The Darkest Surrender (Lords of the Underworld #8)(31)
Author: Gena Showalter

Strider the Reneger should be here with him. I must be rubbing off on him. Strider had promised to be here with him. Instead the lucky bastard was spending time with the very Harpy William often dreamed of seducing.

William had been with vampires, humans, witches, shape-shifters and goddesses, but he’d never been with a Harpy. He wanted to be with a Harpy. Whine, pout.

Maybe, when he finished here, he would give Strider a wee bit of competition for Kaia’s affections. The warrior liked to compete, after all, and William was such a giver, always thinking of others rather than himself.

That giving nature was the very reason he was here.

“Here” was an average home, with average rooms in serious need of a decorator. Beige furniture, beige walls and beige carpet, as if the owners were afraid of color. Oh, and had he mentioned the half-empty vodka bottles that were hidden inside vents, behind books and even in hidden cutouts in the mattresses?

This mundane, prisonlike alcoholic’s paradise was where his Little Gilly Gumdrop had grown up.

Gilly, a.k.a. Gillian Shaw. Human, brown-eyed, too sensual for her own good. At seventeen, she had known more horror and terror than most immortals experienced in an eternity. All because of the owners of this home in Nowhere, Nebraska.

William didn’t have many friends, so he took care of the ones he had. Sure, he liked the Lords of the Underworld well enough. They were fun to torture and damn entertaining to watch as they fell in love, one by one, like flies meeting the swinging net of a swatter. Case in point— Strider. Until William intervened, of course. Surely Kaia would at last succumb to his delightful wiles and forget all about the keeper of Defeat.

The entertainment alone was worth the price of his ticket into their Budapest Fortress: allowing the freaking (minor) goddess of Anarchy to hold William’s most treasured possession for ransom. He lay awake nights dreaming of ways to retrieve that possession, a book written in code that foretold how to save him from the curses the gods had heaped upon him. But he wasn’t going to think about that right now.

He was only going to think about his Gilly. He’d met her months ago, when the keeper of Pain’s woman brought her to the fortress, and he’d been instantly smitten. Not in a sexual way, she was too young for that—he would remind himself a thousand times if necessary—but in a white-knight kind of way.

She’d looked at him, and she’d seen a gorgeous immortal warrior who could give her body untold pleasure. Of course. Everyone did. She’d also seen a gorgeous immortal warrior who could slay her dragons.

He wanted to slay her dragons. He would slay her dragons.

A few times over the past several months, he’d returned to the fortress injured from battle. Gilly had taken care of him, always tender, sweet, ensuring he ate something, was tucked into bed and comfortable. She wasn’t intimidated by him. She laughed with him, joked with him, and when he pissed her off, she stayed and fought with him, rather than running away to hide from his temper.

She knew, soul deep, that he would never hurt her. Even if he didn’t always know it himself. There was a darkness inside him, a churning darkness sprung from the vilest pits of hell. A darkness he’d never loved more than he did at this moment.

Hardly anyone noticed his evil side. They saw the irreverent scamp he projected. And no, that image wasn’t a lie. William was irreverent to the bone, but there was more to him, and somehow Gilly saw that part, too.

And still she accepted him. Had never asked him to change. Had only thought to enjoy his company, to protect him. No one had ever tried to protect him before.

Now, he would protect her. Her family had hurt her in the worst possible way. Therefore, her family would die in the worst possible way. Vengeance was its own form of safeguarding, after all. Sure, time had passed and she’d had no recent contact with them. That didn’t change the fact that they’d hurt her in the most terrible way, forced her to brave the streets on her own—and that they could do it again, to someone else. He’d wanted to do this for a long time, and that hadn’t changed. In fact, the need had only grown stronger.

William walked around the room, lifting knickknacks, discarding them and smiling when they shattered on the floor. Gilly’s mother and stepfather were currently at work, and her stepbrothers no longer lived here, so he didn’t worry about noise control. When he finished that little exercise, he studied the pictures on the mantle over the fireplace.

There were none of Gilly.

Obviously they’d written her out of their lives. No afterthought, no concern for what had befallen her once she’d left.

What he did see: a thirtysomething bleached blonde with silicone-enhanced br**sts and an average-looking thirtysomething male.

Stomach clenching, William thumped the man’s face. The bastard was going to pay for every illicit touch, every ounce of shame inflicted. The mother would pay for allowing it to happen. The brothers would pay for failing to save her.

Her family had given her no option but to run away at the age of fifteen. Fifteen. On her own, surviving as best she could, for over a year before Danika had found her and brought her to Budapest. But because of what had been done to her, because of what she’d had to do merely to eat, she no longer valued herself. She saw herself as used, dirty, unworthy. She’d never said as much, but he knew. When she stayed at the Lords’ fortress, she slept in the bedroom next to his, and he’d heard the way she cried out at night. He knew nightmares plagued her.

Her family would pay for every single one of those dark dreams, too.

His ears suddenly twitched, picking up the sound of the garage door sliding open. He grinned. Oh, goodie. The first contestant of Hurt, Suffer and Die was home.

When he’d first arrived, he had dropped his bag of “toys” on the floor and now bent to pick it up. Oh, yes, he’d never loved his darkness more.

This was going to be fun.

KANE, KEEPER OF THE DEMON of Disaster, strode down the long, winding corridor inside the unfamiliar heavenly palace where he now found himself. The walls were straight up weird, comprised of thousands upon thousands of threads braided and strewn together. Thick and colorful threads with animated scenes playing across them, as if the people he saw were truly living and breathing right in front of him, and he had only to reach out to touch them. It was the most awe-inspiring sight he’d ever beheld—and was that Strider and Kaia crawling along a moonlit hill, females sneaking up on them, weapons trained on their skulls?

He stopped and narrowed his gaze on them, his hands fisting. A head-exploding ache tore through his temples. Only when he peered straight ahead and forced the image of what he’d seen out of his mind did the ache lessen.