Page 30 of Villainous Greed

I didn’t understand. August wasn’t attacking, but he kept tugging on my cloak.

“Look at your mate, Nova,” he said in a raspy, unfamiliar tone. My pulse was erratic beneath my skin. A fiery heat burst across my face and chest. He might not be plunging a sword through me, but his words were doing some sort of danger. “Seehow much bigger I am than you? Makes me wonder how we’ll go together. I bet you’ll fit perfectly in my arms.”

My body was being attacked by that man. The feelings inside me enraged me. Why was I losing composure? I stumbled as I sent another shot of magic at him. He disappeared again, and I gasped, sucking in air, as if I could only do so when I no longer saw him.

I let anger consume me. I didn’t expect him to try playing with my emotions once again, but I should have known better. Did he think he could easily fool me again? Stepping forward, I lifted my hands out at my sides. If he wanted to keep disappearing, I’d just collapse the whole cave on top of us. He made me immortal. What did I care? I just had to keep on until his powers messed up.

There were four deafening booms all around me as I took out the walls and ceiling.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Boom!” he roared.

Huge chunks of rocks blew everywhere. Pain ripped into my shoulder and legs as some hit me. I sensed him right as he plowed into me, covering his body over mine. The scenario changed as we fell. I lit him up with an explosion.

Blood spewed over my cloak as he hissed. “Ow! Fuck, Nova.”

He flopped onto his back beside me. I sat up quickly and saw he had brought us to the human world. The green trees and signs of life were the first sign. And the heat. Hades, how did humans withstand the sun? I could feel it hitting me through my cloak, and towering trees hid me from it. When I glanced at August, he had his cloak pulled apart, shirt ripped in pieces, as his shoulder mended. The bones and tendons were stitching themselves back together. I saw a dark pink nipple and too much toned muscle.

I inhaled as he muttered, “You always hit the shoulder. Why?”

If I hit him in the chest or head, he’d die, then I’d have to wait for him to revive. It just seemed better to keep him alive until I could kill him for good.

“Don’t even think about it,” he warned.

I sighed, wondering why I hadn’t attacked him again.

“How long are you going to keep this silent treatment up?” he asked. If it were possible, he would have stared a hole through me. “I didn’t recognize your voice in New York City. It’s been so long; I didn’t realize it was possible to forget. But if you spoke to me again, I know you’d be my favorite sound again. Maybe I’d know what being content feels like again.”

My stomach twisted painfully the longer I allowed myself to glance back at him. He made lying seem so easy and convincing.

“Take off the mask,” he ordered. “I need to see that it’s you, even if I know already. My curse won’t settle on waiting for you to come to me this time, little star.”

He moved so quickly that a squeal left my mouth. He threw his entire weight on me, slamming me onto my back. His knee stretched upward between my legs and one of his hands went to my mask.

No. He didn’t get to see me.

Pulling my magic to the surface, I tore into him. That time, I attacked to kill. Something strange happened to August. When I expected blood and guts to reign over me, his weight lessened instead. I shuddered when one of his hands slipped beneath my cloak and grabbed my arm. His touch felt nothing like heated flesh, but cold bars wrapping around me. I threw my hands out. My fingers sank into his cloak. And they kept slipping through,snapping on odd bar-like shapes… like nothing was hardly there. Panicking, I blasted him again. And nothing.

He chuckled, and the sound seemed more like an echo. “You can’t explode an organ or limbs if they aren’t any. My bones are strong in this form.”

Swallowing the bile rising in my throat, I realized what my fingers were slipping through.His ribcage. When his cloak peeled off my face, a skinless face peered down at me. Eyeless sockets, with his yellow essence burning through them, flickered in and out as he watched me.

I’d seen monsters of every kind and knew hundreds of evils. But I still screamed and thrashed, momentarily panicked by the skeletal creature pinning me down.

“Shh, shh, shh,” August whispered, but his voice had a barbed echo tone to it. And his mouth. Hades, the boned jaw, looked like it might fall apart as he opened and closed it. “I didn’t mean to scare you. This is the only way I can get close without you exploding me to pieces.”

I didn’t know August Reaper had a unique form. But I supposed I should have. He was the Grim Reaper’s son. That just proved how little I knew about him.

“I need to see you,” August whispered. The echo of those five words felt like a touch on my skin.

Sliding my fingers down to my pants pocket, I pressed the button on the portal chip. I ported, but he yanked my mask off as I did. I traveled to the human hideout he’d compromised earlier. Knowing Harvest would never use it again, it was safe to let August follow me there.

The air was cool on my exposed face. The coppery smell tinged my senses as I took a deep breath, pulling my hood back. Ionly took off the mask when I got to clean myself. Otherwise, I’d grown to enjoy hiding my face beneath it. Derrick couldn’t gaze at me, and I liked that.

August appeared several feet in front of me. The skeletal figure froze when he saw me. Tendons and muscles slid onto him first, as if someone took a human world thing they called a banana and closed the peeling back on it. Then he had skin and those charcoal-colored orbs again. He staggered as he took a step closer, eyes oddly shiny, as his throat bobbed. “How is it you’re more beautiful now?”

“Enough!” I shouted. “Even now, after all this time, you still want to play this game. Do you think I’ll fall for it again?”

His brows knitted together. “Game? Nothing about finding you is a game, Nova! I thought you were dead, only to realize you’ve been alive all this time, and you didn’t think to come to me? You could have said more lies to me, but I still would have protected you from the shit you’re in now!”

---