16. Nat

16

Nat

crushed under a stampede

A snake eating its tail.

It’s all I picture in the pluming cloud of mottled black and red auras and wandering hands, the smiles and fully blown pupils.

It’s unnatural and revolting and a bit hypnotizing.

That’s why I stayed so long, why I watched Sin in his happy place, charming and lazing, glowing under foreign caresses.

Curls mussed, his smoldering I can make you come with a look smile and enough arrogance to challenge Zeus, completely at peace while the most vile of creatures paw after him, desperate to make the best joke or get the best snide remark.

He marinates in the attention, seems to thrum under it like cool rain in the desert. The laughs and games and perversions fuel him, send his shoulders back and rigid, his purple gaze darker, his muscles bulging under his shirt.

Not that I care. I barely notice.

What else am I supposed to look at?

The fornication?

The wall?

My fucking heels?

None of it’s finding Theia, so when another horde pushes into the small humid room, lured at the idea of preening in front of their Lord of Sin as they call him—so help me Hades—I leave.

He’s two buttons from an orgy and I’ve already seen more of him than I want.

You dirty little slut, you’re totally lying . I picture Theia upside down on my bed, grin as bright as the midday sun. As if you didn’t drink him in. Those abs, that delicious vee cut. Wowza. He's registered grade A beef on the Nat scale.

I wish she were here, teasing me. I wish I could chuck a pillow stuffed with books at her, or threaten to fling her off the fire escape and onto creepy Dan’s nudist patio.

She’s not, though.

Every room, every hall, that really big box filled with packing peanuts, I’ve checked everywhere.

Theia, bright like the sun, a female who’s always— always —spent every day like it’s her last is trapped and traded.

I want to scream.

More than that, more than I want to cry and heave and beg the Gods to give her back, bring her home.

I want to kill.

Maim. Eviscerate. Castrate.

It’s not a conscious effort. The thirst climbs up my bones and shatters outward, the desire growing so great it strangles.

It’s my blood, it’s my purpose.

Eliminate. Destroy.

My heart pounds with the force of holding myself back. I pinch the skin of my thighs, I bite my tongue, find the emptiest room I can and shut my eyes.

Breathe.

I coax my rage into strategy, not trying to tame it, but train it. Be vicious in a way that works for me.

As intolerable as Sin is, he’s also right. I can’t go on a killing spree. Not tonight. I need information first.

Slowly, the urge cools as an unwelcome plan forms.

Sin must die.

I’d already vowed to it, distractedly, absently, a line on a very long to kill list.

Now, it’s inevitable.

Tonight, witnessing his familiarity. Seeing how easily he exists with the red and black auras, he must be the first of the Blackguard to die at my blade.

Candles flicker as an entwined couple sweeps into the room, gripping and pulling at each other’s clothes, writhing and moaning. A solid male in purple velvet and a Diakonos in chains and flowers.

Her aura is a gentle buttercream. She lets mosquitos bite her, helps grandmothers cross the street, doesn’t fight when the male with a red aura paws at her. She encourages it.

She’s broken. Conquered. My nails embed into my palms, but my heart calms.

Theia can not be broken.

That’s why she’s not here. No creature could make her drooling and doting.

Theia is fresh baked sugar cookies, too sweet, too gooey and warm until she isn’t. Until someone tries to tell her what to do, and then she’s salt and burned edges and wolfsbane laced in a pretty package.

Something close to relief allows me to dig my shoulder into the wall, giving me the headspace to breathe.

This room is smaller than the rest. It has posters about union rules and a whiteboard listing mortal holidays is stained yellow from the glow of candles, which are each in their own extra-small shipping box, collecting dripping red marbled wax. Tables for sorting and scanning mail are shoved to the walls. A tray of cherry cordials waits in the outgoing pile.

I wish I could eat. Devour chocolate and cream and cherries until I feel sick, but all I can do is hunger.

Return home.

Hades has no gift for prophecy, and I’ve only known the God of the Underworld to be loving to the Erinyes, but this feels like a command, like he knows I will not last, as if he saw me here, choking on hate, salivating, at the end of my restraint.

“Lord Sinis has been out of practice for too long if he’s left you to run about.” The voice is like static, barely coming in.

I turn too slowly, and my stomach tightens.

Red .

Red and brown interwoven like shards of broken glass in a bathtub. I hardly register the male buried in the hazy aura. A male who’s life is punctuated by distinct vile acts while convincing himself they’re out of character.

They’re not.

The red yearns to touch his skin, plant a flag and claim him as a heathen.

I consider punching through his ribcage and ripping the arteries from his heart like wires from a motor. Leave him a drachma so Aunt Megaera can play double dutch with his entrails.

“He’s forbade you from speaking then?”

I snort. “He could try.”

Red lights up, curling aggressively closer. He’s four, five inches shorter than me, peering up with scrutinizing intensity. “What’s your name? You are a marvel.” His knuckles run down my bare arm and I bare my teeth, flinging out a fist—

Stop. Change my movement, smoothing it to tug lightly on his collar, before letting it flutter away.

If Sin can get these people talking, I can too.

I can do it better.

“I’m more interested in your name,” I purr.

It’s infuriating, how I have to laugh at his warped jokes, and pretend to be flustered by his increasing closeness.

I consider smothering him when he tips my chin down with two fingers, and tells me I’m the most beautiful aberration he’s ever seen.

He’s forthright about nothing I care about, but I stow little tangents of information aside as though I’m building a case on why his lungs had to be crushed in my palms.

“Your father must be an utter barbarian. A freak.”

“You take pain well. I have a sense for it.”

“I’d bet my extreme wealth, you’ve got Gigantes in your blood.”

I remind myself to smile and nod now and then.

Red needs encouragement in his spurts of insults.

“Not at all Sinis’s type,” repeats Red. “You don’t smell of him, which means he hasn’t—”

Enough. “What is his type?” I ask, curling a hair on my finger the way Theia does to get free kamikazes at that grimy bar on Fifth.

She wouldn’t suffer this fuck for a free penthouse.

Just slice his larynx and bail, claiming this is such a buzzkill.

“Plain,” Red says, his hand inching down my dress. “Disgustingly plain. He’s not as brave as I am to entertain the unknown.”

“What’s your type, then?” I muster the strength to lean into his touch.

,“Anything,” Red boasts, tongue swiping out over his teeth. “Oceanids, Pereides. Once there was—”

“A Phoenix?”

“You are bold for a slave.” His hand pulls up and he slaps at my breast. “You will cease interrupting me.”

A thick, all-consuming rage scores my skin.

A rage like hellfire, like untold death, like pried limbs and—

Red forces my hips back. My butt smacks the wall, my ankles tip in the heels and then his mouth is reaching for mine.

He’s on his toes and I can’t kill him yet. He hasn’t answered my question.

I grimace, pull my lips over my teeth.

He pants.

Cold air batters me.

The candles extinguish and I’m alone.

No .

Red’s there, bent over, hurling up an entire bottle of champagne.

Amidst the thin strands of smoke, Sin stands frozen, watching me. Lipstick smeared on his neck, hair looking properly fucked, shirt untucked, belt off its loops.

Absolute rage mars his beautiful face.

He takes three forceful steps and presses his boot on Red’s back and shoves him into his own mess.

His gaze is hot and dangerous as it strokes over me with disconcerting thoroughness. Those amethyst eyes don’t leave mine. Not when Red whines, or the tall male getting sucked off in the corner gasps, not when he moves his boot to Red’s arm or when the first crack sounds.

A jolt of heat sizzles through me.

“Making friends, darling?”

Suddenly I’m anything but angry, anything but deadly. With two fingers braced on the wall beside my cheek, he brings his other boot down on Red’s fisted hand, and the bones snap like firecrackers.

“Don’t ever touch what’s mine, Calion.”

Rivulets of heat scamper across my cheeks and down my throat, webbing out under my skin. Sin drags a thumb across my lips, nudging them apart, slipping close to my tongue before he inhales sharply. Pulls back.

The heat burning my cheeks makes me want to strangle him.

“Did you kiss him?”

His palm flattens on the wall by my head, blocking the sweet tangy scent of ichor and blood.

His eyes are electrical currents rushing to connections, so intense they’re near blue. A color I’ve only ever seen in the Underworld, off the wick of Hades’s finger.

I can’t take my eyes off him and he won’t look away.

Heat spreads through me faster, deeper, licking along my stomach. Lower .

“Darling, answer me.”

Some hate must simmer in me.

I can say no . I can tell him the truth.

Red repulsed me, but I know the self-satisfied smile Sin will get, can actually feel the sarcastic pat of his hand on my cheek and the calming of his gaze. And I’d rather plead affection than see his intensity fade.

“I was about to.”

His body tenses. He breathes out slowly, warmth whispering on the bridge of my nose.

My pulse throbs.

Cloudy, heady eyes pin my mouth, his thumb knicks his bottom lip and I gasp at the streak of red of my lipstick he leaves there. His tongue flicks out to taste it.

His voice turns a little too calm for comfort. “We’re leaving.”

“But—”

He straightens abruptly. “Do not test me any more than you already have, Bloodspiller.”

His hand winds around my wrist, another on my lower back and he’s tugging me out the door, ignoring the calls to stay, the half-assed apologies about their gropey friend.

A few advise him to ride me good, or whip me into shape.

“My lord!” A female with blonde hair and lovely blue eyes catches us at the exit. Symmetric smile, she wears a pleated gown in cobalt, a tiara of teeth sized diamonds. She doesn’t look at me. I’m nothing. A Diakonos.

An ugly one at that.

Instead, she touches Sin’s arm, gentle, hesitant, more respectful than any touch I’ve seen, and Sin winces. Yanks away, crowds into me.

“Lesenia,” he grates. A jilted nod.

I’m in the air then, draped in his arms, and he’s charging between the bullet proof glass, past the sign-in desk and box drop off.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he growls against my throat. “I told you that you belong to me.”

That quick, my rage is back. Except now it’s focused on Sin.