And anyone who lived nearby.
I pointed a shaky hand at the seal, willing it away. “Please tell me you haven’t already started murdering people.”
“Hush,” Clark bit out as he shoved me further into the room. My feet twisted beneath me and sent me sprawling onto the floor. Right in the middle of the blood seal. I wrinkled my nose as the sharp scent of iron filled my head, so strong it almost made me puke.
With watery eyes, I glared up at them all. “You’re monsters. You do know that, right? And you’re going to live forever knowing, deep down inside, that you don’t deserve any of it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Andrea said. “Demons have the ability to turn all that off. We don’t have to feel guilt. Or pain. Or any of it, not unless we want to. How gloriously freeing.”
My heart thumped as I remembered when Caim had shut down the night the Cult of Lilith had taken Stolas from us. He’d turned off his emotions. He’d shut down. The only way to protect himself from the demonic rage burning through his veins, all because the pain had been too great.
That was what made the Legion different from all the rest of the demons inhabiting the earth and beyond. They let themselves feel. They fought against the darkness inside of them. They refused to give in to the worst parts of themselves.
The humans before me would do no such thing. They didn’t want to.
Despair raged through me, and I knew without a doubt that a lot of people would die tonight. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. Hell, I’d be the cause due to the stupid orb’s power in my blood.
“One day,” I hissed through my teeth, slowly standing before them, surrounded by flickering candles, darkness, and blood. “One day, all of this will come back on you. It might not be for years, but one day it will. You will look into the face of fate and you will realize that the things you’ve done are the very things that destroyed you.”
Andrea cocked her head with a curious glint in her eye. Then, she snorted and smiled. A lighthearted giggle exploded from her throat, and soft, amused tears filled her eyes.
“You’ve seen far too many movies, Eva. You think you’re somehow going to curse us before your death? Haunt us after you’ve gone?”
“You better fucking believe it.”
Until recently, I hadn’t believed in supernatural things. It was all just stories, tricks of the eye, outright scams. Any explanation at all and I’d clung to it, despite the reports of wings and fire in the skies. But now I knew demons were real. So were vampires and werewolves and fae and a host of other things. Who was to say ghosts weren’t real, too? And if they were, I was going to haunt these assholes until their dying days.
Regardless of how many centuries it took.
Clark, standing just to my left, shifted uneasily in his boots. Which made me think I might have struck a nerve. “Come on. Let’s just get this over with. The forecast says it might get cloudy after ten, so the sooner we do this, the better.”
Moonlight was the answer. The very thing that had turned my blood black. Interesting.
But before I could think too carefully about that, Clark had whipped out his dagger again. He turned toward me with fear in his eyes. Also interesting. After all his shoving and growling and posturing, he was...scared. But of what?
Andrea vanished down the hallway while the other bodyguard appeared behind me and grabbed my wrists. I bit back a cry at the pain that flared through my skin. Rope bit into me, rubbing me raw.
“As long as you stand there quietly,” Clark said, refusing to meet my eyes, “all of this will be over very soon.”
“You mean I’ll be dead soon,” I said dryly.
“No.” His neck bobbed as he glanced toward the door where Andrea had vanished. She still wasn’t back yet. “This isn’t going to kill you.”
“I’m pretty sure that having my blood drained won’t be great for my health.”
I sounded nonchalant. Calm, even. But fear raged in my heart. I didn’t want to die. Not now. Not for a long, long time.
“I mean it.” He dropped his voice to a low murmur so that none of the gathered cult members could hear him. “Don’t fight it, and you’ll be fine.”
Frowning, I met his eyes. “Until two seconds ago, it seemed like you were happy to feed me to the wolves. And yet now you’re trying to warn me. Why?”
He shook his head and backed up a step. “I just don’t want to see any more innocent blood spilled.”
“Luckily, Eva here is not innocent,” Andrea said icily from the door. “Get the ritual goblets.”
The ritual goblets. My heart ricocheted through my chest. Something told me they wouldn’t be passing around any wine in those goblets. Clark remained standing before me, holding me tight, while the other guard strode across the room and lifted a tray of matching silver goblets into his beefy hands.
When he returned to my side, he shot me a sharp smile.
