Pride, page 21
part #5 of The Damning Series
I desperately tried to get to her, tried to take a single step through the sludge-like air, but it proved to be futile. I screamed her name mindlessly, but she never turned to stare at me.
She never removed her hand from the damn dagger still sticking out of my dad’s chest.
And then…
Everything stopped.
The wind snapped back into Z like a rubber band being pulled too taut, though she still didn’t move to face us. Her head was lowered, golden curls concealing her face from view, but her body trembled with unfettered energy.
Shocked gasps and murmurs rippled through the crowd, and one of the ‘brides’ began to sob from where she sat curled on the ground, her arms above her head. Lupe was holding his sister protectively, his light blue eyes trained on Z’s back, just like mine were.
“Z?” he rasped out.
Slowly, mechanically almost, Z lifted a single hand into the air. Silence descended as we all watched with bated breath, wondering what she was about to do.
And then, she snapped her fingers, and everyone around us dropped to the ground, dead.
The guards. The women our fathers told us to marry. The crowd of onlookers.
Dead.
There was nothing dramatic about their deaths—no blood oozing from their eyes or leaking from their mouths. No heads bent at unnatural angles or bodies grotesquely deformed. They simply fell over, their expressions perpetually fixed in ones of fear, horror, and shock.
Axel spun around in a wide circle, seemingly surprised he had been spared, and Lupe’s grip on a still trembling Atta tightened almost imperceptibly.
“Z?” Devlin took a tentative step closer.
Z slowly turned around.
I sucked in a sharp breath, a noise that was echoed by all of us who were still alive.
My mate’s eyes were normally a shade of light blue, a striking contrast to her fair skin and golden ringlets. But just then, they were pitch-black, as if the pupils had swallowed the irises and sclerae.
Her wedding dress fanned out around her, and she tilted her head to the side as she studied us. There was no recognition in her gaze, no spark of love. Nothing but an apathetic mask peered back at me from the face of the woman I loved more than life itself.
“Z?” Killian trembled beside me, and my mate’s lips stretched into a snake-like grin. Poisonous. Deadly. Unforgiving.
“What’s the matter, Kill?” she asked in a singsong, mocking voice. She absently touched a red smear on the front of her wedding dress. “Afraid of a little blood?”
Twenty-Eight
Killian
This woman was not my mate.
Not my Z.
Sure, she had the same face, the same blonde hair, the same crooked smile, but everything about her was all wrong. Z’s smile usually expanded towards her eyes, causing the blue to sparkle like water in sunlight. But this Z’s smile? It was forced, a mockery of the grin I had come to know and love. And her eyes…
Her sweet, beautiful eyes…
Staring into them now reminded me of the ocean—dark, fathomless, and full of monsters you couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
“You killed all of those people,” Ryland murmured, his shadows twitching around his broad form as he hovered in the corner of the room.
“Are you suggesting I let them live?” Once again, Z canted her head slightly to the side, an expression of genuine disbelief marring her perfect features. “That’s silly of you, Ryland.” She heaved out a prolonged breath and descended the last few steps of the raised platform, stopping when she was before us. “You’re lucky I let you guys live.”
“Z, this isn’t you—” Bash’s heartfelt plea was interrupted by a dark portal manifesting in the center of the throne room.
I spun around, my heart in my throat, to see a familiar red-haired woman step through the swirling vortex of smoke.
Aaliyah.
She appeared positively giddy as she studied the room and the dead bodies littering it.
“You…” Ryland growled threateningly, his shadows propelling him forward in a blur of darkness. “You did this.”
Aaliyah placed a hand over her chest in mock surprise. “I have no idea what you mean, shadow. I simply helped you guys defeat the kings, did I not?”
“Y-you did something to Z,” I stammered out, hating how small I suddenly felt. How useless. Where did all my strength and courage go when I needed it? “What did you do?”
“Nothing.” Aaliyah pushed her lips out into a pout. “I mean, it’s not my fault that she was the one who used the dagger on the kings. If one of you had used it, it would’ve happened to you…” She feigned a sigh, studying her nails without a care in the world.
“What the fuck did you do?” Lupe growled out.
“You probably should’ve read the entire text of that little book B found before you did anything rash,” Aaliyah remarked, amusement obvious in the tilt of her lips.
“The dagger…” Bash scrubbed a hand through his ash-blond hair. “It took the magic away from the kings, just as you promised.” He swallowed. “But it also placed that dark magic inside of Z.”
Looking into Aaliyah’s ineffably smug stare made me want to lunge forward and slap her. The intensity of my hatred towards her took me by surprise. I’d never wanted to hit a female as badly as I did her.
“The world is nothing if not a dangerous spider web, Sebastian,” Aaliyah cooed with a saccharine-sweet grin. “The second you become trapped in it, it’s impossible to free yourself. You just have to wait until the spider comes and eats you.” She playfully gnashed her teeth together and then giggled. The noise clawed at my back and sliced open my skin. “You’re all nothing but pathetic, little flies. But Z? Z’s a spider.” Her smile softened when she flicked her gaze towards my mate.
Struggling to keep my expression placid, to not allow her to see how rattled I was by this entire situation, I snapped out, “You mean nothing to Z. You may as well be a damn candle next to the brilliance of the sun. You can’t compare to her.”
I didn’t know where that burst of courage came from, but it was damn worth it, especially when Aaliyah’s face darkened.
“Watch your mouth, incubus,” she hissed.
“Enough with the dramatics.” Z rolled her black eyes as she sashayed forward, her white wedding dress cascading over the faces of the men and women she’d killed. She didn’t give their dead bodies more than a passing stare, utterly indifferent to the carnage she’d caused.
Fuck, this wasn’t Z. This wasn’t the woman I loved.
How the hell were we supposed to get her back?
“You can’t seriously be thinking of going with her?” Ryland’s voice was incredulous and maybe even a little desperate.
“She’s my sister, Ryland.” Z waved a hand in the air dismissively before shifting her gaze towards mine. Our eyes met, and a bolt of ice slashed through my chest. “I’m keeping you alive because of…sentimentality’s sake, but don’t think I’ll extend the courtesy again if you try to stop me or my sister.”
“Z, don’t do this,” Jax all but begged. He stumbled forward and dropped to his knees at her feet. “You promised you wouldn’t leave me. Please.”
Z’s eyes shone like flinty chips in the darkness. “That was the old Z, Jax. The new Z…” She pursed her lips and shrugged. “She honestly doesn’t give a damn.”
Her words were like a garrote, digging into me so deep, they drew blood.
“Z…” Jax pleaded.
“Grow the fuck up, Jax.” She leaned down and patted his cheek condescendingly. “Maybe you wouldn’t be so reliant on me if you actually grew a pair and drank some blood.”
I felt the breath being siphoned from my body when she laughed, the dark, husky sound curling around me like smoke.
“Wait!” Like before, my mouth moved away from me before my brain could catch up. I stumbled forward a few steps as Z’s lips curled into a frown and Aaliyah’s eyebrows bunched together. “Take me with you.”
“Killian—” Bash hissed, but I ignored him.
“Why the fuck would we do that, incubus?” Aaliyah rolled her eyes, but I could see Z wavering. She considered me with a tiny frown.
My heart stuttered and got caught in my throat as I held my mate’s stare, begging her to see me, to remember me. Her face was so pinched, you’d think she’d just swallowed a lemon, but she didn’t immediately deny my request.
I continued on before I could lose my nerve. “I’m an incubus, so I’m really good at the…errr…the sexy stuff. Really, really good. Z knows.” I swallowed heavily. “Z, you could keep me with you so I could pleasure you and…um…do sexy stuff to you.”
Fuck, Killian, you really suck at selling yourself.
“I see.” Z’s lips pursed further.
“I’ll be, like, an incubus on tap,” I continued desperately. “My entire purpose will be all about your pleasure.”
Aaliyah scoffed haughtily. “If it’s pleasure you want, sister, I can find you a thousand incubi who actually know how to use their cocks.”
No fucking way in hell would I allow that to happen.
“Z, you know me. You know that I’m good.” I attempted to stand straighter and puff out my chest, emulating a confidence I didn’t truly feel. “Take me with you.”
“You’ll only be allowed to touch me, incubus.” Z stepped forward and grabbed a hold of my wrist, giving it a squeeze. “No one else.”
“I don’t want anyone else,” I answered honestly.
A muscle in her cheek fluttered, and her grip around my wrist tightened. “All right. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”
“Killian,” Devlin hissed, his voice rife with alarm and fear.
I tried to send my brothers a reassuring smile over my shoulder, though I knew it was slightly wobbly and off-kilter.
What was the saying?
Fake it till you make it?
I definitely was faking the shit out of this right now.
“I’ll be okay,” I assured them, praying it was the truth. “I’ll look after our girl.”
Z gave my wrist a small tug, and I was helpless to do anything but stumble forward. Aaliyah continued to watch me with a pinched face, her eyes narrowing in suspicion, but I simply offered her a tentative smile and wave.
Please, please don’t kill me. Pretty please with sugar on top.
Please give me the strength to be brave and smart enough to save our mate.
“Kill! Z! Don’t do this,” one of my brothers implored, but I didn’t look over my shoulder to see which one. At the moment, their voices all sounded the same—muted and distant through the waves of blood cresting against my skull. My heart pounded erratically, and I knew Z could feel it where her fingers dug into my wrist.
And then we stepped through the churning portal, and the world around me faded in a burst of dark ink.
Epilogue
S
“Quit pacing, brother,” T hissed, but his words barely registered as I forked my fingers through my light brown hair.
Where the fuck were they?
Aaliyah promised they would be here soon, so what was taking them so long?
My thoughts swirled rapidly as my feet ate up the distance from one wall to the other in the ostentatious mansion Aaliyah had claimed for herself.
From the corner of the room, Mali watched on with wide, terrified eyes. Her vampire fangs lengthened as she nibbled on her lower lip, and I flashed her a wide, toothy smile. She blanched, seeming to curl in on herself like old, brittle paper, and I scoffed at how ridiculous she was behaving.
Sure, she had believed me to be dead, but I was the same man I had been when those shifters tore me apart and Devlin made a deal with me to save my soul. The exact. Same. Man.
I rubbed my hand through my disheveled brown curls again and frowned when a strand got tangled in my fingers. Was I…? Was I losing hair? I swallowed heavily as I stared at the innocent brown curl tangled between my fingers before immediately shoving it into my pocket. I didn’t want T to see, to know how…dysfunctional I was becoming. How broken.
The prospect of my imminent hair loss faded when a portal materialized in the center of the living room and three figures stepped out. Aaliyah, looking as radiant and pretentious as always in a frilly green dress that hugged her curves. The fucking incubus, who swallowed convulsively as he glanced around the room, stark fear splayed across his features.
And then…
Z.
My heart rate elevated when I took sight of her slender frame outfitted in a white wedding dress. Her golden curls tumbled loose around her shoulders, and I had to rein in the impulse to grab a strand of that gorgeous blonde hair, tilt her face upwards, and kiss that pink, pouty mouth. My cock stirred to life in my pants as lust barraged me from every direction, blowing air into my lungs and breathing life into a body I’d long thought dead.
“Did it work?” T’s face had drained of all color, his eyes haunted as he stared at Z. No, not at Z…
At her pitch-black eyes.
I bit my lower lip at the thought of gazing into those gorgeous, onyx gemstones as I fucked her tight little cunt. Would she still be as wet for me as she had been years ago, before her bastard of a boyfriend stole me away? Or would her pussy be used up from all of her so-called mates? The thought unfurled wrath in my stomach, along with a healthy dose of envy. It exploded in every direction, coursing through my veins like molten magma.
Unwittingly, my gaze slid to that damn incubus. What the fuck was he doing here? Aaliyah promised me Z if T utilized his contacts in the Alphabet Resistance to figure out her exact location. This incubus fucker was never supposed to be in the equation.
I was a greedy, selfish fucker, and I didn’t want to share. At all. Z was fucking mine.
My girl glanced dismissively around the room, her eyes sweeping over me but never sticking. I noticed her tiny hand was gripping the incubus’s wrist like a life raft, and the jealousy that curdled in my bloodstream was acidic. It burned everything it came into contact with in a torrent of white-hot fire.
Mali cowered in the corner of the room, her large eyes wide and terrified as she stared at what remained of her best friend.
“Z…” she whimpered helplessly, and the incubus’s head whipped in her direction. The two of them exchanged a wordless conversation, and the redheaded fucker’s jaw clenched, his eyes narrowing to slits.
“It worked,” Aaliyah said triumphantly, gesturing towards an impassive Z.
I wanted her to look at me, to notice me, but instead, her attention remained riveted on my brother.
“Z, I don’t know—” T began, and Z finally released the incubus’s wrist to take a step in our direction.
“I know you sold me out to Hans at the Bloody Carnival,” Z hissed.
If it were possible, T’s face turned even paler. It was as if all the color dissipated with that one sentence.
“I don’t know what you mean—”
“You allowed me to be taken and sold,” she growled out. “You knew what could’ve happened to me but didn’t care.”
T glanced desperately in my direction, but I simply regarded him with cold indifference.
What the fuck was Z talking about? T would never have betrayed her like that. He knew how much she meant to me, how much I loved her. He wouldn’t—
T swallowed and took an automatic step backwards, and it was then that I saw the guilt in his eyes. It stabbed at something already bleeding inside of me, something broken beyond repair. Every muscle in my body locked tight as the full truth of T’s betrayal washed over me in a crushing tsunami.
T betrayed Z.
He sold her to the fucking vampires.
And for what?
Memories momentarily pierced the wrath percolating in my heart.
My soul. Yes, that was it.
He traded Z…for my soul.
And I fucking hated him for that.
My breathing was stuttered, a noisy exhale followed by an equally noisy inhale, and it took every ounce of willpower I possessed to not teach my damn brother a lesson. To tear him apart with my bare hands. How could he? What the fuck was he thinking?
“I-I saved you,” T stuttered, still shuffling backwards as Z advanced. “When the gorgon attacked you, I saved you—”
“Do you really think that makes up for the fact that you goddamn sold me?” she hissed, and I swore her veins pulsated and writhed, the color more black than blue beneath her porcelain skin. “That you left me to die?”
Fuck, she looked so beautiful like that—full of wrath and fury, vengeance and death. Full of life. With her golden hair and flowing white dress, she truly looked like an angel.
My angel.
Only mine.
I absently scratched at the skin on my wrist, feeling blood well and then cascade onto the carpet in rivulets of red. One glance down confirmed a chunk of skin had fallen onto the floor at my feet. I quickly placed my hands behind my back before anyone could notice and comment on it.
My angel wouldn’t love me anymore if she knew I was falling apart, and I needed her to love me.
Z continued to advance on a rapidly retreating T, her features twisted in anger.
“There will be no forgiveness, T,” she bit out. Before I could even blink, she was directly in front of my brother with her hands around his neck. One twist, and his body fell to the ground, his eyes vacant and unseeing.
Mali shrieked from her corner of the room, and the incubus’s eyes widened in surprise and fear.
I knew what emotions I was supposed to feel after seeing my brother get murdered—horror, surprise, anger, maybe even a little guilt—but not one of them managed to breach my defenses. They couldn’t slice through the walls of wrath, lust, pride, envy, greed, sloth, and gluttony I had erected around myself. Those emotions… Those emotions I understood. They enveloped me in a warm embrace, and I couldn’t differentiate where I ended and they began.
But the other emotions? The ones that made me weak?
