The Salvation: A Dark Vampire Fantasy Romance, page 21
Malachor’s endless abyss of blood and death threatens to wash over me, drown me in its tide, ripping me down to become this new entity, one she could never love—nor anyone else.
Sometimes, Reaver allows victors. Other times, he allows them to fight to the death. I’ll never fathom why the crowds get off on it when any of them could easily be chosen. My Court has turned into one massive hive of sex, blood, and hunger.
It’s too familiar.
The screams haunt me to this day. So many centuries with Kyan, with my brothers, away from my court, I’d trained myself to forget. My times with Kyan and Shadow numbed the scars I never wanted to feel again. Quintessa...obliterates them.
The irony. She is my anesthetic. We are her stimulants, her adrenaline.
More blood. More punishment. More souls snuffed from existence by my hand.
Quintessa’s screams only pour fire into my scars. My little dove never tears her eyes off mine—just as she did when Reaver whipped her. Gods, that girl has the heart of a phoenix. I do not have her strength. I turn away, lose myself to the hatred, substituting the torture for it.
When Reaver finally commands me to pause, I finally lift my eyes to the uppermost level, and acid simmers through my veins, a mad wrath stoking embers in my throat. Because he has her naked. On her knees. Sucking his foul cock. One hand fisting her hair to yank her closer to choke her. The other...under her chin, forcing her to look at him.
Brutal impulses overcome me. Driven by a vicious vengeance, my wings beat on their own. Waves of wrath rule me, nothing else. He’s aware of my ascent, but he’s too busy leering down at her, enjoying his torture as tears stream down her eyes, whether from her stuffed throat and burning lungs or the emotional pain, I can’t tell.
He jerks, slamming his hips, then pulling out to paint her body with his disgusting seed. I crash into him. He laughs. With his dick out and flagging, the asshole fucking laughs.
“Oh, tut tut, Merikh! I wondered when you would snap.” He grins at me while I pin him to the ground, towering over him with my wings. “I lost the bet that it would be when she first cried his name. Or when I stripped her naked the first time. No, all it took was that tight little throat wrapped around my dick!”
“I’ll rip off that miserable dick and shove it down your throat soon, Reaver. And I’ll cut off your balls and serve them to her,” I seethe through gritted teeth, spitting at him.
“Why, Merikh, was that a threat?” he guffaws.
Quintessa appears in my side vision, clad only in her tattoos, a ray of light shining through the dark tension. Eyes glassy and brows threaded with concern, she reaches out, but I growl in a warning. If she touches me, I’ll snap. Lose my fucking shit.
“Merikh...” her weak voice rasps. “Aislynn.”
The name is already a gods-damned noose around my throat. She simply pulls it tighter. I don’t let up yet. I sink my claws into his throat, just enough to draw his blood before shoving him hard against the stone and rising. Despite the torment of her body heat, her scent is tainted. I can’t look at her. If I were to see his cum dripping down her front, nothing will stop me from bending her over that balcony and fucking her right here. And Reaver would inflict his punishment on her the whole time.
The prick clicks his tongue while brushing his robes off and delicately touching the tips of his fingers to the superficial marks. “That was quite foolish, Merikh. I was ready to end the night, but it seems you need a reminder of who is in charge. So, I’d suggest you return to that circle where you belong. You will be a contestant for this final battle. And you better make it good. Once it’s done, then you may take your sweet little queen with her tight throat anywhere you desire.”
I don’t hesitate to beat my wings. The prospect of one more fight, of getting us both out of here, drives me back to the arena until I land with the shooting force of my wings. The ground fractures beneath me.
When I glance up, Reaver has Quintessa pressed against the balcony in nothing but her skin while tipping another glass of venom wine into her mouth. Her eyes turn hollow before she swallows, and I recognize how hard she’s trying to detach, numb herself. But she stiffens when Reaver palms her breasts before softening, melting to the heady drink that is more mind and body-altering than Fae wine.
Reaver commands the final contestant to enter. She must be dragged. And my breaths hike. Guilt throbs a pained tremor inside me. My stomach hardens to iron.
While I may never have loved her, she is still the most loyal Founder. OIne I respect and care for in my detached way. Her light-binding pulses through her skin, shimmering beyond the sheer white shift Reaver chose for her, had forced upon her. Her long dark hair has been bound into a braid, cascading to her waist. And it’s not hatred that burns in her indigo eyes. It’s a cold, bruising remorse. Because she already knows how this battle will end.
Azurienne.
All the other Founders remain on their level, sitting upon their lower thrones, gazes darkened as they wait for the inevitable.
A cold, predatory fury bleeds through me, and my body reverts to its long-lost instincts, impulses. Punishment. Survival. Hatred. Damnation. Lust. Destruction. Death.
The Demon of Death, they called me. The tool in Malachor’s belt. The one he forged into a blade. The scars beneath the ones I wear today still have his fucking name written on them. A name I heard her scream so many times tonight.
A name she screams again despite her hoarse vocal cords. I don’t turn. I don’t look up.
Azurienne and I crash against one another in a battle between two lethal predators. Anyone can see who is stronger. Claws and teeth sink into my skin, but the pain doesn’t ground me. Only Shadow can.
The pain sends me deeper.
I lose myself to the hate and sadism creeping back into me like a prowling beast stalking my undead heart—ready to rip it from my chest. Because I had to destroy my heart every night I served as Malachor’s pawn.
I strangled it whenever I gripped throats and squeezed the life out of them. I crushed it whenever Malachor took me to his bed, fucked me on the coffin, or when I fucked others as he watched or participated.
Violence overcomes me, rips through me until I slam my body against my old lover’s until I break bones, rip flesh, and spill blood. Her screams have no effect. They cannot pierce the cold, dead scrap of flesh in my chest—unfeeling, worthless.
Kyan was the only time my heart could not be destroyed. He kept the shattered pieces from blowing away.
Shadow held them together.
Quintessa squeezes through their cracks and heals them with her blood, scars, and tattoos.
By the time I finally envision her face, Azurienne is pinned below me. My mind snaps back before I can deal a lethal blow. So trained after all my years with Malachor.
She moans, shivering from the pain of my fangs and the strangulation marks upon her throat. If Reaver wasn’t such a bastard, I could have given her an honorable death, a swift one.
“What shall it be, my little queen?” Reaver taunts Quintessa, and for the first time, I lift my eyes to my little dove.
He cups her jaw, raising her chin higher in presentation with all those in the court studying her nudity and licking their lustful lips. When the time comes, when my power is restored, when the noose is broken, I will rip out all offending eyes, all those dripping tongues, and leave them sightless and mute, wandering around in the dark forever.
Quintessa swallows, her eyes pained as she roots her eyes upon me before glancing at Azurienne.
“Please don’t make me do this,” I overhear her plead with Reaver, but her begging will fall on deaf ears.
She should let me die. She doesn’t know what will happen after the Hollows—how Malachor will rise. I cannot tell her. It would endanger us all, our child most.
One brutal stab of Reaver’s fingers inside her, all his damned fingers, has her doubling over that balcony, croaking out a weakened ‘Malachor’ before she clenches her eyes, lifts her hand, and slowly points to...me.
“Looks like it’s your lucky night, Merikh,” Reaver mocks me with a crazed cackle. “Finish her.”
Too overcome by my need to reclaim my little dove, all I grant Azurienne is one final gaze, one final nod of understanding, one last farewell. “All in the Underworld will know who the true God of Blood is from my soul, Lord Merikh Howle.”
I make it quick. A blood clot to her brain. Swift. Painless.
And then, I’m beating my wings, thundering into the air, snatching Quintessa right off that balcony, and soaring to the Sea of Bones as fast as possible.
She wants and needs my possession more than ever.
After the war upon her senses, as she described on our brief flight—between her working her hardest to detach, break away pieces of herself, and falling into the forced pleasure of the damn venom—she commands me to break her. As I approach the Sea of Bones, I’ve already resolved what I will do.
Slow and tender would be false.
After the ordeal she has endured, she needs me at my realest, rawest, strongest. She wants to feel it, feel everything.
So, I don’t fucking hide myself from her.
I fly past the shore. I sweep across the surf, across the subtle whitecaps, past the riptides and stronger currents until we are a mile well past shore.
Her nails claw at me, cling to me as the gravity of the situation presses in. I drop her.
While Kyan may have helped her a little, she never truly learned to swim. Especially in water this deep. She sinks, her head disappearing beneath the surface as I hover....and watch. After Reaver’s abuse, her spirit is weaker. That spirit will rise when I lift her from the depths.
Snapping my wings tight, I dive, finding her dove-white little body with no trouble. Capturing her mouth first, I breathe air into her lungs, feel her struggle. I deny her. Seizing her body, restraining her until she cannot thrash or fight, I drive my cock deep inside her. And smirk at the blurred sound of her scream. Under my waters, it’s a gods-damned symphony to my ears. The feeling of her warm, wet sheathe sucking me in beneath the surface as we sink lower is like a glorious death, a passing into another world, a dark paradise.
And just before she can suck water through her nostrils, I finally unfold the waters, pushing them away from her face...and mine until she may breathe again.
“Merikh!” she gasps, her head swinging around to stare at the walls of dark water all around us, the water still blanketing our bodies from her neck and my chest down. And how we are still sinking, submerged in deep water. “This is...I—” Her voice cracks with emotion, and I lower my head to take her mouth.
She is a lovely ghost in the water. Her body, like a spirit veil.
Still buried inside her, harder than iron, I pause to meet her silver eyes and give her something real. “Kyan and I would come here. Right out from under Malachor, I would unlock his chains and escape with him.” I smirk at the memory of how we couldn’t get rid of our clothes fast enough as we challenged one another with who could win our flight races to the furthest edge of the Sea. He won, of course. But I am the one who carried both of us back to shore since my wings are stronger.
“We would disappear beneath the water,” I tell her, coiling a hand around the base of her neck. “He’d give me breath. I’d heat his blood.” As I do for her now.
Her breaths escape in tatters. Her glassy eyes fixate on me, overwhelmed while her hands trace my scars, studying them. Each becomes a live wire beneath her fingers...or a living, beating heart.
I kiss her again, pump into her again, anchoring her against me with every thrust even if she is the greatest anchor I need. In and out of time, we sink until nothing exists but another world of twisted black rock formations, the dark flora that can exist in the Sea of Bones like ever-moving ink blots, and the glow of bio-luminescent creatures like ghostly lanterns. Our breaths within the cocoon disrupt the eerie silence.
Gods...I pause from her swollen mouth and roam my eyes across her body. She could be a part of this world. Like one of those phosphorescent creatures like haunting angels in the depths, some mysterious white siren—one who would not steal a man and drown him. No, she would lift a sunken corpse, drag it to the surface, and have no qualms about breathing life back into its dead soul.
Tears roll down her cheeks as she studies my hidden world. One I’ve only ever shown to Kyan. Shadows flicker along the edges of our little sanctuary. When a pale jellyfish, like an aquatic apparition, pulses its enchanting light across her face, Quintessa lifts a delicate hand to the edges of that cocoon—as if she is waving to the creature with its diaphanous shimmering tendrils. It drifts, dancing, illuminating her eyes to a soft silver, enchanting and hypnotic.
More tears come, and I screw my brows low until she turns and kisses me. Opens her mouth, arches her back, and rocks her hips to take me deeper. Biting her lower lip and sinking my claws into her neck, I angle my neck and kiss her harder, stronger, rocking her until I break her like a wave against a shore. And watch her shatter beautifully for me as I empty myself inside her.
When her legs tighten around me, and her nails cling to my shoulders, something grows...dark inside me. Her fear of losing all of this, losing me is palpable. I can smell it in her blood.
Jaw hardening, I continue, “They called me the Demon of Death.” She snaps her head up. I kiss her brow, going on, “For twenty years, I was a toy of torture and thrall of a pet for Malachor. His favorite.” I curl my upper lip in a snarl...until she touches her thumb to the corner of my mouth, stilling me, calming my expression. My little half-ghost of an anchor. “I never lost a battle. Night after night, my only reward was the honor of being used by the God of Blood. Merikh Howle became Malachor’s entity, existing only to serve him.
“But with the rise of the bitten vampires, the God of Blood began making his own race, choosing his vessels with care when biting them and granting them a portion of his blood. Many did not survive. And all retained their original binding power.”
“Except for you,” she whispers, touching her lips to mine as we drift, carried by a current of my making.
Now and then, her eyes wander across the lustrous creatures around us or the dark shadows of rocks, but I know she’s hanging upon my every word as she hangs upon my body...and my cock.
“Except for me.
“For the first ten years, he vowed to destroy me every night. ‘Tonight will be the night, Howle’, he would say—because I had the audacity of claiming his power and my own. But my powers were so raw and untrained, I was no match for him. And since Malachor’s greatest flaw, aside from his pride, was his boredom, he put me to work instead.
For decades, I did his bidding.” A low growl erupts in my throat, but I don’t hide my sins from her. “I battled, tortured, raped, and executed whoever he chose. One of his favorite pastimes was when we came here...” I gesture to the sea. “I would bring his victims to their near-drowning points. He would keep them alive with his blood, and we would repeat. I’d drown them, push the water from their lungs, and he would keep their blood rushing—make it last for fucking hours...days if necessary. Sometimes, he’d watch me fuck them. Sometimes, he’d join. Or fuck me as I fucked them. None could last as long as I.
“Quintessa...all those bones. The crushed ones, any that drift to shore, every corpse in this cursed sea...they have my fucking name written upon them.”
She opens her mouth as if to protest, and I narrow my eyes to black slits in a lethal warning. No excuses. No fucking reason. I could have taken myself out at any time. I could have done the world a damn favor by refusing to let Malachor turn me into his demon. But I surrendered to the God of Blood and my darker nature and became the sadist he loved.
Instead, she sighs, leans in, and kisses each of my cheeks. “You’re not the Demon of Death anymore. You’re...my monstrous boy. Mine.”
I don’t deserve her kiss, her lips upon mine. Her kiss knifes through my very being. Gods, she tastes like resurrection. She tethers my soul. This scarred, broken, and beautiful little beast sinks her claws into me to drag me from my depths. It’s the first time I’ve conveyed the truth to anyone, aside from Kyan. And that glorious fucker lived it with me.
“None dared to contend with the God of Blood. And all who heard of his Demon of Death shuddered in fear. Except...”
Her face lights up. Eyes light up. Fuck, she’s gorgeous when she thinks of him, wearing a glow to rival the creatures all around us.
“Kyan.”
“Kyan,” I confirm. “Cocky beautiful bastard. The angel came down to spy on the demon. We weren’t “at war”. No one could go to war with Malachor. But he grew bored with humans, he stole dragons, Fae, and angels. Kyan was simply the first god to give a damn enough to do anything. And I...” I swallow hard, my chest compressing. A trickle of water invades the cocoon.
“Merikh...” she whispers and rolls her hips, squeezing around my cock, and it thunders to life, keeping me from sinking.
“It started with simple battles. Malachor would pit us against one another.”
“You won?”
I shake my head with a wry smile. “Stalemate. Every damn time. Provided I didn’t use blood-binding, which Malachor would not allow. Water against air. Strongest wings vs fastest. Always a stalemate, little dove. Kyan intrigued him. The asshole infuriated me.”
“Aww...” She cups my face, reading between the lines. “He flirted with you.”
I roll my eyes with a huff. “Fluttering feathered fool.”
“Called you Merry, didn’t he?”
I press my lips to a firm seam. “Bloody brat.”
“You couldn’t break him.”
“Everything was by force,” I dictate pointedly, remembering those battles, how they ended with Malachor having me strip the angel and fuck him and bite him in open Court. “But he laughed every damn time. He laughed when I fucked him, bit him, whipped him. As if he couldn’t fathom how I believed it was some punishment when he wanted it, the winged fucker.”
“The angel wanted the demon,” she says softly and rocks against me again—clenching that warm tight pussy.
