Two Kingdoms (The Dark Side Book 3) Read online

  “The Devil’s whip doesn’t actually belong to the Devil,” Jude says, his tone distracted as he continues to study my eyes. “You were about to go try to kill the Devil again, weren’t you?” he adds, quirking a knowing eyebrow.

  Clearing my throat and feeling overly worked up, I shrug. Wrath and anger should not be in the same body. It’s a deadly combination.

  Anger is one of my impurities, but it’s usually overcome by my logical ability to rationalize and internalize and ignore…

  Rambling more than usual now.

  “Maybe,” I finally admit, bristling at the way they all groan in unison. “To be fair, that was my first dream, in case you’ve forgotten. I thought I was really there, because I’m fairly certain you don’t experience physical pain like that in dreams.”

  “Hell’s nightmares are far different from mortal dreams,” Ezekiel states absently. “We’ve spent centuries thinking it was our future. For fuck’s sake, we’ve obsessed over our balances, trying to figure out how it all goes to shit before it happens. We never stopped to consider it might be our past…until you.”

  “I can’t believe you have those nightmares every night,” I go on.

  Then…I remember they don’t have them every night.

  Not anymore.

  A chill creeps up my spine, and the rambling in my head comes to an abrupt halt as that thought really sinks in.

  When my eyes lock with Jude’s, I see almost a blurry image of him as something hot and wet drips down my cheeks.

  “You’d all really rather sleep in your own rooms because you’re mad at me, and suffer through those nightmares, than to have to share a bed with me? I thought you were simply being petty, but you must truly hate me to knowingly put yourselves through that,” I say on a strained whisper. “All because I wandered off to try and learn more about myself while the four of you plotted your own plan behind my back? Do you not see the hypocrisy, or do you just find my thoughts and needs to be completely irrelevant? Am I still really that insignificant?”

  I’ve never seen Jude’s eyes so stunned before, and if I’m being honest, I think there’s a little panic there too. Kai, Gage, and Ezekiel talk over each other, each of them spitting out two random words, before going awkwardly silent.

  Apparently, these relentless tears of mine are confusing the hell out of them as I turn and shoulder by Kai so I can walk out of the room.

  “We’ve had them for so long we’ve dulled ourselves to them somewhat,” Jude lamely calls to my back.

  I go phantom and zap myself downstairs, needing ice cream. The girls with broken hearts always eat ice cream in the movies.

  I settle for spray whipped cream since there’s no ice cream.

  They show up just as I’m walking out of the kitchen, the four of them warily watching me like I’m going to explode at any moment. Sadly, I can understand that being a legitimate concern.

  “If you’re going to be incurable dicks to me, the least you could do is keep the freezer stocked with ice cream,” I point out dryly.

  I leave them behind as I zap to the living room.

  They stalk me there too, and I turn a glare on them for a change.

  “I think I’ll just stay up and watch a movie. No worries. I won’t be closing my eyes and bringing the house down anymore tonight. You can all go back to your individual rooms and finish up the nightmare you like better than me.”

  I flip them off and pair it with my fuck-you grin, and then I turn and face the TV. I choose an oldie but a goodie.

  Ghost.

  Things were simpler when this was my movie reference for life.

  “What happened with Lucifer?” Kai asks me as he gingerly lowers himself to the seat next to me.

  “It had nothing to do with the nightmares. That was the first time I’ve slept without at least one of you next to me since the bond really settled into place,” I state dismissively, cutting off that emotion that was drawing out the tears and freaking them out.

  “I’m asking the question for a different reason,” he says, trying too…hard.

  I turn to look at him, but I notice the other three have taken a seat on the ground near us.

  “You four are not doing this. Pity parties are not part of my impurities, so I’ll not have one with the four of you tonight,” I say.

  When they don’t automatically spring into action of their own accord, I make a motion to shoo them away.

  Jude smirks before letting his gaze drop to the ground. Meanwhile, I think of ways to knee him in the balls before he can stop me.

  Ezekiel battles a grin as he looks away, while I ponder the many ways I could torture his balls as well. I’d leave them blue for a month if I let this anger of mine dictate me.

  I’m far too evolved for that. Surely.

  An indignant sound escapes me, and they all look at me expectantly, as though they’re waiting for me to share my inner musings.

  “Go. Away,” I say instead. “I like talking aloud, but none of you get to hear what I’m—”

  The doorbell rings, and we all grow silent as we stare at the door like it’s a lunatic.

  “Does the bell often ring at two in the morning when you’re not expecting anyone? Because it’s never happened since I came about,” I ramble. “And only the hell people seem to ring the bell.”

  I didn’t bring a purse to forget, so I doubt someone’s returning lost articles from the party.

  Someone starts banging on the door, and a girl’s panicked voice follows.

  “Gage! Please let me in! They’re going to kill me if they catch me here!”

  “Drop the barrier spell,” Jude snaps.

  Kai beats Gage to the door, and it’s ripped open as a bloody girl with gashes all down her face, arms, chest…everywhere…stumbles in.

  Jude manages to catch her as she falls, and I try to remember she’s dying before I go crazy territorial for no reason and kill her myself.

  Where’s that compassion purity hiding right this moment?

  Gage cradles her face as he kneels in front of her, shouting at me to get her some water.

  Sheesh. It’s too soon for me to see this after nearly blowing the house apart and having to deal with their assholery on full blast.

  The floor starts burning under my feet when Ezekiel also dives to her side and starts applying pressure to one of her wounds.

  Grimacing, I start walking briskly, keeping the floor from being singed as long as I stay moving, trying not to draw attention to myself. Why am I burning the floor? Their bond isn’t strained. I’m not hurting like last time.

  Jude siphons in front of me and grabs something from a cabinet, never glancing at me before siphoning back out. Taking a calming breath and once again reminding myself she’s some girl they care for, but that it doesn’t mean they love her, I get the girl some damn water.

  Or…try…to…

  The bottle melts in my hand before I can make it back, and I curse as boiling water slaps the floor around me.

  “This can’t be happening,” I mutter to myself, straining to make it stop.

  It, however, doesn’t stop.

  Instead of dealing with it, I go phantom and head back into the room, taking a seat on the couch and watching as Ezekiel presents her a non-boiling bottle of water.

  He glances over at me, a concerned look on his face as I pretend to be only mildly interested in the situation. In this form, nothing is burning down around me, so that’s good.

  Kai’s eyes find mine, along with Jude’s, but I look back at the girl. Given the concerned looks they keep directing at me, this girl is definitely one they’ve had sex with before.

  But she’s sort of dying in our living room, so I ignore my selfish impurity, along with my envy impurity, and try to focus on my compassion purity.

  If I don’t succeed, I’ll blame it on the fact I’m quite literally hell spawn.

  Gage’s attention is fixed on her, which has me ignoring envy a little harder.

  “What h
appened?” he asks her as Kai starts slathering something on her gashes, touching her.

  Touching. Her.

  No time to be The Apocalypse right now, Paca. Get your shit together, and stow the inner crazy bitch.

  “The rebels…are attacking,” she answers through garbled blood and strain.

  Lamar could explain everything I’m feeling right now, I bet. He’d even leave me a little note like he did on those journals, reminding me of how awesome I am.

  Why am I not friends with him again? I’m struggling not to ring him right now. Do they have phones down there? Or do you have to put the blood of a virgin in a jeweled chalice and chant something creepy to contact hell?

  Hmmm…that chalice thing seems weirdly specific.

  “Where can I find a virgin at this hour?” I ask myself, tapping my phantom chin thoughtfully.

  Belatedly, I realize I’ve asked that question aloud when Ezekiel and Jude both give me incredulous looks.

  “We’ve never had a virgin, so I don’t know,” Kai answers me distractedly…before his head pops up and his look also turns incredulous.

  “Well, if you’d had her, she wouldn’t be a virgin anymore, so that’s a moot point, regardless. I doubt they have a superstore for virgin purchases,” I go on.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” the girl asks Kai seconds before she makes some obnoxious, death-braying noise and chokes back some of her own blood.

  She’s bleeding all over the place. Those assholes better know I’m not cleaning this up.

  “She can’t hear me,” I remind them. “At least not like this. I’m curious, which one of you picked her out? Oh, wait, I bet it was Gage, since his attention is glued to her.”

  Gage’s eyes meet mine, looking terribly exhausted with me, and he arches an eyebrow like he’s telling me something I should understand. But I don’t understand, because I don’t know them well enough to have silent conversations with our eyes.

  “They breached Hell’s Heart?” Gage asks the girl in disbelief.

  “Hell’s Black Heart?” I ask, a tremor of that nightmare niggling back into my mind.

  “No. Hell has two hearts. Hell’s Black Heart is the prison for the extremely unbalanced,” Gage tells me like now’s the time for tutorials.

  He looks back down at the confused girl who has no idea what’s going on.

  “Who are you talking to?” she asks as she starts healing from the concoction they’re using.

  “She’s really easily sidetracked,” I point out to them. “That’s rather annoying.”

  They all give me a wry look, except for her, of course. She looks rather confused at all of them staring at what would appear to be an empty couch to her.

  “The riot and the rebels,” I prompt the easily distracted quad.

  Kai shakes his head, and I bite back a few choice words when she reaches over and threads her fingers with Gage’s.

  He subtly unlocks their fingers and withdraws his hand, as Kai asks, “How did they breach the heart?”

  “I’m going to breach her heart if she keeps trying to touch Gage like that,” I say on autopilot when she grabs his hand again, clutching it as he bites on the inside of his jaw and darts a frustrated glance toward me.

  “It’s not like that at all,” he tells me directly. “Not anymore.”

  “Logically I know that. However, I’m finding it tedious to be a good girl, because I’m hell spawn,” I state very seriously.

  Before the oh-so-easily-derailed girl can once again ask who they’re talking to, Gage pulls his hand free and curtly says, “Explain.”

  She sighs but starts talking, finally. Sheesh. Takes her long enough to get to the point.

  “They came at us from all angles, so many of them, and Lucifer and the heirs were stored away to keep them safe. The rebels have beasts with them. Hell’s belly beasts. Hundreds and hundreds of them,” she goes on, her voice breaking.

  “Someone get her a tissue, for fuck’s sake,” I insist when the poor girl starts sobbing, clearly traumatized.

  They’re so inconsiderate.

  I stand when she puts her head on Gage’s chest, pulling his hand up to her chest like she needs the comfort.

  Kai siphons to be right in front of me, his head tilting. “She’s just terrified right now, and for good reason. They shouldn’t have—”

  “Stay and take care of her,” I tell him as I change into my badass outfit, but then I flick it back to my Devil Girl costume instead.

  Might as well be on-the-nose at this point, even though I’m not a fan of it.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Jude snaps when he sees my outfits flicker.

  I really should have changed somewhere else, obviously. They know my hell wear attire.

  “Clearly I’m going to go kill some rebels. You’re going to stay and take care of her, because one of my purities is compassion or something annoying like that.”

  I turn whole right in front of her, and she sucks in a breath before her brow furrows.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she asks, even though she should have probably noticed me when she first came in.

  I excuse her oversight, since she was on death’s doorstep…

  Ha!

  “I just made an accidental pun about Death’s doorstep,” I say to Jude, which forces him to pinch the bridge of his nose and mutter something that sounds suspiciously like, ‘woosah, motherfucker.’

  Awww… He’s quoting nineties movies too. I’ve rubbed off on him. I start humming Bad Boys, but I don’t think he gets it. Or his sense of humor is absent at the moment. One or the other.

  “Really, who are you?” the girl asks again, not finding my humor any funnier than they do.

  “I’m complicated,” I say with a tight smile. “I’ll be back to take them off your hands after I go blow some people up. I think that’s why I’m burning the floor under me right now, and not because you’re touching my Famine.”

  She continues to hold onto his hand, looking utterly perplexed.

  “I could be petty and tell her my name,” I inform them, just to let them know I’m a high-road sort of girl, as I go phantom again.

  I siphon out, not really sure where the fucking hell I’m going, since I’m not too good at this. But I focus really hard, letting the burn guide me.

  All four of them appear just as I land, as though they somehow freaking followed me.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I snap, but our dramatic surroundings steal my attention. We’re directly in the middle of the fray.

  “Never mind!” I shout when Jude spins and slices through five men at once with a weapon I don’t recall him having before we left. “You can totally stay,” I add when Kai takes down two rushing us.

  He does this with hardly any exerted effort. It gives me a boost of confidence that they won’t die too easily.

  Gage spins in the air, kicking one man solidly on the chest hard enough to launch that man into a beast’s mouth.

  Without a second thought, I dart out in front of a charging beast that squeals when it spots me and dives under the ground. Thankfully, that freaking terrifying, four-headed thing was old enough to be scared of me.

  “For the record, I didn’t mean to actually go to the battle first. I was hoping we could get details and formulate a plan,” I call out. “I’ve never been here, so I don’t know how I just landed here.”

  “No, you were going to do all that alone,” Ezekiel growls as he slices off a man’s head.

  “Now’s so not the time to continue that argument, dear!” I chirp, punching something that has tentacles and leaves a slimy trail on my hand.

  “Gross,” I groan, quickly ducking as something flies over me.

  We’re right in the thick of it, and all the hooded soldiers are mixed in with men in capes—really? Capes?

  Not superhero capes, either.

  They look like Spartans, right down to the armor and footwear, and they’re not hideous. I wonder if
they really are Spartans.

  “I just got an idea for my next harem,” I say to Jude, who growls at me as he slices through something.

  I think that prick slaps my ass. If not him, it’s one of these really stupid soldiers who will lose a hand later.

  I notice men in tuxedos turning into Spartans as they leap over us, firing pulses of sharp power from their hands that spews into the fray.

  Gage spins again, and as he does, his shirtless body is covered with something leather and armored, just before his boxers turn into some sort of black leather warrior thingy I know better than to call a fringe skirt. Something tells me that would be a bad thing to say aloud.

  Gladiator flashes through my mind.

  A sword appears in his hand, glistening under the fires that are shooting out just above his head. When he comes down, something dark and oh-so alluring drills out of him, almost conducted through that sword.

  I practically gravitate toward the power like it’s intoxicating.

  The horde of beasts charging us shrivel and collapse before turning to mummified carcasses. He lands on his feet, his eyes staring at the sword in his hand like he’s as stunned as I am.

  He looks down at his new apparel with the same quizzical brow, and when our eyes meet, we actually have one of those silent conversations that I found impossible a few minutes ago.

  What the fucking hell just happened? Why is there a thickly fringed leather skirt hitting just under the knees on that fine male body and showing peeks of those muscular upper legs? Will that pierced dick fall out of that leather thingy underneath, since it looks like it’s barely holding all the goods in?

  Okay, maybe it’s not the exact same conversation. But it has to be close.

  Blinking out of the trance, he spins, using that sword to slice through men.

  Jude dives, grabbing someone’s abandoned bo staff, coming up just in front of me before a giant beastly woman almost catches me off guard.

  The same thing happens. Sort of. His clothes change to be an exact replica of Gage’s, and the bo staff turns onyx. It glistens as he brings it across her middle, sending her thundering down to the ground as he yells with the effort it takes.

  As he brings that bo staff back down, a curved blade forms at the end of it, turning it into a scythe as the blade connects with her neck. Just as she turns to dust, he stands and slings the scythe outward, obliterating everything in its immediate path, ashing the line of rebels who are charging at us with their mangled faces and barbaric weapons.