Blood Stained Tranquility (10 page)

“I went through it. Not as much as you are right now because I was human, but I was still able to do it. Fight back, Eve,” Ismini said in a small voice.

Fight back. Right. She was good at that. Barely knew how to do anything else.

“Focus on how much you want to kill us once this is done,” Zexistr said with a good-natured smile framed by those damned dimples.

“Stop giving her ideas,” Cy grunted.

Too late. She was already focused. Was already planning exactly how she was going to rip off their eyebrows, then move onto their eyelashes.

“Anyone else getting a mental image of what’s going on in there?” Keiros asked, sounding strained.

“I told you not to give her ideas, she’s fucking vicious!” Cy cried above the roar of the next energy wave that hit her.

This time, the covers beneath her became nothing but dust, and the mattress nearly followed suit. Eve bore down, clawing into the hands holding her, cracking a tooth that instantly began to heal as she clenched her jaw. She kept the mental image of ripping off their eyelashes front-and-center, even squinting to keep it in focus.

Cy growled next to her, the sound low and potent, full of warning. Clearly, he was seeing what she was seeing and he didn’t like the view. Too bad. Had he been feeling what she was feeling, maybe then she would have given a fuck.

Breathing had pretty much stopped at that point, but she didn’t care. She clenched down, pushed back, and alternated between imagining herself harming the brothers and seeing herself kicking the fire inside her into submission.

She could do this. She had to. She didn’t know the meaning of giving up.

The moment she remembered that, a surge of her own energy detonated from deep within her, an epic-scale blast that rushed forth and went on the offensive against the weakness in her.

Because that’s what the mating had officially become. A weakness. And there was no way in hell she would let it overcome her.

“There we go. Now she’s fighting.”

Eve had no idea who muttered those pride-filled words. She couldn’t really see anymore, and her hearing was beginning to abandon her, too. All she knew was her determination not to give in—along with her desperate need to hurt the three beings holding her down.

It all came to a stop so suddenly, that Eve was left jerking like an epileptic on the bed.

Her hearing returned, the pain tightened into a tiny ball inside her chest, and pure strength surged through every one of her cells, infusing them with the need for violence. An animalistic hiss left her mouth, like something straight out of the wild, as she jumped onto the bed, balancing on the balls of her feet with her knees bent and her claws ready to strike.

As one, everyone within three feet of her shot back. The brothers, smart boys that they obviously were, began inching their way toward the door.

Cy threw his hands up, speaking to her nice and slow, as if that would help shit. “We were just trying to help you. And obviously, we did. Leave my nuts alone.”

“It hurt,” she growled, not recognizing her voice, barely recognizing herself within the psychotic, out-of-control behavioral and mental patterns that were emerging.

“Evesse,” Vedlyl placed his hands on the edge of the bed and leaned in to nail her with his hypnotic stare. “Now that your strength is returning, your instincts are magnified. You need to breathe and relax.”

She almost tackled him; the urge to dig her nails into something, anything, was too great.

“Evesse, breathe.”

He was her friend. They were all trying to help her. With a gasp, she deflated, flopping down onto the bed and noticing for the first time that the covers had reverted back from their ashen state.

“I’m going insane.”

“No, you’re becoming more powerful than anything I’ve seen in a while,” Vedlyl said, still assessing her, his pupils doing that rapid change thing as he scanned her molecules, or whatever the hell it was that he did.

“Ved, is that what Ismini went through?” Dyletri had taken a step forward, his whole body lighting up with the white light of his powers. The way he was staring at the God of Medicine’s back didn’t bode well for anyone.

Vedlyl tensed, but didn’t turn away from his scan of Evesse.

“You weren’t meant to know at the time.
She
didn’t want you to know.”

Ismini stepped around Dyletri, her brown and black hair whirling due to how fast she moved. She placed her hand on Dy’s chest and looked up at him.

“Baby. He’s right—”

“I don’t care. You went through that by yourself. I don’t care what was happening at the time, someone should have fucking told me.” He grabbed Ismini, lifting her into his arms with a fierce expression that stabbed Evesse in the heart and threatened to unleash her
R’mannev.
It was clear that he was still guilt-ridden over what Ismini had gone through before he’d found out she was mated to him and he to her.

Dyletri growled at no one in particular, looking tormented, and stormed out of the room with his mate in his arms. All the hard lines on his body made his intention loud and clear. He planned to love Ismini with every inch of him, to make it up to her in the only way he could.

Yearning hit Evesse, her insides screaming for the male that owned her, even as her mind chastised her for being such a fool. Zeniel didn’t feel that way about her. If he had he would have been there by now. But he wasn’t, and that was because she’d just been an annoyance that he had to put up with. It had been clear in the way he treated her.

Not that she hadn’t contributed to that. She had been so busy being scared of how she felt for him, that she’d gone out of her way to be extra annoying and bitchy to him.

And she’d had good reason to be afraid, hadn’t she? The first moment she’d laid eyes on him, she’d known deep down—somewhere dark and primitive—that she was staring at imprisonment. The inescapable kind.

God, she’d been right. And now, she was locked in a mating all by herself.

Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to be as alone as she felt. “Guys, I’m sorry I almost attacked you. Thank you for everything.”

The triplets nodded, Cy still inching toward the door like he didn’t trust her. Hell, he shouldn’t. He knew her longer than the other two did, even if it was just a matter of weeks.

Soleria, on the other hand, stepped forward to cup her shoulder. “Man, you’re badass. I can’t wait. If I fling myself off the balcony, do you think that’ll speed up the process of becoming whatever the hell I’m going to become?”

At the mention of her throwing herself off the balcony, a worried, stricken look crossed Ian’s face. It was gone too fast for Sol to see it, but Eve had.

Again with the yearning. Again with the reminder that Zen didn’t feel that way for her.

“I . . . I need to be alone.”

She didn’t care that the words wobbled when she said them. Nor that she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the covers as she did. Usually, any show of weakness went against every basic principle she had in her damned body. You don’t grow up in foster care and survive a broken, pathetic system by being a weakling.

For the first time in her life, however, she knew she was surrounded by beings that would understand. If there was one thing she’d realized in the time since she’d met the gods around her, was that they felt on a whole deeper level. One she didn’t think humans could possibly understand. She now knew why, knew that their powers and instincts magnified everything, as was her case.

She was so grateful for that. Especially when they all simply turned and left, no one uttering a single word since all of them knew there were no words to be given. Even Soleria, a human who had always had unnatural instincts, patted her on the shoulder and shuffled out.

Evesse was left alone, faced with a reality that they all knew, even if not one of her friends was brutal enough to voice it.

She might have been brought back. She might still be alive. But she was mated to a male that wasn’t mated to her. Kind of ridiculous actually. She had been resurrected and shoved back into a living form, only to go through death all over again.

This time, however, it wouldn’t be quick like when she had been thrown into the vortex with Ismini.

No, this time, she was going to experience every aspect of her death in slow motion.

Fucking yippee.

Chapter 8

-Renentr. The Underworld.

After arriving in
Renentr
, Zeniel stood outside the
Sivigh
, hearing agonized screams echoing through the entrance to the underworld. The screams died off abruptly the moment he got into the Chamber of Souls.

The creature that had been screaming was dangling from chains and resembled exactly what it was: a rotting corpse. Apparently, it was also no longer capable of much sound. Its breathing was stilted, its chest barely moved. Twitches rode its limbs in spasms, and dark brown blood oozed out of every inch on it, dripping onto the floor in hot, hissing puddles.

The chains around its wrists and ankles glowed white with pure, holy energy. The fist that went flying at it, however, was covered in silver and black.

The
draugar
’s skeletal face crumbled inward. It wouldn’t be enough to finish it. Not yet. But Crius was obviously determined to drive the creature to the brink before pushing it over and ending it. Another fist landed, another loud crunch sounded out through the
Abideos.
Zen tilted his head, admiring the abuse.

The
draugars
had originated within the deepest part of
Renentr
and had given birth to the Norse mythological creature of the same name. They were vile, and the only reason Crius put up with them was because they were useful. As long as they obeyed his rules and guarded the lowest pits—and by extension, the most dangerous prisoners housed in
Renentr
—he allowed them to exist.

The
draugar
currently getting a piece of its back stripped off had obviously disobeyed one of the rules. Zeniel couldn’t focus on which one since all of its
evil acts were on full attack against his frontal lobe. The only reason Mavrak hadn’t crumbled into his usual hysterics was because the fucker was too busy purring in delight at the carnage Crius was dishing out.

One rotting piece of flesh fell to the floor, landing inside the hissing blood. It disintegrated slowly, gurgles rising up along with the stench of decayed flesh being cooked. Another piece joined the first.

The smell of smoke drifted to Zen, and he pulled his attention away from the show long enough to look at the one responsible for the butchery. Crius was wearing a black turtleneck and leather breeches. His usual leather trench coat was nowhere to be seen. The sleeves of his turtleneck were rolled up to his elbows, the black scars on his arms visible as they flexed with every movement.

He walked around to the front of the creature and proceeded to carve into it all over again.

Zen had to admit that this was not the scene he’d expected to find upon hearing the screams when he arrived at the
entrance to
Renentr,
but seeing such an evil creature being punished this way was doing wonders for his issues.

He didn’t
want
to like the sight of such punishment being handed out . . . but the darkness inside him did. It sighed with utter satisfaction as a third piece of flesh fell with a splat. Drops of blood flew up in the air. He stepped back, watching them land in front of his boot, small spots that boiled as they tried to burn through the floor.

“Is that thing even still alive?” he asked.

Crius paused to take a drag of the dark brown cig he was holding. “Of course. This fucker doesn’t die until I say he does. Which is never. He’ll suffer eternally for what he’s done.”

He walked away from the
draugar
long enough to stop before a small, velvet-covered table. He discarded the knife he’d been using and reached for a holy dagger. The inscriptions on it and the blade glowed with white light.

Technically, the being holding it shouldn’t have been able to even go near the knife. Crius was anything but holy. As evidenced by the torture going on before Zen. Yet darkness wasn’t the only thing locked inside Crius. His other half was in there, battling to break free, still hidden from the world but strong enough to flood Crius with some form of purity.