“You can.” I tried to ignore that he was willing to make himself entirely vulnerable for me to put us on an equal level.
“I don’t know, Coal.” Jerk.
“Careful, you keep pushing it off, and I’ll believe it’s because you like me.”
“Fuck you.” I woke my shadows as a spark of defiance ignited. They sputtered but obliged, then snaked across the carpet. Apprehension drained the color from his face. Clearly he was second guessing showing me. He inhaled sharply, then calmed himself as they wrapped around his torso. I snickered, thoroughly enjoying seeing him squirm but knowing it wouldn’t last long.
A hint of guilt fluttered through me.
He tried to kill me. The idea of guilt raced away like Greased Lightning, and I forced myself into his mind.
I met the inferno in his eyes with mine as I sifted through his memories. Every intimate detail of his life filtered through my mind. As a child, there were memories of him running and wrestling with his brothers, each one a different shade of gray. Him growing up and learning archery with his father. The death of his father. Leaving his mother, the pain he felt when he chose vengeance over the love he had for her. The empty victory when he slaughtered the man who took his father from him, only to find two of his brothers had died in the process.
He was a void, much like me, even with the love of his family. He held onto a few millennia of guilt, knowing their deaths were on his hands. Killing his father’s murderer brought him no peace, only more pain. He regretted leaving his mother and not listening to what she said.
She was a wise woman. Beautiful. The reason why Coal was so handsome. He shared her eyes, eyes that burned like a campfire on a chilly fall evening, but he had his father’s build and his thick dark hair—things she couldn’t give him.
Coal panted, his eyes filling with tears as I continued my search to find his fear. I searched through countless wars and battles, deaths of many comrades and enemies in his realm. The fall of kings and queens. A few millennia filled with nothing but pain and regret.
I pushed harder, pulling as many images to the forefront as I could. Painful images that I almost regretted seeing. Probing for something to latch onto, my shadows urged the memories. They were starving, desperate to right the wrong Coal had created. Sadness wasn’t enough. They needed fear.
But I unlocked not a single ounce.
The man feared absolutely nothing.
He was a warrior, skilled and lethal in battle, ruthless. Guilt-ridden, yes, but fearsome, no. Not in the slightest.
His breathing became labored, and he squeezed back the tears that threatened to drip down his cheeks from the crushing weight of the bombardment of images I had stirred. I stumbled upon his meeting with Chronos. The hatred he had for the man was intense, deep in his core, and I suppressed the option it created––the possibility of trust. It seemed we had another thing in common, hatred for my father’s right-hand man.
I watched the memory play out, clear as day as if I were there. Coal stood in a room of stone, a castle perhaps?
Wind was howling through the opened windows as a storm brewed on the horizon, turning the white sky dark with shades of purple and various hues of gray. Rain pelted the stones, spitting little droplets all over the floor. There, his skin was smooth like granite, with bits of silver and gold shining through the smoky marbling. Eyes the color of copper speared Chronos with volts of hatred as they followed the lead snatcher around the room. Murder ran through Coal’s veins and was plastered all over his face.
“Kill the girl,” Chronos ordered. I shuddered. A chill crawled down my spine at seeing my fate so cruelly sealed by three little words.
“Does Hades know about this?” Coal asked, his words venomous.
Chronos glowered at him down the thin rail that was his nose, looking at Coal as if he were nothing more than the gum under his shoe.
“You don’t ask questions; you only take orders.” A muscle ticked in Coal’s jaw. The bones clamped shut as if someone had wired them there.
“Hades is a coward, murdering his daughter.” Chronos lifted a gangly arm, his handsome face twisted with menace and the promise of pain. In his hand, he held a black leather whip. It flew through the air at lightning speed and cracked viciously against Coals chest. His muscles tightened, and he gritted his teeth. The whip tore through rocky skin and muscle with ease. Chunks of stone broke off and flew to the ground. The whip must have magic. I’d never seen a whip do any sort of damage that severe. It was as if there were a blade perfectly concealed inside it.
I wouldn’t put it past Chronos. He was a coward and never played fair.
A substance as thick and dark as wet concrete oozed from the wound, but Coal did not indicate pain, only anger.
I felt a growl bouncing around in my chest, promising payback for what Coal had endured. He was telling the truth. He was my father’s errand boy.
I jumped to another scene where Coal beat the stone wall until his knuckles cracked and chipped off. An emotion so strong it could only be described as throbbing wracked through me. Thoughts of suicide slipped through my mind as he roared with grief. Fresh wounds were cut like canyons in his back and chest, cracked as if someone had chiseled them. Dark blood crept from them like magma from a cave.
On a pyre behind him was a tiny woman, about my size with skin so white she mimicked the snow outside the windows. She shined like a pearl in the glow of the flames that engulfed her body. There was a torso cloaked in silver and engulfed in flames with no legs or arms. Assorted colored roses surrounded her body, withering from the heat of the blaze. I noticed a crack in her neck, and upon closer examination, I could see how her head wasn’t attached.
Then, I saw it, felt it as if I was lying there myself, wrapped in flames. My face lolled to the side, death stilling my features. I studied the face. Aside from the pearlescent skin and dark, ashen hair, it was me—the same long yet delicate nose, full lips, and too wide eyes with thick brows. I gasped.
Dread knotted my stomach. Churning nausea revolted against me.
I fought to yank my shadows back from the visions that followed, everything intimate between Coal and his mate. Or me? My shadows hungered for more, in a frenzy to feed, to find his fears and suck the life from him. To take from him what he took from us. But there were no fears.
There was nothing worse that could happen to Coal than what had already experienced. His worst fears had come to fruition––the loss of his mate.
I could feel the desperation leaking from him, the cold vengeance, and the lack of peace in his life as he remembered her death day in and day out. The pain he carried daily from her loss was excruciating. It robbed me of breath and made my knees weak. Typically, I had no problem seeing the images that I conjured because I was usually euphoric from feeding. But Coal’s emotions were so raw, so real.
He was a man that had nothing left to lose, the perfect ally to my impending storm.
My shadows released him, and he dropped forward, gasping for air on all fours. He let his forehead rest on the carpet as he heaved in oxygen. I sat back on my heels and just stared, feeling sick for witnessing him in such a vulnerable position, so open and revealing. I had a feeling he didn’t let many see this side of him, and I had now seen everything. I knew him as well as he knew me. My heart squeezed.
To top it off, he had some major explaining to do.
“Coal?” I asked quietly. The skin on his knuckles gleamed white as he clenched them. Sweat dotted his neck and soaked into his shirt. A low, feral growl just kept rumbling in his chest. “Coal.”
“I’m fine,” he said, voice strangled and hoarse.
“Okay.” I was sincerely concerned for him. And even though it went against everything I had ever known, I wanted to touch him. Yuck. If he felt what I felt, it was a wonder he hadn’t offed himself decades ago. Which also led to the idea that he could probably kill me if he wanted to. I hadn’t dealt with anything compared to his grief. I needed an explanation, and as urg
ent as it felt that I knew everything, that whole ordeal didn’t exactly make me trust him more. I had to give him a chance to rebound. Even though I didn’t feed, seeing all that again must have him wishing he were dead.
I shifted my position and sat with my back against the arm of the couch to wait it out and fought my urge to sleep. If I were Coal, I would want space and silence, so I gave him both.
After what felt like hours of him calming himself or doing whatever he was and me agonizing over an explanation for what the hell I saw, he finally lifted his head and pushed up off the floor.
His face looked like death, and there was still a sheen of sweat on his neck. Suffering was like a volcano waiting to erupt behind his eyes. He had a crease in his forehead and little lines that bent the corners of his lips into a frown. He looked at me, tilting his head to the side, but I was almost positive he wasn’t seeing me. A chill settled over me, and my mouth went dry from the fire in his gaze.
“Care to explain? Because I’m not sure how that is supposed to help me trust you.” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hug him or kill him. It didn’t feel right knowing so much about someone that I didn’t plan on ending. I didn’t like making him feel so exposed and raw like I had when he fed on me. It was a shitty feeling, and unlike me, he had intimate moments to share—deep-rooted love. A fairy tale ending didn’t compare to what they had. That woman was his heart, his soul.
I was privy to moments he shared with her that no one but them should have seen. I did what he wanted me to do, but still, it felt so wrong. I groaned. What was I becoming that a man, who only moments ago tried to kill me, had me feeling sorry for him?
When he remained silent, I daringly pressed on. “Coal, look at me, not through me. Look at me. Tell me why I saw my face on that pyre.” The calm concern in my voice had even me surprised.
He swallowed hard and long as if there wasn’t an ounce of saliva in his mouth. “Onyx was my mate,” he said shakily.
“Okay, I gathered that much.”
“I came here on orders to watch you because of my past with your father. I made a deal with him long ago. He would help me find, kill, and torture my father’s murderer. In exchange, I would be a servant to him for a hundred years. He went back on his word, so I tried to kill him. As payback, he took my mate as his bride. For centuries, he tortured her, raped her daily, until I was able to retrieve nothing but her body after he killed her.” He paused to take in oxygen. “I burned her body to release her soul from the spell he had on her so he couldn’t have her in the afterlife. I made it so she could never come back to be his plaything. I’ve been on the run ever since until Chronos found me and threatened to kill my family if I didn’t work for him. Watch you.” His explanation was excellent, and we would revisit this conversation, but I was more concerned—freaked the hell out—that I looked just like his mate. That must have been the worst kind of torture.
No wonder he looked like death the day I met him.
“Coal, why do I look like your mate?”
“Because your father is sick and twisted. My guess is he made you in her image, and this was his plan all along to get back at me for taking her soul from him. When I came here, I had plans to kill you immediately, take something from him that he took from me. Then I saw you. Every time I thought about doing it, it felt like I was burning her body over and over again.” A hard swallow made his Adam’s apple bob, and his brows met at the middle of his forehead. There was something he wasn’t telling me. “And now I know that killing you won’t hurt him. It’s what he wants.”
“You wanted me dead.” It was more of a statement, a reiteration to myself of just how demented this whole situation was. This time, I felt hurt.
An eerie feeling settled over me, knowing someone was in my home that was planning to, and completely capable of, killing me this entire time. I knew this and knew it was nothing to do with me, that it was because of my father’s jacked-up mind, but still, he had planned on murdering me.
I couldn’t deny that it excited me as well. Coal was as ruthless as I had thought.
In a way, I was glad I looked like her. It saved me from dying this afternoon, but I couldn’t imagine being in his shoes. No wonder he freaked out at the bar anytime someone looked at me and growled when they got handsy and too close. It must have been pure torment watching someone else go after your mate. Even if I wasn’t his mate, it was still her body I was wearing.
Holy shit, I was a horrible person. The things I’d done in this body were vile, despicable in his eyes, and he had seen every bit of it when he fed on me and had front row seats to the show at the bar. A foreign feeling of shame collided with my pride. I pushed it to the side, not liking where my stream of thoughts was heading. I would not feel guilty for the things I could not control.
What I would do was make sure that Daddy paid for the things he had done.
“God, you look so much like her,” he said sadly, ripping me from my thoughts. I jumped with a start, so deep in my mind, I didn’t even notice he had made his way to sit next to me. The soft caress with the back of his hand was surprisingly warm, and I would have enjoyed it had I been able to feed on him, but I still felt like I had given a heavy dose of anesthesia.
“I know. And as much as it hurts you, I’m glad. That’s why you won’t kill me.” He frowned at my admission.
“Not the only reason.” He mused, a quaint smile tilting one corner of his gorgeous mouth. “She wouldn’t want it. She wouldn’t want me to continue my quest for vengeance, take innocent lives, or even kill Hades for what he did to her. She was the epitome of what is right in the universe. She saw the good in everyone, even me, who was hell-bent on cold-blooded murder. I promise to try to see the good in you.”
“Ha. Fat chance in hell on that one, buddy,” I deflected the sappy, mushy stuff. I couldn’t have him going all soft on me and making promises he wouldn’t be able to keep, promises that shouldn’t mean anything to me, but I couldn’t deny the way I warmed at his words.
A grim smile took hold of his lips. “I’ll admit, it was a struggle to be around you at first. Your personality is so different from hers. But when I saw the vile things you had endured at the hands of your father, the loneliness in you as I fed. Felt the pain and sorrow. The way you wish for a family, for someone to show you love. I realized we weren’t that far apart.”
I chose not to let him know he hit a sore spot. Memories of the disgusting things my father had done to me, things Coal had now seen, and the loneliness that plagued me as much as his mate’s death. “So, you think you’re gonna change me.”
“Not change you, help you. Show you what it’s like to have someone in your life.” My heart fluttered. Someone in my life to count on would be nice. Could he be that person? Could we work past the painstakingly obvious elephant in the room? That I looked like his mate, but we couldn’t be two more different people?
Calm down, bitch. Just because he said the word love doesn’t necessarily mean he means lovers. We don’t do lovers, remember?
But we could. I snarled.
“I’m far from innocent, and I’m a lot to handle. We can’t get attached, Coal.”
“We all have skeletons, Shay,” he stated, ignoring the rest of my statement. He was playing with fire. He had no idea what he was getting into with me. It couldn’t go further. Aside from my strong insistence on self-preservation, there were too many factors that made the situation of being with him emotionally just plain weird.
If he caught feelings, we would deal with that bridge when we crossed it.
“They are more than skeletons, Coal. I will never be the woman your mate was. I’m not a good person, not in the slightest.” I hoped my words would turn him off, remind him of who I was. “I will kill my father for the things he has done.” Vengeance flashed in his eyes, and it looked so good on him it had me nearly moaning. My failure to turn him off had only solidified. I shrugged and sighed, at a loss. “If you’re in, I’d like your help.”
I wasn’t sure when I felt so strongly about having him involved or even fully trusted him, but I did know that I didn’t want to be alone anymore, and Coal wasn’t that bad. We were already one week in and had managed not to kill each other…
Too soon?
It might bite me in the ass in the end, and I may be going soft, but I didn’t care. I could allow myself this one lapse in judgment. Headed into uncharted territory, I needed all the help with my life I could get. He grunted, and I let it slide, as I still hadn’t figured out what the grunt always meant. Whatever it meant, we agreed on one thing.
I had to kill Hades.
7
Doing what I did best and avoiding the situation, I decided to ignore how the evening had gone, and how wiped out I was, and start fresh by making tonight a good night. I needed some fun dancing and drinking until I could no longer walk straight. I showered, then took the time to carefully apply my face and curl my hair. I had giant Texas waves—the bigger the hair, the closer to God—as I decided I needed a little God in my life.
I was a walking, talking, killing version of someone’s mate who had been dead for three thousand years—a devil to her angel. Coal would experience two very different versions of the same person in his life. Were we the same person? Was I based on her? Did Daddy kill her to make me? Had my variation of life had hardened me and turned a beautiful thing dark?
Or was it just that I was her, sans the soul?
The questions had been rolling around in my brain cage for an hour. I needed to do something for myself. Something to remind me of who I was. Salvage the night at least.
I felt disgusting in my skin. Everything felt foreign, like it didn’t belong to me. I knew my father was a warped individual, but this was some next-level shit. Something in me had changed, even I couldn’t witness Coal’s past and not feel some sort of remorse. This situation was all sorts of effed up.
Pawns Daughters of The Underworld Book 1 Page 6
