The Darkest Pleasure (Lords of the Underworld #3)(31)
Author: Gena Showalter

Reyes peered over at Lucien, who was watching him with a hard expression. "Stay with her. Please."

At that, Danika growled. He didn’t think she was angry that he wanted her guarded and didn’t trust her to take care of herself. She truly had reached the breaking point and needed answers.

Lucien nodded.

Reyes pivoted away from them. More than he wanted to take his next breath, he wanted to look at Danika, to reassure her, comfort her. Hold her. But one glance at her, and he would not be able to stop himself from doing all of those things. He would not be able to leave her.

Fisting a blade in one hand and the cell key in the other, he unlocked the door. The hinges creaked as the metal parted. Creaked again as he closed the door. Aeron crouched against the far wall, steeped in shadows. He ceased mumbling the moment he spied Reyes.

Reyes studied his friend, hoping to find signs of the warrior he’d once been, not the monster he’d become. Eyes – still dilated and hungry. Teeth – still sharpened and bared. Still a monster, then, but also a man Reyes loved. The tattoos that covered Aeron from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet were familiar.

Reyes didn’t know why Aeron had tattooed himself with colorful depictions of things he probably wished he’d never done: killing, mutilating, destroying. Reyes had never asked, and Aeron had never volunteered the information. Some things were simply too painful to talk about. That he knew very well.

"Leave," Aeron barked.

The command was not slurred or layered with the voice of his demon, and Reyes blinked in surprise. Had the warrior’s bloodlust faded, even slightly?

"You are lucid now, I see." A glance at the bound man’s wrists, and Reyes saw that they were mostly healed. "You were crazed when Lucien and I appeared in the cave. I’m sorry if I hurt you trying to get you here."

"Free me. I have a job to do."

"Two weeks ago, you were grateful to be restrained. You hated what you’d been ordered to do and begged me to kill you."

"Grateful no longer." Aeron shifted, his legs inching closer to his chest. "Those women need to die."

"The Darkest Pleasure"

No, the bloodlust had not left him. "So they still live? All four?" Tension radiated from Danika and enveloped him. There was distance between them, yes, but still he felt that blistering tension.

Guilt flashed in Aeron’s eyes. Guilt – both beautiful and terrible. Beautiful because it meant Aeron was still inside that mind, still fighting. Terrible because it probably meant one – or more – of the women were already dead.

Reyes’s skin pulled tight against his bones, and he held back a disappointed groan. He’d desperately yearned for good news. Now, he could only pray there was a survivor. "Aeron. Tell me about the women."

Silence.

"Please," he said, ready to beg if necessary.

Again, silence.

No, not silence, he realized a moment later. In the background, there was a soft but menacing growl.

"Answer him!" Danika shouted.

Aeron stilled, even stopped breathing. His eyes glazed over, glowing with crimson rage that overshadowed any hint of guilt. Then, without warning, he sprang forward. His wings popped from the slits in his back, black gossamer that ripped away the remaining tatters of his shirt and expanded across the entire cell. Their razor-sharp points scratched at the walls.

Reyes held his ground. Aeron wanted to lash out, so he would allow Aeron to lash out at him. Better him than Danika.

The chain around Aeron’s neck jerked taut, placing the warrior inches from Reyes’s face. So close a sulfur-laced breeze caressed him. He’d been so near hell, he would reek of its scent for days. Reyes almost wished his demon had not remembered how to get there, allowing him to bury Aeron in the first place.

"Girl," Aeron shouted. His hands snaked around Reyes’s neck and squeezed tight. "Want her."

"Mine," Reyes managed to push past his lips. "Tell me about her family."

"Die!"

"Tell me."

He heard Danika gasp. Thought he heard Lucien shout a terse warning.

"Tell me." The plea was barely audible. He dropped his knife, unwilling to use it on his friend to save himself, and clutched Aeron’s wrists. If this was needed to get answers out of Aeron, this he would allow.

But all too soon, the feeling of Aeron’s hands squeezing tighter and tighter, harder and harder, became too good. The pain was too intoxicating. His demon purred happily.

More.

"She must die," Aeron snarled.

"She’s…innocent."

"Doesn’t matter."

"Once it would have." Before Reyes could add anything else, his mind fogged, dizziness rushing through him like the ocean to the shore.

You have to protect Danika. As he pried Aeron’s hands off him, his windpipe shattered, a thousand needle pricks in his throat. Oxygen could not get through. Blood laced with the bone shards and swept them into his stomach; along the way, they cut everything they encountered.

This was going to kill him. For a little while, anyway.

His eyes closed in bliss, but his mind screamed in denial.

"HELP HIM!" Danika shouted to Lucien. She gripped the prison’s bars, cold all the way to her soul. Colder than ever before. Right now, she couldn’t see Reyes. Not even a glimpse. Aeron, the bastard, had him wrapped in those lethal black wings. "Help him." None of her instructors had prepared her for demons attacking other demons, and she didn’t know what to do. "Please."

"He’ll survive." Lucien withdrew a gun from the waist of his pants, checked the magazine.

"No one could survive that," she said, eyeing the weapon. Her first thought was that he meant to shoot her. Her second, that he would have done so already if that had been his plan.

"Aeron, let him go," Lucien called.

"No!" the warrior roared.

A moment passed. Lucien stiffened, muttered, "What is that thing?" and withdrew a bullet from his pocket. He slid the lethal ball into the gun’s chamber.

Danika was shaking violently, couldn’t stop. "What if you accidentally hit Reyes?" She wanted Reyes…what? Alive, yes. Unhurt, definitely. He had protected her two weeks ago, had taken the brunt of Aeron’s rage today, and now she would protect him. At the moment, he was her only lifeline. At least, that’s what she told herself. That had to be the reason he suddenly mattered to her.

"As I said, he’ll survive."

Would he, though? He was immortal, he was a demon, but was he completely immune to strangulation and bullets? Every time she’d seen Reyes, he’d been cut and bleeding. Clearly, he could be injured. And what if Aeron attempted to cut off his head while he was incapacitated? Stefano had told her that decapitation was the surest way to kill an immortal permanently. Tacking on that "surest" meant there were other ways to kill them.