She almost tackled him; the urge to dig her nails into something, anything, was too great.
“Evesse, breathe.”
He was her friend. They were all trying to help her. With a gasp, she deflated, flopping down onto the bed and noticing for the first time that the covers had reverted back from their ashen state.
“I’m going insane.”
“No, you’re becoming more powerful than anything I’ve seen in a while,” Vedlyl said, still assessing her, his pupils doing that rapid change thing as he scanned her molecules, or whatever the hell it was that he did.
“Ved, is that what Ismini went through?” Dyletri had taken a step forward, his whole body lighting up with the white light of his powers. The way he was staring at the God of Medicine’s back didn’t bode well for anyone.
Vedlyl tensed, but didn’t turn away from his scan of Evesse.
“You weren’t meant to know at the time. She didn’t want you to know.”
Ismini stepped around Dyletri, her brown and black hair whirling due to how fast she moved. She placed her hand on Dy’s chest and looked up at him.
“Baby. He’s right—”
“I don’t care. You went through that by yourself. I don’t care what was happening at the time, someone should have fucking told me.” He grabbed Ismini, lifting her into his arms with a fierce expression that stabbed Evesse in the heart and threatened to unleash her R’mannev. It was clear that he was still guilt-ridden over what Ismini had gone through before he’d found out she was mated to him and he to her.
Dyletri growled at no one in particular, looking tormented, and stormed out of the room with his mate in his arms. All the hard lines on his body made his intention loud and clear. He planned to love Ismini with every inch of him, to make it up to her in the only way he could.
Yearning hit Evesse, her insides screaming for the male that owned her, even as her mind chastised her for being such a fool. Zeniel didn’t feel that way about her. If he had he would have been there by now. But he wasn’t, and that was because she’d just been an annoyance that he had to put up with. It had been clear in the way he treated her.
Not that she hadn’t contributed to that. She had been so busy being scared of how she felt for him, that she’d gone out of her way to be extra annoying and bitchy to him.
And she’d had good reason to be afraid, hadn’t she? The first moment she’d laid eyes on him, she’d known deep down—somewhere dark and primitive—that she was staring at imprisonment. The inescapable kind.
God, she’d been right. And now, she was locked in a mating all by herself.
Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to be as alone as she felt. “Guys, I’m sorry I almost attacked you. Thank you for everything.”
The triplets nodded, Cy still inching toward the door like he didn’t trust her. Hell, he shouldn’t. He knew her longer than the other two did, even if it was just a matter of weeks.
Soleria, on the other hand, stepped forward to cup her shoulder. “Man, you’re badass. I can’t wait. If I fling myself off the balcony, do you think that’ll speed up the process of becoming whatever the hell I’m going to become?”
At the mention of her throwing herself off the balcony, a worried, stricken look crossed Ian’s face. It was gone too fast for Sol to see it, but Eve had.
Again with the yearning. Again with the reminder that Zen didn’t feel that way for her.
“I . . . I need to be alone.”
She didn’t care that the words wobbled when she said them. Nor that she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the covers as she did. Usually, any show of weakness went against every basic principle she had in her damned body. You don’t grow up in foster care and survive a broken, pathetic system by being a weakling.
For the first time in her life, however, she knew she was surrounded by beings that would understand. If there was one thing she’d realized in the time since she’d met the gods around her, was that they felt on a whole deeper level. One she didn’t think humans could possibly understand. She now knew why, knew that their powers and instincts magnified everything, as was her case.
She was so grateful for that. Especially when they all simply turned and left, no one uttering a single word since all of them knew there were no words to be given. Even Soleria, a human who had always had unnatural instincts, patted her on the shoulder and shuffled out.
Evesse was left alone, faced with a reality that they all knew, even if not one of her friends was brutal enough to voice it.
She might have been brought back. She might still be alive. But she was mated to a male that wasn’t mated to her. Kind of ridiculous actually. She had been resurrected and shoved back into a living form, only to go through death all over again.
This time, however, it wouldn’t be quick like when she had been thrown into the vortex with Ismini.
No, this time, she was going to experience every aspect of her death in slow motion.
Fucking yippee.
Chapter 8
-Renentr. The Underworld.
After arriving in Renentr, Zeniel stood outside the Sivigh, hearing agonized screams echoing through the entrance to the underworld. The screams died off abruptly the moment he got into the Chamber of Souls.
The creature that had been screaming was dangling from chains and resembled exactly what it was: a rotting corpse. Apparently, it was also no longer capable of much sound. Its breathing was stilted, its chest barely moved. Twitches rode its limbs in spasms, and dark brown blood oozed out of every inch on it, dripping onto the floor in hot, hissing puddles.
The chains around its wrists and ankles glowed white with pure, holy energy. The fist that went flying at it, however, was covered in silver and black.
The draugar’s skeletal face crumbled inward. It wouldn’t be enough to finish it. Not yet. But Crius was obviously determined to drive the creature to the brink before pushing it over and ending it. Another fist landed, another loud crunch sounded out through the Abideos. Zen tilted his head, admiring the abuse.
The draugars had originated within the deepest part of Renentr and had given birth to the Norse mythological creature of the same name. They were vile, and the only reason Crius put up with them was because they were useful. As long as they obeyed his rules and guarded the lowest pits—and by extension, the most dangerous prisoners housed in Renentr—he allowed them to exist.
The draugar currently getting a piece of its back stripped off had obviously disobeyed one of the rules. Zeniel couldn’t focus on which one since all of its evil acts were on full attack against his frontal lobe. The only reason Mavrak hadn’t crumbled into his usual hysterics was because the fucker was too busy purring in delight at the carnage Crius was dishing out.
One rotting piece of flesh fell to the floor, landing inside the hissing blood. It disintegrated slowly, gurgles rising up along with the stench of decayed flesh being cooked. Another piece joined the first.
The smell of smoke drifted to Zen, and he pulled his attention away from the show long enough to look at the one responsible for the butchery. Crius was wearing a black turtleneck and leather breeches. His usual leather trench coat was nowhere to be seen. The sleeves of his turtleneck were rolled up to his elbows, the black scars on his arms visible as they flexed with every movement.
He walked around to the front of the creature and proceeded to carve into it all over again.
Zen had to admit that this was not the scene he’d expected to find upon hearing the screams when he arrived at the entrance to Renentr, but seeing such an evil creature being punished this way was doing wonders for his issues.
He didn’t want to like the sight of such punishment being handed out . . . but the darkness inside him did. It sighed with utter satisfaction as a third piece of flesh fell with a splat. Drops of blood flew up in the air. He stepped back, watching them land in front of his boot, small spots that boiled as they tried to burn through the floor.
“Is that thing even still alive?”
he asked.
Crius paused to take a drag of the dark brown cig he was holding. “Of course. This fucker doesn’t die until I say he does. Which is never. He’ll suffer eternally for what he’s done.”
He walked away from the draugar long enough to stop before a small, velvet-covered table. He discarded the knife he’d been using and reached for a holy dagger. The inscriptions on it and the blade glowed with white light.
Technically, the being holding it shouldn’t have been able to even go near the knife. Crius was anything but holy. As evidenced by the torture going on before Zen. Yet darkness wasn’t the only thing locked inside Crius. His other half was in there, battling to break free, still hidden from the world but strong enough to flood Crius with some form of purity.
“What did it do?”
Crius walked back to the creature. The blade hadn’t even touched its flesh, and already it had begun reacting to the added white energy. It thrashed in earnest, broken sounds managing to escape even though its face was turned inward. Crius slid the blade into the draugar’s back and exhaled a puff of smoke as it convulsed in spasms.
“He was trading information with my enemies.”
Punishable, yes, but nothing new. Within all the underworlds, treachery abounded. Those types of crimes happened every day, and were usually left to the higher ups to punish.
“And you’re the one punishing him, why?”
“You mean aside from my need to carve into something?” Crius walked around the creature again, stabbing it in the side with the blade. Sliding the blade out, he placed it between the draugar’s neck and shoulder, and sunk home.
Zen almost felt bad for the poor creature. It went into a seizure, its body pulling on the chains as it jerked frantically. The holy light glowed inside it, leaking out of the exposed cavities on the creature’s chest. What it was experiencing was the equivalent of a human being exposed to three hundred thousand volts of electricity. He felt the temperature in the chamber rising and saw more pieces of flesh beginning to cook.
“Yeah, aside from that.”
“It’s the nature of the information it was trading. That’s why this piece of shit will suffer the worst I can subject it to for the rest of eternity.” This was only the beginning. There were levels within Renentr that thrived on agony, bloodshed, violation, and misery. There was no doubt where Crius was sending the draugar to next.
Looking away from the creature, Zen focused on Crius, searching his grid. Images, colors, and emotions flickered across his mind, all proof of what was really behind Crius’s mood. Now the carnage made sense. He hadn’t condemned it at first, but now he definitely had no beef with what Crius was up to.
“Do you know who he was speaking about Dimithinia to?”
“Of course. Some lower minion from the mines of southeast Eren. I will follow its trail to the next one, and the next, till I find which Aviraji asshole is trying to find info about her.”
In Zen’s mind there was no questioning who would be at the top of the chain. It wasn’t necessary. Eren was the demon dimension, one the size of Jupiter. The different factions of demonology lived there, including the war Erencei his father had once ruled over. A place so large was always ripe for malice, and many of the mythical low lives of old made their home there.
It was possible that it was a coincidence, because the order to gather information about Dimithinia could have come from anyone, but hearing the name of his father’s birthplace set off an alarm in Zen’s gut.
“You will keep me up to date with what you find,” he said. Not a request, nor a demand, either. Just a simple statement of fact.
Crius nodded stiffly. “Of course. Now, I’m busy here, in case you haven’t noticed. What did you come for? Because I’m starting to regret allowing you fucks free entry.”
A roll of his eyes, that’s all Zen could muster for the God of the Underworld. “Stop being so melodramatic. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t urgent.”
With a snap of his fingers, Crius made the prisoner, its remains, and the table with blades disappear. The blood on his hands was gone the next instant, and his black coat appeared on his shoulders.
“I’m serious. I’m starting to become aggravated. One more of you storm in here today, and I will shove my foot up your asses.”
He didn’t even bother to ask who else had been there. “I need you to come with me to visit your brother. He has something that I need in his possession.”
Crius turned to Zen, his face studiously blank. Zen could tell that he was searching through his thoughts.
“What could he possibly have that you would risk going into his hell in your currently weak state?”
Zeniel growled low. In a flash, he appeared before Crius and stared him in the eye. Zen felt his eyes changing, the marks on his face becoming more pronounced.
“A soul. One that I need to punish. More than that, I need you to appease me in this. I’m having a hard ass time keeping my inner asshole from tearing you a new one.”
“Me? What the fuck? I haven’t done anything selfish in—” Crius’s eyes widened. He staggered back one step and his expression melted into realization.
Zen barely resisted the urge to scoff. “Why are you doing this to her? Because of Cilpera?”
“Don’t mention that name to me.”
“You’re making one female suffer because of what some bitch did thousands of years ago.” He watched as rage clouded Crius’s eyes. It was there one moment, then gone the next, replaced by that blank mask Crius wore so well.
“Because of that bitch, two of my brothers and I were ripped apart and put back together as monsters. Reincarnated into lives we would never have chosen.”
He didn’t have to elaborate any further. What had become the fall of him and his two brothers was common knowledge among the gods.
A demoness, Cilpera, had become the first Goddess of Deceit by seducing the three holiest brothers in existence and leading them to their deaths. As punishment for the things they did in her name, each of them was reborn as the opposite of what they once had been.
Love, Honor, Light. All three were warped and forced to become the lords of the first three underworlds. Renentr, Hades, and Hell.
And Cilpera had made herself the self-proclaimed queen of the war Erencei. If the order to find out information about Dimithinia had come from his father’s people, it meant that Cilpera was most likely the one after said information.
“Is Dimithinia truly . . . bothered without me?” Crius asked.
“Try hurt. That defines it better.”
Crius glared at Zen, not appreciating his honesty one bit. “As if you’re any better. You haven’t gone back because of this need for vengeance, I see. There’s a newly awakened immortal that is suffering without her R’mann.”
It was Zen’s turn to stagger backward. Denial tried to rise up in his throat. It died halfway out of his mouth as shock replaced everything else. Crius’s eyes went wide as they followed Zen.
“Wha—how . . . She’s awake?”
“Oh, shit. You didn’t know.”
The world tilted and for the first time in his entire existence, Zen felt Mavrak turn his powers on himself. The urge to punish himself burned through every cell in his body. How could no one have told him? Damn it, he’d told them all to find him when it happened!
Crius flashed to him and grabbed onto his upper arms, his hands biting through the leather jacket Zen wore.
“Sit down. Sit the fuck down.” He shoved Zen onto his throne and held him down by the shoulders. “Committing suicide isn’t going to help her, you ass.”
Zen clenched his jaw as the roar in his head blasted through. “I know that, dick.”
“I’m talking to the thing inside you.”
“He doesn’t listen to common sense.” Which was true. Mavrak was raging in two separate directions, one half demanding the vengeance it craved, and the other demanding Evesse.
Mine. She’s mine. Give her to me. I own her.
/>
For a few short seconds, there was a brief moment of peace. Of unity. Zeniel couldn’t blink as the rightness of that feeling slid into place. There was no denying what both sides of him were claiming.
For once, they were in perfect agreement.
The moment was shattered when he saw Evesse in his mind. The bellows built back up, the sound staggering.
“I need that soul, Crius. Please. Once I take out some of this rage on it, I can go back for her.”
Zeniel never pleaded. Ever.
Crius obviously knew this because he gave his shoulders a squeeze before speaking. “All right. Let’s go. It’s about time I gave Lucy a visit anyway.”
“Don’t call him that when we get there. I need him to agree to give me that fucking soul,” Zen said seconds before Crius sighed and flashed them out of Renentr.
The infamous smell of sulfur assaulted Zen’s nostrils. Screams and laughs drifted up to them from afar. Crius’s footsteps echoed behind him. Zen spared him a glance as he dusted his shoulder off.
“Was it necessary to fling me into the damned wall?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. That was an accident.” He said it so calmly that Zen almost believed him.
Almost.
“Bullshit.” Rolling his shoulders, Zen looked around them.
Hell truly did resemble the inner crust of the Earth, complete with stone, dust, and areas full of boiling lava. The narrow tunnel they were in was devoid of any flames or magma though. The only light illuminating their way was the glow of their respective auras.
“Losing it yet?” Crius asked.
“As a matter of fact . . . no. I can hear all the sins from afar but I’m not seeing them.”
“I can smell the mating on you. Kinda disturbing.”
“I know. And you’re sounding like Cyake.”
“You wound.”
“Stop being a smartass and I won’t compare you to your brother.”
Blood Stained Tranquility Page 7