The Fire of the Fated (The Chosen Series Book 3)

by K. C. Hamby

  This is it, then.

  I pull on the flames in my veins and let them burn me from the inside out. It’s a cold fire scorching across my skin and boiling in my blood as it changes me into a goddess of destruction. My ears grow to slight points and my teeth sharpen. I know my eyes are burning gold with the anger welling up inside my chest. My skin glitters under the lights of the night and I growl.

  This shift is nothing like shifting into my wolf. That shift is peaceful.

  This is always full of wrath.

  I sneak up the cracked driveway surrounded by trees on either side, and blend into the darkness of shadows by pulling on my wolf.

  I can use either traits of my wolf or Fury whenever I need, no matter the form I have taken. Convenient, I know.

  Once I creep up to the building, my eyes dilate and focus on a brunette man standing outside of the main door, smoking what smells like a joint. I suppose he is guarding the door, but he isn’t doing too good a job, being high and all. He is decently tall, probably around 6’4”, but he is lanky and long-legged, a twig with needles for legs.

  A van crawls up the driveway and lanky Guard Lad quickly puts out his joint. He steps on it just so, making sure to save the unburned part for later smoking, no doubt.

  Not a noise comes from me as the van stops and two other men get out of the front seats.

  “Jason, again?” the driver yells. He is shorter and his hair is bright red. His face is covered in freckles, but it doesn’t hide the baby-like shape in the slightest.

  “What?” the Guard Lad, Jason, says.

  “Don’t play stupid. I can smell it in the air,” Driver snaps and fans his hand in front of his nose.

  “Come on, I have anxiety. It’s a prescription!”

  “Both of you, shut the hell up,” the passenger seat lad growls. Now, this one is muscular. He is as tall as Jason, but I doubt he could touch his back with the muscles built up on his arms. His head is bald and a scar slices diagonally through the skin, ending behind his ear. “We need to get the cargo inside. Now.”

  Driver and Jason both duck their heads and run to the side of the van. Jason slides open the door and rust flakes to the ground as the metal scrapes along the rails. Dirty copper meets my nose.

  The sound and smell combination make my eye twitch.

  Driver reaches in the back and yanks something out.

  A girl, dirty and bound with zip-ties and a cloth gag in her mouth, stumbles after him. She’s clumsy on her feet and swaying. She’s only donning her undergarments. A quick sniff of the air tells me she’s been sedated. Chemicals swim in the air around her mixing with blood dried and smeared on her arm.

  Jason pulls out another girl, smaller and about sixteen, I’m guessing, with dirt-caked blonde hair. And Passenger drags out another, probably about the same age with dark, ebony skin.

  They all disappear into the building and I am left in the darkness, seething, nearly biting a hole in my tongue.

  How many goddamn times am I going to bust sex traffickers? This is the fourth one in the last three months. This shite isn’t slowing down anytime soon. It’s an epidemic understandably eating away at females’ feeling of safety.

  I sneak up to the building and dive into the shadows along the side just as Jason comes back out, lighting the rest of his joint and taking a long drag.

  I’ve done plenty of drugs in my life, but I’ve never been privy to pot. The skunky smell seems to just rot the inside of my nose.

  Jason turns his back to me to listen to someone inside the building saying something about how he better not be lighting up again, so I take the chance.

  I pull on my bracelet and expose the tiny, garrote wire hiding inside before sneaking up behind Jason and wrapping it around his throat.

  He makes a small, choking sound as I pull him into the shadows of the building with me, keeping my tight grip on the wire all the while. His fingers claw at his neck, trying to gain him reprieve, but he can’t slip them under the thin steel.

  Like I would allow that. Dobber.

  “Say hello to Hades for me, will you?” I whisper in his ear and yank one hard time, nearly decapitating the lad. I push him into the tall grass beside the building and sheath my wire.

  Once I’ve hidden him, I sneak into the building and creep down a long hallway. Its floor is concrete, covered in dirt and bare footprints. Grass grows in some of the cracks and holes in the metal walls.

  All my senses are on high alert, so much so I’m knocked in the face with a smell I know all too well.

  Vinegar. Band-Aids. Cat litter.

  Heroin.

  I trip over myself and gag once, taken by surprise by the odor of my old addiction. My hands shake until I take a deep breath through my mouth and swallow the lump attempting to harden to cement in my throat.

  “That’s a lass,” I whisper to myself as my nerves calm. “You’re nae that person anymore.”

  I swallow again with a shake of my head and move down the hall once more. There are doors on either side of me, but they are all empty except for a few boxes. I come to the end of the hall and take a left, immediately blending into the darkness, and hide behind a forklift at the edge of the large room.

  “Shite,” I whisper and bite my lip.

  There is a large kennel on the other end of the room…filled with drugged and terrified girls of ages around fourteen to seventeen by the looks of them.

  I do a quick count.

  Thirteen girls cower in the cage and ten men stand around them on the outside, watching like hungry dogs.

  “Get me the blonde you got,” another man I immediately assume is the chief of this bullshite demands as he marks something down on a clipboard. He has that leader arrogance in his posture; he talks in a rough, commanding voice used to being followed.

  Driver goes to the cage and pulls out the cowering blonde I watched stumble out of the van. She’s terrified and shaking, the sedative wearing off. Can’t blame the lass. She fell asleep in one place and woke up surrounded by perverted, doaty bastarts.

  “Sit,” Chief orders and Driver pushes Blondie into a chair in front of Chief. “Now,” he starts as he ties a worn tourniquet around her arm. I wonder how many women it has been used on. “I know you probably think you don’t want this, but you’ll want it with what comes next.”

  The throaty cackle slipping from his lips before patting Blondie on the side of the face makes me growl.

  Blondie is quivering, eyes wide and full of terror as she looks around the room.

  And her gaze meets my blue paint-covered eyes.

  She seems to calm for a moment as I place my finger to my lips. I hope the lass understands I’m here to help her and she shouldn’t point out my position. She gives a slight nod as tears stain her dirty cheeks and the cloth gag shoved in her mouth.

  Chief heats a spoonful of heroin with an old, metal lighter and sucks up the melted contents into a syringe. I grit my teeth as he and Driver hold Blondie down before Chief shoots the poison into her used and bloodied vein. He pulls the tourniquet off and Blondie immediately slumps in the chair, but not before moving her pleading eyes to me one more time.

  “That’s a girl,” Chief coos and pats the girl again, this time on her thigh.

  Heroin is expensive. At least, the pure kind is. I would know. Spent all my spare change on it at one point. There is no way these wallopers would use such an expense on people they see as disposable.

  Unless…it’s black tar heroin. Cheap and deadly if not used with care. Ach, even if it is, it’s still a killer.

  “Get her up,” Chief commands Driver.

  Driver does as he is told and yanks Blondie up and over to a table. He lies her down, so her chest and stomach are on the table, but her arse and legs are dangling off.

  Chief moves to a brightly burning fire set in an oil barrel and pulls out a branding iron glowing red with heat.

  I’ll be damned if that numpty bastart is going to brand the lass.

  All the
other girls exchange horrified whispers among themselves.

  Chief walks around behind Blondie and holds the branding iron up like he is waiting for applause from an audience. He smiles to the heated metal and holds it close to the girl’s backside.

  This stops now.

  I step out of the darkness and pull a hatchet from my back. In half a second, I’m flinging it and the hard blade lands in the back of Chief’s head with bonnie finality.

  He chokes for a second before falling face-first onto the concrete floor.

  Driver freezes when his boss’s body drops and finally turns in my direction. He gets one look at the whole of me and the color leaves his face.

  “Erinys,” he breathes.

  He knows his myths about Furies, then.

  He doesn’t get a chance to pull the gun from his waist before I’m grabbing the fallen branding iron and shoving it into his mouth, all the way to the back. He tries to scream around his searing throat, but I make sure it hurts, burning everything the brand touches. I take out the iron and use it to clock him in his napper once to get him on the floor, twice and three times to finish him.

  His skin sizzles as the pathetic life leaves his eyes.

  I’m on the next walloper before he understands what’s happened to his lads. I slide beneath his legs and elbow the back of his left knee. He staggers and falls right into my hands. My dagger drags across his throat, deep and sure.

  I snatch my rarely used handgun from my thigh and tap the trigger, taking out more men with every twitch until the clip is empty.

  Blood flies, men scream, I laugh manically. I cut through body after body with my machete and other thrown hatchet until the men are all cooling corpses on the floor, drowning in pools of their own blood.

  The warm liquid dotted on my face and hands starts to drip down my skin and dry.

  I turn to Blondie who has fallen to the ground in a bit of a drugged daze and reach for her, but being somewhat coherent, she jerks away from me.

  “You're not here to kill me, are you?” she whispers, shaking like a newborn bairn as her eyes dart around the artful bloodbath I’ve created.

  An American. Her accent is Northern American.

  How long have these lasses been in this shite?

  “I'm not here to kill you. I'm here for you. All of you.” I turn back to the lifeless bodies and gesture for emphasis. “You willnae havetae worry about these bastarts anymore.”

  The girl’s eyes fill to the brim as she stares up at me. I try a smile I hope reassures her, but she gives a wee cringe.

  I don’t blame her. I look like a glowing vampire faery.

  “Thank you.”

  I reach out a hand again and she grasps it with only a slight hesitation. Her weight is nothing as I pull her off the ground.

  My blood is still hot from the kill and it's nearly painful to suppress the moan crawling up my throat. The Frenzy is starting. I need to get out of here.

  “Do somethin’ with your life, a'rite? Dinnae let those bastarts win.” I gesture over my shoulder to the numpty fucks behind me, dead as roadkill in their coagulating blood. The girl nods and I turn to the others still in the cage.

  “You’re all safe now,” I tell them as I break the lock with my hands and open the gate.

  They all look uncertain, like I may kill them next, so I walk over to Chief’s body and search his pockets after I yank my hatchet from the canyon it created in his skull. I find his burner phone and call the police, telling them where they can find the girls so they may get home safe.

  The girls all seem to relax and pour out of their confinement once I hang up the phone.

  I bend down beside Chief and hold my hand over his chest.

  “As katharísei fotiá,” I whisper to the carcass.

  Let fire cleanse.

  The body smokes slightly before bursting into flames. The girls scream behind me, but I just wait. I’m used to this. This fire is mine to command.

  The flames destroy the body and any trace left of the bastard. Blood and all. I finish up with all the bodies just in time to slip out, burn Jason’s corpse I left in the tall grass, and leave before the police arrive.

  My entire being is shaking with the power of the kills and my blood is burning hot. The cool air outside is such a contrast to my heated skin, its touch is almost painful as I sprint back to my bike.

  I need to do something with this heat before I go mental.

  ***

  The air is frigid on my face as I jog into the apartment building. My jaw aches from clenching it so hard, determined to hold the Frenzy in for as long as possible.

  My fingers shake madly while I struggle to push the key in the lock and shove my way inside. The scratching of metal against metal has my hot skin crawling, impossibly making me more uncomfortable.

  I shove the door closed behind me. Sure, I tell myself I was trying to make my way inside quietly, but I know the truth. Being loud wakes him up.

  Being loud will help me in the long run to tame the Frenzy.

  The scent of cedarwood hits me like a fucking truck when I lean against the green door of our apartment. I swallow hard, rough cement sliding down my throat and scraping my insides the entire ride down.

  “Babe?”

  Ash’s gravel voice makes my mouth water.

  I sigh and push myself from the door, removing my weapons—the gun absent as I left it at the gate per Olympia law—and lie them on the counter without a word. They are bloody and need to be cleaned, but I don’t have the patience for that now. I lack the will-power to hold myself back for much longer, if my shaking hands are any indication.

  Footsteps make their way to where I'm standing.

  “Hey.”

  His voice is…rugged and low. It always this way when he is up to no good. My eyes find him standing in the doorway to our bedroom, chest bare and muscular, and his boxers are barely hanging on to his hips.

  “Ash, do you try to torture me?”

  His smirk has my blood humming. His hand pulls its way through his black as night hair and those dark amber eyes watch me with hunger. I take a few steps closer to him, trying to control myself even a little. But I’m a predator, and he’s willingly made himself my prey.

  “Now, babe,” he growls and places his hands on his hips, but just so that his thumb hooks into his waistband and pulls down on the boxers just enough to tease me… “Why would you ever think that?”

  I press my lips together and really try to hold myself back, but the fiery Frenzy has other ideas.

  I run to him, slamming my body into his hard chest. Ashy's arms immediately wrap me up and I hunt for his lips.

  His tongue is insistent on my own as he hauls me to the bedroom. When I pull back for a breath, his eyes are dilated, and blue paint from my eyes has smeared across his cheeks. He drops me to the bed and quickly snatches off my clothing and I reach up, ripping off his boxers with one yank. They fall in tatters on the floor when I release them.

  “Oops,” I breathe when he raises a brow, but I’m not sorry in the slightest.

  He smiles devilishly before pressing his lips against my stomach, my hipbones, my thighs…

  I arch my back, letting a moan drop out of my mouth when his kisses and tongue find their destination.

  Chapter 2

  Falen

  I wake with a muffled scream, sleep paralysis keeping my muscles locked for a moment longer. I’m pulled from yet another nightmare about being at the mercy of Damien and Invidia in Tartarus. The tingling in my wrists from the phantom chains has me trembling beyond reason and my eyes frantically search the darkness for the fire I know is coming to scorch my skin.

  But I’m not there having a wolfbane tipped whip snapped into my flesh for days. I’m in mine and Nina’s apartment on Olympia, blanketed by lavender and calmed by the sweet scent of vanilla hiding within it.

  It was just a dream. I wasn’t there. I’m safe.

  Safety can be changed.

  I flinch at the q
uiet voice in my thoughts; the kind of quiet crawling with talons digging in deeper every inch gained. The Monster.

  She’s been more present lately, seeming to solidify into a separate entity from myself, living rent free in my mind and…I don’t know what to make of it other than knowing this is just more bullshit I’m going to have to deal with on top of everything else.

  My arm automatically flails to the other side of the bed, looking for the warm comfort I know is waiting to banish the darkness. My fingers search silken sheets and finally brush across soft skin. I turn over, pulled to her by the bond in my soul.

  “Fal?”

  Her voice is sleepy and cute; a smile tilts my lips even with the remnants of the Monster and the nightmare haunting my mind.

  This is what Nina does to me, after all. She has me smiling even when I’m lost deep within myself and she pulls me back to the light.

  “I had another one,” is all I say as I shuffle my way closer to her.

  Nina turns, icy eyes finding my face in the dim light of the early morning. She can see me in the dark perfectly well. There are a lot of things she can do now that her mortal body couldn’t thanks to Persephone’s gift of immortality.

  A warm hand brushes my cheek and I lean into it, grateful for the healing touch Nina delivers. My anxiety fades without so much as a parting glance and, for that, I am grateful.

  “You’re okay,” she whispers and wraps her arms around me, snuggling as closely as she can into my chest. It’s meant for comfort, I know, but it heats my blood in an instant.

  Anything she does makes me want her more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. She awakens this hunger and I become ravenous.

  It’s almost embarrassing.

  “Yeah,” I whisper, raspy, in her ear. “I’m definitely okay now.”

  Her smile moves across my skin with a light touch and it’s a lit match to the gasoline of desire. My fingers dig into her sides without my permission, but I’m given a gasp from pouty lips against my chest.

  She doesn’t seem to mind my roaming hands.