The End of Gods (A Welcome to the Underworld Novel, Book 4) (14 page)

“What a disappointment you’re becoming to me, Tae Hyun,” she taunted, breathing painfully as she hung her hands over the railing, “kinda like what a disappointment you were to your girlfriend.”

At long last, the last vestige of Tae Hyun’s armor cracked at the mention of the one who stole his heart.

“Do
not
bring her up,” Tae Hyun snapped, inhaling with difficulty as he took another step.

Soo Jin knew that Tae Hyun didn’t like her. In fact, he
hated
her. She knew he hated her for the sole reason that the woman he loved was no longer with him because of her. She knew this, and she was prepared to provoke him with this knowledge.

“How terrible it must be for you,” she plowed on mockingly, laughing with hilarity at him, “to realize that just moments prior, you were kissing the love of your life,
forcing
her to leave the country so you could spare her life. Yet, here she stands . . . no longer the feeble bitch you left, but now the self-serving bitch you want to kill.”

“That’s enough, Soo Jin!” he screamed, getting angrier with every mocking second.

Soo Jin was having too much fun to stop. “Make me stop, King of Serpents!”

Using this moment of distraction, Soo Jin jumped off the stairs and punched him clear across his face, triggering him to take a couple of involuntary steps up the stairs. His teeth snapped together, and she was ready to deliver another punch when he caught her wrist and nearly twisted her hand back. In lieu of using his momentum to break it, Tae Hyun instead rose up and elbowed her across the chest, causing her bones to vibrate before she hit the stairs, her temple colliding against the gold railings.

Yes! That’s more like it!
The competitive part of her screamed in joy when she hit the floor, her body starting to feel the full effects of Tae Hyun’s strength.

Finally.

Finally they were fighting like Gods instead of mere humans.

As blood seeped from her lips, Soo Jin decided to break the human in Tae Hyun and release the violent killer within him.

“Do you know how I killed your mother?” she jeered before running down to him while they were still on the stairs. With easy agility, she ducked to the ground and spun her leg on the steps to steal the ground beneath his feet. As he plunged down, she proceeded to kick him in the face, causing the back of his head to slam against the wall just before he fell and banged the side of his head against the stairs.

Soo Jin let out a cruel laugh.

She used this sublime moment to her advantage and kneed him in the jaw. She followed that by punching him across the face in three consecutive motions before she kicked his face and buried the sole of her boot into his neck.

“Don’t you wanna know how I ended her life?”

“Shut up!” he snarled, grabbing a railing and pulling himself up. As he did so, he kicked her across the stomach before she was able to land another attack. The force sent her flying up towards the remainder of the stairs and slamming into a granite column that decorated the upstairs quarter of the ballroom.

Although pain throbbed like piercing knives in her body, she didn’t care.

He was losing it . . .

And she was loving it.

Soo Jin laughed, enjoying this moment more than she could ever imagine.

She had to push him more.

“She was drinking in her room!” she stated loudly, reveling in the sound of his screams for her to shut the hell up.

Her heart pumped ecstatically at the loss of his control.

She rose to her feet and effortlessly jumped onto the connected balcony railings that blocked the upstairs quarter from the wide-open space leading to the ground floor. She proceeded to walk backwards on the two-inch gold railing with ease. She smiled in anticipation while she watched Tae Hyun glide up the stairs like the fighter that he was.

She continued to taunt him in a singsong voice. “She was drinking like the miserable bitch that she was before I snuck in and found her all alone, ready to be tortured by me . . .”

Soo Jin crouched down, still smiling as Tae Hyun jumped smoothly onto that same railing. He walked on the thin rail like the skilled predator he had always been. He, like her, was able to easily balance himself on the railing, walking on it with such ease that they both made it appear as if they were gallivanting on the ground floor instead of on a railing that had a three-story fall beneath it.

She continued to taunt him, loving it more and more that she was coaxing the God out of him.

“This was just a while before that perverted brother of yours—the one that you killed, by the way—snuck into his thirteen-year-old sister’s room and had his fun
raping
her.”

“
Don’t
,” Tae Hyun warned, breathing so violently that she could see the humanity disperse from his furious eyes. All she saw was a God who had been pushed to his limits; all she saw was a God who was now ready to kill. “My patience with you is fading. If you don’t shut up right now, I won’t hold back any longer.”

Unfazed by his warning, for she was waiting for him to explode, she plowed on. The adrenaline pumping through her was too addicting to stop.

“I taped your mother’s mouth, dragged her by the locks of her hair, and brought her into the bathroom where I helped her out by breaking the alcohol bottles that were already littered around her room . . .”

“
SOO JIN!
” he roared, leaping towards her at once. Then, much to her delight, he began to fight her on the railing.

Each punch he threw, she blocked with ease. In the same degree, each punch she threw, he blocked with proficiency. Punch after punch, kick after kick, and head-butt after head-butt, their bones vibrated in pain at the excruciating violence inflicted upon them. In spite of this trauma, neither Tae Hyun nor Soo Jin yielded from the volatile situation they were fighting in.

“She cried, you know?” she told him, grinning callously while tilting her head after he held her arms, pulled her to him, and growled at her to stop talking. Agony appeared in his eyes, and she continued to stab the words into him, wanting every word to not only hurt him, but also infuriate him.

“She begged me to spare her life. But you know how killers in the Underworld are. We don’t react to people who plead like dogs. I turned on the water in the tub, lifted her wrists, and began to
drag
the broken glass bottle across her wrist for her. I watched as her flesh ripped apart, as her veins were sliced, and then just sat there . . . holding her neck against the wall. I allowed her to watch as the blood seeped out of her—as the life escaped her eyes. And then when I was done, I left her there to rot like the worthless person that she was.”

And this was where he lost it.

An unforgiving inferno claimed his eyes and he lost all sense of control.

Pulling herself out of his grasp, Soo Jin took her final steps backward in satisfaction of finally breaking him. In a swift movement, she ran back towards him and allowed her body to fall forward a foot from reaching him. She gripped onto the railing and swept her legs in the air. When her legs connected with his body, it threw him off balance and left him to fall off the railing.

Tae Hyun’s body was primed to plummet to the world beneath them before, with the agility of an animal, he averted to the side to hold onto the railing in mid-air. He used it as an anchor to keep from falling to his demise, and then, with unparalleled strength, he lifted his legs up, swung his body backward, and found an unsuspecting Soo Jin. She was barely able to let out a gasp when he locked his legs around her neck in a tight knot and then swung his body forward, knocking her off her feet and throwing her over the railing.

“Ahhhhh!”

She dove through the air, plummeting towards the ground before she felt the back of her body slam violently into the gold pillar behind her. Every nerve in her body screamed at the earth-shattering impact.

“Augh!”

Groaning, Soo Jin was still conscious enough in midair; she knew she had to do everything in her power to alleviate the impact of the fall. She bent her legs slightly in preparation for the extreme collision ahead.

Boom!

The soles of her shoes met the ground with a loud crash, triggering pain to jolt up her body before she quickly rolled to the side to ease the momentum (and the pain) of her fall. The fact that it felt like a million different shards of glass were buried in her body did not help matters either. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was pain from the fall, pain from the glasses slicing into her skin, or a combination of both. All she knew was that she could barely focus on her surroundings. The throbbing ache in her body was all consuming.

She was so overcome by the blinding ache that she didn’t even register that Tae Hyun was already on the ground floor with her. It wasn’t until she heard the sound of his shoes stepping over the various pieces of glass was she aware of his presence. Her observations came too late. A pair of strong hands grabbed a fistful of her black hoodie, raising her body into a sitting position with a pillar behind her. Soo Jin gasped when she felt the blade of a sword against her neck.

She looked past the excruciating pain she was experiencing and stared into his wrathful eyes.

She was no longer in the company of a King, but a God.

Perfect.

“Do it,” she urged him, feeling the sharp blade flirt with the skin of her neck.

She searched his eyes, wishing with all her might that he’d just do the deed. She wanted him angry like this, she wanted to break him, she wanted him to not go easy on her—she wanted to make a God out of him.

“Do it, King of Serpents,” she advised tauntingly. “This is your only chance. Once you let this moment pass, you’ll never get it back again. You’ll never be able to kill me again, and you’ll never be able to avenge your mother or your precious personal assistant.”

Mentioning his mother was the perfect tactic, for she saw the bloodlust in his eyes. On the other hand, her ultimate mistake was using the nickname that belonged to the one who continued to own his heart and his humanity. Slowly, the bloodlust began to deteriorate from his gaze. In place of that rage, all she saw were eyes teemed with pain. Tae Hyun began to stare at her with a longing that she couldn’t describe.

Clank.

Then, it was the sound of the sword dropping to the floor that heightened the beating of Soo Jin’s own heart.

She watched as his eyes slowly ran over the blood seeping from her mouth, the blood on her skin, and the shards of glass all over her body. He returned his focus to her face and stared at all the maladies present. His quiet eyes returned to hers. In that instant, a heart wrenching expression came over his face. It was clear that he had finally processed what he had done: he had just hurt the woman he loved more than anything else in the world.

“
Yoori . . .
” she heard him say to her. He breathed in painfully, raised a hand up, and gently cupped her right cheek.

He was staring at her with so much love that she felt hypnotized by him.

“I’m sorry,” he started to whisper, kissing over the bruises on her face, the cuts near her lips, and every part of her face with so much adoration that she was just lost in it.

Something odd happened to Soo Jin at that instant. As he expressed his apologies for hurting her, for fighting her, Soo Jin just felt . . . out of place.

She couldn’t control the warm butterflies that escaped into her stomach at his gentle touch, at the way those captivating eyes held hers. She couldn't control the warmth that overcame her as he showered her with affection. The way his lips—his damn gorgeous lips—moved over her skin just felt so nice. She no longer felt pain. All she felt was distraction.

She peered up at him, somehow unable to rip her gaze from his when she realized that the maladies on his face were bringing some sort of pain to her as well. The fact that he couldn’t prompt himself to kill her, even though he believed she was his mother’s killer, was also doing some strange things to her sensibility.

She tried to shake off these peculiar thoughts.

It was probably the pain, she placated after she processed what was actually happening—that Tae Hyun, despite all her efforts to piss him off, wasn’t going to even attempt to kill her.

Are you kidding me?

Frowning at him and the thought of herself becoming weakened by his charms, Soo Jin decided it was due time to end things for the night. She wanted to incite the legendary fighter—the epic God—to come out of him; she did not need to be mesmerized by the handsome King in the process.

“You’re such a disappointment right now,” she complained, pushing him away in bitterness.

It wasn’t like she had planned on killing him or allowing him to kill her tonight. She simply wanted a prelude to the fun that was to come at their actual battle in front of the Underworld. It was an understatement to say that this anticlimactic fight had ruined her mood.

“You! You’re the once-in-a-lifetime fight I’ve been waiting for?!” she shouted, standing up in disbelief. After years of training, years of pain, years of hell . . . her one true match was someone who wanted to kiss her wounds after a good fight? She stared at him with incredulity when he stood up to face her. “You’re really not going to kill me?”