Darkest Heart

by Juliette Cross

  This would be a quick fight. That wasn’t my vanity speaking, but an honest truth. Though I was still withholding a dangerous secret from Dommiel. Some selfish part of me, the part I’d never entertained before now, wanted to wait. I’d know when it was too perilous to wait. I would never endanger him, for he certainly would be once the noose stretched tight and I was Simian’s pawn. I glanced up at him where he was now on his feet, arms crossed over his chest, looking fierce and quite dangerous himself. And so dazzlingly beautiful.

  Instinctively, I ducked as a dagger flew over my head, having sensed it before I saw it. Getting my head back in the game, I focused on Crusalla. And her imminent demise. I twirled my daggers over the backs of my knuckles, gripping the hilts tight, then tipped my head up and laughed.

  With a snapping growl, she launched, swinging her flail in a circle over her head. At the right moment, I squatted to the ground and beat my wings hard. Spinning upside down, I sliced through the flesh of her inner arm swinging the flail. I’d gouged deep. Black blood sprayed. Her razor-tipped flail went flying into the bars with a clang.

  Landing deftly on my feet, I marched in a circle, snapping my wings closed, the wing guards making a contagion clink of steel plates. Her half-severed arm hung by sinews and bone. To her credit, Crusalla didn’t utter a sound of pain. Rather, she bellowed a war cry and pulled a hatchet from her belt, flinging it with super speed toward my head. I dodged. The zing of steel slicing the tips of my hair proved how close she’d missed me. Not stopping with my dodge and swing away, I launched through the air, both blades high.

  Crusalla reached for a blade in her boot, but not before I stabbed with my right, missing her throat, landing in her sternum above her naked breasts. I tumbled forward with her, taking us both to the ground. Her powerful arm snaked around my waist and she rolled till I was beneath her, her massive hand around my throat, crushing me. My blade embedded in her chest didn’t seem to jar her one bit. Her hideous expression contorted to a deviant smile as she leered down.

  “Pretty little bird is gonna die.”

  The crowd surged to a deafening roar. Their malevolent taunts chorused through the chamber, waves of bloodlust beating down on me like rain.

  “Break her wings.”

  “Slit her neck.”

  “Gut her good.”

  With Crusalla’s other arm inoperable, she couldn’t reach for a weapon. Or block my left hand.

  “They want your sweet blood, pretty bird,” she sneered. “And I’m gonna give it to ’em as soon as you breathe your last.”

  The fierce screams of the throng faded away. Crusalla faded, too. The first edge of unconsciousness was sweeping my peripheral vision. But it mattered not. All my focus remained on seeking the cool essence of my midnight love. It pulsed through my frame, easing the instant panic when air flow was cut from my lungs. It didn’t matter. Something greater was here to help me.

  Power surged, bright and hot. Not just my own, but Dommiel’s as well, coalescing into a beautiful blade of vengeful desire. He wielded his essence within me, demanding I focus and fight. And win. Not that the wish hadn’t been there all along, but Dommiel’s was an overwhelming need, burning through my blood like liquid fire. A desperate, wild thing demanding obedience.

  Though my limbs should be failing me now, my body losing the battle as Crusalla choked me to death, I pulled my left hand up under us, blade jutting up, and stabbed with all my strength straight into her chin, slicing all the way through her skull and out the top with a metallic crunch. Her hands slipped from my throat, body falling off of me into a limp heap.

  Sucking in great lungfuls of air, I lurched to my feet. The audience’s screams had died. The music was turned off. But I wasn’t done. Not yet. Not even close.

  I stumbled forward. With a boot on her stomach, I palmed both of my daggers’ hilts and yanked them out with a sharp zing, black blood spraying. Straddling her shoulders, her lifeless eyes staring up, I hacked with both blades. Once, twice, three times. On the fourth, I heard the splintering of bone. The feverish need to mutilate beyond death clouded my heart with a wave of apprehension, but not enough to keep my hands from swinging and slicing. On the fifth hack, her neck rolled, hanging on by a piece of flesh. With a swift flick of my right blade, I stabbed through the left side of her chest where her black heart would’ve been, then I snatched her head by the mohawk away from the body.

  Raising my open palm over her body, I didn’t whisper the incantation to send her soul to hell, I screamed it. The old words filling the underground chamber with a barbaric stream, energy snapping taut, and the air stilling with a sharp crackle as her body shriveled and darkened to withered black limbs. All the while, fury escalated in my breast, satisfied with the kill I’d made. Then boom. Her headless body imploded with a deafening ripple, a burst of black ash and orange cinders flitting in the air. A soot mark and a dent on the dirt floor marked where her body had been a moment before. I’d sent her black soul to the deep reaches of hell. Now, she would be the one tortured in Erebus.

  I held her grotesque head aloft, still dangling in my hand, turning slowly for the silent horde to see what I’d done to their champion.

  Darkness wafted over me as I spun for all to witness, black blood oozing down my triumphant arm. My reaction struck me as off, but not wrong. She deserved to die. She deserved to be mutilated further, razed from this earth like the rest of the filthy demons staring down at me—some in shock, some in wonder, but most with hungry menace. The burrowing darkness whispered I could take more of them on, I could wipe more of them out.

  With a hurdling scream, I swung Crusalla’s head. It knocked against the bars and rolled down to the dirt. Knowing I was covered in her blood but not caring, I stared up at the boxed chamber where Dommiel had watched. But he was gone. So were Skaal and Nadya.

  Then I heard the most unlikely sound I could’ve imagined. My name. Cheered on the lips of demons. Low at first, like a rumble of thunder gaining speed across a plain. Building in a rousing chant, “Anya! Anya! Anya!”

  Skaal appeared at my side, raising the arm slicked with Crusalla’s black blood.

  “Anya! Angel of Mercy!”

  The blood-lusting horde jumped and clamored, crowding the bars and screamed with primordial delight. The sound both terrified and thrilled me. My true self was horrified. Not at killing Crusalla, of course, but at my display of fervent arrogance and malevolent rage even after she was dead.

  Another slither of Simian’s darkness curled into my left cavity, circling my heart with a tendril, cradling it close, pushing into my mind. Loving me for what I’d done. Telling me I could do more.

  “No,” I whispered under my breath.

  Skaal glanced down, having heard me even over the crowd. I glanced away, finding Dommiel at the arch opening, hands on hips, his dark ruby eye studying me with unnerving accuracy. He saw something in my eyes, for he stepped out into the arena and grabbed my other hand.

  “That’s enough, Skaal.”

  Breaking away, he marched us past the guards back down the hall, around a corridor and into the room where we’d started. With a heavy clang of the steel door, he didn’t say anything. Didn’t accuse me, didn’t judge me, didn’t condemn me. No, that would never be Dommiel.

  Instead, he jerked me into his arms—even smeared with demon blood and gore—and squeezed me so close, I thought I might melt right into him. That was when I realized I was shaking. I’d never trembled from a fight. It was second nature. No. It was the overwhelming urge to punish her body beyond death that had my soul quivering within me, shaken by my unmistakable wicked intent.

  “Shh.”

  Dommiel whispered at my temple, rocking me as he cradled me close. I finally lifted my arms around him, clutching my fists in his jacket and exhaled panting breaths.

  With a gentle push, he pulled back far enough to wipe my face with a damp cloth. Where he’d gotten it, I didn’t know. But he must’ve carried it down with him to the arena. He’d though
t ahead to wipe my face, my arms, my hands, to free me of the demon’s blood. This man. He wasn’t the condemned soul he thought he was. So tender with me. No true demon would treat me this way. Would care so much.

  “Dommiel,” I whispered, my heart aching.

  “Shh.”

  His gaze roved my face, his expression still and stricken, like a man who’d watched his own death before it had taken place. He dropped the soiled towel, then cupped my face with both hands, his thumbs brushing my cheekbones, shaking.

  “Woman,” he ground out, voice as rough as jagged stone. “Never…again.” He lowered trembling lips and brushed them over mine, not coaxing deeper, but simply feeling, touching, making sure I was there. “Never again, you fucking hear me?”

  Swallowing a lump of emotion I didn’t recognize, for I’d fought hundreds of battles and not sensed what was coursing through me now, I protested. “But I’ll have to fight Lisabette’s warrior now. You know that.”

  “No. You won’t.”

  “But how will we—”

  “You leave that up to me. I’ll be dead before I watch you tossed in a pit with some demonic monster again, fighting for your life. I died about a hundred times over in the last thirty fucking minutes.” He pressed his forehead to mine, his own breath coming fast. “Never again.” He was making a promise, not a request.

  I couldn’t think beyond getting my mouth on him, satisfying this desperate, aching need I didn’t know was in me. Sliding my tongue along his lower lip, I pressed inside when he gasped. Then groaned. One hand slid down to my bottom, pulling me against his body while he met me thrust for firm thrust, stroke for slow stroke.

  “Goddamn, woman,” he whispered, before firming his mouth over mine again, taking control as I wanted him to.

  I whimpered, clutching at his nape and his hair, adrenaline from the fight, the win, the relief at survival and being in his arms again spurring me on. I wanted Dommiel. No. I needed him. Like a desperate, crazed woman, I mewled and kissed him back, bruising my own lips against his sharpened teeth.

  With a sharp snarl, both his palms were on my bottom, lifting me up against the door where he ground his hard cock against my sex, spiking pleasure through the thin fabric of my very short shorts.

  “Yes,” I whispered, nipping with teeth up his jaw. “Inside me, Dommiel. Please.”

  He anchored my right leg over his hip and used his free hand to slide the thin spandex aside, finding me swollen and wet for him.

  “Christ.” He stroked and circled my swollen nub while I rocked against his hand. “You’re going to kill me.”

  With predatory speed, he had his buckle open, his zipper down, and his cock in hand, sliding it once along my slit, before he buried himself to the hilt. I held his red-eyed gaze on a high-pitched moan. He filled me to such exquisite fullness, I thought to never know the like other than this. This moment of ecstasy and bliss when he put his cock inside me, stretching me with pleasure-pain.

  “Anya.”

  I cupped his jaw—which was so clamped tight—as he withdrew in a languid roll, then plunged back up inside me, jolting me higher on the wall.

  “Ah.” My mouth fell open. He examined every expression, every part of my face, every line, as he withdrew again and drove deep. So deep, grinding at the end.

  “You’re mine, Anya.”

  He pressed his face close, sliding his nose along my own, brushing my mouth with his. But he didn’t kiss me. Just swept his lips there, breathing in my air.

  “Do you understand?”

  I nodded, but he ground inside me again.

  “Mine.”

  His intent too fierce as he withdrew and pumped back in with quickening speed. Hammering hard to drive home his meaning.

  His metal hand on my thigh squeezed and spread me wider. “Not heaven or hell is going to take you away from me.”

  Then he was pounding hard and fast, his thickness filling me, stretching me, imprinting on my body in a way I knew I’d never forget. No matter what happened.

  “Say yes. Tell me you understand.”

  “Yes,” I obeyed without a thought. For I’d been his since the first time he’d kissed me in Berlin. Lost to his dominant will, his beastly temper, his powerful protectiveness, and his genuine, good heart. The secret he carried inside himself, barely showing it even to me.

  I moaned when he angled and plunged deeper, hitting a bundle of nerves just right, grinding against my clitoris at the end of each thrust. His dominance pulled me toward a brink I didn’t want to fall over just yet.

  “Not yet,” I cried, wanting it to last.

  “Yes. I want to see it in your eyes when you come for me. Come on my cock now, Anya,” he commanded.

  And just like that, I did. My body obeying him. I screamed, then he finally kissed me deep, groaning his own release with gentle strokes of his tongue. Trying to tell me with his mouth and body that it would be all right, that I was his now and he’d take care of me. Never before had I thought to have someone care for me like this. To crave me on a primitive, savage level. Never before had I thought to return those raw emotions. The fact that it was Dommiel, a demon, who’d cracked through my independent resolve and showed me that my perfect black-and-white world didn’t exist somehow seemed poetic. He showed me that even the darkest heart yearns for the light.

  Panting and breathless, he kept me pinned to the wall, impaled on that still half-hard flesh blade of his that was more dangerous to me than any weapon of steel. It was glorious.

  “Never again,” he murmured again, tucking his face into my neck.

  Knowing he referred to keeping me from the fighting ring, keeping me from harm, I exhaled a sad sigh and wished he could. Pressing my lips to the sweaty skin of his neck, inhaling the addictive scent of him, I wished this could last forever. I wished I could disappear into the protective shade of his lovely midnight-and-indigo aura, that we could go where the world couldn’t find us.

  For Simian was coming for me. And soon.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dommiel

  We’d been driving for an hour—beginning from the Russian side near the Estonian border—when the transport van finally approached the Kadriorg Palace. Lisabette’s lair in Estonia. Finally. I needed to lay my eyes on Anya and know she was all right. I’d wanted to ride in the back of the transport van with her, but that would’ve been a giveaway that she meant more to me than she should. And Lisabette’s demon guards who’d picked us up were all too watchful.

  Still, having to watch the guards shut her in the barred cage where her wings were cramped nearly sent me into a rage. Skaal had to send me off to smoke a cigarette while they cuffed her wrists before I ripped their arms off. The anxiety from having her out of my eyesight as we drove deeper and deeper into Vladek’s territory struck a harrowing nerve.

  We’d passed his castle, the medieval Ivongorod on the Narva River, but thankfully the guards kept going, trekking through the snow-swept lands of Estonia. I’d watched the flow of the river for some time, noting its path moving away from Vladek’s lands where I knew it emptied in the Baltic Sea. I’d used the time as we approached Lisabette’s palace to formulate our plan. The terrain gave me all the ideas I needed. One last piece would slip into place, but only after we got inside her palace and I found what I was looking for.

  The sight of her palace, a seventeenth-century Baroque, actually made me heave a sigh of relief. The muscle-bound guard I was paired with—Vaughn—glanced at me. Skaal was in a black SUV with another behind us. Vaughn had said little to nothing along the way, which was fine by me. But with the sight of the palace in the near distance, and my anxiety easing up, I realized a misstep on my part. Time to charm him with what time we had left.

  “Nervous?” His Russian accent was thick. “You don’t seem the type to be nervous, my lord.”

  I found it interesting that lowlings still gave me the deference of my station. Obviously, he didn’t know about my outcast status, but I was sure that secret wou
ld be out before long. Coming here of my own accord was like taking a leisurely Sunday stroll into Tolkien’s Mount Doom in Mordor. It just wasn’t done. But I’d never played by the rules. Why bother now, even though this witch could trap me here and offer me to her master as a gift. From what I knew of her, she liked her independence. And her power. Her greed and pride would be all I needed to flip it all my way.

  “No, comrade,” I replied. “Just need a cigarette.”

  I pulled the pack from my inside pocket and rolled a brimstone between my thumb and forefinger, catching the guard’s eye.

  “Care for one?”

  “Ya.” He smiled for the first time, taking a cigarette from my case.

  I snapped it shut and tucked it away. Flipping my Zippo to life, I lit his first, then mine, cracking the window. Frigid winter air sucked out the swirling smoke. Even so, the deep inhalation inside this contained space sparked my senses to an electric hum under my skin. Exactly what I needed.

  “Fuck,” said the guard. “Best brimstone I’ve ever had.”

  “I have the best supplier. Good friend of mine.”

  “Care to share?”

  “Her name is Bone.” I flicked the tip of ash out the window. “From London.”

  “Bone?” His eyes widened farther. “The maker of the ether-enhanced automatics? And the forger of the black steel claymore?”

  Relaxing into a friendly smile, I was thankful once more for Bone’s kickass skills. And the fact she liked me. She didn’t like many demons. Or angels or humans, for that matter. This was my in.

  “She’s the one.” I lifted my mechanical hand, displaying its dexterity and craftsmanship. “She made this for me, too.” I wiggled my fingers and balled them into a fist. “Remarkably skilled.”

  The brawny demon stared at me like I was a god. Comical, that.

  “My comrades and I worship her.”

  Yeah, I could see that. They probably had a shrine and everything.