He grunted, staggered back and pressed his hand to his face. His eyes darkened when it came away covered in black liquid.
The white sparks in them grew brighter.
He turned them on her.
She saw the instant his temper snapped.
Eva made another break for it.
Benares appeared in front of her, his fist connected hard with her jaw and she went down fast.
Pain bloomed on the left side of her head as it struck the edge of the couch.
The last thing she saw was Benares standing over her, violence and hunger in his glowing eyes.
And then everything went black.
CHAPTER 16
Esher stalked through the wet streets of Tokyo, the breeze cold against his cheeks but already carrying the scent of morning.
Time was running out.
He prowled around a corner and looked both ways along the intersection, his honed senses charting several blocks around him as he scoured them for his prey.
Restless hunger gnawed at him, never sated and ever present. He growled through clenched teeth and then pulled down a slow breath, closed his eyes and focused, stilling his body to focus his mind.
The black need abated, but refused to leave him, still held him at its mercy and whispered seduction in his ear, words that promised retribution.
Satisfaction.
He huffed and stepped, appearing on a rooftop above the intersection. The wind was stronger up high, whipping the tails of his long black cotton coat around his leather boots and the jeans he had tucked into them, filling the silence with the sound. He welcomed it, focused on it and his body, and that black need.
A hunger to destroy.
He shifted foot to foot at the very edge of the roof, toes hanging over the drop, mind clear and focused, body honed and ready.
Soon.
The kill would be his soon.
It would satisfy him enough that he could rest and regain his strength for the next night.
For the next hunt.
He eased back so his toes were on the edge of the skyscraper’s roof and crouched, resting his elbows on his knees and allowing his hands to dangle between them as he waited.
Waited.
Minutes ticked past and mortals appeared, scurrying around below him like ants. He didn’t care where they were going or where they had come from, or which of them was rushing to their death.
For once, they weren’t the target of his ever-present urge to kill.
His usual need to make them suffer had been redirected, replaced by a consuming desire to locate the ones behind the attack on his brother, Ares.
The ones who wanted to open the gates.
The ones who had tried to harm his family.
His lips peeled back off his teeth, darkness bleeding through him as rain began to fall. He would find them, and they would pay for their sins.
They would pay for trying to hurt the ones he loved.
The wind picked up, rain lashed his face and his coat fluttered behind him.
He remained still, not moving a muscle and not feeling the cold as he scoured Tokyo with his acute senses, picking out every mortal within a mile radius.
The bright lights and neon shone up from the streets all around him, all across the vast city. He lifted his head and scanned the panorama, studying it.
To his left, Tokyo Tower speared the sky, bright orange against its backdrop of the business district and the river. On his right, a dark swath in the middle of too much light called to him like a beacon, a pocket of nature that surrounded the castle of the emperor.
Back when he and his brothers had first arrived, much of Tokyo had been open space, filled with traditional wooden structures. There had been peace. Now there was so much noise.
He gritted his teeth.
It grated on him, pushed at his control and made him want to either leave or destroy everything in his wake.
Yet, somehow, he remained, and the city remained with him.
It flickered to the otherworld in the rain haze, a city bathed in flames and fighting for survival. Rain fell as streaks of fire and the building beneath him creaked and groaned, the section to his left torn away to leave only twisted metal and chunks of broken concrete that looked as if a huge daemon had ripped it in two. Blue fire dashed across the dark park, chasing something. Screams rose up from far below him, the terrified shrieks of mortals combining with the roars of daemons to ring like music in his ears.
Gods, he wanted them to suffer like that, because they deserved it.
Despicable monsters.
All of them.
Both daemon and mortal alike.
Tokyo flickered back to the present, rain-swept and quiet.
The tower glowed to his left. The park beckoned to his right.
Behind him, the air vibrated with the power of the gate.
He held it open as he had every night over the past three months.
A lure for the daemons.
So far, none had dared to approach it.
But they would.
He could feel it in his bones, could sense it in nature as she whispered to him. The daemons were coming.
Soon he would have the fight he wanted, the battle he needed, and the blood on his hands that he craved.
Soon.
But not tonight.
The only creatures foolish enough to be near him were the mortals below, scurrying around beneath their cheap convenience store umbrellas, absorbed in their lives and ignorant of others.
Ignorant of the damage they did.
Esher looked back at the gate, water rolling off the longer lengths of his black hair and soaking into the pale blue scarf he wore wrapped around his neck.
The colourful concentric rings hovered in a disc flat above the rooftop of the skyscraper, flaring in places as they turned inside each other, twisting in opposite directions. Impatient. Like him. They wanted a purpose, a reason for being here in this world.
He had none to give them.
The symbols between the bands of the circles shimmered in different colours and he closed his eyes, allowing their power to soothe him as they connected him back to the Underworld.
To the only world he cared about.
He turned away from the gate and watched the mortals passing below him.
He despised this world and the foul creatures who inhabited it.
Barely a century ago, the gate had been at ground level like the ones his brothers protected around the world, but the mortals in Tokyo had built and built, never stopping, destroying everything in their path and pushing nature out. It seemed to him that they only knew how to destroy.
They only thought of themselves.
He pushed the sleeve of his black coat back and stroked his wrist, not feeling the obsidian woven band that encircled it.
He only felt the scars.
They burned beneath his cold fingers, irritating him, and he scratched at the band, sneered as he glared down at the mortals below him. Beneath him.
Humans.
He growled through his teeth and tracked them one by one, the darkness rising inside him, writhing and spreading black tendrils through his body, its grip on him growing stronger. His blue eyes darted between the mortals and short fangs pressed against his lower teeth as he ground them together.
They wanted to destroy everything.
Especially when they didn’t understand it.
Especially if it was stronger than they were.
The rain around him stopped falling, droplets suspended in the night air, shimmering like colourful pearls as they caught the lights of the gate behind him.
He stared at them, breathed hard and fought to calm himself, chanting in his head in the language of his home, the only world he cared about.
The only world that cared about him.
His fingers rubbed harder, digging into his wrists, and pain built there, fire that licked at his flesh and seared his bones, and he looked down, catching a glimpse of b
lood before it disappeared, leaving only scars behind.
He growled and the water he held in the air around him vibrated, trembling as if it feared him.
It had nothing to fear.
Water was his passion, his companion, his most precious thing. It was the only thing that was good about this wretched world. His powers had grown stronger, giving him control over more than water, placing any liquid under his command, but it was the water he loved and it was the water he controlled.
It was abundant here, flowed in so many forms. Rivers. Seas. Rain. Tears.
A component of every living thing.
A weapon he could use against them.
He dropped his focus to a lone male as they crossed the road and walked along the pedestrian street opposite him.
Esher narrowed his gaze on the human as the noises of their world broke through the silence of the rain and reached his ears, scratching in them. Car horns blaring. Engines roaring. Traffic crossings speaking as they stopped those cars and mortals twittering to each other as they used them.
The rain suspended around him began to shake.
His mother’s voice whispered in his mind, a soothing melody that had him reaching for the pocket of his dark grey shirt.
Whenever it becomes too much, my beloved, find your peace.
He pulled the tiny black noise-cancelling ear buds from it and pushed them in his left ear and then his right, and let the strings of the classical piece wash over him.
She had said other things when she had given him the gift, things he hadn’t bothered to put to memory because they had been about the mortals, about learning to forgive and to love humans again.
Impossible.
He would never love a human.
It was bad enough that a mortal, a Carrier, had dared to invade his family and steal Ares’s heart. Now a second brother had been targeted by one of their vicious, deceptive kind.
If that mortal dared to harm Valen.
He focused his power.
The water around him exploded.
She would pay for it with her own blood.
CHAPTER 17
Eva started awake, her heart lodged in her throat, head spinning and pulse racing. She blinked hard and a tremble started deep in her core. What had happened?
She fought to remember.
The shaking wracking her tired, aching body grew violent as an image came to her.
Benares.
Only he hadn’t been the Benares with the playgirl good looks and sultry smile, oozing charm and seductive promises.
He had been a monster.
He loomed over her, his arm a tight band across her back, glowing white-blue eyes surrounded by obsidian streaked with equally bright lightning that blazed outwards from them and black lips moving soundlessly, flashing sharp teeth.
A monster with hunger in his eyes.
Eva shook so hard that she struggled to push the cream covers off her body.
Tears filled her eyes, making it hard to see, and she blinked them away only to have more replace them. They tumbled down her cheeks as she ghosted her hands over her bare legs and her hips, searching for marks.
Searching for something that would confirm her worst fears.
Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed it down as she reached her stomach, sobs shaking her even as she fought them back and tried to deny them.
She didn’t remember undressing.
She remembered the hot feel of his mouth on hers, remembered hitting him and him striking back. She lifted a trembling hand and winced as her fingers made contact with the left side of her head. She remembered hitting the arm of the couch on the way down.
And then Benares looming over her.
Cold froze her blood in her veins and wouldn’t thaw, no matter how many times she told herself that he hadn’t touched her.
She couldn’t convince herself.
Because she wasn’t sure.
He had wanted her, and she had been at his mercy.
He was a monster.
Something from a different world, from Hell.
God. She pulled her knees to her chest and rocked as she tried to shut out the image of him, but it was branded on her mind, taunting her with the truth.
Benares was a monster.
She shuddered and buried her face in her knees as she finally heard his words.
He wanted to feed on her.
She wasn’t sure what that meant, or whether he had done it.
She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
No.
She was sure of one thing.
She had to get away.
Eva rolled from the bed and gathered her clothes from the wooden floor, pulling them on with trembling fingers. She gave up trying to button her jeans and zip her boots, and fumbled with the black t-shirt. Tears blurred her vision again and she blinked them away as she crawled across the room, fear giving way to determination as her instinct to survive took over. The floor squeaked beneath her, filling the heavy silence together with her panted breaths.
She reached the doors that covered the left half of the far wall of the room, next to the kitchen, and pulled her phone from her jeans. Her fingers shook so violently as she opened the case and slipped the key out of the pocket in it that she almost dropped it. It took her several attempts to slot the key into the lock on the door and turn it.
Relief poured through her when she heard the latch click.
She hastily pulled the doors open. It was dark on the other side, but she didn’t need to see to know where her kit bag would be. She grabbed the black duffle and pulled it out of the cupboard, and felt it to reassure herself there were weapons inside.
Everything she needed was in it. Money. Clothes. False identities.
Eva tugged it to the kitchen and used one of the stools to pull herself onto her unsteady feet. Her legs threatened to give out but she locked her knees and shoved fear to the back of her mind.
She could break down later.
Once she had escaped this madness.
The air shifted behind her.
The wooden floor creaked.
Eva screamed and swung her duffle, hit the person hard enough to make them grunt and crumple to the floor. She bolted for the door, grabbing the first set of car keys on her way past the bowl on the kitchen island counter where she kept them, and a black padded jacket from the hook near the door.
She yanked the door open and ran down the stairs of the building, refusing to slow even as her boots flapped around her ankles.
She lost one at a bend in the staircase.
Kicked the other off and kept running.
She hit the door to the building with such force that it slammed against the wall as it opened, the loud crack echoing around the courtyard like a gunshot.
Eva frantically pressed the button on the car keys, blood racing so hard her head spun. The lights on her Fiat 500 flashed and she grimaced. She just had to pick the keys for the slowest damn car in her collection.
She opened the door of the compact white car, threw her bag and coat onto the passenger seat and shoved the key into the slot. The engine started with a reassuring purr.
She had to run.
She had to escape.
Eva put the car into gear and flicked on the headlights.
Her gasp shattered the silence.
Valen stood between her and the exit.
“Don’t leave,” he shouted.
Hurt flashed in his eyes but she was focused elsewhere.
On the arcs of white-purple lightning that crackled over his hands.
He was a monster too.
They were all monsters.
She gunned the engine.
His hand rose, palm facing her, a gesture for her to stop.
To do as he bid.
She shook her head again. She couldn’t. She had to run. He would move. He would move or she would run him over. She had to get away.
She needed to escape this madness.
She ne
eded to escape before it swallowed her whole and there was nothing left of her.
Her bare foot hit the gas peddle.
Move.
She stared, eyes widening, as the car lunged towards him.
Move.
She willed him to do it, because she couldn’t stop. Her body wouldn’t listen now. She needed to run, before Benares found her.
Because Benares had…
“I said don’t leave!” Valen’s voice crashed into her head, knocking that terrifying thought out of it.
His hand curled into a fist and he slammed it down into the car bonnet. The back wheels lifted off the ground as the front of the Fiat crumpled under the blow.
Her eyes nearly popped out of her head.
She shrieked as the lights on the dashboard and the headlights flickered, and arcs of electricity chased over the chassis and up his arm.
His eyes glowed bright gold.
The engine stuttered and died.
Her panted gasps filled the silence as she stared at him.
What in God’s name was he?
A quiet voice at the back of her mind whispered that she knew what he was—a monster, just like Benares. Another voice issued from her chest, trying to push the first away, telling her that was a lie. He was nothing like Benares.
Even when she had denied it, some part of her had been aware that Valen was different, that the things she had seen him do were real and that he had powers. That had frightened her, but he hadn’t.
He had been gentle with her.
He had looked at her with something akin to affection in his eyes, a feeling she had only seen him reveal to his mother and had kept hidden from his brothers and the rest of the world.
His fingers flexed and he looked down at his right hand, drawing her attention there. Blood ran down it, but it was the sparks that chased up his arm, crackling and snapping against his skin, that held her attention.
He wasn’t a monster.
But he wasn’t a man either.
Her panic slowly subsided, but fear remained, its grip on her so fierce she couldn’t shake it, she could only fight it and the images of Benares it kept throwing at her, piecing them together in a way that made her feel he had done something to her.
Violated her.
Tears filled her eyes.
Her hands shook against the steering wheel.
Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2) Page 20
