I put my hands behind my back to hide the fact that I need to clench them into fists. Darkness follows me like my own personal Grim Reaper. I thought I was becoming a better male. I thought my time doing bad things had come to an end. How stupid I’d been to even entertain the thought.
“Well, the rest need to go too,” Katerina says. “Take your earphones out.”
I stop breathing. Of course she wants to go for the throat. This spell allows her to take full advantage, and she isn’t going to waste the opportunity. With the obsidian chains around me I can’t shift, but my Berserker genes will still take over. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I nod. “Yes, regina.”
Let her take out this bloodlust on me. By the time she gets to my brothers, she’ll be satiated and will hopefully leave them alone. I take out my earphones and put them in my pocket. The doors to the cells screech open. There’s no red haze that takes me because I can’t fucking see. But it’s still ‘red’ in my ears, and in my head. In my blood-soaked, blackened soul. It’s a sort of song. Ugly. Malicious.
The entire time I’m chasing and killing these humans, I’m fully aware, unable to control the way my body wants to maim, to destroy. The screaming soaks into me like wine, and it fuels me to tear and break and snap. Human screams come and go. Blood mists the air. I can’t help but revel in it. So much.
I needmore.I can’t escape it.
Then, far away, I hear the sound of something new. My head snaps southward. Scythe’s head—and further away, Savage and Lyle’s heads too—snap in the same direction.
The sound is pure violence. Pure agony.
It’s the rage of my regina.
I shake my head as the sound reverberates through my skull. It focuses me enough to allow me to think. To go still. Settling down on my haunches, I close my eyes and listen to the one who tugs at my soul.
A regina rampage is a thing of myth. It is usually driven by the death or danger of children. Very occasionally, however, the capture or death of a regina’s pack drives its central mate into a frenzy of bloodlust.
My skin erupts in goosebumps, and my mouth curves into a smile.
Chapter 7
Ghoul
I’m overseeing the editing of the new videos when the serpent king slithers into the room. Everyone stands and bows.
“At ease. Ghoul, I need you to visit the Crocodylus property immediately. The hyena matriarch has received a venom-writ missive and assumed it was me. It wasn’t. We need to determine which of our people has the audacity to be sending such a thing.”
“A missive? Like a letter?”
“Correct.”
Katerina had alluded to her plan to secure Scythe and his brothers. Gloated, in fact. I never would have believed it unless I’d seen the footage at Drakos Estate for myself. Everyone is unsettled by the hyena’s witchery, but the underworld lords are more excited that she’s removed Scythe from the chessboard. One less formidable enemy. One less hurdle.
The Clawsons sent her flowers. Mace sent chocolates.
“I’ll head out right away, Your Majesty.” I bow again and take my leave, heading upstairs into the night.
Dematerialising into shadows is my favourite thing. There are few things more delightful than becoming nothing…andbecoming everything. During the day, it’s not as fun because I’m confined by the lack of shadows. But the night isallshadow.
I am darkness. I am the thing that goes bump in the night. The bogeyman, as Savage likes to call me. Silently, I can travel across the world, watching the humans and animalia who are up to no good. Who do their work at night. But the thing that catches my eye the most are the little pretties. The sparkly lights that shoot out of houses every so often. As a teenager, I liked to count them, name their colours and rank them for their beauty: The souls that leave this world and come to mine.
Not all those who die meet me in the shadows. Most are directed elsewhere and we pass each other by like sailing boats in the dark. Sometimes I wave, but some of them are led to the shadow realm. These, I like to watch. They soar through the ether, and the shadows reach out like grabbing hands, snatching them up.
Tainted people. Monsters like Xander. Like Titus. Like me. Those who’ve blackened their spirit so badly the light can’t even stand them. A lot of them wander in between for a while, lost and hungry, often angry. I don’t know what happens to them once the shadows have devoured them and I can’t see their souls anymore, but I can only hope it’s the worst. We have only ourselves to blame for that.
There are no souls for the shadows tonight, however, as I soar over the vacant land and The Collector’s barbed-wire fence. Her servants don’t see me until I re-materialise on her white-tiled doorstep. The two roos at the door jump three feet in fright.
“Settle down, boys; it’s only the big bad basilisk,” I jeer. “Croco-dearest is expecting me.”
The two males resettle their automatic rifles on their backs and open the door. One of them leads me to a sitting room where the statuesque form of Xander stands obediently with his hands behind his back, ever the humble servant. The Collector and thehyena queen sip herbal tea at a small table. The hyena has a secret dash of bourbon in hers.
“You have a pet dragon,” I say, bowing low.
The crocodile offers me her hand, and I take the thing and smack my lips in the air over it. “That and more.” She grins with all her teeth. “They are quite obedient. Xander passed all my tests.”
