A Touch of Brimstone by McKenzie Hunter
6
If I learned nothing else from Marvel movies, I knew this was the time to run at him full speed, leap into the air, and scissor my legs around his neck. Hammer pound his face and head until he was dizzied and disoriented. Bring him to the floor by using my positional advantage and shifting my weight. With my super powerful thigh muscles, I’d choke him out.
A woman can dream and have lofty goals. That plan wasn’t rooted in any form of reality since he’d subdued a massive wolf in the time it took me to gasp a breath, and the week before I’d tripped over my own feet. I didn’t possess the agility and mastery of fighting to go hand to hand with this man and be remotely effective.
My best defense was to get the hell away and figure the rest out later. Giving me a taunting look of menace, Anand twirled the weapons with practiced precision before storing them in the sheaths at his waist.
I backed away and ran in the opposite direction, which I guessed was the main exit.
Fuck.
Dominic stood between me and it. Steely eyes, coiled danger, and raw power radiated from him in waves. Whatever transpired between him and Kane had ignited something vicious in him. I scanned the area for an escape route. Nowhere. This building served one purpose: a meeting space for them.
“Go away,” I ordered.
“No.” In an ominous wave of movement, he was close and circling me. Scrutinizing me with narrowed eyes. I turned, following his every movement and returning his considering look.
“I have questions for you.” He bristled, accusation heavy in his voice.
“What?” I wanted to sound challenging and confident, but my words came out in an uncertain squeak.
“How did you do it?” he demanded. “I thought we had rid the world of such magic. Yet here you are.”
“You know damn well I’m not a… witch.” It still felt ridiculous saying it, despite knowing witches and other—worse—things existed. I didn’t understand how he could defend me so ardently to the group and then make such accusations.
“No, you’re not. You’re far worse.” With narrowed eyes and a hard jaw he regarded me.
Fire blazed and encircled me. Heat licked at my skin.
“Reveal yourself,” he ordered.
My arms tucked to the sides and my hands shot up to protect my face. I pressed my thighs together, trying to minimize myself to prevent further injury as the flames inched closer and closer. He was going to burn me alive.
I wailed each time the flames brushed my skin. Pain rampaged through me, tears blurring my vision. I couldn’t die like this. I refused to die like this. Squatting down, I readied to spring through the flames in a manner that would only cause minimal damage.
Before I could act, Dominic made a sharp command and the flames disappeared. It was as if they’d never existed, leaving the ground unmarred. But they were real; my blistering skin was proof of that.
“You’re not a witch—not a Dark Caster,” he said, stepping closer to me.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
He reached for one of my burned arms. I jerked it away. Tears spilled. I was so close to a torturous death. Anger rampaged through me, tumultuous and unfettered.
When he reached for my arm again, I punched him. Hard. His head snapped back. Not bad for my first punch. But I wasn’t expecting it to hurt my hand as much as it did. There must be an art to it. And I planned to learn it. Despite the pain, my burned skin hurt more.
Punching him felt good until a smile feathered across his lips. His amber eyes lit up with amusement, the flecks of gold dancing with delight.
Oh, you want another?I put more power behind the next strike. It evoked a bark of laughter from him. I never thought punching people better would ever be a life goal, but here I was, making it one.
Maybe he was a lifelike robot. Vampires, shapeshifters, witches, seers. Why not impeccably lifelike robots? No one laughed when their crotch was being kneed. Before I could execute it, his finger sliced through the air and a strong force smacked into my leg, collapsing me to the floor with a thud. Dominic knelt next to me; his hands covered my red, blistered arms. His uncompromising eyes held mine.
Coolness crept up the length of my fingers, hands, and arms. The pain receded along with my anger and anxiety. Coaxed into calmness, my body relaxed and I lay back on the floor, my head dropped to the side. Was it my imagination or could I smell lavender and vanilla? I was lulled into a somnolent state as my body healed. Peace. The world didn’t seem so overwhelming, my life not a calamitous crapshow.
This is not real.
Yanking my arms from his hold, I jumped up, looked at my healed arms and then at Dominic who was on his feet, too, just a few inches from me. He was giving me a knowing look, baleful delight curling the corners of his lips.
“What the fuck did you do to me?” I spat out.
“You needed to be calmed and healed. I didn’t have time to deal with your petulance.”
“I wouldn’t have needed healing if you hadn’t tried to burn me alive,” I shot back.
“Yet you stand here, alive and well, in all your tedious insolence.” All emotion had drained from his expression. His cool indifference spiked my anger even more.
“Believe me, I’m more than happy to take my insolence elsewhere and get the hell away from you.” I backed away, watching him carefully to make sure he wasn’t moving closer. When he stayed put, I quickened my pace toward the exit.
“That is your choice. I predict your death will be within the next day. Hopefully it will be painless and quick.”
I scowled. “Is that a threat?”
His dark chuckle eased through the room. “You have no idea who I am, do you, and what I’m capable of. I can assure you, if I wanted you dead, it would be as I wished.”
Not something to brag about.
“Then who?”
“Luna.” There was a musical note to the way he said my name. A rich, sultry drawl. “The seers have connected you to this situation. Desperation to return the prisoners to the Perils will cause people to react to the slimmest of leads. You are the face of the spell right now. Their only lead. They’re convinced that getting rid of you is the only way to break the spell. The only thing standing between you and death is me. What you saw upstairs is nothing. How will you survive it?”
He inched toward me, slowly, taking in how attentive I was to his words. How would I handle people who could perform magic, shift into animals, teleport—or zone or whatever—and effortlessly call on fire?
The slow breath I took had little effect on my panic.
“Tell me, Luna, what is your role in this?” This time my name was said with the disdain of a curse.
“I don’t understand any of it. I’m not part of it and you know it,” I said, lying through my teeth. I was certainly tangentially involved; I just had no idea to what degree. But since the murder cult upstairs was prepared to kill me because of it, I had no intention of confessing. It was something I needed to work out later, but it wouldn’t be with Dominic or the others. I wanted to get as far away from them as possible.
“Oh, but you are. I just need to figure out how.” He took hold of my hand and slipped off the ring, revealing the markings.
My chin jutted in defiance to show my innocence despite the evidence. His brow furrowed as he gently bent my fingers back to show me the markings, as if I hadn’t seen them before. He had to know I’d seen them before.
“I saw the way you responded to the picture Callum presented. You balled your hands to hide your fingers, which is when I noticed the ring was different.”
Borrowing a page from his playbook, I gave him a look of cool indifference.
It brought a dark smile of interest to his lips. “At first I thought you were a powerful witch who managed to get access to forbidden spells. That is the way of the witch, always pushing boundaries, thirsting for power and ways to leverage their privilege. When my spell didn’t uncloak you, I knew you had to be more. Stronger. A Tenebras Obducit—a Dark Caster. If you were, the Conventicle need not be involved. I wanted to handle you the way I handled the others.”
Hearing the brutal edge in his voice, I could imagine the way the others were handled. I swallowed. After a long, considering look, something vaguely empathetic showed on his face.
“Great power that can’t be checked or reined in leads to chaos and the wielder of such power feeling omniscient. That can’t be allowed.”
“You seem to have a great deal of power and no one upstairs seemed to be able to rein you in.”
A smirk tugged at his lips but he forced it back into a cruel straight line. “I’m never to be reined.” It was a simple response that spoke volumes. He’d stepped over that line of confidence. The man was a certifiable jackass.
“Luna, Luna, Luna.”
My name came from him in a low, deep, melodious sound. A draconian chorus with a dangerous harmony. He circled me again, watching me carefully. My heart pounded and everything in me screamed to run, but Anand guarding the exit made that impossible.
“What mess have you gotten yourself into?” he whispered.
I swallowed and shook my head. “I don’t know.” The statement escaped before I could stop it. What had I gotten myself into?
Again, he was in front of me, studying me with avid curiosity. He spoke softly, as if to himself. “You’re not a witch or a Dark Caster, but you are responsible for releasing the prisoners from the Perils. How was it done?” His gaze slipped to my finger again.
I had no response for him.
He sighed. “Tell me what you know of the Perils.”
Dominic was trying to discover a link where none existed. What I knew of it was only what I’d gathered from the conversation upstairs.
“A prison for supernaturals. Where you keep your worst.” I couldn’t imagine anyone worse than the ones upstairs, but obviously I was wrong.
His head barely moved into the nod. “Perils of the Underworld, where I am its guardian.”
Whenever I watched a show where a person passed out after getting terrifying information or horrifying news, I always called BS. No, double BS. What? You forgot to breathe? To do the very thing so intrinsic to your body’s survival that you hold your breath to deprive it of oxygen, but the body’s like, “Nah, bitch, give me the good stuff. Give me oxygen.” And forces you to breathe.
Now I felt the need to issue a formal apology. Because my body seized. All the things that seemed automatic, essential, a necessity just felt foreign. My mouth dried, my breathing was ragged, shallow, and definitely not enough to survive, and fight or flight was simply nonexistent. I stood there for what seemed like eternity trying to get my body to respond appropriately. To react. And to participate in anything that would remotely be considered self-preservation.
“What?” I eked out.
“Luna, you’ve released my prisoners from the Underworld. You may not have been the weapon, but you were the tool.”
Believe me, you’re a tool, too.
Oops. Didn’t mean to say that aloud.
With a wry smile he started pacing around me again, his hands behind his back, my name said over and over but not in the alluring, sultry way. It was a rough, disparaging string of words. Nearly excruciating in its execution.
“Tell me, Luna,” he said behind me. I whipped around to face him. “Should I destroy the tool for a short-term solution, or find the weapon?”
Fighting with the guardian of the Underworld wasn’t going to fix my problems. In fact, it would probably make them worse. I was moored to this. Despite my protective responses rearing in overdrive and telling me to run like hell, this situation wasn’t going away. But if I was going to be a player, I wouldn’t be intimidated into my decision.
Squaring my shoulders, I looked him straight in his fiery amber eyes. Despite the hard intensity of them, I held his gaze. “If you were interested in the short-term fix, you wouldn’t have intervened.”
His face remained impassive, his head canted slightly as he continued to listen.
“I’ve been pulled into something that I definitely don’t want to be in, dealing with people I hope to never encounter again. I want it to be over. I want to have nothing to do with this situation or you dreadful people.” I lifted my hand, presenting the markings. “If working with you is the only way, then I’m in. If we are working together, no more threats. I don’t care how thinly veiled they are. You will not bully me. Are we clear?”
His expression changed but it was still indecipherable. Understanding? I didn’t think that was it. Amusement? Definitely. Portentous? It better not be.
His lips curled slightly into a small, tight, mirthless smile. He looked over his shoulder at Anand, who flashed a grin. “I’ve been commanded to behave,” Dominic said to him. The laughter in his voice made its way to his eyes.
“Little Luna.”
“It’s just Luna,” I shot back.
“Luna. You are correct. I want to find the person behind this, especially if it is a Dark Caster. I know their history and the chaos and destruction they enjoy. It needs to be stopped. And to do so, we will have to work together.”
I’d been abducted and attacked by a vampire, sniffed by a lion, interrogated by a witch, and nearly devoured—or whatever his intentions were—by a wolf. I had every right to be overly cautious and I didn’t like the subtle undertones in his response. A limited alliance.
“I want to help.” Biggest lie ever. I had to help in order to get out of this mess. My face must have betrayed that because he looked smug now.
“You are the little fish. I want the whale. You are the means to the whale. As long as I need you for that, the others will never touch you.” Everything he said possessed an implicit “but” and I didn’t like it.
Our interests aligned. As long as he wanted me alive, the others wouldn’t touch me. For now, it was my best hope.
A slow smile moved over his lips. He handed me back the ring and I slipped it on my finger. “It seems like we are in this together, Lit—” He bit the word off. “Luna.”
Several moments of tense silence passed, then he extended his hand to me. “Would you like to see what you’ve done?”
Not really. Did I really need to see an empty cell? Definitely didn’t want to see one in the Underworld.
There were many reasons to say no—one being Mr. Personality in front of me—but I needed to know exactly what I was dealing with.
I was unsure whether, when I analyzed this in the future—if there was a future—this decision would make the list of the things that made this situation infinitely worse.
Despite the high likelihood, I nodded.