House of Ash & Brimstone

by Megan Starks

  Scales ripped through Shade’s skin, bleeding, seeping up the length of his arm, a gleaming blackness from his fingertips to his elbows. Massive, clawed wings tore from his back.

  And Gisele screamed like she’d burn through every ounce of air in her lungs. “Beast, ruuun!”

  But the minotaur had other ideas. Head bowed forward to angle his unbroken horn, he squared his burly shoulders and charged for the shifting valahan.

  “No, stop! Beast!”

  Her boys were about to collide like two dark, steel trains shrieking down the twisting tracks of her life. She knew she shouldn’t look, but she couldn’t stop herself, breath hitched painfully in her throat.

  With his scales jutting like jagged gemstones across the curve of his enlarged collarbone, down the bow and bend of his protruding, thick-knobbed spine, and over the arch of his swelled, carved-from-obsidian forearms; with his hair a loose, dark cascade to his wings and two wickedly curved horns, knobbed as alligator skin, protruding from his temples, Shade was barely recognizable to her. Three-inch canines cut into his bottom lip as he growled, spittle mixing in the corners of his mouth with welling blood. Black tar poured from his eyes, staining viscous rivers down his cheeks. He slapped a hard-plated, gleaming onyx tail against the ground, skittering a wash of white pebbles to the side behind him. And then he lunged for the minotaur, taloned wings pounding against the air to propel him forward.

  If she was the sun, he was the endless night, coming to swallow her whole.

  They were going to die.

  Terror jolted through her as Beast’s bray cut short—as blood splashed the pale-pebbled rooftop and entrails followed it, as the minotaur went down and didn’t get back up—as Shade turned his weeping black eyes toward her, and the world stopped for the span of three shuddering heartbeats before he launched himself in her direction.

  A yelp caught behind her teeth.

  She tripped on the stones beneath her feet and fell back against the peeling, yellow-painted access door. The back of her skull hit the metal with a thunk, and the yelp escaped her. Then Shade was on her, faster than any human could have covered the distance between them. Faster than she’d ever seen him move. Punching through the air like a piston aimed for her head.

  Face burning, she stared up at the hard, muscled expanse of his chest. If she hadn’t slipped—if she hadn’t fallen, if she’d been mere inches higher, his claws would have ripped through her. They would have sliced skin and muscle and severed arteries rather than tearing right through the solid steel door at her back.

  “Hey!” she yelled, riding the sudden swell of anger to keep from drowning in a sea of fear. “Apologize for hurting Beast.”

  Her words reached him, despite the soul-sucking, terrifying blackness of his eyes, despite the thick tar staining his face and the feral snarl that rattled deep in his chest. Shade flicked his gaze to the downed minotaur behind them—God, he wasn’t moving, burgundy blood puddling beneath his hulking, heaped, all-too-still form, but no, please, he had to be okay!—and then he forced the words in a guttural growl from his lips.

  “So sorry.”

  She had no idea if he actually meant it, or if he was taunting her. He peered down at her, neck twisted at an inhuman, reptilian-cold angle, feral and predatory, pinning her with a look that threatened he was going to eat her from the inside out, and she squeaked—God Almighty squeaked—before she squirmed out from under him. He yanked his arm free. And the door came screeching off the hinges with it.

  He neither smiled nor snarled at her then, just stared, deadly intent on her as he tossed the heavy door aside with a thundering crash.

  He took a slow, goading step forward, but she felt riveted to the spot.

  “Run!” he snapped, baring his fangs. “Run away.”

  He hadn’t needed to tell her twice. At the first bark of his voice, she’d turned and darted through the open maw of the doorway terrified he’d grab her by the hair and drag her kicking and screaming toward Beast’s lifeless body.

  Shade had wanted her to flee. Because he wanted to chase her. He wanted to catch her before he killed her.

  Or maybe he really did want her to get away.

  Did his desire matter, if the end result was the same?

  The hallway’s eggshell walls streaked past in a blur as her legs pumped so hard they burned. Then she slammed into the elevator’s closed, cold chrome doors, her fingers fumbling for the call button. She tapped the button repeatedly, to no avail. It didn’t light up.

  And then she glimpsed him in the reflection of the doors.

  He was leaning through the torn doorframe, his pale shoulders and chest jutting like a knife-blade into the back of the hallway. His claws scraped the wall as he watched her, eyes black and cold as space. Even folded, his hulking wings caught on the doorframe as he stalked into the hall, his nostrils flared wide to drink down the scent of her fear.

  Facing her, he snapped his wings wide, chipping the walls. For the briefest of moments he teetered, muscles trembling, before he pulled his wingtips in tight and flat against his shoulder blades. Then he clenched his jaw and launched toward her, his talons outstretched, grasping for the back of her neck.

  She bolted to the right.

  “As if,” she bit out, angry at him for attacking her, for killing—no, hurting Beast—hot tears blurring her vision as she ran for what she hoped was an accessible stairwell. She gritted against a scream and tasted blood. Head pounding, she swiped at her watery eyes and felt the sting of a fresh cut from her elongated, black nails. “I’ll kick your ass back to the surface before I let you take me down.”

  The door was locked. She growled. The handle crunched in her grip, and she shoved her way inside.

  A stairwell. Thank Lucifer.

  She took the steps two at a time, was halfway up the first flight before she realized she should have been fleeing down. Shade slammed into the narrow ingress like a raptor on the hunt, and she cursed.

  His speed and strength sent him crashing into the far wall. Claws scrabbled over metal railing, steel-toed boots scuffing the concrete as he pounded up the stairs after her.

  She turned and flung a hand at him, heart hammering in her chest. “Stop! Just stop!”

  Magic bit at her lips.

  He jerked to a halt, careening on his feet. His chest heaved, and his muscles trembled, his knuckles gaunt and black-scaled where they gripped the railing.

  She’d done it. She’d stopped him.

  If she hadn’t been so panicked, she’d have thought to try it before.

  “Gisele,” he grated.

  A relieved smile curved her lips.

  Then he lurched and took a slow, shuddering step. He ripped the railing right out of the wall, and tore toward her once more, out for her blood.

  With a sharp yelp, she flung herself up the flight of stairs.

  “Stop—for longer!” she shouted, and he did, his body locking into a violent standstill, giving her just enough time to escape from the stairwell onto another level of the building.

  More closed doors. Executive suites?

  She burst through one closed door into an expansive atelier with a breathtaking view of the city. Large paintings in blues and greens adorned the walls. A milky-glassed desk gleamed before her, loose papers strewn across its sleek top. Legs trembling, she hopped the desk in her flurry to the two-story window pane stretching the far wall, just as Shade barreled into the room, scattering the paperwork and knocking the whole damn desk to the ground. Glass crunched. Then she crashed through the window with the full force of her momentum, head tucked behind her raised arms, determined not to look back.

  Beneath her, an infinity pool spanned a ship deck-sized balcony with white pebble stones. For a moment, her heart skipped a beat. But this wasn’t the balcony that held Beast’s horrifyingly still body. That one, the one where she’d met her brother, was at least one floor lower on the opposite side of the building.

  This was not a place of blood and death.
Yet.

  She gasped a breath. Then the cold water swallowed her whole.

  Shade crashed through the clear surface above her. Boots kicking, wings flailing—billowed wide and awkwardly like loose, flapping sails, tangled and weighted by the water—he sank fast and hard, yanking her down with him as he latched onto her, claws cutting into her shoulders. The water clouded red. She kicked against him, writhing, bucking, trying not to scream, and he pulled her close, cradling her against his body, embracing her, before his hands found her throat.

  She tore away from him with a sharp thrust, bleeding harder, stung and stinging and terrified as he grabbed for her legs, missed, and sank further down. Chest aching, she swam single-mindedly for the surface, shaking from the cold and the fear that choked the breath from her lungs, whispering that he was right behind her, that he was going to grab her again, that she was going to drown screaming, while he thrashed and sank deeper still.

  Gripping the glass edge of the pool, she hauled herself above the surface of the water and wailed. She choked and cried and shrieked again. Aquamarine glass cracked in her hands. Then, chest heaving, she looked behind her. She looked beneath, to the dark, thrashing danger that was Shade, who wasn’t coming for her after all. He wasn’t deadly. He was just drowning.

  He’d reached the bottom, kicked off, flailed, and sank again. Evidently, he was having trouble furling his wings. Still, he was grasping for her, not to save himself but to satisfy his master’s command. He was dying to kill her. Literally.

  She should leave him. She should spurn him, hate him, scream her frustrations into his face. She should save herself—do whatever it took to survive.

  Instead, she reached an arm under the water, holding to the pool’s chipped side with the other.

  “Come on!” she called, unsure if he could even hear her. “Hurry! Change back so you can swim to me!” She added the force of her will to each word, feeling the magic burn her lips as the commands left her tongue.

  With a jolt, his scales and fangs, horns, tail, and wings rippled away. His eyes widened, gray and stormy and scared as he swam desperately for her. Their fingers entwined, and she tugged him to the pool’s edge.

  He broke the surface, gasping and choking, his hair plastered to his face. “Get away from me!” he howled, voice ragged as he dragged himself from the water and onto the smooth white pebbles of the balcony. “I can’t stop!”

  “So I’ve noticed,” she snapped, wounded by the truth of his warning.

  The fact that his feelings weren’t enough to stop him hurt worse than the scrapes he’d given her.

  “I’m not joking,” he growled back, mistaking her response for flippancy.

  He crawled away from her, muscles twitching with each forced movement, and coughed up icy water onto the stones beneath his palms. Trembling, he heaved and gagged, spine arching as the bones popped, and once more scales tore through his skin.

  Then he looked to her with such raw pain and remorse that her heart froze in her chest. “I’ll kill you, Gigi.”

  Black tar ran wetly down his cheeks. Stones like pale bones scraped beneath his claws.

  Shit.

  Adrenaline trilled through her veins, and she surged forward in a mad scramble onto the balcony, slipping in her haste to escape him and the pool.

  “Shade!”

  With a lunge and a swipe, he caught her leg, yanked. Claws bit into her thigh. Twisting, she kicked for him, but he was already clambering on top of her, holding her down. Black wings ripped from his back. They arched over her, wet and glistening.

  He drew a hand back high, clawed fingers crooked hard, ready to strike.

  Her voice cracked like a gunshot between them. “Wait, don’t!”

  His trembling fingers curved into his palm, and instinctively, she raised her arms to shield her face. His fist slammed into the ground by her head, sending white stones skittering and crazing jagged lines in the underlying gray cement. Panting and sweating, he swore.

  “Any time you want to stop me,” he snarled.

  How? She’d tried in the stairwell, but it hadn’t worked.

  She gaped up at him, heart thundering and mouth dry.

  “Stop,” she breathed, but there was none of the power behind it she’d felt before. Her fear was riding her too hard. “Please.”

  “Would love to. Would fucking kill to, believe me.” He watched her with wide, horror-stricken eyes, but he didn’t ease off her. His own desire wasn’t enough to stop him. She wasn’t enough to stop him.

  With a shaking hand, he drew the bloodied, horn-carved knife from its holster at the small of his back. A wash of disbelief crashed through her. He was going to do it—cut her head off as Rhogan had commanded. Her body braced for the pain, even as she grabbed wildly for his wrist.

  Her fingers latched onto his rough-scaled skin as he brought the edge down. She bucked and shoved, but was no match for his strength. Her breath hitched in her throat. But instead of slicing into her neck, he stabbed the knife into his own forearm—the one supporting his weight. He wavered above her, wings jostling to steady himself, and grimaced from the pain. Blood welled around the blade and trickled toward his palm.

  “Stop quivering and fight me,” he rasped. “Pain helps, but I still can’t control myself. I need you to help me, Gigi.”

  The shock of his rebuke was a slap to her face. But it gave her something to latch onto. Anger. The will to fight flooded back into her, and she sneered up at him. “Don’t call me that when you’ve got Beast’s blood on your hands.”

  He glanced to his hands as if they hadn’t been washed clean by the pool—then washed again with his own blood—a look of disgust furrowing his features. “He couldn’t protect you.”

  “Neither can you!”

  “So stop me!” he shouted back at her. “Kill me to avenge your precious Beast.” His gaze slid to the hilt angled behind her shoulder. “That sword for decoration? Cut me! Choke me, drown me. Bleed me out already. Just do something! Make me save you or let me die.”

  He growled low and deep next to her ear. It was a demon’s way of weeping, and it sent shivers down her spine.

  “Gigi, please,” he begged. His claws raked over her ribs. “Hurry. Tell me to tear my heart from—no! Fuck, not yet. No!”

  Before she could speak, his rough hand seized her throat. She gasped as he pressed harder down on her, squeezing, scales coarse as gravel scraping her skin.

  “L-let g-oh!”

  His eyes lightened, stark with apprehension, but his grip didn’t loosen. His arms began to tremble. “I’m sorry, Gigi, I’m not strong enough,” he choked.

  And then he ripped her throat out.

  28

  A fire raged in her throat, searing her from the inside out. Consuming the whole of her. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t even think beyond the pain.

  And Shade was crying for her just like she’d seen once so long ago.

  His hot tears fell to her cheeks, and she closed her eyes to blot out his face. She couldn’t handle both her own agony and his at the same damn time.

  Blood puddled beneath her, matting her hair to the back of her neck. Twice now her brother had done this to her. Twice he’d hurt her and her dragon. A scream welled in her chest, wracking her ribs, seizing her until it broke from her lips, though she had no chords to give it voice.

  The dampness seeped down between her shoulder blades. And a new sort of flame raged to life inside her. The burn of a lethal injury flared sharply into the pain of a rapid-fire regeneration—of skin and muscle and cartilage reknitting in record time.

  She hadn’t come here to die. She’d come to save her soul-bound.

  Thick, spear-tipped horns white as bones burst from her crown, branching and jutting and aching so hard she thought they might split her skull in two, and suddenly she was able to form a sound for her pain and fury, yowling the shuddering caterwaul of a demon rising from the ashes of Hell. Wickedly curved claws ste
mmed from her fingers, and her skin flushed red-hot, first a soft, rosy hue, then a deeper mauve, then darker still, an opaque and vivid scarlet.

  The cleaver rattled beneath her, no doubt gorging itself on her lifeblood, and she drew it shakily, propping onto her elbows and then rising despite the pain to free Joy from her sheath.

  “Damn traitor,” she chided the blade when it, too, seemed to grow larger and sharper and more beautiful, gleaming as a new moon and purring its words, am bathed for hunting, am bathed to burn, vitalized by her blood.

  When Shade lifted his grief-stricken gaze to her face, she realized he thought she’d been talking to him.

  “I didn’t—”

  A rich, full-bodied laugh shattered her half-formed apology. She jerked, eyes wide and wild, latching onto the form of her approaching brother.

  “He wants to die. But he can’t do it himself. You see?”

  “But he—”

  “Misled you? He likes to do that. Likes to pretend he has some measure of control, even when all he can do is listen and obey. Even when he can’t outright lie. And especially since I told him he can never, ever kill himself.”

  “Rhogan, please. Just let her go. I’ll never run again. I won’t fight you anymore, I swear, I—”

  “Do not speak another word until I permit you.” He looked cross for the first time since Gisele had interrupted them on the other side of the roof. “You’re such an exceeding disappointment. You were supposed to have learned, Shade,” he tutted at her dragon, “that you can never escape me. Now, finish what you started.”

  Gaunt-knuckled, Shade gripped the knife embedded in his forearm.

  “Shade, talk to me,” she ordered, pulse ratcheting in her scorched throat. “You haven’t killed me. We’re still fighting.”

  “I should have never let you come here,” he lamented, and a rush of relief swept her. “I have killed you. I should have never tried to stand at your side.”

  “Look at me,” she said, and he did, seeming to take in her appearance for the first time since her change. He drank down the sight of her deep cinnabar skin, the smooth expanse of her healed throat, her crown of horns, her black-flooded sclera, and her whip-like, onyx-tipped tail like a drowning man. Which is to say, he choked.