t help it. He was a dark flame after all.

  Ready for his attack, I caught it, neutralizing the shot. Then I grabbed his hand before he could throw another, sliding my fingers between his. Gold-and-blue fire threw off sparks that showered down around us.

  “Arys.” A demand rang in my voice. Squeezing his hand, I reached out to the spark of light within him, the spark of me, and I called it forward.

  Our connection proved stronger than Lilah’s magic. While Arys and I tended to swing dark due to our vampiric nature, at our core, we were balanced. The light was always there. Every time we came together like this and didn’t want to kill each other in some way still amazed me. It felt marvelous to be whole.

  Something that Salem and Lilah were not. And never would be.

  Lilah held her bleeding neck, screaming at Salem to do something. He took one look at the spewing gash in her neck and forgot about us. He saw only her.

  With Arys’s hand in mine, I was calm and focused. Reaching out with a metaphysical touch, I found everyone who belonged to me and drew them in. My presence anchored them, breaking them free from Lilah’s chaos.

  Then I gathered all the power we commanded together. It roared through the building. The earth heaved from beneath Arys and me in a rippling wave.

  Salem grabbed Lilah’s hand and jerked her close. She fell against his chest. For one heart-stopping moment she blinked up at him like he was everything.

  Then they turned to face us. Everything I pulled from Arys and my vampires, I channeled through my light. The energy flowed from me, gushing forth like a dam had broken. It met their dark force.

  The resulting explosion threw everyone off their feet.

  My hand ripped from Arys’s. Airborne for a brief few terrifying seconds, my flight stopped when I slammed into the wall. I slid down it to land on a table that immediately toppled over beneath me, dumping me unceremoniously to the floor.

  With a groan and a curse, I grabbed the overturned table and used it to get up. No way was that demon horror escaping me that easily.

  I turned to find Arys and the others picking themselves up.

  Prepared to end this battle, I rushed toward Lilah and Salem with hands blazing. What I didn’t anticipate was Salem’s circle. With a snap of his fingers it encased around both Lilah and himself. Springing up right in front of me, I skidded to a halt, just barely avoided colliding with the invisible wall of energy.

  The circle he’d made was large. And though I looked on in confusion, Lilah seemed to know exactly what was going on. She threw herself at the wall of the circle before turning to pound her fists on Salem’s chest.

  With little regard for her rage, Salem shoved her away. Pulling a small pouch from his pocket, he sprinkled sparkling black powder on the floor. Salt perhaps. He moved fast, creating a symbol that very much resembled a yin yang with some variations. Each dot resembled a wing.

  Lilah threw herself at him, shrieking like a madwoman. “Don’t you dare do it, you gutless asshole. You promised. Salem, you promised.”

  Ignoring her cries, Salem snatched the dagger from Lilah’s hand and turned to me. He nearly shouted, “After we’re gone, use your blood to close and bind the seal. It has to be sealed with light flame blood. Then the seal must be destroyed. Do you understand, Alexa?”

  At his first words tonight, I nodded my head, but I didn’t totally understand. Not until I saw it happen.

  Using the dagger, Salem sliced into his palm. Then he pressed his blood-smeared palm to the center of the symbol he’d drawn. The entire symbol lit up with a pale copper light. Lilah continued to shriek and pound on her other half.

  Salem caught her flying hands and jerked her tight to his chest. Pushing the disheveled hair back from her face, he gazed at her with undying adoration while she struggled against him.

  “I hate you,” she cried, dissolving into angry sobs.

  “No, you don’t. But I wish you could. Your love is poison.” Salem was both wistful and resigned. And also determined to do what he believed he had to do. For her.

  To save her from herself.

  Lilah never ceased fighting as Salem dragged her to the center of the magical symbol. The light shot up through the ceiling, surrounding them so heavily that I could barely see them. Lilah’s outraged scream filled the building.

  Then the light flickered out and they were gone.

  Stunned, I stood frozen in place. Salem had opened a door to the prison he’d created for Lilah and pulled her in with him. It was such a selfless act that I wondered if perhaps he’d planned their imprisonment all along.

  Remembering what he’d said, I bolted forward. Using a claw, I opened a gash across my hand and jammed it to the floor, right next to Salem’s crimson handprint. Beneath me, beneath the building itself, the earth trembled.

  The black salt burst into flames, and I gasped. But they quickly went out, leaving the symbol burnt into the dance floor.

  I fell back on my ass, still trying to make sense of what just happened. In Lilah’s sudden absence, her power fell away. Chaos became confusion.

  Willow reached my side first. With a gentle hand on my shoulder, he said, “Salem was right. We have to destroy the seal. We have to tear the flooring out and burn it.”

  I nodded, and a stray blood tear slipped down my cheek. If Lilah
would have worked with me when I’d first asked her, it would never have come to this.

  But restoration was not what she’d wanted. Because that meant peace. For a demon queen who reigned in chaos, that must never be.

  Salem deserved better.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  More than an hour later I let myself into the hotel room that served as a private haven for Falon and me. Exertion and pain plagued me as I tossed my bag on the desk chair and headed for the bathroom.

  I didn’t know if Falon would show up. But he would know I was here. He always knew when I wanted him. If he left me hanging, then I would know that things were worse between us than I thought.

  Standing in front of the mirror that I’d once gazed into as Falon fucked me against the wall, I peeled off my torn and bloody clothing. My bruised face stared back at me, my eyes a muddied blue, on their way back to brown.

  The shower held its own share of memories, good and bad. I don’t know why I never switched rooms. I’d grown attached to this one. It was ours.

  Thankfully, and somewhat miraculously, nobody had been seriously injured during the commotion Lilah caused. After the adrenaline had worn off, I’d gone about righting chairs and tables, kicking broken pieces into a pile.

  Most of the mess had been tidied by the time I left. Twice in one week. Hopefully that was it for a while. The repair costs were starting to really add up.

  I needed a hot shower and a comfy place to relax, and let’s face it, I wanted my fallen angel to show up. So I set my sights on the hotel.

  When I’d left the club, Shaz and Arys were on their way to check on the Doghead wolves. We might be down a demon queen, but we were up one demon with isolation-induced madness and control issues. Plus the Feds were manning up. As Alpha, Shaz had to ensure his wolves remained safe.

  Gabriel and Willow had stripped the vinyl flooring that Salem marked. Better safe than sorry, they continued with the old planks beneath, everything cut into chunks that fit into Gabriel’s car. As far as I knew they planned to burn it all outside the city.