Page 17 of A Touch of Brimstone

Punching him felt good until a smile feathered across his lips. His amber eyes lit up with amusement, the flecks of gold dancing with delight.

Oh, you want another? I put more power behind the next strike. It evoked a bark of laughter from him. I never thought punching people better would ever be a life goal, but here I was, making it one.

Maybe he was a lifelike robot. Vampires, shapeshifters, witches, seers. Why not impeccably lifelike robots? No one laughed when their crotch was being kneed. Before I could execute it, his finger sliced through the air and a strong force smacked into my leg, collapsing me to the floor with a thud. Dominic knelt next to me; his hands covered my red, blistered arms. His uncompromising eyes held mine.

Coolness crept up the length of my fingers, hands, and arms. The pain receded along with my anger and anxiety. Coaxed into calmness, my body relaxed and I lay back on the floor, my head dropped to the side. Was it my imagination or could I smell lavender and vanilla? I was lulled into a somnolent state as my body healed. Peace. The world didn’t seem so overwhelming, my life not a calamitous crapshow.

This is not real.

Yanking my arms from his hold, I jumped up, looked at my healed arms and then at Dominic who was on his feet, too, just a few inches from me. He was giving me a knowing look, baleful delight curling the corners of his lips.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” I spat out.

“You needed to be calmed and healed. I didn’t have time to deal with your petulance.”

“I wouldn’t have needed healing if you hadn’t tried to burn me alive,” I shot back.

“Yet you stand here, alive and well, in all your tedious insolence.” All emotion had drained from his expression. His cool indifference spiked my anger even more.

“Believe me, I’m more than happy to take my insolence elsewhere and get the hell away from you.” I backed away, watching him carefully to make sure he wasn’t moving closer. When he stayed put, I quickened my pace toward the exit.

“That is your choice. I predict your death will be within the next day. Hopefully it will be painless and quick.”

I scowled. “Is that a threat?”

His dark chuckle eased through the room. “You have no idea who I am, do you, and what I’m capable of. I can assure you, if I wanted you dead, it would be as I wished.”

Not something to brag about.

“Then who?”

“Luna.” There was a musical note to the way he said my name. A rich, sultry drawl. “The seers have connected you to this situation. Desperation to return the prisoners to the Perils will cause people to react to the slimmest of leads. You are the face of the spell right now. Their only lead. They’re convinced that getting rid of you is the only way to break the spell. The only thing standing between you and death is me. What you saw upstairs is nothing. How will you survive it?”

He inched toward me, slowly, taking in how attentive I was to his words. How would I handle people who could perform magic, shift into animals, teleport—or zone or whatever—and effortlessly call on fire?

The slow breath I took had little effect on my panic.

“Tell me, Luna, what is your role in this?” This time my name was said with the disdain of a curse.

“I don’t understand any of it. I’m not part of it and you know it,” I said, lying through my teeth. I was certainly tangentially involved; I just had no idea to what degree. But since the murder cult upstairs was prepared to kill me because of it, I had no intention of confessing. It was something I needed to work out later, but it wouldn’t be with Dominic or the others. I wanted to get as far away from them as possible.

“Oh, but you are. I just need to figure out how.” He took hold of my hand and slipped off the ring, revealing the markings.

My chin jutted in defiance to show my innocence despite the evidence. His brow furrowed as he gently bent my fingers back to show me the markings, as if I hadn’t seen them before. He had to know I’d seen them before.

“I saw the way you responded to the picture Callum presented. You balled your hands to hide your fingers, which is when I noticed the ring was different.”

Borrowing a page from his playbook, I gave him a look of cool indifference.

It brought a dark smile of interest to his lips. “At first I thought you were a powerful witch who managed to get access to forbidden spells. That is the way of the witch, always pushing boundaries, thirsting for power and ways to leverage their privilege. When my spell didn’t uncloak you, I knew you had to be more. Stronger. A Tenebras Obducit—a Dark Caster. If you were, the Conventicle need not be involved. I wanted to handle you the way I handled the others.”

Hearing the brutal edge in his voice, I could imagine the way the others were handled. I swallowed. After a long, considering look, something vaguely empathetic showed on his face.

“Great power that can’t be checked or reined in leads to chaos and the wielder of such power feeling omniscient. That can’t be allowed.”

“You seem to have a great deal of power and no one upstairs seemed to be able to rein you in.”

A smirk tugged at his lips but he forced it back into a cruel straight line. “I’m never to be reined.” It was a simple response that spoke volumes. He’d stepped over that line of confidence. The man was a certifiable jackass.

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