Page 66 of Lovely Violent Things

Her dark eyes flash with firelight. “I’ve liberated them.”

“You’vemutilatedthem.” I grab her hand. “This can’t be what you wanted, what you imagined. I refuse to believe that.” As I stay locked to her gaze, a tiny flare of hope springs within me. “What happened to you?”

What she allowed me to see within her at the ravine was real. It can’t all be a part of her mask. The moment Kallum said the site was a glimpse into what made the Overman vulnerable, I felt the truth in his words.

Tragedy.

I recognized that fatal pain inside her right then.

And right now, I have to go for the jugular.

“Where is Colter?” I demand, gripping her hand tighter. “Where is your brother? Did you mutilate your own twin, your own flesh and blood for your vanity—?”

She breaks out of my hold, her palm striking my face in a sharp slap.

Head canted sideways, I feel the burn of her heartache, my skin alive with the searing sting. I focus on that pain, allowing it to sober me further.

Just as suddenly, Devyn’s hand seizes my throat in a firm clutch. Nails biting into my skin, she draws my face close to hers. For one second, I glimpse behind the perfect, beautiful mask she wears. In the quickening beat of a drum strike, I see the hurt, the grief veiled behind the drugs in her shimmery eyes.

“You think I give afuckabout some ancient god or his brainless followers,” she hisses. Shaking her head, she laughs breathlessly. “I wanted to give you all your answers, Halen. But—” She slowly and deliberately releases my throat. “I think you should die with your mystery.”

As quickly as I break through to her, she shuts me out. She’s a master.

A shiver coasts over my naked skin, and as Devyn backs away, she reaches out to the woman holding the chalice. Her eyes stay trained on my face as she brings the cup to her mouth and drains the contents.

When she drops the cup to the earth, her eyes are glassy, her features slack.

She’s gone.

Devyn raises her arms, the fire seeming to snap and rise higher at her command. “I will take it freely or by force, but I will take it, Halen.”

“What happened to choice?” I demand of her.

“You already made yours. Now you’re here. At least you were given one.” She whirls toward her devoted subjects. “Hear me,” she shouts. “We willingly gave up our worldly possessions, our mundane lives. A test of our devotion.”

The horned people around the circle of fire groan and pound their chests in answer.

Devyn spins around and around, arms outstretched. “And you know the word,” she cries, her voice pitched high, carrying over the drumming. “I love those who do not first seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and be a sacrifice, but who instead sacrifice themselves for the earth, so that the earth may one day become theÜbermensch’s.”

I recognize the recited passage fromThus SpokeZarathustra. Devyn uses the wordage, twisting the meaning, to control her higher humans.

“The Primal Man sacrifices himself, tearing free of worldly constraints, in order to be reborn, to recreate himself,” she says, her glassy eyes settling on me. “This is the way to our divine immortality.”

I push forward, staring her in her bloodshot eyes as I search my memory for a passage to combat hers, any purposeful words I can use to get through to these people. “Zarathustra stated, ‘This is my way, where is yours?’” I shout, “thus I answered those who asked me ‘the way,’ for the way, that does not exist’.”

I turn to face the victims, these people who have been misled, followingliterallyblindly, offering pieces of themselves to achieve Devyn’s misguided wisdom.

“This is what you believe?” I ask of them. “Nietzsche defined it so damn clear that there is no formula or path to follow, that each person must seek their own way. But you’ve followed hers. You’vesacrificedyourselves for her way. Can’t you see the failed logic in that?”

The eerie moans ascend higher, the flames popping against the dark abyss of this hell. The higher men fall to their knees in frenzied worship of their priestess. They’re too far gone, lost to depravity as they fuck and worship and submit to their will.

“You have no idea what they’ve suffered to be here,” Devyn says.

Then, with a defiant smile, she tilts her head. The dark tresses of her hair spill over her bare shoulders as she oscillates in sexy rolls of her hips to the rhythm of the swelling drumbeat. Her body gyrates, succumbing to the drug in her system, her movements becoming frantic, and a band of fear cinches my chest at the powerful sight of her.

She touches the antlers affixed to her scalp, caressing the bone as she dances closer to me. “Nietzsche was such a misogynist,” she says. “Overman. A ridiculous translation. I prefer Over-woman. As theMaenads, the fucking followers of the god themselves, were in fact women. Figures a man would try to rewrite history for his ownvanity.” She spits the word back at me, her dark eyes alighting on my naked skin. “Your profile was wrong on that, profiler. My vanity has no place here.”

“Dance with me,” she urges, clasping my waist and drawing me toward the center of the ring of fire.

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