Her Psycho Beasts, page 43
part #3 of Her Vicious Beasts Series
Never in my life did I think I’d be protecting my father’s men from Minnie. Not after she’d saved my life from the bullets of these very beasts. Not after everything. There is only confusion and fear on her tiny, round face, and that expression is mirrored in every face around the hall.
Xander had always been right. I’d been raised a serpent and was showing that tonight. I am a conniving, manipulative, cruel beast who’d betray her friends. Her mates.
But I had made a vow.
Marduk and Yeti haul Minnie back from trying to get to me.
“Keep her safe. Get them all out of here,” I project to the tiger.
Marduk, his brows creased as his clever mind figures this out, nods at me and angles to get her, Connor, Stacey and the others out.
Lyle and Savage viciously yank at their protections but fail to remove them. I won’t turn to look at them. Won’t see the betrayal and hurt on their faces. The rage. Gods, they are strong, but against their regina…
Once everyone has been shoved back from the dance floor and away from me, guns angled at them, one of the serpent generals swaggers in. At seven feet tall and with this skeleton mask and shadows roiling around his frame, Ghoul is one of the most dangerous beasts this hall has ever seen.
But what I’m not prepared for is the way a sallow-skinned Damien Agnis stumbles in after him, rubbing his hands together, his eyes darting around excitedly. He wears his usual white suit and glasses, but his fiery hair is lacklustre today. Something in my healing powers tells me that the phoenix lord has been unwell.
“She is there!” Damien shouts unnecessarily, pointing at me. “That is Aurelia Boneweaver.”
“I see her,” Ghoul deadpans. “Bring her forward.”
I’m not naive. My fifth mate is not on my side. He never has been. And right now, I don’t need him to be. The end of a gun prods at my spine, and reluctantly, I step forward. All eyes press upon me, and I catch Raquel’s gun metal grey eyes, staring hard at me from the corner. I curse. Marduk must not have been able to reach her in time.
“Do nothing,” I warn my wolf-friend.
“Oh, Aurelia. Scythe’s going to be so mad,” they reply.
“I hope so.”
A sudden look of horrific realisation passes over Raquel’s features.
Not being able to see Ghoul’s face behind his mask makes it difficult to gauge anything of what he’s thinking, but Damien’s face is pale and sweaty, like he’s unfathomably excited.
I should have known he’d be involved in this.
My mates are frantically tapping on my telepathic shields, but I cannot let them in now. I’m so close.
“Do you have something to say?” To my surprise, Ghoul’s deep voice extends not to me, but to someone behind me.
I turn around, a bit of relief washing through my veins, to see Xander, straightening the bottom of his suit and striding towards me, gold pocket chain glinting under the hall lights.
We stand in the middle of the circle of onlookers now, and the expression on the dragon’s face is something I’ve never seen before. His usual barely repressed molten fury has turned…cold. He’s almost like Scythe in the way his face is devoid of emotion. Completely and utterly blank. And his normally glowing white eyes… I’ve never seen them this shade of harsh black. Something flickers at the edges of him. A spot of grey.
I stare in a mixture of awe and horror as a memory of an eerily similar moment comes back to me. Of Titus and Minnie in the middle of an audience just like this one.
Xander leans down so that only I can hear what he says.
“I hate you,” he hisses. “I hate you for existing. I hate you for breathing. I hate you for what you turned me into.”
He makes a movement so quick that I barely register the pain.
Crimson drips freely. I stare at my forearm, stricken into silence as a deep scratch on my skin bleeds.
Everything around me seems to darken.
Xander straightens and says loudly, “I formally reject you as my mate.”
My very being is rendered still. Frozen in time and space as something pure and crucial inside of me tears in two. I cast my memory back to the night I had spoken to him in the TV room and Savage had almost caught us.
“I know you don’t like me,” I’d said, sticking my chin up in the air. “I know you’d prefer me dead. Now, I’m giving you that opportunity.”
He’d narrowed his eyes at me, those glowing orbs becoming slits. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if you want me gone, now is your chance. I’m going to give myself up to my father. Ghoul has agreed but we need a beast facilitating things here.”
His eyes had flickered black then, the lack of colour sending my blood pressure skyrocketing. “You don’t even know what you’re saying.”
“Oh but I do.” My voice had turned into ice and I showed him just how serious I was. “You’ll get what you’ve always wanted. And so will I. Will you do it?”
Those blackened eyes flickered again and before he said. “So be it.”
Now, under the ancient chandelier of the Animus dining room, surrounded by my mates and friends, Xander leans towards me and says viciously, “You had your plans and I had mine.”
As if under water, my head slowly looks back up to see his face. His neck. And the place where our mating mark had been is now utterly and completely bare.
Chapter 95
Scythe
Cain Clawson stands proud before me, his aura flooded with violent black and red.
“You think you can keep me from my regina?” I laugh then. Like I’ve never laughed before at the infinity of stars above. I don’t care that it sounds mad. I don’t care that I am mad.
Cain gives a silent order and the crossbows are cocked, the strings creaking as they are drawn back.
I dive just as the arrows are fired, flinging out my power in a wave that knocks the front line off their feet. They writhe on the bitumen, coughing up blood, the wet sounds of their choking filling the air like the most beautiful song.
As I roll smoothly to my feet, I crave to hear more of it. I want a symphony.
There is shouting as felines move forward to replace the broken archers, and I feel an incessant tug as multiple beasts try their telekinesis on me.
My power sweeps it away and their power goes tumbling like seaweed in the surf.
Focusing my power, I unleash it upon the next wave of felines and hyenas, but stronger beasts have come forward now, and their power pulls at me…and finds purchase.
I roar at them as they advance towards me, no less than twenty hands outstretched.
They force my knees to crumple. I land heavily on bone, my torso kept straight.
Cain sneers at me from under his heavy black beard. “You’ve thought yourself infallible for too long. You and your kind.” He stands aside and a lanky, pale figure is shoved forward, bound in obsidian. Silver hair shines under the streetlight, and two ice-blue eyes look in opposing directions.
“Mr Kharkorous!” Hammer shouts. “They say they want to kill me!” A knife coated with milky liquid is angled at Hammer’s throat. He feels the scrape and screams. “I want to go home!”
A snarl tears from my throat, but the telekinesis holds me firm. A phantom pops up in my periphery, wraith-like, hollow-eyed with jagged teeth. It is followed by another, then another. They line themselves up shoulder to shoulder, weaving through my enemies. Mouths open to reveal needle light teeth and they laugh in a pitch that mimics my own.
“They belong in an institution,” Cain snaps, “or six feet under. Fill him with arrows.”
I laugh again at that great joke, because Xander had destroyed Mace’s big supply of firearms. They had to resort to ancient tactics now.
Crossbows?
My laugh echoes in my own ears.
Mad or not, I want my regina. She is the object of all my desires. Of my obsession.
But a pain pierces my torso, right between the muscles of my hard abdomen. Disbelief clouds my brain as the shaft of an arrow, long and thin, juts out from my skin, the arrowhead disappearing completely. A fell burning courses through my gut.
Pain blossoms on my right side, then my left. I tug at the bonds holding me, the veins in my neck bulging, sweat erupting upon my skin. Burning fills my stomach, my sides, my chest, as more arrows pierce my body.
I roar, straining against the forces holding me tight, pulling and pulling. My foot moves behind me and with one sweeping motion, I plant it before me.
“How is he still up?” someone calls.
“More arrows!” Cain commands.
“Mr Kharkorous!” Hammer cries.
Pain blooms in my chest. I look like a pincushion now. That burning is pounding through my body with each heartbeat.
A phantom tears apart from the group and wanders forward. I squint at it, wondering at this new development.
But she glows blue. She walks with familiar grace, silver hair full and floating around her naked body.
Not a phantom. A ghost.
“My son,” my mother rasps, her voice harsh, even in death.
“Mother,” I choke.
“This is not the way,” she says, her eyes furious as she beckons to the phantoms chanting their heinous song around me. “Take it. Make it yours.”
Something nudges within my centre. Something that feels golden and blue-eyed sassily demands attention.
I shake my head. “I want her to live within me. I want to feel her close.” Close, but separate.
She smiles. “Did you forget? She was made for you.”
I reach for those glowing drops within me, the power my regina blessed me with, that I had been keeping in a lonely corner of my heart, and grasp it with both psychic hands.
My regina’s voice resounds in my head. “It’s me and you against the dark, shark-man.”
The glowing drop expands. It fills me with pure Boneweaver power, wild like a tempest storm.
That primal shark within me makes its own vow. “I will walk in the dark with you for all of eternity. And for every eternity thereafter.”
Power erupts from my core, funnelling through every blood vessel, every artery and vein, filling the chambers of my heart, flushing the venom away. I roar in triumph, planting my other foot in front of me and rising to my full height once again. My face flushes with heat, and I know from the gasps and the heat that my eyes have turned a glowing gold. My teeth extend into weapons wholly sharp and lethal.
Had they forgotten who is King of the Marine Court? Had they forgotten who’d given the sea a voice?
Had they forgotten my regina is the Lady Aurelia Boneweaver?
A wave of power roars from me like a tsunami, and it floods the area, sweeping every beast up in its wake, grasping their hearts and rendering them frozen, eyes wild with terror.
Hammer goes toppling to the ground, his chains clanking. He unravels himself like a bucking, rabid animal and gets to his feet, then sprints past me and towards the water.
The scent of fear and horror fill the air, and it’s then that I realise it.
My phantoms. My apparitions. They’ve fallen back. Their voices silenced. My mind is…
Free.
Their voices and images are not gone, exactly, but they are held back as a dam holds back the colossal weight of thousands of gallons of water. Frowning, I look around my internal forces.
I seek it out, the layers of Boneweaver magic, and just as I had once stripped back Aurelia’s seven layers of magic, I leaf through the layers of her power. Eagle, wolf, lion, shark, crocodile, phoenix; a whisper of her beasts lie within me, but there, glittering with precious force, is something that is uniquely hers. Only Aurelia’s.
It stretches out within me, a layer of glittering, celestial water that protects me from the psychosis.
Not water, Boneweaver tears.
Because what are tears but brine filled with emotion, in the same way the sea is laden with power?
A clatter of wood tells me the arrows have been pushed out and have fallen from my body, useless now.
Cain roars, breaking free of my hold. I come back to my external world to see the massive tiger charging towards me.
But something in the night sky distracts the both of us, stopping him short.
It’s fiery and red, travelling at colossal speed. Like a comet, but flying way too low…
The very earth trembles.
I fling my arm up over my head just as Celeste slams into the ground in a shower of sparks and embers. She shifts into her human form and extends her hand out to me. “Come with me. Now.”
“Gladly, my lady.”
She shifts back into her phoenix form and soars over me, her talons angled in my direction. I get my hands up just in time and she grabs on to them in each of her claws, effortlessly lifting me up. My feet leave the ground, and within seconds, I’m being hauled over the city, Cain shouting in rage after us.
“Brace yourself,” is all the warning she gives me before she accelerates with speed only a phoenix is capable of. My eardrums pop as she breaks the sound barrier, sending us hurtling across the state.
Chapter 96
Aurelia
Two guards wrap gloved hands around my biceps and turn me around to face Savage and Lyle.
“Say goodbye to your little mates.” Ghoul’s deep voice is the sound of male arrogance. “Boys, say farewell to your regina.”
Even against my powerful shield, Savage opens his mouth and roars a mighty bellow.
I stumble back a step as he fights off my hold and his body shifts, but not in the way I expect. His human body remains the same as his mouth elongates in a muzzle full of vicious teeth, and his entire face sprouts midnight black fur as his head becomes a wolf’s. His arms elongate and his hands also shift into their wolf form, growing long, sharp claws.
His shift abruptly stops there.
Dear Mother Goddess. He’s half-shifted.
An otherworldly snarl rips from his gaping maw and he continues to tear free of my protections, bit by bit.
As if inspired, Lyle seems to choose to let go of his own control and his pupils swallow his eyes. From his chest, a lion’s roar breaks free.
The frantic serpents angle their weapons on them.
“No!” I scream. “Do not hurt them! Do not—”
“Enough,” Xander’s deep, annoyed voice chops through the din like an axe.
“Move out,” Ghoul commands.
As I’m hauled away from my mates and out of the dining hall into the night, I’m screaming my mate’s names, a new fear and uncertainty borne inside of me.
What have I done?
Chapter 97
Scythe
It only feels like minutes later when the dark landscape is broken up by the lights of Animus Academy.
“Scythe!” Savage roars into my mind, registering my presence close by. “They took her! They took our regina!”
Fear lances through me, sharper and more poisonous than anything I’ve ever experienced. I barely notice the ache in my wrists as Celeste descends.
She slows her supersonic speed, but we still approach the academy fast enough to make my heart pound.
I get a view of chaos, students running and guards trying to muster them as Celeste inclines at a sharp angle and drops me without warning onto the front lawn. I land with a jarring thunk, rolling to cushion the blow and leaping to my feet before sprinting towards the dining hall, scanning the grounds, scenting the wind.
Any enemy that was here is only recently gone.
My own guards shout my name, and when they see no sign of me slowing, they run behind me.
“Aurelia!” I roar into the night. As I enter the dining hall, I call my brothers’ names. The hall is devoid of students, with only my guards and my wolf and lion standing frozen by the wall.
Immediately, my hackles raise. Savage has half shifted—he has a wolf’s head and upper limbs on a human’s body, and he howls into the ceiling, the rest of his body stationary.
Their lack of movement has me on high alert.
Ernie and Bernie are trying to calm Savage. Meanwhile, Lyle is on his knees, his face pale, his body drenched in sweat as he appears to be held by invisible bonds.
It can’t be.
She couldn’t have.
But she has, I realise as Lyle shoots me a pained expression and Savage calls my name.
“Get away from them,” I command.
The bear brothers immediately stand aside and I grab Savage by the shoulders. “Speak, brother. What happened? Where is she?”
But Aurelia’s own magic is holding them firm. Binding them. Anger swells in me like a gathering wave, and I cut my finger through the air twice, breaking my brothers free of their telekinetic bonds.
“We need to go after her,” I say, rapidly assessing the action in the hall. Marduk appears around the corner, jogging towards me; no doubt he’d assured his regina’s safety first.
“She bid us to stay,” Lyle says, getting to his feet and removing his tie. “Commanded it!”
“Fuck that!” Savage’s voice says inside our minds before he sprints outside, making the guards shout and scatter.
“I’m going to get the car,” Lyle says, following after him.
Marduk falls into stride beside me just as a scent in the hall sends my shark thrashing.
Ghoul.
“She went of her own accord, Scythe,” Marduk says, eyes glimmering with adrenaline. “She planned this. Her, Xander and the basilisk.”
As we exit the dining hall back into the night, a mythic power booms through the air like a drum. I freeze and fling out an arm to stop Marduk. Ahead of me, Savage and Lyle freeze too.
“Quiet!” Lyle roars.
The guards around us sense it and everyone on the lawn stops in their tracks. Everyone’s hackles are raised. Everyone is poised.
It comes to us from the main road, in the direction the serpent trucks would have left.
