My fingers found their way into Adonis’s shirt, exploring his muscled body, and he let out a low growl.
I couldn’t remember why he didn’t want to give in to me here, why he wouldn’t just take me in the grass right now … there was some reason, but it was stupid, and I could entice him if I just pulled off my dress.
“Ruby,” his lips were at my ear, his breath hot against my skin.
“You. Me. Now.” My ability to phrase things elegantly seemed to have disappeared along with my shoes somewhere. Might as well discard the dress with it. I pulled up the hem of my dress, then tossed it into the grass. Lust lit me on fire.
A cool breeze kissed my skin, and Adonis’s gaze raked over me, studying every curve. My pulse roared.
At the look he was giving me, raw need surged. I had a vague sense that we were outside somewhere, that people might be watching, and I really should have my dress on. But I couldn’t quite stop myself. I kissed him deeply, rubbing against him as I tried to make the aching stop.
Adonis pulled down my bra, covering one of my nipples with his mouth. I hooked my leg around him, trying to draw him in closer to me. He pressed his hard body into me, teeth skimming my nipple. Then, his tongue swirled over it. He wanted me as badly as I wanted him.
My breath hitched in my throat. “Touch my crinkum crankum….”
He pulled away from my breast. “What?”
Shit. Had I said that out loud? I’d just killed the mood. Godsdamn executioner, getting in my head.
I swallowed hard. “I didn’t say anything.”
In the next moment, he was spinning me around so I faced the tree. His hands found their way into my panties, and he stroked me with such a light touch between my legs that I thought I might lose my mind.
“Adonis,” I moaned, rolling my hips, my ass pressing against him.
His breath was hot against my ear. “Tell me you love me.”
I’d say anything he wanted right now just to get him to touch me harder. And in any case, it was the truth. I shuddered as he stroked me again, too lightly. I pressed myself against his hand.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Lightning cracked again. An adder slithered though the grass toward me, and I had a vague sense that I needed to get away from it … something about venom, but….
“Say it louder,” Adonis whispered.
As it slithered up my leg, another wave of pleasure rippled through me. This was how Eve had felt in the Garden of Eden, when Azazeyl had tempted her. This was—
That’s when the adder sank its fangs into my thigh.
“Ouch!” I shrieked.
Adonis’s body stiffened, and he pulled away from me.
I gripped the adder by its neck—if you could say that a snake had a neck—and pulled it off me. Two red droplets bloomed on my thigh.
“That thing is venomous.” He ripped it from my hand. In an instant, the snake went limp. Adonis didn’t have to expend much effort to kill—it just kind of happened naturally for him.
The place where the adder had bitten me throbbed, and the pain was enough to bring me back down to earth.
“I need to get the venom out,” said Adonis. In the next moment, he was on his knees, his head between my legs, his hot mouth on my thigh. His tongue moved expertly over my skin, sucking out the venom. Involuntarily, I felt my thighs clenching around his head, and I threaded my fingers into his hair.
When I’d imagined Adonis’s head between my thighs, snake venom hadn’t been in the picture, and yet I wasn’t going to complain about the feel of his mouth on my skin.
If I could just get these panties off—
But just as I was thinking it, he pulled his head away. A droplet of blood glistened on his lower lip. “That’s the venom out.”
“Venom?” I blinked.
He stood. “From the adder bite.”
“Right. Yes.”
Adonis looked dazed, his eyes half-lidded with lust like mine. Then, he straightened, smoothing out his clothes. “We were on our way to the castle.” He reached down to the ground, picked up my dress, and handed it to me.
“I know that. I’ve been thinking about it the whole time.”
When lightning speared the sky again, I found that the women weren’t quite as I’d imagined them. Their breasts weren’t on display. They wore ordinary frocks, hems at their knees. A few men in suits were standing around, pretending to ignore us, even though I knew they’d seen everything.
With my cheeks reddening, I pulled my wet dress over my body, then snatched my weapons off the ground.
Keep it together, Ruby.
Chapter 22
We just barely managed to keep our clothes on the rest of the way up to the castle.
A long, crooked stone bridge spanned a moat between where we stood and the castle itself. Electric lights flickered inside the narrow castle windows. There were no guards here, no soldiers to protect the place.
“Any idea where we are?”
Adonis shook his head, staring at his palm. Blood still ran from the thorn wounds, pooling on the pavement. “No, but all the Devil’s Bane is weakening me. My body isn’t even healing like it should.”
I swallowed hard. “Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe I should come back with Hazel, or someone else impervious to the Devil’s Bane.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “No way. You are not sending me away for my safety to come back with a teenaged fae.”
I could already tell there was no arguing with him. And in any case, we really didn’t have much time to lose.
“Let’s see if we can get in there, then.”
We stood before the castle’s entrance, and a pulse of electricity surged between the spires above us. It had a clear rhythm to it, and I guessed there must have been some kinds of thin wires connecting them. Beneath our feet, a sheen of copper glinted from the cobblestones.
This whole city looked like it had been built to conduct electricity.
An eerie feeling rippled over me, and I suddenly felt very grateful for the bow and arrows I’d brought with me. Despite all the aphrodisia, this whole place creeped me out. I stared at the entrance—an ordinary-looking wooden door with what looked like an electric buzzer—wondering if we were just supposed to ring the doorbell. But before I crossed the stones toward it, a shudder whispered up my spine.
Loud, thumping footfalls turned my head, and I whirled to find a monstrous man looming over us. At the sight of his face, my mouth went dry.
He held a torch aloft, and it cast wavering light over his misshapen face. His skin looked piecemeal, like it had been poorly sewn together. It had a yellowish hue, stretched tightly over his bones. It was practically translucent, and I could see the sinews and muscles through it. He must have been at least eight feet tall, dressed in rags, with the dark lips of a corpse….
Suddenly the pieces were starting to come together in my mind. The emptied graves I’d seen in London, the missing corpses, the jerky movements of this city’s inhabitants, the electricity everywhere.
“Somewhere in this city is a necromancer,” I whispered. “We should be very careful.”
Adonis stared at the corpse, his expression unimpressed. “Please don’t tell me the festering bag of flesh before us is the king of this place.”
Adonis had spent so much time being immortal, and completely immune to any kind of harm, that he really had no idea when to shut up. Even when Devil’s Bane had made him vulnerable.
“Not a king,” said the corpse.
Honestly, the fact that he could talk—and talk clearly—surprised me.
“Not a king,” the creature repeated as he straightened. He pressed a hand to his fleshy chest. “A monster who roams this earth alone, scorned intensely by all who behold me for my wretchedness. Why do I live? I’ve been cursed with a countenance that inspires dread, and yet deep within my bosom—”
Adonis rolled his eyes. “Here we go.”
The monster scowled, then cleared his throat. �
�Deep within my bosom, I hold feelings of affection. Yet other passions stir me like any other man—not least among them a venomous rage. Despair imbues my every thought, and I yearn for revenge. I shall draw sweet pleasure by indulging myself in your shrieks and torment as you die. For within my bosom—”
The rest of his monologue was cut off by a swing from Adonis’s sword. The blade cut his meaty arm, slicing into it. The monster roared, even though no blood poured from his body.
“Stop it with the bosoms,” Adonis snarled. “You sound like a twat.”
The monster staggered back, but the blow hardly seemed to affect him. In the next moment, he was lunging for Adonis, wielding his torch like a weapon. “I shall incinerate you and relish the cries of your torment!”
I pulled an arrow from my quiver, nocking it. “I take it your death powers aren’t working on him.”
“No. He is unnatural, and so is his soul.”
I loosed my arrow, and it found its mark in his chest. He kept stumbling onward, moving toward me with his torch, and I stepped backward.
“The gods should never have given the fire of knowledge to mankind,” he bellowed. “For look what they’ve done with it. The world reviles me, and anguish pierces me to the marrow! I am malicious only because—”
Adonis swung for him again, his blade carving into the monster’s side. “Please stop talking.”
The monster howled, but he seemed undeterred. I nocked another arrow, and it sailed into his chest, protruding next to the other one. “I am alone!” he cried, thrusting his torch at us. “And palely loitering!”
The weapons weren’t stopping him. Still, there was only one of him, and two of us.
At least, there had been only one of him. I gaped as more monsters stumbled from the shadows, their feet slamming against the stones.
“I thought you said you were tormented by solitude?” snapped Adonis. “There are dozens of you. What in the gods’ names are you complaining about?”
“Each of us equally tormented by cruel solitude, for within our bosoms—”
One of my arrows slammed into his jaw, cutting off his rambling. But as soon as it did, I felt a searing heat scorching the back of my arm.
I whirled to find a new monster thrusting his torch at me. “The fires of knowledge burn you!”
“That is actual, literal fire,” I shouted, gripping my arm. “You fucking knob-end.”
Lucky for me, the rain had dampened my clothing, so nothing ignited.
But now, more monsters surrounded us, each one of them waving a torch and banging on about their bosoms and cruel visages. Most importantly, they all looked eager to light us on fire. My heart raced, and I loosed arrow after arrow.
My arrows were flying uselessly into them, striking their hearts, their lungs. And it didn’t make a godsdamned bit of difference, because they just kept lumbering on, waving their torches.
They’d encircled us, closing us in, determined to burn us to death.
I backed up to Adonis, my arrow still raised. “Now might be a good time to use those wings.”
“Already? I thought we were doing well here.”
“Do you really want to stand here listening to their monologues?”
“You have a point.”
In the next moment, his arms were encircling me, and he lifted me into the air, wings beating the rainy air. As he lifted me above the castle, I stared down at the undead mob below us. We’d escaped them, but they blocked the only entrance I could see to the castle.
I had no idea what could kill these fuckers, until another bold of lightning cracked the sky.
I had a feeling that electrical pulses had given life to these corpses. Was it possible that a powerful electrical current could also overwhelm them—overloading their synapses?
That electricity between the palace spires pulsed again, igniting the wires between the towers. As it did, an idea began to spark in my mind.
Rainwater covered the ground below us. Water conducted electricity, right?
The storm hammered against us, and I shifted in Adonis’s arms. “Can you bring us over to those wires? The ones with the electricity running between them?”
“Why?” he murmured in my ear. “Are you planning on ending it all after listening to them speak for too long?”
“No, I think I have an idea.” I reached behind my back, pulling an arrow from my quiver.
I’d just have to be very quick, or I really would end it all.
Adonis soared toward the wires that stretched between the spires. I watched them carefully, getting a feel for the rhythm of the electrical pulses. I had about five seconds between each one. “When I say ‘now,’ bring me right down to the wire.”
“Are you going to tell me what in the gods’ names this is about?”
“You’ll just have to trust me.”
When the next burst of electricity sparked and snapped along the wire, I said, “Now!”
One.
Adonis swooped lower until we were just over the copper wire.
Two.
I ripped it out of its mooring, the copper biting into my fingers.
Three. I quickly tied the wire to the end of my arrow.
Four. I raised my bow, then loosed the arrow. It soared into the crowd of monsters, touching down on the wet ground.
Five.
The next electrical pulse burst along the line, racing down the copper until it ignited within the crowd. Electricity singed the air as it surged through the monsters’ bodies, and the scent of burning flesh curled all around us.
One by one, they fell to the ground.
“There.” I nuzzled my face against Adonis’s. “They’re not tormented by solitude anymore.”
“You could say that.”
“Because they’re dead,” I added.
“I understood, yes.”
During the next gap between electrical pulses, I yanked on the wire, pulling the arrow up from the ground. With one shot from my bow, it soared over the castle’s spires in the other direction.
And just like that, I’d cleared the ground for our landing.
Chapter 23
He lowered us to the ground, and we stood before the fallen pile of monsters.
Honestly, there was no better antidote to an aphrodisiac than a pile of scorched, undead and re-dead monsters. The stench and the charred remains managed to dampen any remaining lust that might have heated my body. At least, for now.
I glanced at Adonis’s hand, grimacing when I saw the blood still flowing from his palm. If we spent too long here, would he actually become mortal? And what other disturbing creatures would we run into?
I stared at the castle entrance. Unlike a traditional castle with an iron gate or portcullis, this one had a wooden door inset into a stone opening. The stone doorframe had been carved to look like some sort of clown with sharp teeth. I shuddered. I was no psychological expert, but clown-fascination never seemed like the hallmark of mental stability or social adjustment.
An electric light flickered above us, and I eyed the buzzer.
While I was mentally calculating another complex plan with my bow and arrow—in case something came running for us—Adonis reached over me, pushing the buzzer.
“Just like that. You’re ringing the doorbell.”
He shrugged.
After a few beats of silence, the castle door creaked open on its own, revealing an empty stone hallway. There were no defenses here to deter us. Had the king been expecting us? It only reinforced my sense that he’d been watching us.
We crossed into the hall, where the tall ceiling arched high above us. A crimson velvet carpet stretched out over the floor like the tongue of an enormous beast. I breathed in deeply, that floral aphrodisiac heating my blood again.
Lightbulbs crackled and sparked from the arched ceiling, and a rhythmic beat from distant music pulsed in the air. I glanced at the carpet, thinking of Adonis’s tongue on my thighs. A smile curled my lips.
It was at this m
oment that I looked down at myself, realizing that at some point—probably in the last few seconds—I’d pulled down the top of my dress, exposing my sheer bra. The strap of my bow carved between my breasts. My nipples were standing at attention, and for a moment, the sight of them distracted me until I yanked my top up once more. Keep it together, Agent Hudole.
Adonis’s hand around my waist didn’t help the situation, and he leaned into me, breathing in deeply. I indulged myself in a quick kiss on his neck, licking his skin, tasting a hint of salt. Then, I forced myself to pull away again, thinking of the stench of scorched corpses.
Stay focused, Ruby. Stay focused. Corpse bosoms and scorched flesh.
At the top of the stairs, the doors opened into a red-velvet-draped hall. It had the shabby, faded grandeur of an old music hall—in fact, maybe it was an old music hall, crammed with people in vibrant clothing. Voices echoed off the high ceiling. A stage stood at one end of the hall, and balconies and box seats hung above us. Faded green and red paint chipped off the wood. I liked it here. In fact, I didn’t really want to leave.
“This place is amazing,” I breathed.
I could almost envision myself on the stage, giving the burlesque performance of my life. Some black tassels, a fan dance. In fact, I had the strongest urge to get up there right now.
Adonis’s eyes were on me, blazing with intensity, and I could feel his magic strengthen, licking over my body. “It’s going to be hard to focus in here,” he said.
I licked my lips. “You have a knack for understatements.”
Chandeliers with sparking lightbulbs illuminated the crowd. All around us, women wore thigh-high stockings and short, bright frocks. They sipped from bright green drinks, their cheeks and lips painted red. The men wore suits, many of them with thin mustaches and slick hair.
Rogue Fae (A Spy Among the Fallen Book 3) Page 13
