Becoming his Monster

by Amelia Hutchins

  “I want to feel their organs as they turn to dust in my hands,” I amended. “I want to drink their blood, and paint my flesh with their blood.”

  “That’s…that’s one way to cope with it,” he said as he scratched his head, staring at me. “I feel sad, and lost. I feel like I lost my mother,” he admitted, and I turned empty eyes to him, watching as a black tear slid down his cheek. “We lost our mother, and yet we have not even considered bringing her back. She’s our mother.”

  “She is gone,” I stated firmly. “She wouldn’t have wanted to be like we are, or be immortal. She made it clear when shit started happening at home that if her time came, we let her go. I promised her.”

  “You did what? You knew immortals existed and that vampires were real and you promised to let her go?” he cried angrily, his hand dropping away from mine as he stared at me.

  “I promised to honor her wish to go when her time was here, and so it has come,” I said gently as I frowned. “I know you want to bring her back, but look at us. Look at how wrong we are, we’re not even processing her death; instead, we are sitting here staring at her corpse as we prepare to burn it.”

  “You’re not thinking of bringing her back, but I am, so who is the wrong one?”

  “I am what I was created to be, what you brought me back to be, Joshua. I cannot change that. I know if I had a soul, I’d feel her loss so fucking completely that I’d be shattered, but I don’t. You got to retain a part of yours, but mine is gone. The sliver I have never loved her, I’m not sure it ever loved anyone. Maybe that is why I feel this weirdness in my being? You want me to scream and cry with you? I’ll do it, but I won’t feel it. I loved my mother, in life, I loved her so fucking much that it hurt, but I’m not the same, and neither are you. You want me to rip the creatures that did this to tiny pieces and eat their souls? That I can do, and I’ll relish every second of it. But mourning her loss? I don’t feel the earth-shattering sadness I should. Maybe Hades can bring her back?”

  “She isn’t like you,” Hades’s deep voice emitted as he appeared before me, his violet eyes moving between us and my mother’s corpse. “Her sacrifice wasn’t pure; it was to protect herself, not Kendra. She cannot be brought back as you were, her soul is already gone. When I brought you two back, you wanted to come back. You were just hovering between life and death, reaching for Nyx and her power to bring you back. Your mother made a choice, and where she is now, it’s so much better than what we face. You should have known the angels were here for the child, Lucian. When have those selfish, self-serving pricks ever stepped out to help without having alternative motives?” He spat onto the steps, as if it was vile on his tongue.

  “I was busy hunting for something that’s been lost a long time. Something that can hold the devil himself,” Lucian stated as he stood up and stared down Hades.

  “And the warehouse?” Hades asked as he pushed his thick, midnight hair out of his face.

  “It was a trap, one meant to kill us,” I admitted.

  “And yet you didn’t die?” he countered.

  “No, we had Erie with us to dismantle any wards, but the moment she began to search them for a way to bring them down, it triggered a failsafe in the wards, and gargoyles awoke to attack us.”

  “Gargoyles?” he shivered. “Nasty pricks, those little buggers.”

  “Buggers?” I frowned. “They meant to rip us apart.”

  “I’m sure they did, but that shouldn’t have stopped you. Lucian, you fancy a trip to an angel warehouse? I could use a workout.”

  “Lena?” he asked, watching as I slid my gaze back to my mother and then to Joshua.

  “I’m staying,” I uttered as I slid my fingers back to Joshua’s and held his hand. “My family needs me more than you do. Kendra is still lost.”

  “Gods, they took her?” Hades huffed. “The fucking hell did you guys do? Leave those bloody bastards alone here while you went off to search for shit?”

  “They’re archangels; they’re supposed to protect people.”

  “That’s your first mistake, Lena. They serve no one but their own needs; they brought heaven to its knees with Lucifer.”

  I swallowed hard as I stared up at him. “They’re working with him?”

  “Those particular ones, yes,” he nodded. “Raphael helped kill a few others, Diana included, you met her briefly, I believe. There’s only one being who could kill an archangel minus current company and a shadow who seems to have gone missing, and that’s Luc. I’m sorry, but you fuckers got played. And it looks like it cost you an entire coven’s worth of witches.”

  I stared out across the funeral pyres that were being built and realized it had cost us greatly. Assuming they’d been on our side had lowered our guard, and we’d rushed at the chance to bring Lucifer to heel, and in doing so, we’d lost most of the coven, and a few humans in the process.

  “They came for the witches,” I uttered thickly. “They wanted them out of play, why?”

  “They have ancient ones who need new bodies, and the only way they can transfer souls is to have ones who match them in magic and power. My guess, they needed vessels to transfer into. A Sarah suit would indeed be something they’d want, and need.”

  I stared at Hades and then opened my mouth and closed it. My teeth gritted as anger shot through me, unfurling my wings to deadly tips as I rose and faced him.

  “The warehouse can wait; to transfer would take a magical point of the leyline. They’re in Metaline Falls. At the house. At our house. It’s where the leyline meets and dumps power into the Inland Northwest. Once they removed it from this Guild, it’s where it began to push up through the ground. Lucian…” I growled, but he smiled, watching me with pride as I reached for him. “Take me home.” I shivered as memories seemed to slither into my mind, my heart clenched as I considered the last time I’d been home.

  For Kendra, I’d go back.

  For Grandma, I’d go back.

  To get revenge, I’d go back.

  “Lena, the last time you were there…” Joshua argued.

  “I slit my fucking throat. This time, I’m going to slit theirs.”

  Chapter 33

  Lucian

  She’s darkening, deeper into the form she’d become. Her eyes leak tears, and yet she doesn’t feel the death as she would have if she’d housed a soul. Empty and cold, devoid of the emotions she should feel for the loss of her parent.

  Joshua watches her, his stare unnerving and condemning and yet the rest who she claimed were soulless aren’t entirely so. They house more of their soul than she does, she who has none of what she once held, and something Hades slipped into her as if she was a fucking cocktail he was creating.

  It’s not that I don’t enjoy knowing that she cannot find release or pleasure with others, but that she doesn’t mourn the loss of her loved one. She should be screaming, tearing the world apart with her loss, but instead, she’s calm, empty.

  I watched her pile wood beneath the corpse with a cold detachment that is driving me bugfuck crazy. I wanted to hear her screams, the denial that her mother was lost, and yet she didn’t rally the pain; no, she clung to the cold rage that slithered through what she had become, and begged to bathe in the blood of those who took from her.

  Fury: a mythical being who seeks justice for those too weak to claim it…How ironic that my girl would seek to right the wrong done to her, even though she herself ended her life. She no longer fears death because, in her own way, she’s become it.

  She’d become a winged warrior who craves chaos and blood in payment for those who took from her. It’s a small miracle that she doesn’t crave my blood for what I had done, for the game she was forced to play as I fought to protect this world from the responsibility I’d fucked up. I’d done this to her, my game with Katarina as I struggled to free her took the only being I craved more than life from me.

&n
bsp; She faltered next to the shrouded body of her mother as Alden approached, his eyes rimmed red from the loss. He searched her face, scouring it for any sign she felt the loss, and then she wiped away the single black tear that slipped free.

  “You will be okay,” he stated, his grey eyes watching her as she stepped away from him, letting him touch the corpse of the woman he’d briefly found love with. “Fiona knew what the cost was to protect her children; she knew she’d pay with her life eventually.”

  “You loved her,” she stated, her hand fisted at her side as she watched him with a detached sentiment.

  “I did,” he admitted, his silver hair sparkling beneath the moons iridescent glow. His flesh is red, rimmed with the glow of the immortal blood he’d consumed to heal as he had. He’d woken up pissed, assuming they’d made him immortal against his wishes, but then calmed once he had figured it out. Most people would kill for immortality and yet he’d come enraged when he’d assumed they’d changed him into a vampire.

  “You need to back the fuck off,” Joshua snarled, his eyes alight with the need to fight.

  “I loved her,” Alden snapped, holding his ground as the Fae sidled closer to the old man who had yet to release his hold on Fiona, as if he could will her back to life.

  Personal experience told me otherwise, and yet I moved, closing the distance between Lena and myself as Joshua prepared to fight anyone stupid enough to touch his mother.

  “Enough,” she uttered thickly, her eyes slowly moving from Alden to Joshua. “She loved him too, Joshua. You can’t fight him because he loved her, so thank him. Thank him for being there when I died, and holding her through the pain because I remember wishing one person would hold me when news of your death reached us. I had no one, no one to hold me and tell me it would be alright.”

  “I loved her,” he argued.

  “No one is questioning that,” she replied sharply. “No one doubts you loved her. I sense her loss, even though I cannot feel the pain. There’s a place that is…voided. As if her leaving has left a hole, and yet while I may not feel it, I understand it should hurt. I sense you feel it on a different level, and I wish you didn’t.”

  “He retained pieces of his soul,” Hades admitted as he stared at Joshua. “That’s how he found you, knew you as he had in life. You, on the other hand, had no soul to save. You know what you should feel because you’ve retained your mind, but the soul is where we feel loss when it comes, and without one, you only know what you should feel. You just can’t feel it because it isn’t the soul you house’s loss, but you’re aware of it. Inside, you feel something missing, like something was stolen from you. Use that to find the ones who remain, Lena. You know how to find them and when the time comes, you’ll save them.”

  “Shouldn’t we go now?” she asked, her voice low but even as she squared her shoulders, no longer letting them droop with the loss she’d felt guilty at not mourning.

  “No, it takes time to prepare to transfer souls into a body, and right now they’re expecting you to show up with an army at your back. Right now Lucifer is holding your sister, telling her all of the horrible things that will happen to her when she births the antichrist into existence. She’s safe, or as safe as she can be considering he sees you when he looks at her. You…pissed him off pretty good, Fury. Not many can say they’ve crushed the skull of a fallen angel and lived through it. Luckily, he wants you alive to use against us.”

  “Us?” I snapped coldly.

  “Us, Lucian,” he nodded as the words left his lips. “He’s aware of why she is alive, and who brought her back to you. More than that, he’s aware she cannot be killed easily, but that she can be killed. That is actually why I am here. There’s a blade, one forged in the river of the Gods that can kill her. We need to find it and destroy it before he does.”

  “You think he’d kill her? He wants me to suffer because unlike him, I am not bound to Hell, or trapped there. I’m free to walk the earth.”

  “He isn’t bound there anymore. Magdalena freed him when she entered Hell knowingly, remember? I do believe you spanked that perky ass for doing it. Then you impregnated her as the eclipse played out. Now I’m here to help clean up your mess again. The other Gods have been awakened, and while you may not die, Lucian, there are other things, worse things than death.”

  “They can try, but they will fail as they always have,” I grunted, watching as he nodded but turned those violet eyes onto Lena, who snapped her fingers as flames leapt to the several funeral pyres around us. She silently stepped closer to me, her hand skimming against mine as if she wanted or needed comfort and then her words replayed through my mind.

  She’d never had anyone to comfort her as she’d dealt with Joshua’s death, alone. No, only the darkness she’d let in, the darkness she’d let me glimpse in the blood ritual had comforted her, and even though she’d died, it had remained inside her, like a viper waiting to strike.

  Her face was bathed in the firelight, caramel-colored hair as she watched the flames lick her mother’s remains. Embers from the shroud floated in the air, revealing the calm, petite face that looked so much like Lena’s that my stomach tightened. I wondered if she’d have come back if they’d chosen to burn her ashes, to try to force the other side to accept her soulless body. Her fingers curled through mine, pulling my arm closer as she leaned against me for comfort.

  “I have you, little one.”

  “I know,” she answered as she continued to watch until the flames burned the flesh, filling the area with the intoxicating, obnoxious odor. Still, she remained as others dispersed. I tighten my arm around her, pulling her into my embrace as the Fae, Alden and a few others remained. “And we’re returned to the ashes for which we were born, to the witches who called us into this marvelous storm. I send you back to whence you came, I free you now in this eternal flame.” The flames leapt, sending nothing but ashes into the sky with her words. She’d whispered a spell, one that released the souls of the dead, to speed their process to the other side.

  “Only high priestesses can do such a thing,” Joshua marveled as he stared at her with wide eyes and his mouth hanging over. “You’re…you’re not even a witch!”

  “I’m…more,” she muttered silently, her eyes watching as the ashes seemed to be sucked into the heavens above. Power, raw, uncut, unchecked power buzzed at my side as she continued watching her mother’s ashes as they returned to where her soul had been born.

  I held her closer yet, unable to get close enough to reassure she was real, that she was still the innocent girl who’d lipped off at me, and had grabbed my dick with a naiveté that had been addictive to watch. Those eyes lifted, holding mine as a subtle smile played across her full lips.

  “I’m…tired,” she admitted, even though she didn’t crave sleep. She didn’t have a soul that needed rest or to recover. Only a craving for what she desired and what she needed: revenge. “I’m hungry.”

  “You don’t eat,” Hades said with a lopsided grin. “You need to fuck. Let out the Fury that is trapped within.”

  “I have let her out.”

  “No, you’ve let her taste a sample of this world, but you’re strong, and you hold her on a leash. Let her out to dance with Lucian, and then to feed on the blood of the angels tomorrow morning. She can’t hurt him; she’s bound by laws older than space and time to protect him. Let her out to feed, to show you what she needs to live.”

  “I’m bound to protect him?” she snorted. “He’s fucked.”

  “He enjoys being fucked,” Hades chuckled. “Trust me, let her out and see what it’s like to embrace what you’ve become. No more holding back, it’s time you learned your limits, and who is whispering to you when you think no one else notices. You have two faces now, Lena. One is yours, the other is who you are to become. If you think you’re powerful now with only this version of yourself, know this, you’re weak. Once you can let her out, let
her spread those wings without fear of hurting others, she will teach you what you have truly become.”

  “And if I lose myself when I let her out?” she asked softly.

  “Then we will be right here to help you find yourself again. That emptiness you feel, that craving for more? That’s her, trying to feel her way into your world. Trying to merge herself with you to become one. I’ve let you stumble enough, little she-cat, now spread those wings and embrace what you truly are. You’re a fucking butterfly, fly free.”

  I swallowed hard as I stared at the composure on her face, the steel spine that spanned straighter as she tilted her head as she stared at Hades. I’d felt her magic growing and then slipping away, and yet I’d no idea she was the one pushing it away.

  “Lena, we should…sleep,” I offered, knowing she knew I had no intention of sleeping. “Hades, find that blade. Spyder is hunting the archangels, aware of where they may be hiding. The others are setting up a perimeter around their estate as we speak. Hellhounds have been unleashed, but we know they won’t attack him. Not willingly, let’s give them some incentive to do so. Everyone else should rest because tomorrow, tomorrow we unleash our own brand of hell onto the archangels and the devil himself.”

  “Lucian,” she whispered as she turned, curling her delicate frame against my body, seeming so small in the clearing with the ashes still floating into the sky. “Take me to the club, where I can’t hurt anyone.”

  “How did you know it was rebuilt?” I asked, and she smiled the most wicked smile I’d ever seen grace her lips.

  “You have your ways, and I have mine.” She shrugged as she lifted on her toes, pushing her mouth against mine. “Take me away where I can be free, where I don’t have to fear hurting others. Where I can fucking own you,” she added and a growl resonated from deep in my chest at her open challenge.