by Trina M. Lee
“I’m ok,” I said, breathy and weak. “Don’t stop on my account.”
Shaz grabbed my arm as I sank to the ground. Arys stood there staring at me with something like fear on his face. That couldn’t be right. Nothing scared my dark vampire.
After a moment the pain eased off. My wolf paced inside me, restless and confused. I held tight to Shaz and watched as Willow used the jeweled dagger on the rooster. Dripping the bird’s blood on top of Jez’s blood in the pentagram, he continued in that strange language.
Jez gasped and wobbled but stayed upright. The light of the fire bathed her in an orange glow. Face flushed and eyes wide, she stared at the blood splashed in the snow. Smoke rose up from it, stinking of sulfur.
My head spun as Willow dipped two fingers into the blood-spattered snow. Like a lucid dream, I watched in a fog as he painted bloody lines on Jez’s face: across her forehead, down her nose, and under each eye.
A growl rumbled in my throat. The beast within was angry and irrational, impatient with her vampiric cage. With my head in a fog, the wolf took advantage of my distraction, flinging herself at my insides. I needed to shift. Now.
The mark of the curse in the palm of my hand burned. I pushed away from Shaz and tore at my clothes with claw-tipped fingers. There was no holding back anymore. The wolf was coming now.
And she was pissed.
“Alexa?” Arys reached for me.
I slashed at him, gouging four deep gashes into his forearm. A guttural snarl replaced the words I couldn’t say. Losing control had always been an aspect of the vampire, but this was all wolf. And it was like nothing I’d ever experienced.
Hands shaking, I ripped my clothes off, snapping fangs at Arys when he approached. Rational thought ceased to exist as I lashed out at him. Like a rabid animal, I snarled and snapped, unwilling and unable to stay calm.
I wanted to hurt him.
No, I wanted to destroy him.
The shift came fast and fluid. Everything happened in spurts of motion without thought or feeling. The need to tear things apart drove me. I started with Arys.
He faced me with both hands raised, crackling with power. His lips moved, but the words were muffled and distant.
What little remained of me slipped away, buried beneath the vicious need to destroy. A strange sucking sensation pulled at my insides, tugging me in several directions at once.
The last thing I remembered was lunging at Arys before the violent swoon sucked me down a black hole.
Then darkness. A free fall into nothing.
A nudge. Someone prodded me with a foot. A familiar voice, one I’d hoped to never hear again.
“Nice to see you again, Alexa. I’ve been waiting for this.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“This has to be some kind of nightmare.” I gave my head a shake as the darkness lifted. My blurry vision slowly came back into focus.
The graveyard behind the ramshackle church had vanished. I sat on a floor I knew well in a house I hated. A fire blazed in the hearth.
Shya’s house. But how?
He stood oppressively close, staring down his nose at me with obvious twisted glee. This couldn’t be real.
“I told you I’d see you soon,” he said. “Why do you look so surprised?”
The house appeared to be empty other than the two of us. This had to be a bad dream. I pushed to my feet, shaky and unbalanced. No longer was I in wolf form. Had I ever been? Had that been real?
Confusion had my head spinning. “What’s going on? How did I get here? How did you get here?”
Shya held up a hand. Irritation flickered across his face. “One question at a time. You’re ruining the effect.”
In his trademark trendy suit, his blue-black hair short and styled just so, the demon wore a triumphant expression. Big black wings flared out behind him in a threatening manner. Shya didn’t have to attempt intimidation. He exuded it.
“What’s going on?” I repeated, holding back the onslaught of questions I wanted to throw at him.
He let me stress for a minute before answering. “You’re inside the stone with me. That’s what’s going on.”
“But…” There was no wrapping my head around that.
“How? Allow me to enlighten you.” Shya slithered closer, reptilian pupils large in the dim lighting. “I cursed your wolf, which gave me the ability to drag you in here on the night of the full moon. Your body is elsewhere but your consciousness is here. With me.”
“My body?” I glanced down at myself, dressed in the clothing I’d worn out that night. What a fucking head-trip.
“Funny how it works, hmm? Like a dream, your body is elsewhere, but what you experience here feels incredibly real.”
Stars exploded behind my eyes, as my face met the edge of the kitchen counter. Shya had moved fast, slamming my head into the granite surface twice. The pain sudden and excruciating, blood poured from my nose and bottom lip.
Dusting off his hands as if it had dirtied them to touch me, Shya regarded me with his usual grim amusement. “This is how we will spend every full moon night until you let me out. During these visits, I will do everything in my power to send you back each time a little more fucked up than the last. Now, let’s have a chat, shall we?”
Bad news for me in so many ways. Really. Bad. News.
“I’ll never let you out, Shya. You know I can’t take that risk.” Rubbing my throbbing nose, I glanced about the house. “So is this an illusion or something?”
Shya busied himself digging in the fridge. “Of course. I have to keep myself sane somehow. Being trapped in an object will drive even the strongest demon insane eventually. My magic still works in here, and I love this house. Might as well surround myself with something comfortable and familiar.”
He withdrew a bottle of chilled red wine and fetched two glasses from a cupboard beside the stove. A snap of his fingers and the light overhead turned on.
I watched him, wary and afraid. So this was the curse. It had turned out to be both better and worse than I’d anticipated. “So if my body is elsewhere, is it just running on autopilot without me?” Vaguely I recalled a ravenous need to rip flesh from bone. Oh shit. I’d attacked Arys.
“Without your consciousness to keep it balanced, your wolf is just that: a wolf. Reduced to its most basic primitive instincts. Hunt. Kill. Survive.” Shya poured wine in both glasses and handed me one. “I know you prefer harder stuff but humor me.”
I gaped at him, ignoring the glass he shoved across the counter to me. “So right now I could be slaughtering people and won’t even know it until I get back into my body? What the fuck, Shya?”
Sipping the deep red wine, the demon perused me over the rim of his fancy glass. “You should have thought of that when you trapped me like the devious little bitch you are. A toast, shall we?” He raised his glass, staring pointedly until I grudgingly did the same. “To a game well played. And to every move having a counter move, until only one victor remains.”
Despite the ominous promise in his toast, I felt like I’d been paid a compliment. Our glasses clinked together and I sipped the wine. No body, no problem. Being a blood drinker meant missing something as simple as a drink. If I was stuck here all night with him, I might as well enjoy what I could. Something told me there was more pain in my near future.
As horrified as it made me to think about what my wolf could be doing right then, I trusted that Arys could handle it. I had to.
“To victory,” I muttered.
Shya eyed me, his scarlet gaze picking me apart. I’d hoped to never see him again. Wishful thinking indeed. I should’ve known better.
He tipped his glass up to his lips and drained the contents before promptly smashing me in the face with it. Instinct kicked in, and I raised a hand in time to keep the jagged stem he still held from finding its way into my cheek. Instead it plunged into the palm of my hand.
I yelped and jerked back, dropping my own glass in the process. It hit the counter and shat
tered into several pieces, splashing wine all over me.
“Now,” Shya said, his tone pleasant and misleading. “Let’s sit in front of the fire and talk. We have much to discuss.”
Ignoring the glass mess, he grabbed the wine bottle and strode into the living room. Wings settling around him, Shya lounged on the couch, propping an ankle on the opposite knee. Brows knit into an impatient frown, he glowered until I joined him.
Having few choices, I sat on the ridiculous chair that sought to swallow me whole. After inspecting my injured hand, I touched my face, finding a cut on my cheek. Shya felt he owed me, and I supposed if our roles were reversed, I’d have felt the same. For having no actual body in this place, it sure friggin’ felt like I did.
“Now tell me,” he began, tapping fingers against the wine bottle. “How long have you been fucking Falon?”
No point denying the truth or refusing to have this discussion. I was stuck here for a while. Might as well play along.
“A month or two I guess,” I said, staring at the fire. “After I turned.”
“I see.” Shya cocked his head to one side, pondering this. “I’d have assumed it started long before that.”
The flames flickered and jumped, dancing in an erratic rhythm. How I wished I could get lost in them. My throbbing face kept me rooted right there in my current reality. “You’d be wrong.”
“And what motivated you to take him as a lover?” His inquisitive gaze was heavy upon me. The weight of it settled on my shoulders despite my averted stare.
The demon was intelligent. He knew damn well my relationship with Falon had a darker motive, a reason for existing that went beyond the norm. What did he expect me to say?
“Power,” I replied, the simplest answer with the most truth. “A powerful escape from blood, death, and guilt. Certainly not love or any of its unfortunate counterparts.”
Shya’s chuckle made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “No, certainly not love. Falon is not capable of such an emotion. That gift was stolen from him.”
A dozen questions bombarded me, each fighting to be asked first. I held my tongue, resisting them all. I didn’t need to know. I didn’t even want to know.
As if sensing my inner battle, Shya went on. “Was he always such a hateful thing? Of course not. Not one of us started out as anything other than pure love and beauty. But such is sin, you know. It has a way of transforming what is beautiful into the essence of vulgarity.”
I grimaced, fingers dug into the arms of the chair. Seeing as this house was an illusion, I didn’t imagine Shya would care about the blood stains on his white furniture.
“Who is Winter?” Dammit. That one slipped past me.
Silence for a moment. Only the crackle of the fire broke the quiet. Maybe he wasn’t going to tell me. Perhaps he didn’t even know.
“Winter… was a nephilim,” he said. “She and Falon were deeply in love. However, he was not the only one who wanted her for his own. Female nephilim are a rarity of sorts. Their love was cursed by a dark prince, a demon of the highest order. A mortal being, Winter was cursed to live again every time she died, and in each lifetime she and Falon were destined to fall in love. The moment they consummated their love, she would die, and the process would start over. Again and again, they were cursed to relive their love and loss.”
The horror of such a thing struck me, and my gaze swung to Shya, searching him for any sign of a lie. But he really had no reason to lie about such a thing, did he?
I remembered Halloween night when Falon had seen Winter. He’d been so angry and hateful. He’d mentioned having to listen to her for a thousand years. A thousand years of reliving the same heartbreak?
It was more than I could fathom.
“So what happened?” I asked, hating myself for wanting to know so badly.
Shya drank from the wine bottle before handing it to me. “After several lifetimes of this torment, she sought to escape the cycle by seeking out another lover. The one who had cursed them. This destroyed Falon. Winter lived out her days with the dark prince, and when she died again, she did not come back. But I’ve seen enough to know that she torments Falon still.”
I drank back way too much wine in an attempt to drown the swelling sympathy. Knowing Falon’s history, his secret, it changed nothing between us. It affected our relationship in no way. And yet, I now understood so much more about him.
Fuck.
“Don’t tell me shit that will make me feel bad for him,” I groused, more to myself than to Shya.
“Does it? Make you feel bad? How fascinating.” The demon sat up straighter, eyeing me with keen interest. “I suppose I felt sympathy for him once too. Until he became Lilah’s whipping boy.”
Shya began to ramble, going on about Falon’s betrayal when he started sleeping with Lilah. How traitorous he’d been when he helped her discover the whereabouts of her missing scroll before she turned it into the powerful key that was eventually passed on to me.
I half listened, finding it hard to concentrate on the demon’s self-pitying rant. I just kept replaying Shya’s version of Falon’s story in my head. It all made sense now. Falon’s declaration that, in our encounters, he sought to remember how to feel. His need to escape the void, the numbness that he carried. Because of Winter. Because she’d destroyed him. Broken his heart in the worst way. Hurt him so bad he sought out the memory of bliss in my arms.
Though he was known among his kind as a traitor—even Willow had thrown it in his face—Falon had been betrayed by the one he’d most loved.
He couldn’t know that I knew. It would change things.
But had it already?
“She let me believe I would serve at her side. That she and I would rule together. All the while she was screwing my right hand man, plotting to overthrow me. No demon can be trusted. We may dedicate ourselves to the deception and enslavement of mankind, but we do it to each other as well. Reaping what we’ve sown to make it all very—Alexa, are you listening to me?”
A head-splitting spasm racked my skull as a shot of pure darkness seized me. Body contorted, a scream stuck in my throat, I struggled to keep from falling to the floor and foaming at the mouth.
Shya leaned forward to catch the wine bottle as it slipped from my fingers. The attack fell away, and I slumped back in the awful chair, praying for time to pass quicker. I needed to get out of here and get back to my body.
“We could have ruled together, you and I,” he continued, leaning across the space between the couch and chair. “But you had to go and destroy that key in a pathetic attempt to aspire to something you’ll never be.”
I sucked a painful breath into my lungs. “And what might that be?”
“A hero. A do-gooder. A Hound of God.” So matter of fact was the demon, so sure of himself. “Willow’s sacrifice was for nothing, Alexa. You’re still a daughter of darkness.”
My temper flared and I sat up seething. “I am still a Hound as well. One doesn’t cancel out the other. Not anymore. That’s what Willow did for me. You can talk all the shit you want, but it won’t work on me. Willow did what he had to so I could choose to be more than the label you give me.”
Though Falon and I might despise one another, nobody inspired the sheer raw hatred that Shya did.
The asshole grinned. “Did he? Or was he just seeking an excuse to finally fall all the way into the abyss?”
He wanted a reaction. So I shouldn’t have given him one. If he could use power here, then could I also?
I reached deep to draw on the force within me, using the constant flicker in my core to fling an assault that was driven by light. It snapped Shya’s head to the side and stole his breath. Small impact really but I found satisfaction in it anyway.
“You know nothing about Willow,” I snapped. “His heart is pure and his loyalty boundless. What he did was done out of honor and duty. Fuck you for saying otherwise.”
Shya leaned so close he laughed right in my face, a chilling cack
le that cut off abruptly. “And fuck you for taking away the empire that is rightfully mine.”
“It isn’t though.” I argued. “It never was. You failed to secure your own power, so you sank to taking it from others. You’re weak.”
Fire lit up his fingertips. He grabbed me by the shoulders and flung me to the floor. Shya was on me fast, wrapping his burning hands tight around my throat. I screamed until he choked off my voice.
Instinct demanded that I fight while sanity insisted I remain calm and take the abuse. Fighting would only make it worse, but accepting it would be to admit defeat. I’d come too far with Shya to do that.
I reached out for Arys and found nothing. Searching farther, I thought of Jenner, Kale, and the other Las Vegas vampires. Not a trace. Inside the stone with Shya, I was cut off. No outside sources to draw on. I couldn’t go toe to toe with Shya alone.
But I tried anyway.
Driven by the sensation of his hands melting my flesh, I released a panicked blast made up of everything I had to throw at him. Much to my surprise, the hit threw Shya off me, wrenching his hands from my neck. I wasted no time leaping to my feet. Shya was already getting up from where he’d sprawled against the coffee table. I slammed my foot into his face, hearing the pleasant crunch of bone.
Because I couldn’t move faster than a demon, he caught hold of my leg and used it to slam me into the stone fireplace. He never gave me the chance to recover.
The beating he laid on me was both physical and supernatural. While my brain rattled around, I wondered if it were all as real as it felt. Would my body be a mess when I got back? If Shya killed me here, would I truly be dead?
“You know what your problem is, Alexa? You never know when to shut up or give up.”
His foot met my middle and I cried out. Another scorching blaze ate up my insides as he stripped my power, leaving me barren and weak. I coughed blood and braced for the next blow. He’d started this the night we trapped him. I expected him to finish it now.
Except he didn’t.
He stopped as suddenly as he’d started. Leaving me in a tangle of limbs on the floor, Shya ambled to the kitchen where he casually pried the cork from a new bottle of wine.
