Black Dalliances (A Blushing Death Novel) (26 page)

“I was so worried,” he whispered with a hitch in his voice.

“I know. I’m sorry,” I said, tears streaming freely. His grip loosened on my arms, and I slid down the wall.

Setting me back on my feet with light nimble fingers, he stared down into my gaze with yearning and relief.

I fell into him, wrapping my arms around his middle as tight as I could. His arms snaked around me, clutching me to him as he nuzzled his face into my hair.

“I missed you,” I whispered. Being wrapped in his arms, my chest tightened with all the emotion I’d been holding back. No matter what he’d done, no matter what I’d done, I loved him and he loved me. He was as much a part of me as Dean was and I wanted him to know that. Even if I was furious at him, I still loved him.

His hands slid up into my hair and he tilted my head back to peer down at me. “I missed you like a limb from my own body. I don’t ever want to feel that way again,” he growled as if he still felt the pain of it.

Patrick’s mouth crashed down upon mine, possessive and searching. I opened to him as his tongue thrust into my mouth. His fangs skimmed my bottom lip, slicing across my flesh and blood flowed. He drank it down, feeding from my strength. Our tongues twisted in a hungry, desperate entanglement as he deepened the kiss.

My body warmed and responded with a growing, burning passion. I had been responding this way to Patrick since the first time he set those dark intense eyes on me. Nothing would stop me from reacting this way. Our magics spoke to each other, were a part of each other. That’s where Baba Yaga was wrong. Patrick and Dean wouldn’t weaken me, they gave me strength . . . power.

Patrick growled into my mouth, hungry and desperate for more. My sex responded in a primal reaction, tightening and soaking my panties with the wet arousal. I sank my fingers into his thick coarse hair and crushed his mouth tighter against mine. I wanted to climb up his body and wrap my legs around his waist. It had been so long since I’d felt him inside me. I wanted to be whole again, to have his thick cock so deep inside of me that I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began.

“Okay, kids,” Dean growled at my back, his voice strained and his energy scorching my skin.

Patrick broke away, turning his dark eyes up to Dean behind me. His gaze filled with the hunger I felt pressed against my pelvis.

“It doesn’t feel so good to see her with someone else, does it?” Patrick snarled.

“Work this out later,” Saeran snapped.

“He’s right,” Dean conceded.

“That was quite a show,” Likho growled from his throne. “And you said there was nothing between you and this Blushing Death. Tsk . . . tsk . . . tsk.”

Dean stepped up on my other side, flanking me with Saeran behind us. Patrick grabbed my hand, intertwining our fingers together. Dean reached out and clasped my other hand in a tight grip. The two of them together was like a circuit closing. Magic and power snapped into place, churning, mixing, and flowing through us until it burned, begging to be released.

The last time we’d connected like this, it had been painful, debilitating, and exhausting. The sheer invasion of their power had been so fierce that it had knocked me the fuck out. This time it was a free flow of energy moving uninhibited between the three of us. A soft pink glow I’d never seen before bulldozed out from me, encasing all three of us in its whirlwind of magic and power. I breathed deep the cool, clean air surrounding us. I felt good. Really good, actually.

Staring at me with wide-eyed amazement and pride, Patrick squared his shoulders and Dean winked at me.

“I feel better,” I whispered. I didn’t hurt anymore. The wounds weren’t healing as they had once but I didn’t ache. The warm power oozed over me and my muscles loosened and the pain eased until I could move with ease.

“We all feel better,” Patrick whispered. He reached up and stroked his thumb across my cheek, sliding his fingers behind my ear and into my matted, dirty hair. “I think that’s how it was supposed to have worked the first time,” he said with an
I-told-you-so
smile cresting those beautiful full lips.

Likho stood from his throne, taking the solid step down from the dais. The entire throne room shook with the force of that one step. Releasing Dean and Patrick’s hands, I ripped The Ewen blade from between the knife sheath and my thigh where it was secured. I drew the Smith and Wesson from the holster under my arm and fired two quick shots, sinking them into the skulls of the two Cossacks flanking Likho, eliminating them. Two down. Eight more guards to go.

Chapter 29

“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” I snarled at the monster in front of me. “I’m The Blushing Death.”

“Three against eight, silly Cossacks,” Patrick snickered.

“Doesn’t seem fair,” Dean added.

I didn’t look back as the high-pitched, terrified sounds of men screaming echoed against the white walls. I fired again, the sound ricocheting off the high ceiling. My bullet hit the beast square in the chest and bounced off. Laughing a hearty, patronizing chuckle, he stood, still gripping the box with Patrick’s heart in his hand. Standing tall, his horns almost brushed the candle chandelier as he came to his full height. I craned my neck, tilting my head back to get a really good look at him.

“
Fuck
!” I gasped. “You’re a big bastard.”

“Did you think your human weapons would stop me?” he roared.

Sliding the Smith and Wesson back into its holster under my arm, I eased my grip on the Ewen blade and relaxed my fingers.

“Can’t blame a girl for trying.” I shrugged.

Raising his large left foot with yellow broken toenails, Likho stomped down, shaking the entire castle from the foundation all the way to the highest turret.

I stumbled back, unable to keep my balance on the shifting floors and dislodging stones as the castle came apart at the seams. Chunks of stone fell from the ceiling as the castle rocked. While I staggered, attempting to gain my balance, he raised his long, thick, furry arm and backhanded me. Likho’s strike reverberated through my body like I’d fallen stories down to the hard castle floor. For a moment, I was weightless, soaring through the air and crashing into the wall. Air rushed from my lungs in a race of wind and my limbs turned to jelly.

Sliding down the white wall now stained red, I hit the ground. It took a minute for my eyes to focus again and my lungs to fill with air. I scrambled to my feet and clutched the Ewen blade tight in my hand, drawing Gladi with the other.

The sound of fighting filled the room but I couldn’t pay attention to Dean, Patrick, or Saeran. I had a bitch of a fight in front of me, needing all my focus. I spit the blood filling my mouth on the floor and rolled my shoulders, letting my neck crack.

“You are not worth my time, little girl,” Likho scoffed at me.

Bastard! We’ll see about that!

“Milagra,” Likho bit out. “Dispose of her,” he declared, waving his giant hand.

I met Milagra’s dark eyes with a glare of warning, letting the hard command of my Eithina fill my eyes. Burning around the edges of my irises like I’d spent too long staring at the sun, I knew my eyes had shifted to the silver of the wolf. Milagra’s dark eyes widened and she backed away, plastering her body against the solid wall, leaving Likho to me.

“I can’t,” she said, hesitating as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. Shaking her head, her palms flat against the wall, Milagra trembled.

“Looks like it’s just you and me,” I said, leveling the Ewen blade on him.

Roaring his anger and frustration, the feral sound echoed. Likho charged like a rabid animal, snarling and drooling with rage. He barreled at me like a rampaging beast, filling the castle with his angry roars. My skin crawled, my muscles tensed, and my heart raced, waiting for his impact.

I ducked, slicing Gladi’s sharp tip across his belly. Like running the blade across granite, Gladi skipped and skidded along the surface of his flesh. Sparks erupted as the blade pulsated in my hand but left his body intact.

Fire erupted, an unnatural blue flames as if the air itself had caught fire. It spread out, catching fabric and the flesh of dead Cossacks, building until the harsh blue flame was a wall of heat. I rolled on the ground away from Likho, keeping my body tight as he stomped after me, trying like hell to crush me beneath his massive crusted feet. Each stomp pounded a deafening cadence on the stone floor, shaking all of the Outer Realm, even the teeth in my head.

Hopping to my feet, I panted with exertion. The Gladius hadn’t given him even a scratch. I slid the sword back into its scabbard, feeling her anguish seep into me at being excluded from the fight.

“What scares you, little girl?” Likho whispered with a glint of menace in his red eye.

“Bitches in pink tutus,” I snorted, not letting on how close to the truth that statement was. Marabelle had been a scary bitch.

“Milagra was so simple. A little girl afraid of the dark. Afraid to be alone. Mr. Cavanaugh, was more complicated,” he grunted, his chest heaving with the thickening air as the oxygen thinned, consumed by the fire.

“I bet,” I said, rolling my neck, my palms slick with sweat from the heat.

“He was afraid of disappointment, to disappoint. So, I gave him means to overcome it.”

“You took his heart.”

“It
beats
. Parasites’ hearts shouldn’t
beat
. Why does it
beat
, little girl?”

“Fuck if I know,” I said, tightening my grip on the Ewen blade. The damned thing seemed too small for what I wanted to do with it.

Likho reached his large clawed hand out to snatch me up. I somersaulted between his legs and the hard rough stone of the floor scratched my face. He was too big and too slow. I got to my feet and braced for the fight before he was able to turn around to face me.

I gathered our power around me like a shield, drawing on Patrick’s cold control and Dean’s fiery exaction. I mixed it with my own power—the simplicity of death. Humming, magic and power manifested in a soft, rose-colored field, swirling the colors of white, red, and something in-between in a cloud of around me. Becoming something solid, a field I’d created all on my own. One moment it was soft and translucent, and the next it exploded out to encase Likho, and I from the rest of the fight.

Blocking both Dean and Patrick out, I enclosed us in my blushing tomb. I couldn’t have their interference and if I couldn’t kill Likho, the shield would give them time to escape.

Torches on the wall behind me flickered out as my shield spread over them, snuffing the flame. I took in a deep breath and blew as hard as I could, using Dean’s power to spark the torches back into existence and then into a white-hot heat that spread beyond the torch, creeping along the wall and my blushing pink bubble.

The heat within the shield rose higher and higher until it was almost unbearable. When the flames covered my barrier and burned bright red, I knew they couldn’t hurt me. The magic was mine. The flames belonged to me, and no matter how hot the fire became, they couldn’t consume me. If I couldn’t kill him, maybe my magic would.

“What are you?” Likho whispered with a wide eye and a sneer that turned my stomach.

“I am death . . . life,” I answered. A small smile crept across my lips and the words felt right.

I leveled Ewan’s blade, gripping it in my hand gently as if it was an extension of my own arm. Facing the monster with the red-rimmed eyes, the blade grew and grew, transforming into a beautiful long broadsword that glimmered in the growing firelight. Its diamond facets cast large, rainbow prisms across my face and over the thick fur of Likho’s body. The sword was heavy in my grip, heavier than the Gladius by almost five pounds but the power held within was incomprehensible, wild, and eager. Rearing back, I leveled Ewan’s blade on Likho, letting the light glimmer in his one eye.

Likho swung at me again but I rolled, sinking Ewan’s blade into his thigh. Blood spurted from the wound, covering the blade with a thick, black, viscous sheen. Roaring in pain, a shrill sound that made my ears bleed, he reared back away from me. He didn’t go far. The swirling field of fire encasing us stopped him from escaping and forced him back toward me.

“Patrick’s heart,” I snapped, filling the enclosed space with my anger.

“You want the parasite’s heart?” Likho laughed.

“I want it back in his chest,” I roared as I lunged for him.

“We all want something.” Likho sliced his clawed hand across my body and shredded through my clothing.

The sting of his claws burned as they ripped into my flesh, tearing across the front of my stomach. I roared in anger. How could I have let him get close enough to practically gut me?

“Tell me now, or I’ll take you piece by piece.”

“You foolish little girl. It’s death magic. There is no reversal.”

He clawed out at me again, but I saw his reckless move coming as he telegraphed each movement with a slight hitch in his limbs. Swinging at his wrist with the jeweled sword, I brought the blade down cleanly through his forearm, severing muscle, tissue, and bone instantaneously. Likho’s hand fell to the floor in a thud of heavy flesh, splattering his black blood across the floor and both of us.

Likho stared down at me in horror, stunned into silence and frozen where he stood. His blood-red eye turned to the hand lying lifeless on the ground.

I couldn’t keep the pleased smile from turning up the corners of my mouth as the realization hit him that I would take him apart piece by piece if I had to. Just as I’d promised.

His remaining clawed hand reached out for me, too quick for me to avoid. His fingers, as thick and as long as my arm, wrapped around my body, squeezing until I could hear my bones crack. Claws dug into my back, piercing my body. Shards of pain pulsed, burning through every synapse and nerve ending I had. Clamping my sword arm against my body, he had me trapped, bleeding, and scared shitless.

“I’ll see what scares you before I pluck that pretty little head from your body,” he growled.

Like an ice pick through my mind, something cold and wild scoured my brain for pieces to put together, tossing memories and thoughts aside as if trash. My brain exploded into pain. I could feel his thick fingers in my mind, rooting around in my head as if there was nothing between us, not even my skull. My skin crawled with the foreignness of having him inside me.

I screamed out as the pain almost blinded me, and he dug through my memories, happy, sad, painful, it didn’t matter. The sheer size of his power ripping through my mind made my body rigid. Every muscle tensed and all my nerves fried and sizzled with his invasion.

Kill
, she growled through my mind, fighting like hell to force Likho out from somewhere that monster didn’t belong.

“So rich,” he cooed, almost in pleasure. “There’s so much power.”

I couldn’t allow him to see any more. Ignoring his intrusion, I forced my mind to empty, to find the peace I knew was still in there somewhere, no matter how scared I was. I buried my Eithina’s growling away and emptied myself of everything, every sound, every instinct, and every thought until there was nothing left but peace. The void overtook me and I felt him release as he drifted, flailing through the emptiness of my mind. I breathed in deep, feeling the hot stagnant air fill my lungs and tossed the Ewen blade to my other hand.

“It’s gone! It’s all gone!” he bellowed as his grip tightened around my body.

“Welcome to my hell,” I ground out. Bringing the gleaming sword back again, I leaned in and struck. Sinking the diamond blade deep underneath his hard sternum, I forced the sword up and into Likho’s chest. Warm blood flowed down the blade, covering my arms and the front of my body as the monster dropped to his knees. Wailing and hissing, his eye narrowed on me as his fingers lost their grip and I slipped free.

I backed away, putting a few precious inches between us. Blood oozed from the hole in his chest, soaking his fur with the foul, sulfuric smelling liquid.

I ripped Ewan’s blade from his chest and swung, making a clean circle above my head. The blade cut through his neck and Likho’s giant head fell from his body. The horn over his left ear lodged into the stone as it hit the ground, preventing his head from rolling. Tilted at an odd angle, his dead eye stared up at me from his decapitated head, his mouth open with a snarl still etched on his chapped and cracked lips.

I stepped back, dragging Ewan’s blade across the ground. Likho’s heavy body collapsed forward, falling in a bulky, blood soaked heap at my feet. The sword had grown incredibly heavy in my hand and my arm ached from the shoulder down as I tried to lift it. Adrenaline was still pumping like a drug through my system, curbing some of the pain from my injuries. It was going to hurt like a bitch very, very soon but until then, I breathed.

Leaning over and propping my weight on my thighs with my sword arm, I snatched the box holding Patrick’s heart from Likho’s hand.

I stumbled back into the shield of my power, sliding down the wall as the flames licked at me but didn’t burn. My ass hit the stone floor hard and I pulled my knees to my chest. In my hand, the shiny box surface was smooth and I hesitated a moment, not wanting to believe Patrick’s heart lay in this simple ivory box. Tipping the lid, I peeked inside at the dark crimson muscle resting there. The soft murmur of a slow, but consistent beat seemed to echo even over the crackling fire covering the walls.

Patrick’s heart was beating.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!

I snapped the lid shut and shoved the smooth ivory box into the large cargo pocket of my BDU’s along my left thigh. No one was touching this thing but me until I could get it back in Patrick’s chest. A problem for later.

Draping the sword across my lap, I inhaled the first deep breath I’d been able to suck into my lungs since I’d seen Patrick dangling from the wall like a fucking
piñata
. I slumped back against the blush wall of power I’d created and released my hold on the fire burning bright in the confined space. The flickering flames receded back as I willed them, crackling and crawling into the torches where they’d originated.

Collecting my thoughts and savoring the fact I was alive, I catalogued the aches riddling my body. I gasped in pain and surprise as something hit the shield I’d erected, hard. Like a sharp kick to the gut, the ripple of impact across my shield doubled me over as a glistening white stone fell from the ceiling. Striking my protective wall, the chunk of ceiling slid down to the ground. Another one hit and then a third.

“Motherfucker,” I snarled as the castle began to break apart, coming down around us.

Hands thrust through my wall, grabbing my biceps and yanking me hard against it. Again and again, those cold hands tugged at me but the shield held, keeping me inside. Another pair of hands reached through from behind me and wrenched. Together, they heaved and my body broke through the shield in a crash sounding more like shattering glass than a sharp pop of energy.