I wanted him to take me for his own, and if he killed me while doing so, I would gladly give him my life forever.
“Sully...” More tears fell. “Thank God, you survived.”
“I did.”
“You came after me.”
“I’ll always come after you.” He nuzzled my nose with his. “You’re mine and I’m yours and I have so much to atone for.”
My heart smashed against my ribs, triple beating, failing. “I need you.”
He pulled away, his slitted eyes flashing with regret. “I can’t fuck you, Eleanor. Not like last time.” His voice rumbled, stroking me with fiery licks.
His denial hurt me worse than anything. “Please...it hurts. My heart...I need. Please, don’t refuse me.”
“I can’t feel you almost die in my arms again.” His talon-tipped thumb stroked my knuckles, his massive paw skating higher up my arm. “I can’t be the reason you suffer.”
My limb looked like a twig in his grasp. A silly little twig that he could snap at any moment. I gasped as my heart fisted and suffocated, making me breathless. “But I won’t be able to—”
“I’ll help you, Jinx...” With his strange eyes locked on mine, he hurt me. “I’m sorry.” His claw punctured my skin, driving the sharp tip into my vein, poisoning me with whatever venom he carried. “I love you, Eleanor. Please...please forgive me.”
“Forgive you...?” My eyelashes fluttered.
My heart heaved a final lurch.
Tiredness.
Heaviness.
Nothingness.
Chapter Eight
I MIGHT WEAR THE FLESH of a beast, but my heart was still that of a man. A heart that stuttered and howled as Eleanor turned limp and lifeless in my hold.
She hadn’t been able to see the syringe. The illusion keeping her firmly in the spell of my new conjuring. I hadn’t been able to see the injection either, but I could feel it in my unsensored hands. I uncapped the needle and punctured her arm, plunging the sedative into her veins.
In the fantasy, my claw was what pierced her.
Her shock at my causing her yet more pain made my stomach seize. Her rapid unconsciousness did its best to cleave me out of Tritec’s icy control.
I’d taken a gamble.
I’d used a sedative that I’d thought would be used for my failing heart and shielded hers instead. Sleep was the only gift I could give her.
It has to work...please.
She turned into a ragdoll.
No longer haunted by elixir. No longer at my brother’s mercy or mine.
She’s free.
It was the only solution I could think of to protect her.
Take her mind out of the fantasy and that solved one deadly consequence. Put her to sleep, and elixir could no longer play havoc with her heart.
But my theory hadn’t been tested...
Yet again, I’d put her in grave danger just like I had since we’d first met.
I’m so sorry, Eleanor...for everything.
Cradling her gently, I placed her on the forest floor. Her gorgeous hair swept over her face as she sprawled at my feet. Her lips parted, her features utterly serene, her eyelashes thick stencils on her cheeks.
Was her mind free?
Was her heart calm?
Had I saved her or killed her?
I wanted to stand vigil. I needed to ensure I’d done the right thing by knocking her out. But I didn’t have the luxury to stand guard.
I’d entered this hallucination for two reasons.
One, to save Eleanor from being raped by my sibling.
And two...to kill that sibling motherfucking dead.
Sweeping her hair away from her face with savage gleaming claws, I stood. The bat wings spread from my spine, heavy and pulling on muscles already fatigued. The sensation of being ten feet tall and controlling a frankensteined creation of reptile, carnivore, and chimera made my body throb within its new skin.
My eyes remained on Eleanor, flinching as she suddenly disappeared.
Her mental awareness of the fantasy completely shut off in sleep, extracting her from all the lies I’d coded. She was gone simply because her mind was no longer reachable.
I stared at the empty dirt, missing her. I would give fucking anything to be beside her in the lounge of my parents’ estate. To collect her from the floor and carry her to a soft bed. To lie down beside her and keep her safe.
But...for now, I was locked in this mirage until it ended.
Time to play.
Balling my fists, feeling the sharpness of my talons embedding into my palms, I cricked my neck and turned away from Eleanor and love, and focused on my brother and hate.
He stood on the opposite side of the fire, his face illuminated by flickering flames, darkness thick behind him, a ring of wolves penning him in a trap made of teeth.
So that was why he hadn’t approached me. Why he hadn’t been a nuisance after I’d thrown him off Eleanor.
He can’t move.
My lips spread over fangs as sharp as scalpels. “Seems I have allies holding you at bay.”
Drake straightened, his hastily tied pants hanging low on his hips, his avatar of a burly redheaded lumberjack not fooling me. Drake had always been sick in his proclivities of hurting those more vulnerable than himself, but when the tables were turned on him...his fear stunk in an instant.
His armpits released an aroma reeking of sour stress. His muslin shirt soaked with sweat, and moisture glistened in the dip of his throat. “Who the fuck are you?”
I laughed, awed at the hastily created creature I’d typed. The creature I now lived within. When I’d altered the text and coding, I’d thrown everything into the mix. Every predator, pain, and poison I could think of. I’d followed no boundaries or common-sense.
I’d embraced the nonsensical and whatever beast I’d conjured now chuckled with dread and death, its chest purring with feral blood thirst. “Don’t pretend you don’t know me, brother. You and I are well acquainted.”
Drake blanched, the redheaded complexion flushing grey. “Sullivan...?”
“Unless we have another relation I am unaware of.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“Assumptions will get you killed.” I cocked my head, complete with gilded horns. “And I’ll happily deliver.”
He gulped. “What the fuck did you do?” His pompous arrogance returned, dragged around him like tatty armour. “Sick of being the fool so fashioned a monster?” He sneered. “It’s just fake. Just like this whole piece of shit fantasy is fake. Do you honestly think you can scare me? That I’d cower before you?” He stepped toward me, earning the terrifying snarls of timber wolves. He stopped but continued sneering, “You’re just the same old cocksucker as before. A laughing stock. A nerd who somehow convinced himself he’s powerful. Newsflash, you cunt, you’re not powerful. You and your computer games can take a flying leap, Sullivan, because unlike you, I don’t wet my fucking pants over something that can’t hurt me—”
A wolf lunged, snapping at his wrist.
Drake backpedalled.
Jaws bit down, missing by a hair.
He thought that wasn’t real?
That that bite couldn’t hurt him?
This is gonna be fun.
Yes, this was virtual. And yes, in the outside world, his body would remain unscathed. But in here...thanks to my careful immersion and the tweaks I’d made along the way, myth had the unnerving ability to become real.
Brain damage had been an unsightly side effect because my mirages were...entrancing. Hypnotic. A mesmeric tool to trick the mind into accepting fiction over fact.
While being used as a stage for sex, that realness wasn’t a problem.
But use it in warfare? Turn its salacious nature into treacherous?
Well, there was a reason the Pentagon had contacted me a few months after a high-placed politician came to get his kicks. Why I received offers with unlimited zeros for their exclusive use of my Euphoria.
Use
my VR for anything other than its intended purpose and it became the most dangerous thing on the planet. Not Tritec, not elixir, not all the other scrapped and trialled drugs combined.
This...this was true power because Euphoria could take war into the mind. Battles could be won without troops being stationed overseas. International squadrons could be patched into a battleground where no loss of physical life occurred, only the liquefying of a brain.
Drake would not die...not physically.
But holy fuck how his mind would snap.
It would crack like bone and dribble out like marrow.
I could trap him here forever, keep him awake so he couldn’t escape, flay him from sanity, one body part at a time.
A slow, sadistic smile spread my lips. “Allow me to give you your first lesson, brother of mine.”
“I don’t need a lesson from a bastard like you. Give me back my goddess, fuck the hell off, and—”
“Ah, Drake. How sweet this is going to be.” I sucked in a sulphur laced breath. Scales hissed down my spine and thighs. Inky black, soaking up the fire flames, natural shielding for sensitive flesh within.
“Bite me, asshole.” He bared his teeth. His stupid, useless human teeth.
I grinned, my monster teeth stabbing into my lower lip, making me bleed and staining my mouth red. “Oh, it will be my fucking pleasure.”
He backed up as two wolves stalked him, their snouts low to the ground, their coarse fur quivering around their scruffs. Drool dripped from black gums, yellowed fangs glistening for his jugular.
“Not yet,” I murmured, mostly to myself, partly asking a wild animal I’d encrypted to back the hell off because Drake’s proverbial death was mine.
I didn’t expect the wolves to freeze. For their moon-yellow eyes to lock onto me. For their heads to duck in obedience.
Huh...that’s interesting.
I flexed my shoulders, feeling the colossal weight of bone scaffolding and fibrous membrane that formed the wings behind me.
When I’d hastily written this deception, I hadn’t typed anything about animals listening to a master. They were there just as background threats. An atmosphere to turn forest into boneyard.
But...
Wasn’t that poetic? Fatalistic even.
Drake had not only tried to kill me, he’d killed so many other beasts.
It was only fair his death would be shared.
“Tear off his left hand,” I whispered, the grumbling of my creature sounding part earthquake.
There was no pause.
No signal the wolf couldn’t understand.
In a single heartbeat, the wolf on Drake’s left side launched, snatched, and bit.
Drake howled.
Fuck, he howled.
The crunch of bone, the tear of tendons, and the slap of something heavy landing in the fire.
Instantly, the sizzle of skin and pop of blood scented the sky with charred meat.
Drake fell to his knees, cradling the stump where his hand used to be. Blood poured down his forearm, pooling in the dirt.
The wolves sat back on their haunches and joined in his howl. An orchestra of worship and agony.
Drake’s avatar met my gaze. The redheaded man crumpled in on himself, cuddling his arm into his impressive belly. “What the fuck! Tell them to back the fuck off!” His face twisted into livid hate, and the same haughty arrogance he used whenever he’d beaten me and killed my strays appeared.
He tried to see past my disguise of fang and claw and berate the boy he’d tortured from the crib. A kid he’d always won against.
A brother who’d been too weak to stop him in his human form.
Pity.
Such a fucking pity that his own ego had ensured the slowest, most sickening death possible. I would spare him nothing. I would grant no leniency.
I wanted him in motherfucking pieces.
Not wanting to walk, aware that my thrice broken leg outside the fantasy would not tolerate exertion, I spread my heavy bat wings and flew.
A conscious instruction. A whim delivered by virtual reality. A simple tilt forward and swoop...and I soared through the fire.
Drake blanched as I landed before him, right in the midst of timber wolves.
“Sullivan...break the illusion. Get us out of here and we’ll talk...alright? We’ll have a beer in the blau lounge, even smoke one of Dad’s old cigars. We’ll—”
“His ear,” I murmured.
A wolf on his right side pounced and sank its incisors into Drake’s gristle. With a fierce yank, it tore Drake’s ear straight from his head.
“FUCK!” Drake bellowed, his remaining hand slapping over the hole where his ear used to be. “Sully!”
With a toss of its muzzle, the wolf shot the bleeding body part straight down its gullet and swallowed.
I laughed.
The noise in my chest sounded like asteroids colliding with mountain tops. A pummelling of rock and unmovable stone.
Drake rocked on his knees, blood drenching his clothing. “Fuck you, Sullivan. Fuck!”
I wished it was the brother I recognised and not an avatar before me, but...it wouldn’t ruin my enjoyment of his destruction.
“A hand for touching what wasn’t yours to touch. An ear for believing I’d listen to your lies. And a...” I cupped my chin, stroking the scales running down my throat. “His foot, if you’d be so kind.”
A wolf behind him nodded its giant canine head and snatched at Drake’s foot. It yanked him clean off his knees, biting down hard, the crunch of his jaw heard even over Drake’s bloodcurdling scream.
It took a few gnaws, a death shake or two, before Drake’s ankle shattered, his Achilles tendon severed, and the mangled meat of his foot was removed from his borrowed body.
The pack squabbled over it, tearing at toes, eating Drake all while he watched.
“And a foot for ever stepping onto my islands.”
He screamed again, his face glazed with agony.
How did the pain feel?
Was it just mental or had his mind taken full ownership of this form? Could he feel the throbbing wrongness of no longer having complete limbs? What did his body look like in the outside world? Did his nose bleed as his brain scrambled? Did sweat coat his nakedness?
I hope it’s the worst thing he’s ever felt.
I truly fucking hope so.
I hoped he felt every tear, felt every droplet of blood, heard every snarl from the wolves.
A spider the size of a small dog scuttled past.
“Wait.”
Its eight legs paused, its many eyes locking onto me.
“Gag him, his screams are tiresome.”
It happened faster than Drake could suck in a breath to beg. A web of silky strands shot from the spider’s funnel and slapped over his mouth with sticky, silvery strands. It covered his nose too, making his chest heave for a proper breath.
His intact hand rose to scratch it off, achieving a small tear to breathe.
“Another snack?” I smiled at the timbers. “His right hand, if you please.”
Two wolves leaped on him this time, both biting down on his forearm, tearing more than just his hand but everything below his elbow.
The pack lost its hierarchy, pouncing onto Drake as dirt flew. My brother was stampeded by starving canines, and his hand and forearm were devoured.
His screams were muffled, his eyes flowing with disbelieving tears. He shook his head, holding up the stumps he now had, blood spurting from ripped arteries.
The spiderweb still hushed him.
“Muuuuuummyyy.”
“I’m sorry, what was that?” I bowed over him, my wings cocooning us in a morbid cape where earth scattered, and wolves continued to squabble over his tissue, fighting each other in a tumbling mass of fur. “Are you saying Mummy or Sully? Because neither of those can save you.”
“Mweeeassee.”
“Please?” I stabbed a claw beneath his chin, tilting his head up until our eyes met. “
You’re begging me now?”
He nodded so fiercely that he punctured his own chin on my talon. “Mweeeassse!”
I clucked my tongue, sounding like a snake hissing over its prey. “Ah, brother. When did you ever show me mercy? Do you remember me begging when it was me you hurt?” I cupped his cheek, shaking my head. “No, you can’t remember because I never begged for my own salvation. I only begged for those I tried to protect. But you don’t have any idea what that feels like, do you, Drake? No loyalty to an animal, a lover, a friend. No loyalty to a brother who was your only kin.”
“Memanor.”
“Eleanor?” I squeezed his jaw in my fist. “You dare try to say her name. Why? You think by reminding me of her that I’ll take mercy on you? That I’ll stop before I go too far?”
He nodded, his nostrils flaring over the web gagging him. “Mont.”
“Don’t?” I chuckled right in his face. “Oh, there’s no going back now, Drake. I couldn’t stop myself, even if I wanted to. Even if you showed some meagre redemption at this late hour, I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself from extracting every droplet of pain I can.” I let his face go, swooping to my feet. “Not because I need revenge for myself, but because you owe it to Serigala, to my otters, pigs, dogs, rabbits, apes, and everything in between. Your screams are for them, Drake. Your howls are for Eleanor. Your agony is theirs because it’s justified...but your death...” I grinned, once again revealing blood-stained fangs. “Your death is mine, and frankly, I’m having far too much fun to rush to that finish line, aren’t you?”
He thrashed in the lava-racked earth. He mumbled and moaned, turning dirt rusty with his blood.
The wolves took off, sated with what they’d eaten, no longer bound by my control. They were free, just as all creatures should be.
Another carnivore arrived.
A sabre tooth tiger that only existed in history books and fiction. Its sable coat gleamed in the fire as it prowled around Drake, sniffing the remaining pieces.
I crossed my arms, flaring my wings and flying back a little. “Fancy a taste?”
The tiger growled, licking its chops.
“By all means, please shred my brother of his clothing.”
The cat didn’t wait. With unsheathed claws and a paw bigger than Drake’s chest, he sliced ribbons into my brother’s skin.
Fifth a Fury (Goddess Isles, #5) Page 8
