Chapter Twenty-One
Anya
I could feel it. The surge of Dommiel’s essence filling my limbs and expanding my chest with intense aggression, while a pinprick of Simian’s poison, a stinging barb, slid deeper into my body. One gave me strength, the other threatened to drown me in evil and pain. Ironically, both wanted my submission. I’d give that only to one man. One demon. His burning gaze warmed me through, firing my need to beat down this demoness and get back to him.
I still hadn’t told him that Simian may take me before we reached Uriel. Before Uriel could remove the poison threatening to envelop my heart and brain. As if in response, a shadow swept across my mind in the guise of the seductively wicked demon prince who was waiting for my final fall, when he could take me into his keeping. When I’d become his creature, to do whatever he wanted. He could make me kill children, innocents I’d fought to protect most of my immortal life. Just for his own pleasure. He could make me his lover or the plaything of his demon hordes. I’d become numb, unable to feel anything once he’d had his way with me. Once the poison swamped what was left of myself, I’d be his alone. And unable to stop or resist. The realization that my worst fear could quickly come to fruition snapped me from my daze. The end was near, yes, but we were also closer than ever to regaining Uriel and bringing him home.
Facing the creature standing before me with an arrogant tilt of her fiendish head, I waited for her first move. She bared her sharklike teeth and swung her flail in a menacing circle over her head, I spun out of reach before her razor ball could swipe my face. But not before I could slice the tendons behind one knee. Her weight faltered as she stumbled left, the ball of her flail hitting the dirt floor with a dead thunk.
Quickly regaining herself, she spun to face where I stood. Her fans howled and jeered from the stadium seats.
“Get her, Crusalla!”
I was unaffected by her snarls and growls. Or those of her fans. There was only one way this fight would end. With me standing over her body. She was a creature who preyed on the damned, gaining pleasure from the torture of others. No matter if the damned deserved hell or not, a creature who thrived on inflicting unending pain deserved nothing but annihilation.
She swung forward again, moving with more caution this time. And a little bit of a limp, I was pleased to see. I parried away from her next circle of that bloodstained flail. But she was craftier, quicker, than I thought, altering her aim just enough to catch the lower edge of my right wing. A sharp pain and burst of blue feathers flew into the air, erupting with a chorus of demon cries.
Flames of fury licked up my spine when I glanced down at the damage. Opening and snapping my wings to their farthest breadth, the audience gasped in awe and grew silent, even as the music pounded on. I stared down Crusalla, daring her to come at me. Try for my wings again.
She snarled and hissed. The gorgon Medusa couldn’t have been more horrific in demeanor and appearance than this she-beast. I’d battled titans—dragons and giant monsters twenty, thirty times my size. I’d defeated furies, the muscle-clad, horned beasts who served as guardians for demonkind. I’d fought one demon prince, and though he’d gotten a bite into me first, I still escaped. I’d even fought evil men who preyed on innocent children, smiting them from this world and sending their souls to hell without a backward glance. This creature was not near as frightening as any of them. She spent her endless nights torturing chained victims. I’d spent mine fighting free beasts of the air, more malevolent and skilled in the arts of brutality than she could ever be.
This would be a quick fight. That wasn’t my vanity speaking, but an honest truth. Though I was still withholding a dangerous secret from Dommiel. Some selfish part of me, the part I’d never entertained before now, wanted to wait. I’d know when it was too perilous to wait. I would never endanger him, for he certainly would be once the noose stretched tight and I was Simian’s pawn. I glanced up at him where he was now on his feet, arms crossed over his chest, looking fierce and quite dangerous himself. And so dazzlingly beautiful.
Instinctively, I ducked as a dagger flew over my head, having sensed it before I saw it. Getting my head back in the game, I focused on Crusalla. And her imminent demise. I twirled my daggers over the backs of my knuckles, gripping the hilts tight, then tipped my head up and laughed.
With a snapping growl, she launched, swinging her flail in a circle over her head. At the right moment, I squatted to the ground and beat my wings hard. Spinning upside down, I sliced through the flesh of her inner arm swinging the flail. I’d gouged deep. Black blood sprayed. Her razor-tipped flail went flying into the bars with a clang.
Landing deftly on my feet, I marched in a circle, snapping my wings closed, the wing guards making a contagion clink of steel plates. Her half-severed arm hung by sinews and bone. To her credit, Crusalla didn’t utter a sound of pain. Rather, she bellowed a war cry and pulled a hatchet from her belt, flinging it with super speed toward my head. I dodged. The zing of steel slicing the tips of my hair proved how close she’d missed me. Not stopping with my dodge and swing away, I launched through the air, both blades high.
Crusalla reached for a blade in her boot, but not before I stabbed with my right, missing her throat, landing in her sternum above her naked breasts. I tumbled forward with her, taking us both to the ground. Her powerful arm snaked around my waist and she rolled till I was beneath her, her massive hand around my throat, crushing me. My blade embedded in her chest didn’t seem to jar her one bit. Her hideous expression contorted to a deviant smile as she leered down.
“Pretty little bird is gonna die.”
The crowd surged to a deafening roar. Their malevolent taunts chorused through the chamber, waves of bloodlust beating down on me like rain.
“Break her wings.”
“Slit her neck.”
“Gut her good.”
With Crusalla’s other arm inoperable, she couldn’t reach for a weapon. Or block my left hand.
“They want your sweet blood, pretty bird,” she sneered. “And I’m gonna give it to ’em as soon as you breathe your last.”
The fierce screams of the throng faded away. Crusalla faded, too. The first edge of unconsciousness was sweeping my peripheral vision. But it mattered not. All my focus remained on seeking the cool essence of my midnight love. It pulsed through my frame, easing the instant panic when air flow was cut from my lungs. It didn’t matter. Something greater was here to help me.
Power surged, bright and hot. Not just my own, but Dommiel’s as well, coalescing into a beautiful blade of vengeful desire. He wielded his essence within me, demanding I focus and fight. And win. Not that the wish hadn’t been there all along, but Dommiel’s was an overwhelming need, burning through my blood like liquid fire. A desperate, wild thing demanding obedience.
Though my limbs should be failing me now, my body losing the battle as Crusalla choked me to death, I pulled my left hand up under us, blade jutting up, and stabbed with all my strength straight into her chin, slicing all the way through her skull and out the top with a metallic crunch. Her hands slipped from my throat, body falling off of me into a limp heap.
Sucking in great lungfuls of air, I lurched to my feet. The audience’s screams had died. The music was turned off. But I wasn’t done. Not yet. Not even close.
I stumbled forward. With a boot on her stomach, I palmed both of my daggers’ hilts and yanked them out with a sharp zing, black blood spraying. Straddling her shoulders, her lifeless eyes staring up, I hacked with both blades. Once, twice, three times. On the fourth, I heard the splintering of bone. The feverish need to mutilate beyond death clouded my heart with a wave of apprehension, but not enough to keep my hands from swinging and slicing. On the fifth hack, her neck rolled, hanging on by a piece of flesh. With a swift flick of my right blade, I stabbed through the left side of her chest where her black heart would’ve been, then I snatched her head by the mohawk away from the body.
Raising my open palm over her body, I didn’t whisper the incantation to send her soul to hell, I screamed it. The old words filling the underground chamber with a barbaric stream, energy snapping taut, and the air stilling with a sharp crackle as her body shriveled and darkened to withered black limbs. All the while, fury escalated in my breast, satisfied with the kill I’d made. Then boom. Her headless body imploded with a deafening ripple, a burst of black ash and orange cinders flitting in the air. A soot mark and a dent on the dirt floor marked where her body had been a moment before. I’d sent her black soul to the deep reaches of hell. Now, she would be the one tortured in Erebus.
I held her grotesque head aloft, still dangling in my hand, turning slowly for the silent horde to see what I’d done to their champion.
Darkness wafted over me as I spun for all to witness, black blood oozing down my triumphant arm. My reaction struck me as off, but not wrong. She deserved to die. She deserved to be mutilated further, razed from this earth like the rest of the filthy demons staring down at me—some in shock, some in wonder, but most with hungry menace. The burrowing darkness whispered I could take more of them on, I could wipe more of them out.
With a hurdling scream, I swung Crusalla’s head. It knocked against the bars and rolled down to the dirt. Knowing I was covered in her blood but not caring, I stared up at the boxed chamber where Dommiel had watched. But he was gone. So were Skaal and Nadya.
Then I heard the most unlikely sound I could’ve imagined. My name. Cheered on the lips of demons. Low at first, like a rumble of thunder gaining speed across a plain. Building in a rousing chant, “Anya! Anya! Anya!”
Skaal appeared at my side, raising the arm slicked with Crusalla’s black blood.
“Anya! Angel of Mercy!”
The blood-lusting horde jumped and clamored, crowding the bars and screamed with primordial delight. The sound both terrified and thrilled me. My true self was horrified. Not at killing Crusalla, of course, but at my display of fervent arrogance and malevolent rage even after she was dead.
Another slither of Simian’s darkness curled into my left cavity, circling my heart with a tendril, cradling it close, pushing into my mind. Loving me for what I’d done. Telling me I could do more.
“No,” I whispered under my breath.
Skaal glanced down, having heard me even over the crowd. I glanced away, finding Dommiel at the arch opening, hands on hips, his dark ruby eye studying me with unnerving accuracy. He saw something in my eyes, for he stepped out into the arena and grabbed my other hand.
“That’s enough, Skaal.”
Breaking away, he marched us past the guards back down the hall, around a corridor and into the room where we’d started. With a heavy clang of the steel door, he didn’t say anything. Didn’t accuse me, didn’t judge me, didn’t condemn me. No, that would never be Dommiel.
Instead, he jerked me into his arms—even smeared with demon blood and gore—and squeezed me so close, I thought I might melt right into him. That was when I realized I was shaking. I’d never trembled from a fight. It was second nature. No. It was the overwhelming urge to punish her body beyond death that had my soul quivering within me, shaken by my unmistakable wicked intent.
“Shh.”
Dommiel whispered at my temple, rocking me as he cradled me close. I finally lifted my arms around him, clutching my fists in his jacket and exhaled panting breaths.
With a gentle push, he pulled back far enough to wipe my face with a damp cloth. Where he’d gotten it, I didn’t know. But he must’ve carried it down with him to the arena. He’d thought ahead to wipe my face, my arms, my hands, to free me of the demon’s blood. This man. He wasn’t the condemned soul he thought he was. So tender with me. No true demon would treat me this way. Would care so much.
“Dommiel,” I whispered, my heart aching.
“Shh.”
His gaze roved my face, his expression still and stricken, like a man who’d watched his own death before it had taken place. He dropped the soiled towel, then cupped my face with both hands, his thumbs brushing my cheekbones, shaking.
“Woman,” he ground out, voice as rough as jagged stone. “Never…again.” He lowered trembling lips and brushed them over mine, not coaxing deeper, but simply feeling, touching, making sure I was there. “Never again, you fucking hear me?”
Swallowing a lump of emotion I didn’t recognize, for I’d fought hundreds of battles and not sensed what was coursing through me now, I protested. “But I’ll have to fight Lisabette’s warrior now. You know that.”
“No. You won’t.”
“But how will we—”
“You leave that up to me. I’ll be dead before I watch you tossed in a pit with some demonic monster again, fighting for your life. I died about a hundred times over in the last thirty fucking minutes.” He pressed his forehead to mine, his own breath coming fast. “Never again.” He was making a promise, not a request.
I couldn’t think beyond getting my mouth on him, satisfying this desperate, aching need I didn’t know was in me. Sliding my tongue along his lower lip, I pressed inside when he gasped. Then groaned. One hand slid down to my bottom, pulling me against his body while he met me thrust for firm thrust, stroke for slow stroke.
“Goddamn, woman,” he whispered, before firming his mouth over mine again, taking control as I wanted him to.
I whimpered, clutching at his nape and his hair, adrenaline from the fight, the win, the relief at survival and being in his arms again spurring me on. I wanted Dommiel. No. I needed him. Like a desperate, crazed woman, I mewled and kissed him back, bruising my own lips against his sharpened teeth.
With a sharp snarl, both his palms were on my bottom, lifting me up against the door where he ground his hard cock against my sex, spiking pleasure through the thin fabric of my very short shorts.
“Yes,” I whispered, nipping with teeth up his jaw. “Inside me, Dommiel. Please.”
He anchored my right leg over his hip and used his free hand to slide the thin spandex aside, finding me swollen and wet for him.
“Christ.” He stroked and circled my swollen nub while I rocked against his hand. “You’re going to kill me.”
With predatory speed, he had his buckle open, his zipper down, and his cock in hand, sliding it once along my slit, before he buried himself to the hilt. I held his red-eyed gaze on a high-pitched moan. He filled me to such exquisite fullness, I thought to never know the like other than this. This moment of ecstasy and bliss when he put his cock inside me, stretching me with pleasure-pain.
“Anya.”
I cupped his jaw—which was so clamped tight—as he withdrew in a languid roll, then plunged back up inside me, jolting me higher on the wall.
“Ah.” My mouth fell open. He examined every expression, every part of my face, every line, as he withdrew again and drove deep. So deep, grinding at the end.
“You’re mine, Anya.”
He pressed his face close, sliding his nose along my own, brushing my mouth with his. But he didn’t kiss me. Just swept his lips there, breathing in my air.
“Do you understand?”
I nodded, but he ground inside me again.
“Mine.”
His intent too fierce as he withdrew and pumped back in with quickening speed. Hammering hard to drive home his meaning.
His metal hand on my thigh squeezed and spread me wider. “Not heaven or hell is going to take you away from me.”
Then he was pounding hard and fast, his thickness filling me, stretching me, imprinting on my body in a way I knew I’d never forget. No matter what happened.
“Say yes. Tell me you understand.”
“Yes,” I obeyed without a thought. For I’d been his since the first time he’d kissed me in Berlin. Lost to his dominant will, his beastly temper, his powerful protectiveness, and his genuine, good heart. The secret he carried inside himself, barely showing it even to me.
I moaned when he angled and plunged deeper, hitting a bundle of nerves just right, grinding against my clitoris at the end of each thrust. His dominance pulled me toward a brink I didn’t want to fall over just yet.
“Not yet,” I cried, wanting it to last.
“Yes. I want to see it in your eyes when you come for me. Come on my cock now, Anya,” he commanded.
And just like that, I did. My body obeying him. I screamed, then he finally kissed me deep, groaning his own release with gentle strokes of his tongue. Trying to tell me with his mouth and body that it would be all right, that I was his now and he’d take care of me. Never before had I thought to have someone care for me like this. To crave me on a primitive, savage level. Never before had I thought to return those raw emotions. The fact that it was Dommiel, a demon, who’d cracked through my independent resolve and showed me that my perfect black-and-white world didn’t exist somehow seemed poetic. He showed me that even the darkest heart yearns for the light.
Panting and breathless, he kept me pinned to the wall, impaled on that still half-hard flesh blade of his that was more dangerous to me than any weapon of steel. It was glorious.
“Never again,” he murmured again, tucking his face into my neck.
Knowing he referred to keeping me from the fighting ring, keeping me from harm, I exhaled a sad sigh and wished he could. Pressing my lips to the sweaty skin of his neck, inhaling the addictive scent of him, I wished this could last forever. I wished I could disappear into the protective shade of his lovely midnight-and-indigo aura, that we could go where the world couldn’t find us.
For Simian was coming for me. And soon.