63. GODRIC

Ihold Gideon’s gaze as Mawt blossoms in his eyes.

I haven’t seen them in their full-on Death mode since the day I told him his mother died. We have—or rather he has brought up her death dozens of times ever since. This level of darkness has never taken him over since the acuteness of his bereavement passed. It makes me wonder what’s bringing it on now, if there is something wrong with him.

Since I can”t care less at the moment, I turn away, gesture to Elijah for another bottle. “I’m not letting you harp on that again.”

Gideon cracks a furious laugh. “Certainly. I must forget about her, since you consider her collateral damage.”

His mother was no such thing. It’s what I needed him to believe. He’s already a precarious quantity as it is. The truth would make him an uncontrollable one.

I grab the bottle from Elijah’s hand before answering him. “You can remember her any bloody way you like, as long as I don’t hear about it. What I want to hear about is why you think I compelled you, and what happened after I allegedly did.”

Tory grabs my jacket and yanks me around to her. “We were talking to Wen, when I found myself telling her that I’m never talking to her again, and taking off.”

Gideon grabs me from the other side, and shoves his face into mine. “What she said.”

My gaze slides between them as I practically feel them reverting to their basic components; entropy and war.

Drawing a blank on rationalizing their behavior, it takes a concerted effort to exert only enough force to shrug them off. “That’s no compulsion. That’s her. She must have pushed your buttons until you wanted to fling yourself off the planet.”

“Speaking from experience, Big Brother?” Gideon sniggers, his eyes brightening again, but not to their usual pretty-boy turquoise. It’s as if an eclipse has moved off the face of twin blue-hot suns. “But no. I for one love her aggravation.”

My hand freezes in mid-pour as the word “love” lodges into my brain like an ax.

The fucking liquid overflows over my other hand as I see myself dismembering him, all too clearly.

Tory nods vehemently, her blood-red eyes reverting to their stormy hue. “Yeah, I adore that scrawny weirdo. Her aggravation is the only entertainment I get around this fucking mausoleum. Something compelled us.” She drags me back to face her, her irises changing from steel-blades to burning coals. If Gideon looks hopped up, she looks positively barmy. “And by something, I mean you.”

Picking up my glass, I zap her off me, a little harsher this time. “Why would you even think it was me?”

“Because you don’t want us anywhere near her, especially me.” Gideon encroaches on me again, his growl shattering the glass in my hand. “And your compulsion is still working.”

Raising my eyes from the glass embedded in my hand, I reconsider my initial plan. It’s a pity to let these shards go to waste. Raking them down the face he’s shoving into mine would carve him some interesting expression lines for a few days.

Regretfully, my reasons for not engaging him still stand.

Shaking off the shards, along with the blood and brandy, I raise an eyebrow. “You’re unable to go near her?”

His eyes darken again with outraged frustration, giving me my answer.

This is even more serious than I first thought.

Gideon has always been immune to all forms of psychic manipulation. Who could be capable of doing this to him? And why?

As if I need another her-related mystery.

I exhale. “Well, it wasn’t me. And before you splatter me with more spittle and inanities, you know I wouldn’t deny it if it was.”

This gives them pause.

Tory’s manic expression gives way to a morose one. “Who could it have been, then?”

I shrug. “That’s a mystery you have to resolve on your own. For future reference, I don’t care if you talk to her. In fact, I consider her ego-crushing powers a radical treatment for your terminal vanity.” I swipe a fed-up glance between them. “You have the nerve to come bellyaching, you useless arses, when you’ve done bloody shit to help me contain the Zinimar situation.”

In response, an addled-looking Tory slinks away muttering to herself.

Gideon gives me a hateful grin that would look so much better without all those pearly-whites. “Is this why you’re sitting here drinking by your lonesome, O Exalted Sword of Heaven? You’re spilling tears of frustration into your drink over the impasse we’ve reached with the Infernal Court?”

Lorcan echoes his maliciousness with an extra goading leer. “We all know the sole source of his frustration. She drove you to drink, old chap!”

I have to ration my exhalation so I don’t pulverize the bar, and to rein in the preposterous urge to confide in these two twats.

Gideon’s face falls, making him look as deflated as Tory has been when she left. It’s beyond weird, this pendulum of emotions they’ve been exhibiting. “If she did, why bother hitting the bottle? It’s not as if we can get intoxicated properly.”

I don’t answer. I’m certainly never telling him I don’t get intoxicated at all.

Gideon looks around at the rowdy crowd, his sigh breaking a few bottles. His compromised control should alarm me. For some reason, it doesn’t.

“How I envy these lesser beings.” His expression suddenly does another one-eighty, lighting up with an eagerness I haven’t seen since he was a hero-worshipping ten-year-old. “But maybe there’s a way around our pesky imperviousness. Have you heard of that Level-Seven mage from Albus’s order? He’s touted to have moonshine spells that can affect even us, and that he tailors them to each Supernatural for maximum effect. How about we split a bottle of his special-order brew, Godawful?”

Every nerve in my body snaps. Like his every bone will at the next strategic moment. For daring to desecrate her name for me.

Lorcan makes choking sounds as he glares at Gideon. “How about I split your head in half, you wanker?” He nudges me with an elbow that would have torn into anyone else’s ribcage. “The planet thanks you for not considering it, mate. It’s too fragile for a Level Nine drunken tantrum.”

I curl my lips, not bothering to argue that it wouldn’t affect me. He knows I’m immune to everything.

Everything but her.

After that, we fall into a strange and dejected silence among the Hellish uproar.

I’m certain we must look like three over-the-hill blokes who realized they’re in the wrong place, among the wrong crowd. That being amidst the young and carefree only makes them feel the crushing burden of their years and responsibilities even more acutely.

Suddenly, Lorcan whistles. “Bloody Hell! The girl’s got moves.”

“First time I agree with you on anything, mate,” Gideon growls, the sound both surprised—and hungry. “The girl does got moves. And the moves got her.”

An unknown sensation rushes through me. As if all the aggression I’ve suppressed, until I believed it had dissipated, is bursting out of every hair follicle.

I try to not understand, to not seek confirmation of what these two tossers meant.

I fail on both counts.

Turning, as if under the gravitational pull of a black hole, which isn’t too far from the truth, I see her.

She’s over a hundred feet away, and almost engulfed in the writhing bodies between us. Yet I see nothing else.

I always see nothing but her.

She’s on the dance floor, alone. Those she wouldn’t come with me for, her wanker so-called friends, are nowhere in sight. Though, I have to admit, they weren’t on my kill list this morning. I don’t know how it happened, but they’re on better terms with her now. Which is good. For them. The rest of the crowd doesn’t seem to mind her being among them now. Probably life-saving for them as well.

She’s almost congealed in writhing bodies, yet she stands out. Not only because she’s like a beacon in total darkness to my senses, but because she’s covered from neck to toes. Everyone else is in one state of undress or another.

Her immediate vicinity is all females. Thankfully. She’s surrounded by every shape and size of nubile body, displayed in attires designed to accentuate feminine assets, and to enforce male idiocy.

They could be animated potato sacks for all the effect they have on me.

The sight of her, though, in the sterile Academy-issue garb, even when she hasn’t regained all the weight she’s lost, over me, is like a spark consuming a bomb fuse. She affects me the same way when she’s bedraggled, or even when she’s “barfing.” Now, she’s taken it to new depths of torment.

She’s dancing.

As those risk-junkie bastards who’re truly messing with their lives’ odometer said, she’s “got moves.”

They’re unaware, unstudied. Inborn. An extension of this irresistible force’s very fabric of being. I can also see the imprint of my molding in her undulations. And that’s when I have barely schooled her in stamina, strength and survival. When I haven’t yet instructed her in the ways of sexual abandon, and indoctrinated her in withstanding the zeniths of carnal pleasure, and the abysses of erotic pain. Before I forged her into a master and subjugate of the flesh.

I dare not imagine what she’d do to me then.

Even with her uninitiated, with her dancing in no way sexual, her movements are like aphrodisiac bullets. They spray me, penetrating my shields, and injecting their compulsion into my bloodstream.

And I know exactly why.

She’s dancing like she can’t bear her skin, like she wants to crawl out of it, to tear it off. She’s moving like what she is, an entity of infinite depths, of unfathomable hunger.

She’s swaying and swinging and shaking like she’ll implode if she doesn’t get fucked. Filled. Finished. By me.

But from Lorcan’s and Gideon’s comments, and the way other males are encroaching on her circle, they are drawn to her, to her need, and seem helpless not to respond.

Maybe it will be tonight that she drives me to go on that preemptive male-elimination rampage.

That would be the end of my plans, but so what? It would be well worth it, throwing them all away, to correct the gross error I’ve been committing. Playing my cards too close to the chest, and letting other males think they can get away with coveting what’s mine. And she is. Mine.

Mine.

I’m done trying to suppress that fact.

Like she said, this thing between us is terrible either way, whether I have her, or I don’t. So I should have her. Have all of her. Devour her to the last spark of her being.

She wants me to. She craves me, and everything with me, with all the unstoppable force of her endless hunger. She doesn’t care if I end up destroying her.

I probably will. Even if I don’t, she will perish anyway, all too soon.

So why not have all I can have of her, while I can?

Truly—why? I don’t remember why I’ve been holding off, or can think of one reason not to indulge her, not to unleash myself on her.

I push off my stool with a force that has it exploding into splinters, and has Lorcan and Gideon jumping off theirs in alarm.

Before they make a move, I turn on them, an animalistic growl filling my ears. “Follow me, and I’ll rip off your arms, and feed each of you the other’s.”

They look up at me, a shocked look in their eyes.

I laugh as I turn away, feeling unbound for the first time in—well, ever. There’s not one inhibition left in me. After a lifetime of nothing but control, it feels—beyond description. Beyond belief. I never imagined I could feel this way. Never imagined a feeling like this existed.

As I begin closing the distance between us, the last distance I’ll ever allow between us, her eyes open.

Her gaze collides with mine, and they widen.

Those eyes. Those infinite wells of madness and temptation. Of yearning—and trepidation.

Oh, yes, my bane. Be afraid. You finally broke me. I’m giving you what you’ve been dying for, what I’ve been going insane for. I’m throttling and fucking you within an inch of your impossible life, right here on this dance floor.