Shara

I raced down the darkened hallway to the room where Tanza held my alpha. He was still alive, but his body blazed like she’d tossed him in a pool of boiling acid. I could taste her blood in his mouth.

She’d forced her blood into him. Contaminated him. The same as Ezra.

I gripped Rik’s weakened, stretched bond in my mind and prayed I wasn’t too late.

Breathing hard, I stopped and made sure I found the edge of her blood circle. Now that I knew what to look for, I could feel the emptiness, the absence of warmth and life that marked the edge of her circle. If Ra was the god of light, which gave all things life, she was the opposite. The anti-life. The complete and utter blackness.

In some ways, we were very much the same. I had been conceived and born in absolute darkness. But the light of love still glowed within me.

She knew nothing but her hunger for pain.

He lay on the floor, his head in the child’s lap. It could have been sweet and innocent, if he wasn’t writhing with pain while she laughed, a sweet, high-pitched sound of pure enjoyment so evil that my stomach heaved. I almost vomited all of Keisha’s blood on the floor.

He turned his head and met my gaze. Black blood dribbled from his lips, but he still managed to smile. :Shara. You did it. My queen. So fucking proud.:

His voice came from a million miles away, but I could still hear him.

Closing my eyes, I sank into our bond. I didn’t dare force my will too fast and hard down the fragile bond tying us together, for fear it would dissolve into nothing. His pain washed over me. Stronger. I breathed through it, letting it flow through me. Tears trickled down my face. I shredded my lips, fighting the need to scream. He didn’t scream, so I wouldn’t, either.

I sank further into him. My rock, unshakeable. The low rumble of an earthquake. His extreme gentleness, utter loyalty, and selfless love. My alpha would lay down his life for mine in a heartbeat.

And I would pull him back from death’s door to keep him with me.

For all his strength and alpha will, he surrendered to me. He had from the first moment I’d met him. I remembered the gentle way he’d pressed his forehead to mine. His big hands so careful when he held me. A man of his size and strength could take anything he wanted from a woman, but he’d never do such a thing. My pleasure and enjoyment had been his number one priority from the first moment we met.

If that meant rolling over on his back and letting me have my wicked way with him, he’d be there for that, all night and all day, every day.

It was easy for him to let me in, all the way, without hesitation. He held nothing back. He opened up his heart, mind, and body to me. His soul brushed mine. I was inside him. I was him. I looked through his eyes and saw myself looking back.

Slowly, I rolled my head back to look up into Tanza’s face. Her eyes glittered like black mirrors. Her blood seeped through my body like poison. A dark bond that I could trace back to its source. Her blood circle flowed around us like a black hole sucking up all the light of the universe.

Rik’s eyelids fluttered. His body started to fail. But I didn’t need his eyes to see any longer. I gathered my will and focused on Tanza’s bond taking root inside him. I tapped my blood, both my period blood and the blood trickling down my chin. I focused it like a laser beam and pushed a searing hot flame through her bond.

I burned into Tanza. All my power, blasting into her with the heat of the earth’s molten core. Her eyes flared, flicking with flames. My flames, burning inside her. She opened her mouth and screeched, a sound meant to deafen and maim. Rik jerked and spasmed on her lap, his body already punished with that sound while I’d finished Keisha. I felt the echo of pain and thrashing in my body, but it was distant, removed from Rik. I was inside Rik. I was in the circle with him. And he was dying.

I stoked the flames inside her, pushing harder. The blood circle wavered, straining beneath the force of power I pumped through him into her. So much power. Enough to blast the earth into dust. To tear the universe apart.

Or implode a black hole.

The blood circle popped, and the floor lurched beneath us. I slammed back into my body. On my hands and knees. Bleeding. I crawled toward Rik. Tanza lay on her back, thrashing and screaming as my flames boiled inside her. But she wouldn’t fucking die.

My Blood raced ahead of me. Daire grabbed Rik’s arm in his jaws and dragged him away from Tanza. Itztli and Tlacel grabbed her legs, pinning her lower body. Nevarre and Xin grabbed her arms.

She wailed louder and bloody marks tore open on my Blood. A slash across Xin’s face. Deep, bleeding scratches on my black dog’s flank. Invisible whips that tore at their flesh. But they kept her pinned, waiting for me to reach them.

I wasn’t sure what to do. How did one kill a demon?

:You kill the shell it inhabits and force it to vacate the body,: Guillaume said in my mind. He raced toward me, knives in both hands. Leviathan had finally torn through the roof of the building and was blasting fire at anyone who thought to come after me.

My flames burned inside her, crisping her body, but she still lived. I wasn’t sure what else I could do, short of sinking my fangs into her. But the last thing I wanted to do was risk giving the demon a hold in my mind and body too.

Then I remembered. My knife. I patted the tiny pocket Alice had sewn into the delicate skirt and found my old knife. I flicked it open and moved closer to Tanza’s thrashing body.

“Help,” she whimpered in her child’s voice. “Help me. Save me. Please.”

My mind quailed. I couldn’t harm a child. Mom had died to save a child.

I thought of Xochitl lying hurt and scared like this and my stomach heaved at the thought of sinking my knife into her.

Sensing my hesitation, the demon chittered inside her, a high-pitched metallic laughter that tore at my flesh. Tanza’s hand shifted into a black talon that lashed out at Xin and sliced deeply into his stomach, nearly disemboweling him. Doubled over with pain, he struggled to hold on to the claw, using his own body to shield me from the brutal weapon.

Gritting my teeth, I clutched the knife in both hands. The only way to save the child Tanza had been was to end the demon’s dominion in her body. Forgive me, I thought at the universe in general, and slammed the blade into Tanza’s heart.

Guillaume brushed past me and swiped his blades in a quick arc that sent her head rolling to the side.

Black blood leaked out of her. Not human. Not Aima.

I crawled over to Rik and pressed my wrist to his mouth. Eyes closed, he sank his fangs into me. Nevarre helped Xin up and brought him to me. I offered him my other wrist. I sank into them both, letting my power flow through their bodies. Xin was easy to heal, though his wound was ugly.

Rik didn’t have as many visible injuries, but he was hurt internally, as if the demon had rubbed a cheese grater all over his organs and nerves, shredding them from head to toe. He fed long enough that I sagged against him, despite draining Keisha dry just moments before.

Guillaume stepped close and offered me his bleeding wrist. Nevarre pressed against my back, supporting me while I fed.

“Make sure you burn out the contamination from them both,” Guillaume said. “If not, the demon may be able to track either of them down, even years later, and slowly infect them with its evil.”

I cast my senses through Rik’s body, searching for any hint of the blood he’d been forced to take from Tanza. Small drops had spread through his body like a black cancer. I took my time, making sure I touched each one with my power until all traces were wiped away. He sat up and wrapped his arms around me, though he didn’t release my wrist yet. I nestled against his chest, breathed in his scent of smoking hot rock, and didn’t mind the tears of relief that dampened his shirt.

When he finally lifted his mouth, I sighed with regret.

“Perhaps we could continue this once we return to your home, my queen.”

I nodded, still feeling rather fuzzy, like my head would float away. Something wasn’t right, though. I wasn’t complete. I looked around my Blood and finally settled my gaze on Ezra.

He knelt at the edge of my Blood, head down with shame.

“Ezra.” He flinched but lifted his head. I held my hand out to him, and he slowly crawled closer to bury his face against me. “Shhhh. We’re all safe now.”

“I’m so sorry, my queen. I fell right into their fucking trap.”

I wrapped one arm around his shaggy head and held him to my chest. “This trap was set for me before my birth. If not you, then another one of us would have sprung it. It doesn’t matter now. We won. It’s over.”

He lifted his head, his eyes haunted. “Is it? I still feel her inside me.”

I looked over at the smoldering body. The fingers on her hand twitched.

Pressing my bleeding wrist to Ezra’s mouth, I sank through his body, searching for those black cells of her blood. As with Rik, I took my time, making sure Ezra fed well, and that I didn’t miss a single drop of contamination that he might carry.

Something rustled in the hallway. Rik dragged me up into his lap. Daire crouched over our legs. Guillaume whirled with a foot-long bloody knife in his hand.

“It’s me,” Vega said hurriedly, stepping out into the blue-tinted light, hands up. “Just checking on you. The troops are getting restless. They don’t know whether they should flee or swear to Isador.”

I blew out a sigh. This was the part I’d dreaded from the beginning. The business of taking over a house as large as Skye was going to be tedious in the extreme. I held out my hands and Nevarre took one, Itztli the other, helping me stand. “Let’s make sure this body is completely destroyed before we leave.”

“Good idea.” Guillaume used his boot to push the severed head closer to the body. “You may have to douse it with your blood and light it on fire that way, my queen.”

I nodded, holding my hand out to him. He cradled my palm in his and carefully widened the bite in my wrist to allow my blood to drip in a steady stream. I coated the small body in blood, until my knees quivered, and I felt lightheaded again.

“Who… or what… is that?” Vega asked hesitantly.

I debated how much to tell her. Keisha was dead. The child she’d been so obsessed to save, also dead. Tanza had truly died a long time ago, because the demon who’d tortured alphas all these years had not been an innocent child.

Concentrating a moment, I lit my blood on fire. Flames roared higher, quickly consuming the body. Flesh cracked, blackened, and crumbled to ash.

Turning away, I said, “It was a demon. It twisted your former queen into torturing her alphas.”

Vega nodded, and relief eased the harsh lines of her face. “She wasn’t always like that. We weren’t always like that.”

I stared back at her until she dropped her gaze and stepped aside. “Let’s hope the fuck not, because things will sure be different now. This is my fucking house, and nobody suffers in House Isador for another’s whim.”