Apocalyptic Read online

  Nothing happened. At first.

  I refused to believe the power of a light flame who just happened to be a freakin’ angel wouldn’t give me the boost I needed. There was nothing but resistance.

  Then something began to happen. I might have gasped. Pouring nothing but focused intent and light into the dark looming within Arys and me, I willed it to respond, and it did.

  My greatest fear was doing something to make it worse. As I looked on the dark began to move. A reluctant gradual shift, like dark waters receding with the tide. I said a small prayer and poured forth everything I took from Salem.

  What would it take for it to overrun us completely if this didn’t work? Another attack from Arys? A meltdown from me? Violence that Shaz couldn’t always be there to stop? It was a chance we couldn’t take.

  I drew harder on Salem, channelling everything I could into forcing the dark back. So bad I needed to see it balanced. As it should be.

  Ever so slowly the shadows succumbed to my command. Bit by tiny bit it eased back.

  Chasing the dark back to where it belonged was the only way to mend the rift. The abyss that spanned from Arys to me, tormenting us every night, it would only close when each side returned to balance.

  The effort demanded more focus, stronger intent. It demanded all I had to give and then some. Using Salem’s immortal vibe to guide my intent, I willed it to keep moving. Demanded it. Nothing else mattered more to me in the entire world right then than seeing that gold and blue in perfect balance.

  With each tiny smidge of progress, I felt my fears lessen. Had Falon been right? Maybe I could do this after all.

  And I would have. If Lilah hadn’t been so hell bent on sabotaging us all.

  We’d all gone into this knowing she’d try to stop it if she could. Because if I succeeded in fixing the unbalance between Arys and me, then I could do it for her and Salem as well. She wasn’t taking that chance.

  The sharp slap of dark flame power came out of nowhere. It blindsided me. The attack was specific, directed at the light flame that burned in my core.

  Lilah’s fury screamed through my link to Salem. She didn’t just burst into his head. She took over.

  Immortal power guided by the anger of a pissed off demon queen struck me. Without pulling any punches she used her tie to Salem to channel her hate and rage into a weapon that she then kicked my ass with.

  My link to Salem turned darker than the most absolute of black. It reeked of brimstone and decay. Her target was my light. All she had to do was feed my darkness, undoing the progress I’d just made.

  Through her twin flame Lilah poured darkness into me. The dark flame she hit me with recognized itself in me. It stirred up the darkest parts of me. Lust for blood, power, and to tear things to fucking pieces. Every wicked desire that dwelled in Arys and me grew and swelled at her manipulation.

  She fed it. Forced it. Doing all she could to bring forth full darkness in both of us. Snuffing out our light. That was her end goal.

  It snapped me fully back into my body. I sat up with a shriek to find Salem staring at me with orange eyes. Lilah’s eyes.

  She was here with us, present within him. And she didn’t fight fair.

  So neither could I. Lilah had forced every monstrous hunger I possessed to rush me, tempting me to give in to shady hungers. Had she forgotten that included arousal for powerful men?

  Knowing she watched, I targeted Salem and unleashed a torrent of sex-drenched allure. At this point he was more of an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire than anything else. Although I’m sure he battled her inside his own mind, it didn’t stop me from pulling him under.

  Confusion crossed his face, followed by understanding, and then nothing but lust. I climbed onto Salem’s lap, knowing that seducing him was my only way to get into his head and disrupt her hold on him.

  “You want a piece of me, bitch?” I hissed, finding her within Salem’s wide eyes. “How does it feel to have your lover get hard for me?”

  Pandemonium broke out. Willow and Gabriel realized what was happening. The darkness that took me, it took Arys too. In my peripheral view I saw Shaz and Jenner tackle him as he made to lunge at me.

  “Alexa,” Salem gasped my name, the struggle evident in his eyes. “Run.”

  Even as the guttural plea left him, he brought up a hand and nailed me with a point-blank attack. It was all Lilah. Pure demon magic struck me down, pinning me to the floor. Using Salem to do her dirty work, Lilah took down both Gabriel and Willow with precise blasts of pure evil. Then Salem was on me.

  With claws I slashed at him, fighting to keep him back. I drew on my vampires and struck back with a blast of roiling power that threw the angel back. Wings flared, he grabbed me roughly and jerked me to my feet.

  My back slammed against the open doorframe, the metal latch digging into my spine. Throwing attacks at him did little to harm him in any way. It didn’t help that my power ran darker than ever before. It made battling Lilah next to impossible. Which was her goal.

  I couldn’t beat her without the light.

  Pinning me in place, Salem shook like he resisted every move she forced him to make. His eyes flashed back to his usual gold. With a sheen of unshed tears, he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  Then he was gone, taken over by his dark half. She looked out at me through his eyes and smiled. “Tough luck, Alexa. You can’t always win.”

  Salem’s strong hands gripped each side of my head, forcing me to meet his eyes. Lilah’s eyes. An angel and demon twin flame duo proved formidable. Being the queen of light and dark didn’t mean shit against two immortals. Not when my light withered by the second.

  Lilah fed the darkness into me as I fought to dislodge her hold. What light I’d had left was quickly being devoured by shadows. Arys, who’d had so little already, stood no chance.

  The demon bitch wanted to drive us both to total darkness. It’s what she wanted for her and Salem, and the threat of me being able to stop that had driven her to take us with them.

  I pushed back against her, pulling all the power I could from my vampires. But as the light inside me dwindled, I had nothing to channel it through. Throwing dark power at her did absolutely nothing. It wasn’t enough.

  It was the light that gave me power over dark creatures. It flickered and struggled in my core, refusing to bow to the shadows. Still it shrank to a tiny glow.

  No! This can’t be happening.

  We were going to lose. But how? How could this be? The bitch was locked away and yet still able to reduce me to a begging mess.

  Blood tears streamed down my face. “Please, don’t,” I begged, having no shame. All I knew was that Arys and I couldn’t end this way.

  Jenner and Shaz fought to subdue him. He was making them work for it. It killed me to see the rabid glint steal in as the light faded from his eyes, replaced by shadows.

  “It’s nothing personal,” Lilah said to me through Salem. “Just self-preservation.”

  A final surge exploded from Salem. This was it. He and Lilah would extinguish our light flame, ruining us forever.

  Refusing to go down without a fight, I reached a shaky hand down and drew the Dragon Claw. After my run in with Bane, I wasn’t being caught without it. Shya had promised it would destroy the physical form of any dark creature. Filled with Lilah’s immense essence, Salem fit the bill.

  I stabbed the dagger into his side as deep as I could. His startled cry hurt my ears. Lilah was forced out as Salem clutched the unexpected wound. Seconds later he vanished.

  Their Godless power fell away.

  Dropping the dagger, I clutched the door frame in an effort not to collapse. Although I could no longer intricately see our energy fields, I knew our light had been all but obliterated. Only the barest trace remained. I felt it inside me. Burning bright and hot, albeit tiny and pathetic. A match in a midnight storm.

  So close the bitch had come to destroying us. How the fuck would I fix us now?

  The urgent
and irresistible need to slake my wicked desires obliterated that question. They ran rampant through me, freed from the barrier the light had imposed. I saw through a haze of black.

  Moving in sync, Arys twisted free from Shaz’s hold at the same time I grabbed Jenner and flung him from the room. He hit the carpet in the hallway with a grunt. Arys wrenched Shaz’s arm behind his back and tossed him after Jenner. The two men collided in a heap of limbs and shouts.

  I slammed the door in their faces and turned to my other half. This must be the part where we kill each other. It loomed. I sensed it. Strangely, I was ok with it. So off balance, it didn’t occur to me that I should still be fighting it.

  Arys and I, part of us, we just wanted the struggle to end. Our eyes locked. No longer did I see all of him there. Something was missing. Humanity. The spark that returned to him when we bonded had been snuffed out.

  We weren’t alone. Willow and Gabriel were a groaning mess on the floor where Salem had left them. That was fine. They could watch. It was Shaz who shouldn’t see what was about to happen.

  Coming together we moved as one, a perfect mirror of one another. Suddenly my hand was on Arys’s throat. I threw him against the closed door, using his weight to keep it shut against the guys beating on it from the other side.

  “I’m sorry.” I heard myself say in a broken voice. “I tried.”

  Arys stared down at me with grim amusement, like our imminent doom was the goddamn punchline of a sick joke. “You did what you could. But we both knew it would end this way.”

  My hand tightened on his throat. Power, so dark I choked on it, ruffled my hair. Arys spread his hands wide, inviting my best shot. I didn’t want to take it, but I knew he wouldn’t waste the first one he got.

  There was no rationale left. There was only bringing this all to a close. The way the darkness wanted us to.

  I crushed my lips to his, needing to feel him again before it was all over. We owed ourselves that much. The door bounced and rattled in its frame. On the other side Shaz shouted that he’d tear the fucking thing down.

  Do it, a small, quiet voice pleaded somewhere deep in my psyche. Don’t let us end like this.

  Arys took my face in his hands, far too gentle for the sinister force guiding his every move. The passion in his kiss was haunting. It reeked of death and his lust for mine.

  Behind me Willow called my name. He sounded far away, muffled like he shouted through water. It was unfortunate that he’d have to bear witness to our destruction. He’d fought so long and hard for us.

  Arys tore his lips from mine and, with a ragged groan, backhanded me. The force spun me around and threw me off balance. I stayed on my feet, tasting blood.

  “I didn’t want to love you,” he said, strangled, like he tried to hold the words back but failed. “I didn’t want any of this.”

  Worse than any physical blow, Arys’s scathing words cut deep. He sounded like Lilah.

  Soul crushing pain had me clutching my chest. It hurt in so many places. “I didn’t ask for this either,” I shouted back at him, tripping over a sob. “You came after me, remember? You could have just stayed away.”

  Not true. I knew that. He couldn’t have stayed away any more than I could walk out of here right now and never see him again. But right then the dark rode me, and its words flew out of my mouth. It stole Arys’s guilt from my memories and threw it in his face.

  “You changed me,” he accused, catching the fist I swung, “into something I didn’t want to be.” Squeezing my forearm, Arys dragged me against him.

  My body blazed in remembrance of all we’d shared. I still wanted him, still loved him with every part of me, despite wanting to unleash my pain all over him. “You made me a monster,” I spat, raking my gaze over his tense jaw. With each hateful word, I craved him more. “A coldblooded killer, just like you.”

  “I made you a work of fucking art.” He smirked into my face.

  A stand-off. Those precious few seconds before all bets are off and shots are fired. The shitstorm of darkness engulfed us.

  Our attacks came at exactly the same time. Power exploded between us, dark meeting dark. The collision threw us both in opposite directions.

  Gabriel and Willow put themselves between us, readying for our quick recovery. Latin spilled from Gabriel, erecting a massive floor-to-ceiling energy barrier in the middle of the room, dividing Arys and me.

  The door burst open. Relief filled Shaz’s face when he saw us alive. He didn’t hold back. He threw an adrenaline-fuelled fist into Arys’s jaw, snapping his head to the side. The vampire went down, out cold. It wasn’t easy to KO a vamp.

  “Help me get him out of here before he wakes up,” Shaz barked.

  Jenner helped Shaz to gather Arys like they would a drunk friend, letting him hang between them as they dragged him down the hall.

  Both saddened and angered, I watched him go. It felt like my soul was being carved out with a cold, bony, claw-tipped finger.

  Willow caught me and pulled me into his arms as the others took my lover away. It hurt me to see. The hollow pit left inside me ached. The spark of light that had once been a brilliant flame now flickered. A tiny candle in a windstorm. It was all we had left.

  “Alexa? Talk to me. Say something.” Willow slapped my face lightly, trying to get me to focus on him. Worry filled his enchanting eyes.

  The sounds of the heavy metal door at the end of the hall reverberated as the guys removed Arys from the building.

  “It’s over.” Ragged, breathy, I could barely get the words out. Defeat overwhelmed me.

  “No, it’s not,” Willow insisted. “Not as long as you have even the smallest spark. Because that’s all you need. Don’t you dare give up yet.”

  The voice of the dark boomed so much louder now. Insistent and convincing. It wanted me to taste Willow. Temptation reared its ugly head. Why the hell shouldn’t I? What else did I have left to exist for now other than blood, sex, death, and staying high on all of it until my final showdown with Arys.

  The thought had barely finished flitting through my head when Willow sensed it. He stiffened, jerking back so we weren’t touching. “Alexa, don’t.” Raising both hands in surrender, Willow shook his head. “I’m not what you really want.”

  Splashing him with my allure, I shrugged and touched the side of his face. The simplest of touches that had him swooning. My succubus side had always been dark. It was right at home now with less light to battle it for dominance. My wolf wasn’t a fan of this new turn of events. It sat back in silence, confused and unhappy.

  “No, maybe not,” I agreed, my seductive purr driving his arousal higher. “But I can’t think of a better way to end the worst night of my life than by drowning my sorrows in two of the most powerful vampires I know.”

  Gabriel backed toward the door. Distance wouldn’t help him. Not anymore. I was inside him.

  “Don’t do this.” Despite his plea, Willow leaned into my touch. His gaze was on my mouth. He wanted to taste it.

  With a finger I beckoned Gabriel closer. At the same time I dragged a hand down Willow’s chest, headed lower. They were both mine, and I intended to enjoy them.

  The air moved. A telltale ripple I both heard and felt.

  I glanced up to find myself staring into silver eyes set in a beautiful, battered face. Splotches of purple and red decorated Falon. One eye swollen, gashes on his lip, cheek and forehead.

  Bane! The demon prince had done this.

  Falon shoved in front of Willow, saving him from me. Clasping my face in his hands, the fallen angel searched my eyes. What he found made his mouth draw into a tight line and his brows knit together. Falon studied me like he couldn’t accept what he saw. He blinked a few times and glanced away, but not before I saw what he’d tried to hide. Utter dismay.

  He pressed his lips to my forehead and exhaled a slow breath. In a tone that lacked true vehemence, he murmured, “Let’s get you out of here before you can fuck anything else up.”

&
nbsp; CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “What the hell happened?” Falon blurted the second the hotel room door swung shut. He locked it and shed his long coat, flinging it over the desk chair. “Did Salem screw you over? And he has the nerve to call me a traitor.”

  “No way, you first.” I waved a hand, indicating his bruised face. “Did Bane do this? Why the hell did you go after him?”

  The bruises had healed significantly since his arrival at the Kiss. Still, they lingered. It took an assault loaded with a fuck ton of power to leave marks on an immortal. I marveled at the sight of Falon’s beautiful face marred by violence. I felt it between my legs.

  “Do not say his name,” Falon hissed, shoving the chair so it bounced against the desk. “Tell me what happened. You’re dark as fucking sin, Alexa. Don’t walk away from me.”

  Dropping clothing as I went, I headed for the large ensuite and turned on the water in the shower. I peeled off my bra and panties before untying my hair from its disheveled braid. I wanted to scrub the entire night away. Since I couldn’t do that, a layer of skin would have to do.

  Falon strode into the bathroom behind me. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking a shower.” I shot him a look that said ‘duh’ and stepped beneath the hot stream. “What does it look like?”

  “It looks like you’ve lost whatever was left of your damn fool mind.” His expression guarded, Falon disrobed.

  A pricey shirt and a pair of pants with trendy names I didn’t know hit the floor. They were in rough shape anyway. Beneath the fashion mag duds, he went commando. Tall, naked, and undeniably divine. I stared at the cuts and bruises that marked him. Wounds from blades, fists, and magic covered his torso. He’d gone after Bane, but why?

  Falon stepped into the shower, nudging me aside so he could take over the hot spray of water. Scrubbing both hands over his silver hair, the water cascaded over him. I kind of wanted to eat him a little bit. Unable to take my eyes off him, I fumbled around for the shampoo.

  “You think this is bad?” Falon gestured to his wounds. “It’s nothing. I won’t even feel it tomorrow. You’ll still be dark as fuck. What exactly did you do?”