Page 90 of Queen of Darkness
Jaxton lifted his rifle to fire, but the queen blurred with movement, and her backhand tossed him clear up and over our little group. He slid along the tiled hallway until he bounced limply off the door—now wedged between the walls at a precarious angle—and came to a stop with a wheezing sigh.
One of the Enkk advanced on the queen, four arms at the ready. She waited for it to approach, the tall demon walking on its bird-like legs. Elenia studied it as it came, its lower arms holding the shorter blades while its upper ones whirled the swords in slow circles.
“Shoot her, dammit,” Aaron hissed.
The rest of the team snapped out of their daze and brought their guns up to fire. Elenia chose that moment to make her attack, slipping in close before the Enkk could attack. She battered its arms aside, snapping one of them in the process, before hauling it down to the floor in a crash to shield her body with its torso from the hail of bullets.
The guns fell silent, and Elenia flung herself free of the demon’s corpse and scattered our team with blows. She left me for last. I evaded her first strike through sheer luck, but after that, she picked me up, shook me around like a rag doll until I saw nothing but stars, and then tossed me into the throne room.
Never had I been so casually cast about like I was a leaf in a storm. Aaron had told me she was strong, had warned me that she was more than he could take, and I thought I’d heeded his message.
I was wrong. Absolutely and completely wrong.
We couldn’t defeatthat. She was no longer a person, but a thing, a force of nature. By the time I landed, came to a halt, gasped, wheezed, and gotten into a sitting position, perhaps three or four seconds had passed.
In that time, the queen had quite literally ripped another Enkk’s limbs from its body, used those same limbs to batter another demon to a pulp, slam Alexi through a wall into whatever lay beyond and disarm everyone else.
Now she stood face to face with Aaron, and the bitch wasn’t even breathing hard. It just wasn’t fair! How were we supposed to face that? To stand before her power?
“This was a mistake,” I muttered, coughing through the pain as I pulled myself to my knees, groaning at the pain. “Definitely a mistake. We should have just nuked the bitch. That would have been the better move.”
While the queen and Aaron argued about something—they weren’t yelling, and my ears were still ringing—I tried to gather my senses. I was in the throne room. True, I hadn’t made a bold entrance but instead had been unceremoniously dumped at the foot of Elenia’s throne, but I was here, nonetheless.
Too bad it wasn’t going to matter.
Have to try, though. You’ve got to try.
Shaking it off as best I could, I got to my feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. My eyes darted to the lounge area Elenia kept at the far right of the room. Comfortable couches and piles of cushions were mostly hidden behind thick, plush purple curtains. Yet within their shadows, I saw people moving.
Worried that they might be more troops waiting to ambush, I staggered in that direction. At least I could take on some regular vamps. Maybe. I was pretty shaken.
Yet, they recoiled from my advance. Not warriors, then, but what? Flinging back the curtain, I look at the cowering forms. All of them were naked, three-quarters male, but all exquisite specimens of the human form. Any other time, my eyes would have been more than happy to take in the sight of Elenia’s blood slaves.
There was no doubt in my mind that’s what they were. The evidence was trailed down their throats and chests, the trails of dried blood from fresh holes. She had been feeding before we arrived.
Over a dozen faces looked up at me. Their eyes were glazed with fear. Thick chains kept them bound to one another. There was no escape for them.
A pained cry from outside the doors forced me to spin around, just in time to watch Aaron hurtle through the entrance. He hit the base of the steps that led up to the actual throne itself, and his head snapped back, cracking hard on the stone.
In that instant, I knew what I had to do. Even as the pain flooded over our link and blood started to pour from his head, I realized I had no choice. There was only one way out of this mess.
Snarling, I reached for the nearest blood slave. The shadow in my mind surged forward as it recognized what we were about to do, my fangs sliding easily into place.
If you kill one of them, you’re never coming out again, I admonished, but the entity wouldn’t understand. It didn’t care. All it wanted, all it knew, was how to feed.
And feed we did. The fresh blood filled me like pure energy. I inhaled sharply as the lingering wooziness fled my skull. My skin stretched taut, muscles swelling as I drained the slave. He fell to his knees without a word.
More pain battered at my link. I couldn’t bear to turn around, to see what was happening to Aaron. I just had to hope Elenia wanted to toy with him long enough for it to matter.
Enough!I screamed as the pale skin under my teeth turned white. With a mighty mental howl, I tore myself away—only to latch on to the next nearest on the chain of slaves.
I hated the way the power made me feel. The glorious energy that burned away my fatigue and the minor aches and pains I hadn’t realized were there. I was growing, my clothing becoming tight. I quickly slipped out of it, barely able to restrain the Hunger inside me long enough. I would be naked soon enough anyway. No sense in delaying.
Slave after slave fell before my fangs, their blood powering me, leaving them on the edge of death, but still alive. I drank deep and greedily. There was no time to be polite. My face and the front of my body were streaked read from mouth to navel, and it ran down my legs as well. I was a demon born of hunger, and I wasn’t stopping.
This was Elenia’s fault. She had done this to me, turned me into this, thisthing. I had become the monster I always feared, and I had done it so I could stop the one everyoneelsefeared.
Brilliant lancing pain flooded my mind. I staggered, just in time to see Elenia stomp down on Aaron’s leg, snapping the femur.
