As I launch myself from the stage with a sudden and feral sounding growl, the crowd jumps, receding from me as if I’m a ferocious tide eroding their resolve, taking a few steps back in surprise. I hear Callista gasp slightly as I stalk forward, my skin mapping dark with power as I feel my muscles begin to unfurl, the tension in my body mine to manipulate as I wish.
I find him, still sniggering in the crowd, the one I need to make an example of.
My steps don’t falter as I raise my arm, swinging the length of the sceptre across his face and knocking him onto the floor. The Psiren’s part, not doing what I have partially expected and mob attacking me, but merely watching on with interest. Celius’ muscular torso strains beneath my weight as I fall to my knees on top of him, taking the mass of the dark pearl orb in my left hand and smashing it into his face. His eyes widen with fear as my nails abandon their clutch of the orb, allowing it to roll, bloody, across the floor with a high-pitched ring. Wrenching back my hand, I ball it into a fist and bring it down into his face, hearing an audible crack as it strikes his jawbone and I feel blood rush to my knuckles. He tries to fight back, but I’ve got him pinned to the floor from the waist down with the positioning of my legs, a move I used on Vex not so long ago.
When I grab his wrists as they come up to throttle me, he smiles, wondering what I’ll do now I have no remaining limbs adequate to beat him with. I smile back at him, lips pulling back over my teeth.
I don’t speak, merely lunge for his throat, digging in my incisors and breaking open the creamy pallor of his neck’s flesh like a casket of red wine. The blood flows quickly from his carotid, and I drink deep and hard, feeling the heat of it rush through me and my heartbeat deepen as I take in his lifeforce. Once I’m done, I rise from his body, which lies bleeding on the floor beneath me. My face is covered in his blood, and it drips, hot, sticky, delicious, down from my lips and off my chin before trickling gently into my cleavage.
“I believe Callista said you should fucking kneel!” I bark, looking around at them, terrifying as I plunge the end of the sceptre through Celius’ skull, eviscerating his brain and causing him to die right there as I look down on him like trash. I step aside from him, kicking his limp body with my sandal to make sure he’s well and truly dead.
As I do so, I feel a tidal wave of fear move through the room as the Psirens’ bend at the knee and kneel, bowing their heads. The room is silent, not a breath audible, nor motion sounding through the air, which crackles, alive with my authority. Callie and Orion stare at me as I survey the sea of Psirens, and both nod, satisfied. I don’t smile. I merely clear my throat.
“Training starts at dawn. Now, follow me. It’s time to rave,” I decree, watching as they get to their feet in silent uniformity. Tossing the sceptre to the floor and giving one last look over Celius’ dead body, I stride back up the length of the hall.
Callie and Orion open the double doors, and Callie stares at me with wide yet unmistakably proud eyes.
“I… I had a reception all planned,” she whispers, looking disappointed.
My face is still bloodstained and mapped black and blue, but I smile at her, sure I must look monstrous. However, I’m also sure this may very well be the truest reflection of myself I’ve ever presented to anyone.
“I’m taking them to the deep. I feel like they need to blow off some steam before we start training tomorrow. I’m taking them out of the city. My methods aren’t going to be orthodox by the standards of the other council members…” I explain in a quick, clipped manner, impatient as I feel the Psirens slowing while I block the doorway in front of them. They could go around me, but they don’t; they still, waiting for my next move, pleasing me immensely.
“Alright. I trust you.” Callie nods for me to leave and I take off without further word, not sure what I can possibly say that will mean anything.
Besides, I have more important jobs to attend to.
Storming out of the double front doors of the Lunar Sanctum, I lead them, a long line of lost boys and girls, to the edge of the cliff where I had once teetered so close to the ledge with another.
“Jump.” I order them, face remaining stoic as I refuse to turn to them, to acknowledge them as people. I want them to earn my respect, my attention, I want to teach them to be obedient, and that starts right now.
Underneath the stormy mass of the sky above, I stand, glowing and bloody as the Psirens strip down behind me before running and launching themselves, fully nude, off the top of the cliff. They soar through the air, one by one, silhouetting against the sky, only discernible as the grim moonlight catches the jagged edges of their arching forms.
“So, how was it?” I hear a voice call out as the final Psiren leaps into the waves below, phasing just before hitting the surface with a hard splash.
I spin on my heel, taking him in as he lights a cigarette, a leather jacket adorning his torso, which I know remains marked by me, beneath.
“If you’d have attended you’d know,” I retort, and his eyes widen as he catches the red of Celius’ sticky blood coating the bottom half of my face even still.
“This really isn’t my scene. Bloody boring affair if you ask me, Love. Though, the after party… that’s something I can get down with…” He takes several steps toward me, closing the distance between us, and I take a step back.
“Do you remember the last time we were on this cliff?” I demand, and he smirks.
“I do. I predicted you were ripe and ready to be picked. And how right I was,” he purrs. I scowl.
“What happened before… it can never happen again,” I snarl, and he smirks.
“Oh, fuck off. You and I both know that is a load of utter poppycock.” He grabs me around the waist and pulls me back away from the edge. The scent of him, the cigarette smoke, the salty musk… it brings back the memories of that night, causing desire to pool unwillingly between my thighs.
“Vex, it’s over,” I whisper, and he smirks down at me.
“Oh, Love. Even you don’t believe that. You can’t even muster the power to say the words with any conviction.” He takes the cigarette from between his lips and throws it to the ground, despite the fact it’s far from finished.
“Stop,” I plead, victim to my own lack of restraint. I’ve let the flood gates open when it comes to him, and now I know how delicious things between us can be. I’ve had a taste, and now I can’t forget it. I can’t resist it. As if he’s become the darkness I’ve been fighting, embodied.
“Say it like you mean it, and I will,” he growls, eyes wild with lust, as I pretend to struggle in his grasp. I purposefully pull away, raising my hand in the air and bringing it down to slap him just like I’ve always done as the urge to hit him clutches at me. But this time he catches me by the wrist, slamming his lips down onto mine and tasting the dried blood on my skin.
The dark night blankets us, and I moan into his mouth, my heart beating wildly in my chest as his hand crawls down my spine and pulls down the zipper of my dress. It falls to the ground, exposing my undergarment beneath, a single lace thong, which he promptly rips asunder. Tossing it to the ground, his fingers dig into my ass as we stand, clutching one another, stuck in a limbo of utter lust and undeniable hatred.
The wind whips around us as he breaks the kiss, gasping for air. His eyes wash over me, making me hate him, hate how desperately I want to find release with him one more time. The rage inside me is too much to be contained for so long again, and for a moment, with him, I had felt like I was the one in control of the darkness, not the one being controlled by it.
I gaze up at him, biting my bottom lip and getting a malicious thought.
Perhaps I can have what I want. Use him to find relief from the building abyss inside. After all, I am a Queen. But I’d never just let Vex have me so easily. I’m the kind of woman you chase and catch, not the kind of woman who falls to her knees at any given opportunity.
“Call me,” I breathe against his ear, leaning forward as I turn on my foot,
pushing off the rigidness of his pecs and stepping out of my dress before bolting toward the edge of the cliff. I take the plunge, soaring off the ledge as the cold night air quenches the simmering fire he’s left sizzling beneath the surface of my skin.
Hitting the surface of the water, I plunge deep after my children, after the Psirens, leaving Vex alone on the edge of the cliff as he had once done to me. I feel the water against my skin as I slice through the sea, calling me into the deep as it has done for many years. Now though, for the first time in forever, I swim with intent, with purpose.
Now, I will carve my own destiny, and I fully intent to vex a certain tentacled asshole every chance I get along the way.
Chapter Ten
Creep
VEX
She’s a sodding pill.
Bitter to swallow, fighting me all the way down my gullet before falling unwillingly into my core and dispersing her dark, dominating tendrils, addictive within seconds. The release of her into my system has the blood screaming inside my goddamn veins, my dick throbbing hard against the front of my jeans like something possessed. I’m aching throughout, in withdrawal, as I raise a hand, shielding the flickering flame of my lighter from the immense wind coming off the sea that lies unrestrained below.
Extinguishing my lighter as the end of my fag catches, letting off a puff of fragrant smoke into the air, I inhale heavily, taking the smoke inside of my lungs and trying to focus on the relief I know is coming at the next exhale. My heart is doing the bloody tango behind my ribs, causing me to stand on edge atop the cliff.
Tilting my head back, I exhale, seeking relief but finding none. I close my eyes, letting the moonlight cast shadows over my skull, and take in a breath, this time of night air. The aroma of salt, mixed in with the lush greenery surrounding the Lunar Sanctum behind me, is overpowering to my Psiren senses, but it’s not what I’m seeking. I grasp what I’m craving in my nostrils, letting them flare and enjoying the scent of her, fleeting as it might be. Sweet, dark cherry ignites a fire in my synapses, causing my mouth to flood with saliva and my stomach to tighten with desire.
The smell takes me back as I keep my eyes closed, the cold of the wind whipping around me and providing much needed contrast to the fire beneath my skin.
The arch of her flawlessly smooth back, a bead of sweat falling between her shoulder blades, sharp with need, and down into fragrant dew which coats the top of her ample ass. I remember the feel of my fingers plunging into the tense knots of her muscles, seizing flesh that hadn’t been touched in this way for years.
Bloody woman. I curse internally.
I open my eyes to the black of the sky, but I don’t see it. I see the dark silk of her hair, falling flawlessly over her swollen breasts. The sea is no longer a shifting mass of water but the quivering of her body atop me as she takes what she wants without permission or pause, each cresting wave another undulation of her pleasure, locking me in and rippling around me.
Bloody… Pissing… Sodding… Woman! I growl, taking yet another quick inhale of my cigarette and finding myself so angry at the lack of relief for my usual cravings that I throw the barely touched fag to the ground, stamping on it and leaving an overdramatic dent in the earth.
I think back, wondering if I’d felt like this the night I’d been turned. Alyssa’s embrace had been deceptively bloody loving of course… but it hadn’t felt like a curse. Azure felt like fire from beginning to end, like what I was doing was dangerous beyond what I knew. I’m realising, only now, that I’ve potentially become addicted to something with someone who has no desire to repeat the act, or so she claims.
I’ll be making sure it’s not a one night only kind of show if it’s the last thing I do… I vow, tensing my jaw and acknowledging the ridiculous hunger I’ve acquired for the act itself.
Is it her? Or is it how I become when I’m with her?
Who goddamn knows?
I’ve had sex before… good sex, lots of it. And yet… what happened in the dark of that hotel room, spreading from the internally cast shadows of the shit we’ve been infected with… it was something bigger than me. It was primal and raw… and it was also the biggest thrill of my life. I have never felt that alive. Not riding a motorcycle at top speed, drinking myself stupid, or injecting pleasurable chemicals beneath the skin.
She was something else, has always been, and yet for some reason, she can’t see it. She’s too bloody melancholic, too broken and damaged in her own mind to see the kind of powerhouse I see in her.
She’s a Queen alright, a bloody dark demon spawned right from the undercarriage of hell to torment me from now until the day I sodding die. Alyssa had warned us, said we were damned, but I never figured that meant I’d be cock teased by some wild, dark goddess trapped in mortal flesh until I was ready to drown in the weight of my own frustration.
Is it hell? Or bloody heaven?
Who pissing knows!
I turn my back on the ocean, walking away from the ledge on which Azure and I find ourselves teetering so very often, not only physically, but metaphorically. I can still hear her as I do so, the sound of her climax, ringing in my ears like some kind of resonant haunting from the demons we had not exorcised, but exercised that night.
It can’t be the last time. It just can’t.
Over my undead fucking body.
She says I’m a creep, that I’m dirty minded and base. Is she wrong? Hell no. But maybe it causes her so much disdain because I’m everything she is too, but where I wear the face of a dark killer with swagger and undeniable cool, she’s too afraid to.
I don’t understand her. I mean, I can pretend to, and there are moments when I look at her and catch the ghost of an emotion I recognise from a book I read once. But I’m sure that she’s ashamed of who she is, and I’m bloody certain she’s ashamed of who she became underneath the sheets with me.
She acts like the weight of the world falls upon her and her alone rather than knowing, as I do, that we are merely pieces in a much larger picture. I have surrendered to the idea that the current will take me where it wills, and yet she resists, a fighter through and through.
I don’t know what will happen now. I know what I think I want to happen, I want to lock myself in a room with her and give in to the carnal urges riddling through me, cancerous and destructive to both of us.
I do know one thing for sure though, and that is the fact that she has the sodding power now.
As much as I may bloody love to hate it, it is me, not her, who is Vexed now.
Bloody hell.
Epilogue
A Christmas Tail
Kayla’s surrounded by Geoffrey, Stan and Theodore, snuggled deep down into her brand-new mermaid blanket. It’s been a long day, Christmas day to be exact, and the evening even longer.
Callie, Orion, Gideon and I had all been invited for a late Christmas dinner, and having nothing better to do I’d agreed to come. I haven’t been the best sister, having had no opportunity to Christmas shop, but Callie and Orion have, unsurprisingly, more than made up for my lack of anything resembling care by gifting her a tiny, pearl thread tiara, which she’s refusing to take off. If only she knew the true weight of the icon upon her head. Would she still wear it so readily?
Probably. I mean, she seriously loves anything shiny.
“Did you have a good day, Kayla?” I ask her, and she nods.
“Yes. I love my tiara. Did you get any nice gifts, Zure?” she asks, and I think back to earlier today. Vex had given me three orgasms in an abandoned cave before dinner, catching me off guard and naked as I had come ashore to meet up with Orion and Callie… but I guess I can’t tell her that. Or anyone. It’s too goddamn weird that I’ve fallen into that dark pit of despair more than once since the first time it had happened. I still can’t seem to make myself stop though, as much as I completely and utterly detest myself and everything about him every single time it’s over.
“Nah. I’m a bit old for gifts,” I express with a small smile, and
she twists her mouth. I reach behind me to straighten the blue silk of my blouse and her eyes widen, as if she’s expecting something from me. I instantly feel guilty, my soft spot for her increasing in diameter with every single meeting.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything,” I apologise, as silence falls between us, trying to fill the gap in the conversation with anything other than her questions about whether or not I have a boyfriend and if he’s dreamy. It’s a no and then a NO on that front, in all senses of the word.
“That’s okay. There is only one thing I really want.” She’s devious with her cute moments, I’ll give her that, as she places a thumb in her mouth and begins to suck. Her eyes are wide as her tiny feet wiggle under the comforter, and I roll my eyes, laughing despite myself.
“What is it, tiny extortionist?” I sigh, and she giggles, removing her thumb from her mouth.
“A bedtime story.” Her eyes are laced with mischievous intent.
“I don’t really do the fairy tale thing…” I grimace at the idea of filling her head with utter rubbish.
Happily ever after and handsome princes? I snort. I’ll save that for Callie.
“No! Not that. I wanna know about mermaids.” She eyes me, biting her bottom lip and smiling, as if she has no idea that what she’s asking for isn’t allowed.
“Kayla… you know that’s against the rules,” I breathe, glaring at her, and she puckers her lips, squishing up her tiny nose.
“I’ll find out you know. I’m smart.” She watches me, her gaze holding mine and imploring me to tell her everything.
I exhale heavily, I don’t want to get into a fight, I’ve had enough of that with Vex. It’s like now he’s taking my excess rage from me and quelling my frustrations, I can focus my dark power any way I choose. It’s exhilarating, taking me back to when Titus had helped me reach my highest point of intensity as a killer.
Vexed: A Tidal Kiss Novella (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 5) Page 14