He chuckled at her futile attempt. “You really shouldn’t have opened Pandora’s Box until you were more prepared. I’m glad you did. Your miscalculation is my benefit.”
Desperation to halt Nix’s descent into Hell had caused her to act recklessly. She realized too late her grave error in judgment. Maybe, with time, she could control the foreign power. Right then, the ravaging effects of its strength left her defenseless. And defenseless in Micah’s presence couldn’t end well.
He released his engorged shaft from his pants. Stroked the hard, blue length from base to tip, until red pre-cum beaded the head of his slit.
She closed her eyes and summoned the look on Nix’s face as his fingers moved inside her. Thought of Nix the day she first met him, his smartass comments, his awkward charm. Remembered him as he laughed and horseplayed with Amos.
Just remembered him….
Chapter Forty-Six
Madison gagged on a clot and whimpered at the hot path it seared to her belly. Dark lust built between her thighs again, and she knew if her husband shoved his dick inside her, she wouldn’t be able to fight the climax he’d force upon her.
Something tangible shifted in the air and prickled her exposed flesh. She opened her eyes as iridescent prisms of rainbow orbs bathed the room like a disco ball.
The spheres coalesced into a solid huge ball, grew brighter and more piercing to look at. She stared, hoping the end grew near. Instead, Zen popped into existence. She’d been unaware he could teleport. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise, since the immortal held innumerable powers she knew nothing about.
Zen uttered something short and bitter in his language, grabbed Micah by the back of the shirt, and flung him across the room. Her husband struck the wall, his head hitting the wood paneling hard enough to crack it.
“Madison, what have you done?” Zen stared at her with cool, silver eyes, his tan skin paling.
“I fucked up.” Her voice sounded raw, as if she’d been screaming for a long time. Her body might never stop screaming in agony. Her heart shredded, bleeding with no hope for resuscitation because she had been the indirect cause of Nix’s damnation.
“You!” Micah snarled, a mixture of fear and rage. He touched the back of his head, and his fingers came away black. “How’d you get out?”
Zen whipped around and blasted rainbow balls toward him. Micah managed to dodge all except one, the final slug burning a hole through his shoulder. Madison could see the wall behind him. The edges of his wound sizzled and he grimaced, grave pain turning his lips white.
“I don’t wish to fight you.” He held the palm of his uninjured arm out in a sign of surrender. “Give me Madison, and we’ll leave.”
“No,” Zen said, his voice dead calm. His shoulders were squared and tense. “To end your plan, all I need to do is kill Madison.”
“Yes,” she whispered raggedly. “Please do.”
I can’t save Nix if he kills me, though.
He better not try
, Pandora added.
Zen slapped his palm to his forehead. “Damn! Amos is psychotic in my head.” He winced and ground his teeth.
Zen never cursed. His swearing divulged the severity of the situation.
Clenching his head between his hands, his face paled. Finally, he slid his hands over his crown and back to his neck, facing Madison with jaw clenched.
Their eyes clashed. She held Zen’s stare, his a thunderstorm of conflicting emotions….anger, remorse, and indecision were the ones she could identify.
In the four years she’d known Zen, she’d never seen him anything other than stoic and composed. An altogether different man stood in her presence at that moment.
“Please kill me, Zen.” She rolled onto her stomach, seeking comfort in the cool tile. Burning up, she feared she’d begin to liquefy from the inside out at any moment. “Sweet Jesus, put me out of my misery!”
“Don’t lay a finger on her!” Even though Madison couldn’t see Micah, she heard the panic in his voice. Zen terrified him.
Interesting.
Madison laughed. The movement sent shivers of agony through her system, and her humor turned into whimpers. She still managed to cough out, “My crystal genie frightens you.” Zen wasn’t her crystal genie. She had gone to great lengths to keep Nix from referring to him as such. Only because the way he said it implied an intimate relationship. “I hope he kills you.”
Zen knelt beside her, keeping his glare trained on Micah as he reached back to swipe a finger across her forehead. “You’re burning up. What’d you do to her after she opened Pandora’s Box?”
Micah said nothing. She thought maybe he smirked by the half-harrumph noise he made.
“Forced his gooey ass blood into my mouth,” Madison whispered, her heart pulverizing her ribs with its pounding cadence. She panted faster than a dog on the verge of a heat stroke. She would die soon, she realized, and welcomed the release from her insane life. “Amos….” she tried to utter past a tongue too thick, a throat parched. “Zen…please take…care of…Amos.”
He gripped her arm and rattled off a bunch of lilting words in his foreign language, a language she suspected long dead and mostly forgotten. The pain eased off with his words, and her breathing regulated.
“Keep a grip on my hand,” Zen said, confirming he restrained the Pandora power. He helped her to rise on shaky legs, lacing her fingers with his. “Do you see?”
“Yes,” she whispered, staring at him in awe. What she saw…fragments of Zen’s life, the world before her own, and the utter magnitude of his age.
“You understand what I must do?”
Madison nodded and stepped closer to him. Micah panicked, attacked, and came up against an invisible shield she knew Zen created. Determined, her husband persisted, bellowing promises of revenge if Zen harmed one hair on her head.
“Do it, Zen.” She squeezed his hand, hoping to reassure him. “I’m ready.”
Don’t!
Pandora screeched.
“No!” Micah shrieked at the same time.
Zen placed two fingers against her temple. “I’m sorry,” he said as a burst pulsed from his fingers. Madison cried out at the agonizing contact and a fog bloomed in her head, diminishing her hearing.
Micah spouted omens and curses too fast for her to catch them. He kicked on the shield, screamed and begged her to fight back. Begged her not to leave him. She’d have pitied him if he’d been worthy of the emotion.
Another discharge from Zen’s fingertips fractured every particle in her body…or felt like it. Zen wrapped an arm around her waist and steadied her against his lithe frame, proving the immortal possessed more strength than his short frame seemed capable of containing.
Everything went numb, time suspended, and Amos’s screams penetrated the muddled fog of her brain. At first, his cries sounded like radio static. Panicked, he pleaded with Zen to save her, not to kill her.
Her poor baby. He worried about her when he should be worrying about school grades or whether to pick the cheerleader or geeky nerd to be his girlfriend.
Amos, it’s okay
. She felt him settle immediately and knew he heard her. Picturing her son, she brushed his blond hair off his forehead. She loved him more than life.
The third charge hit her by surprise. Back bowing, she jerked and shrieked before slumping in Zen’s arms.
Amos went ballistic.
It sounded like Micah cried, sniffling and gasping, but the fucker needed a heart before he could be brought emotionally low. Dropping to his knees, hands pressed to the invisible shield, Micah’s scratchy voice begged Zen to show Madison mercy and…to forgive him for his sins.
“It is done,” Zen said, and ran his fingers down the side of her face.
Yes, she thought. Finally! She dragged in a labored breath…blackness consumed her.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Nix and despair were one. Crouching in the corner of the cave-like room, he clamped his eyes shut in hopes the slinking shadows would disappear. Too bad closing his eyes wouldn’t deaden the sounds of the agony of the damned. The pain of souls never ended, and their screams stung worse than a hive of bees. He cupped his hands over his ears, but nothing drowned the sounds of misery.
The worst mind-fuck ever, being forced to watch Micah parade Mads in front of him and fuck her after slowly disrobing her. Her screams of pleasure made his ears bleed.
“Just giving you a taste of what you’ll never have,” Beliel taunted, only for Nix to discover afterward that the one Micah screwed was a pureblood succubus and not Mads.
Nix shuddered, and blanked his mind at the memory. The screams continued like a macabre chorus. No rest for the wicked…no truer saying in his estimation.
Nix cried. He doubted he would ever stop crying. The despair leeching into his subconscious from the departed souls became too much for his sanity to bear.
“Your pity-fest grows old,” Micah remarked, striding toward him where he hovered in the corner of the room.
The memory of Mads’s smile and laughter fed solace to his regret. Clinging to the way she sounded upon climax helped shutter the pitch of agony a fraction. “Fuck you,” Nix rasped out in a hoarse voice.
“It’s clear you hang onto the memory of my wife.” Micah’s fist clenched at his sides. He discovered the reason for his actions when the demon said, “Madison is dead. Killed by her friend Zennyo Ryuo.”
“You lie!” He’d already fallen for one of Micah’s lies. He wouldn’t fall for another.
“I watched the fucker kill her,” Micah screamed, shifting into his angel appearance. Nix stared into the fallen angel’s eyes, and the hurt blasting from his stony, mournful gaze verified the truth of his words.
No!
“This time she was used against me,” the demon growled. “I dislike sharing the same outcome with you, Phoenix.”
Nix’s gut twisted and his body shook. Curling his fingers into his palms, he prayed he would discover this revelation a new mind-fuck. He could handle the mind-fuck, just not Mads’s death.
The King traced a claw down Nix’s chest and tears boiled in his fiery eyes. “We suffer together for her loss, a common thread in our pain. Let me train you, and together we can seek revenge.”
Oh, God, please, not Mads.
He sobbed, unmanly and loud, no longer from the pain others felt, rather from the loss of someone he adored.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The sun coming in the windows hurt her eyes, and her already pounding head protested the fractures of light with harder whacks against her skull. Wincing, Madison squinted and touched her head. Dear God, Nix was in Hell because of her. How could she ever hope to live with the knowledge? She couldn’t.
Zen shifted, drew her attention to where he stood at the window, the curtain slit just enough for him to look out, his expression pensive.
“I thought you were going to kill me, Zen,” she said, her throat thick with tears fighting to surface. She licked dry lips and gagged back bile at the taste of Micah’s dried blood.
“I should have.” He dropped the curtain, throwing the room in shadow, and turned to face her.
Using her elbows, she pushed up and leaned against the headboard. Pulling her tattered shirt together, she clutched it with a fist and glanced about the standard hotel room.
“Your nudity doesn’t affect me.”
“I know.” He never showed interest in any woman. His volatile emotions last night proved that snapping open Pandora’s Box disturbed him deeply, however. “Why didn’t you kill me?”
“Because I’m a colossal fool.”
He would never admit he actually cared about her. In a brotherly way only because sexual tension never aggravated their relationship.
“Micah thinks I’m dead?”
“For now.” He approached the bed, his hands shoved into his pockets, his stare neutral, maybe a shade cooler than normal. “His ignorance won’t remain for long.”
“Amos?” She whispered his name, terrified her son still suffered after several hours. Daylight now, Nix had opened his hotel door to her at dusk. At least a dozen hours elapsed since.
“Amos was too distraught.” He grimaced. Their eyes locked and he shrugged. “He knows you live.”
“Petra’s with him?”
“Yes.”
Madison pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “What’d you do to me, Zen?” Besides blow her fucking brains out with immortal finger-shots.
Zen sat on the edge of the bed, and she watched him. He curled a leg onto the mattress and faced her. “You saw what I am?”
Some, not nearly all of it
. “Yes. An immortal from the Zennyo Ryuo race, once thought to be a dragon from myth and lore. You were created in a different time, one much earlier than any time known to current man, with one ambition…to protect the balance between man and supernatural.”
He nodded, and a thick lock of hair fell across his forehead. “Micah fed you his blood to sway Pandora’s power. I balanced it out by giving you a smidgen of my power.”
God help them all if what Zen gave her was a ‘smidgen’ of anything. Nothing had ever hurt as much, not even giving birth to Amos without an epidural.
“For five millennia I kept Pandora’s Box hidden, protecting mortal man from the woes hidden within until Micah hunted the Box down, took me by surprise, and trapped me in the crystal. For fifteen years, I remained there. During the time of my incarceration, Micah and others like him ran rampant with destruction, creating half-breeds like you and Amos. The balance is out of order.”
“And now I have unbalanced the power more by opening Pandora’s Box?”
“Yes.” He flicked imaginary lint off his pants.
“You should have killed me.”
“Yes.” His silver gaze shifted, met hers. “Micah’s an angel and I should be able to kill him easily. After I put you to sleep, I tried and failed.”
No emotion touched his face, but she sensed how much his failure disturbed him. “What exactly does that mean? You’ve lost some of your mojo?”
“No. Micah has gained too much power.”
Perfect!
Madison rubbed her knees with her palms and noticed blood encrusted beneath her nails. Micah’s blood. And now Nix had joined him in Hell, for whatever cause he perpetuated.
Shell-shocked, her hands shook as she plunged her fingers through tangled hair to clasp her head. “Nix is in Hell,” she whispered.
“I know.”
She hugged herself with her arms. “He doesn’t belong there, Zen.”
“He made his choice.”
“No.” She shook her head. Nix had been tricked. Tricked like all the others who sold their souls to Hell. Agitated by the unfairness of the world, she stood and crossed the room to the bathroom. She threw back the shower curtain. A roach lay on its back, furry legs twitching as if the motion would turn the insect back over.
Zen had rented a dump.
“Za vila.”
Be gone
, she said, and the roach poofed out of existence. She reached in and turned on the shower, twisting the knob all the way to scalding hot. She needed to scrub layers of skin off, to clean her soul, if possible.
Zen stepped into the doorway of the bathroom and cast a shadow across the room. “I know I encouraged you to use your demonic mojo, but it’s best if you don’t use it further. For now.”
Facing him, she stripped. He turned his back to her. “I thought my nakedness didn’t affect you?”
“It doesn’t. He marked you.” His right foot tapped a restless beat against the floor.
His reaction was…strange.
She knew Micah had marked her, her own demonic sigil interlaced with a marking she didn’t recognize. As she stepped into the stall and pulled the shower curtain closed, she traced the design Micah had carved over her left breast. Who owned the second sigil? She knew the designs of all the Kings; this one held no meaning for her.
“I need clean clothes, Zen.” She squirted shampoo into her palm. “I also need my shurikens. The ones with the rhombus engraved on them.” She lathered her hair and used both hands to scrub her scalp. “Oh, and get my knife, the one Nix gave me, and I’ll need my Taurus pistol.”
“Why do you need your ninja stars?” Leave it to Zen to question the request for the shurikens, but not her knife or pistol. She ignored his question.
“Someone needs to get Amos, and tell him to grab the emergency bag.” She leaned into the water spray and watched the bubbles fight to slide down the drain.
“What are you planning, Madison?”
She soaped up a washcloth, wasn’t satisfied with the amount of suds, and added more body wash. “I’m getting Nix outta Hell, of course.”
“You’re not going into Hell,” Zen said reasonably, but she wasn’t in a rational state of mind. Nix resided in Hell, for God’s sake! She fought not to step out of the shower and punch Zen’s caution right out of him. “Not with Pandora power unchecked and in your untutored control.”
They’d see about that, she thought, using the washcloth to scrub her arms. She could write a book on stubbornness, and Zen hadn’t seen her at her best yet. “I’m getting him out.”
“This isn’t open for discussion.”
“Agreed. My mind’s made up.” She rinsed the washcloth and lathered it with another dollop of soap. “You’re welcome to stop me the only way you can.” She ran the cloth down the inside of her leg and let a moment of silence hang between them before she added, “Kill me.”
Curtain hooks shrieked across the metal rod. Startled, she jerked up and stumbled. Zen reached out, caught her wrist, and steadied her.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, pressing her palm between her breasts and attempting to calm her racing heart.
Zen’s fingers squeezed her wrist. “If you go to Hell, Micah gets his wet dream….His demonic Queen, his son, and Pandora’s Box. The power to level the planet.” His grip tightened.
She wondered if he realized how tightly he gripped her, as her fingers started to tingle from the lack of blood flow.
“I should have separated the Box from you when we first met. It would have been the wisest course, but I wanted to believe Pandora’s Box safer with you, since no supernatural creature would dare come after you, except for Micah. And I thought I could defeat him. I…respect you, Madison.” He looked away and scrunched up his face as if admitting to human emotions made him uncomfortable. “In the end, my emotions do not matter. I will not allow Micah to win.”
Madison twisted her arm, freeing her wrist. She rubbed the red finger marks and opened and closed her hand in an attempt to work the blood back into her nerveless fingers. She held his stare.
“No one is expendable. If I have to kill you to protect the balance, I will.”
“Like you killed me earlier?”
“Don’t push me, Madison.” His eyes swept her nude body. “You’re fragile, half-mortal, and I can kill you without touching you.”
“Don’t tell me no, Zen. Don’t you dare!” She threw the body wash bottle at his head because it was the nearest thing in her reach. He dodged it. “You owe me. I busted you out of your crystal jail. You fucking owe me!”
“Owe you? I taught you how to defend yourself.”
Madison laughed and shoved him—hard. The irritating immortal didn’t even have the decency to stumble. She stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her dripping body. “You taught me self-defense to amuse yourself. You knew none of the paranormal creatures would dare touch me, thanks to Micah’s mandate.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. Mutiny stark in his posture, he said, “Phoenix is not worth the risk.”
“Not worth the—fuck you, Zen!” She gulped a deep breath. Her temper soared as she realized Zen didn’t value Nix’s life the way she did. That hurt her feelings. “I’m starting to think you weren’t worth the risk of saving.”
Zen sucked in a harsh breath. She hoped the statement hit the mark.
“You fight nothing, Zen. You just blast it all to smithereens. Effective, and boring. You value nothing and no one, care only about your stupid balance of power. Some people are worth fighting for, regardless if the odds aren’t in your favor. Nix is one of those people. I wouldn’t expect you to understand any of my human emotions, though.”
Zen clutched her arms and stopped her from brushing past him in an angry huff. Refusing to look at him, she jerked to get out of his clutches. His insufferable grip held. He pulled her back into his personal space, and they just stood there, her seething and ready to take his head off. Him…well, who really knew what he thought.
“Release me, Zen.”
“No.”
She glared, ready to blast him, except he spoke before she could. “If I believed no mortal worthy of fighting for, I wouldn’t give a damn about protecting the balance. And I would have killed you in the crystal cave. When I stared into your eyes, I saw a woman who possessed the bravery to change the world. A woman capable of fighting the odds against her and flipping destiny off with a smile on her face.”
Stunned, she stared at him. For him to open up this way…kind of like the second coming of Christ.
“Tonight, I saw the same woman. Nothing changed in your eyes, even though Micah upped the odds in his favor with his blood. Again, I stayed my killing hand. I have faith in you, Madison. You’re the first and only mortal to gain my faith.”
He released his hold. She swayed. Remained silent, waiting, as Zen tugged his fingers through his hair. An indecisive move and totally out of character for him.
“If you believe Phoenix is worth the risk—” Zen closed his eyes and expelled a tired breath “—I may live to regret this…you have my support. I’ll help you bust into Hell and save him, but we have to do this the smart way.”