Page 130 of The Demon Court

She’d somehow scrambled up when he’d been certain he had hit her against the floor hard enough to knock her out. That damned wind magic, or whatever it was she called upon must have softened the blow. Baring his teeth, he spun toward the stairs and saw the dark outline of her body as she disappeared around a corner.

Did she think she could get away from him that easily?

He leapt, claws digging into the sides of the stairwell before he began to climb. The railings gave him handholds. He launched himself time and time again, climbing up the center of the Tower’s circular stairs. He became their nightmare, a spider creeping up their walls to hunt them down.

A few sorceresses shrieked, and some tried to attack him. One held twin blades in her hands. He let her stab his shoulder before grabbing onto hers and tossing her into the open air. Her scream was cut short by a sickening crunch. Good enough. Another tried to throw fire in his eyes. An elemental? Where had Minerva been hiding these women?

The fire did little more than annoy him. He let her lob a few flame balls as he passed by before he leapt past to the next level.

Now, where was the bitch who controlled them all? He’d hunt her through the entire Tower and kill every last one of her daughters if he had to. But Minerva didn’t care if they died, which meant she must have a place to hide.

On the seventh level, a sorceress with blood red hair started toward him with her hands raised. And somehow, Selene stood beside her.

He froze. Selene was so pale it frightened him. Her eyes were wide, her hands held out as though in prayer.

“Wait,” she said, but it wasn’t her voice. It was the woman’s who stood next to her. “You have to stop.”

He shook his head, trying to clear some of the bloodlust that raged through him. He needed to listen for a moment, but that new power consumed him. It was similar to his normal control over lust, but different enough to be hard to control. Oh, he lusted for flesh, but not in the same way any longer.

“Please,” Selene said in that voice that was not her own. She took a step closer to him, and he saw blood leaking out from beneath her thick skirts. “You have to help me. Let them go, Lust. Help me instead.”

This was... wrong. It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her, and yet, she was standing right in front of him. Should he...

“I never wanted you,” Selene whispered. “I only wanted to come home and you wouldn’t let me go. What other choice did I have?”

He swallowed hard, his chest cracking open in fear. Had he trapped her? Had he forced her to stay with him when all she had wanted was her freedom? He’d never been that man before. His claws dug into the stone, and he shook his head again, like a beast trying to dislodge a thorn in its paw.

“Stop it,” he snarled. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but this is not her.”

“It’s me. Of course it’s me, demon.”

She had stopped calling him that long ago. Lust’s eyes narrowed upon the figure, and he noticed the details that his breaking heart hadn’t let him see before. Her skirts weren’t real. The very edges revealed the lines of the marble beneath her.

“Now!” the woman standing beside Selene screamed.

Another sorceress barreled out of the darkness. He didn’t have time to brace himself before she struck him. Her arms wrapped around his waist, squeezing impossibly tight as they fell to the ground. Even this height would hurt him, and he prepared himself for the pain that would soon hit his back. But the woman? She was going to break his ribs.

Grunting, he spun them in the air so that she would hit the ground first. Her eyes widened in fear the moment before they landed. She hit harder than he’d expected, and her body made a noise he would remember for the rest of his life as it cushioned his fall.

Breathing hard, he glared back up at the stairs where Minerva was getting away.

Cursing out a breath, he stood and shook out his hands. Blood splattered on the ground, and he didn’t need to look to know he was covered in it now.

“It’s no use,” a quiet voice whispered from the shadows beside him. “I’ve already seen it.”

A fucking soothsayer. He should have known Minerva would have one of those. He moved nothing but his head to glare at her. “The future is malleable.”

“She dies.” The dark haired woman pointed above them. Her hand trembled. “She dies from the top of the Tower.”

He looked up and flexed his hands. “Then I will climb faster.”

“You can’t get there from the inside. The peak is protected by our strongest sorceresses. If you think these women are powerful, you’ve seen nothing yet.”

“They were not powerful.”

Another woman joined the other, her hair white as snow, with sad eyes that met his. A wind whirled around her, and he wondered if, given the chance, she might have been as powerful as Minerva. “This was the plan the whole time. We fight you, so Minerva has a chance to get there first.”

“She wanted to trap me.”

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