36. You Can’t Imitate This Violence

One chance.

The thought was a cold stone sinking down her throat, dropping into her gut. She stood on the cliff. Unmoving.

Heart racing. Her breath constricted in her shrivelled lungs. Horns retracted again. Elegance and strength wouldn’t win this. Condensing herself was the only way.

Her darkness muttered its agreement as she squared her shoulders and forced herself to inhale. Internally, she called for them to reduce her to their amorphous status.

Make her into a whisper of Shroud-woven spider silk. They wreathed around her and blotted out the moon. The night air tightened into a garrote around her neck.

Everything dimmed. Even the sound of the ocean waves crashing far below faded to a distant hum. Her demon and overflowing well of magic were silent.

The simmering, roasting, muscle-trembling fury condensed. So did her five centuries of lethally sharpened need. Everything she was and had ever been, would ever be—it all funneled inward.

It was a bizarre shrinking, weighty sensation. Her bones seemed to splinter and disintegrate.

Her restless, circling, whipping shadows stilled before flowing into her. Through her.

They became willing extensions of her intent. She invited them to dive deep within her. She would have no body.

No substance until safely through the wards. The world dissolved. She vanished into a vortex. Absolutely nothing made a sound. The darkness streaked across the ocean.

Her purpose was all she had left. Save him. End the threat. Then she’d claw him bloody for suggesting they split up in the Hamptons.

Stupid ideas always wrought disastrous consequences. Softness had crept too deep. Never again.

Never again would she let him convince her it was the best option. Her mind shut up as the shrinking feeling intensified.

It was akin to being pulled through the eye of a needle. The crushing, razor-thin matter she transfigured into made her regret every mistake she’d ever made.

It wasn’t long before she felt the wards nearing her. Her shadow had been right. If she could’ve smiled, she would have. The wards buzzed.

Her darkness thinned further, impossibly so. She sensed it. She couldn’t see it. But she knew it was there. The hairline fracture yawned, gaping before her.

It was a screaming gap, an anomaly in the fabric of reality she had to pierce exactly where its cyclical weakness lay. She focused intently on it and her shadows.

She fashioned them and herself into an obsidian spear tip. She sped towards it.

It was a cataclysm. She was precise. Her scream never sounded as the wards parted with a violence that would’ve snapped her bones in corporeal form.

Agonizing. Their magic whispered in chants. All about keeping demons out. Holding a vampire in. Keeping everything and everyone else out.

She’d have to break them. A ship would sail right over the spot the island had occupied once she was done with the cursed place. Her shadows spat her out.

She hadn’t let them perform that trick for decades. No one had been stupid enough to make her utilise it. Ash had been the first to stand ten toes down and battle her in decades.

He was the only one who understood what that violence meant. A secret language that ached and bled.

They spoke it fluently. No one else ever could. She landed with a rolling tumble. She popped to her feet and turned her back to the verdant ground.

Facing the roiling ocean like a pot boiling, she unsheathed her Silverthorn knife. She didn’t even look as she slit her left palm and let the blood soak it.

She gripped the runed and jeweled hilt. Let her essence seep into the cracks of the carvings and crystals.

She spoke Latin; the witches clung to it even now. Preferring it over English or any other language to speak their spells.

In order to break the invisible shield around the island, she would use their own tongue to do it."

Revelare.”

In one fluid motion, she stabbed the blade dripping and sizzling with her black blood into their wards. It was akin to stabbing a sheet of aluminium. She yanked it down toward the ground as though disemboweling something.

She held her breath as static sparkled over her face and the wards jittered. The air screamed.

A multitude of disembodied voices howled in reproach. Her shadows flailed and hissed back. Liora gazed up at the sky, watching the shimmer of magic falling away.

It melted like candle wax as the entire island shook under her feet. She turned, her smile slanted and cruel, to face the sprawling hunter base proper.

It was a blight of ugly, brutalist concrete and steel. A low-slung fortress of grey slabs. Slit-like windows punched through the walls, reinforced glass to protect their weak, mortal skins.

The architects of her time would be inconsolable at the sight of this shoddy modern workmanship.

There was no artistry in it. It served their dull, idiotic purpose and nothing more. Her lip curled as she sheathed her knife. Alarm klaxons began their deafening, panicked bleating wails.

They set the sky ablaze. Lights flashed along the roof of the building. Painting the pre-dawn air in streaks of rotating crimson light.

She inhaled deeply and unravelled gossamer strands of shadow from the raging mass around her. They came willingly. As eager as she was to end this.

“Give me an hour. No more. Go,” she muttered and threaded them into the earth.

She nodded as they wriggled beneath the grass like onyx worms. Her gaze flew to the figures scrambling like khaki-covered ants from the barracks to the right of the base.

She chuckled. The metallic reek of gunmetal and oil, the cold, stale sweat of human fear infused her senses.

They’re only good for paperwork, she thought with a snort.

Their pathetic dreams of glory and wealth died here and now. She’d tried to poison their roots in the past.

This time, they wouldn’t even have dirt to toil. She walked toward the barred entrance at a measured pace. The slow beat of her heart was the tempo.

Her spine was steel. They thought their walls and wards were a sufficient defense. Liora smirked. They were really their tomb.

And she’d just sealed the door. She drew no weapon.

But as she caught the shine of the black helicopter that helped her find this place, she ordered another ribbon of darkness to break free.

Its nebulous head looked at her and awaited its orders.

“If Silas tries to flee, warn me.”

It nodded and fluttered over to the mechanical bird with metal wings. She kept walking.

Her heels sank into the ground, shadows coiling and snarling. She focused entirely on the fearful hunters gathered before the door she meant to enter.

Their faces ranged from grim determination, utter terror, and resignation. A mix of young and middle-aged, not the runts she’d picked off in the city. They aimed guns at her.

Scarlet dots sprinkled her leathers. Pitiful. She flicked her wrist, and a shadow shot toward the bulky man shouting orders.

“Fire! Hold her off.” A chorus of weak, quivering voices interrupted him, but he didn’t listen to their pleas. “Follow your fucking—”

Liora’s obsidian noose looped around his neck and snapped it before he could finish his sentence. The man dropped onto the gravel with a crunch. She grinned.

Chaos erupted. Bullets hailed. Her shadows absorbed most. One pierced her shoulder. The bright bloom of white-hot pain made her laugh.

They might as well have kissed her. She plucked the bullet free of her skin.

The flesh wept black and healed over, as she licked the blessed steel and spat it back at them. The bullet shredded three hunters.

Blood spurted out of catastrophic wounds. A flare of warmth unraveled behind her ribs. The rest of their comrades screamed.

The racket was a symphony she’d sorely missed. Her eyes narrowed on two lanky younglings, their body language howling for freedom. Only around twenty-five years old.

Their guns shook so hard they couldn’t pull their triggers. The weapons were worth more than they had been. The witches would learn that too.

Smoke and mirrors, carnival tricks. A copper tang in the back of her mouth cleared her overanalytical mind. Her lightning zig-zagged from her fingertips.

For a second, the men just stared, wondering what had happened. One by one, their eyes burst—pulp and gore dripped down their gaping faces as she fried them from the inside.

Silver veins branched across their exposed flesh as their life force cooked. They flopped and convulsed like fish before the gutting.

Pitiful. The fragrance of overcooked meat drenched the atmosphere. It was art. Around fifteen remained.

They skittered and grouped together. Firing at her. Her magic deflected, but she needed to feel it. Feel the burn to remember who she was.

To keep the thrashing power in her veins from overtaking her. A lucky few scored her thigh and cut new grooves into her biceps.

The scorching drip of her blood only added more weight and skill to her attacks. The pain sharpened her senses and blocked out all thoughts of losing Ash to them forever.

“You’re too late! They’ve already begun.”

She cocked her head. Ignoring the jump in her pulse and the stall of her breath at the words. Lies.

The twisting sensation in her gut didn’t listen. Her brand didn’t burn.

But she knew he was alive. They wouldn’t be fighting her if he weren’t. Their heartbeats were a war drum, a funeral dirge she’d memorized and helped conduct.

“Return them to the Shroud,” she said. An order to her darkness.

It reacted instantly. Shadows birthed blades, cleaving torsos mid-shriek. Slight twists of her wrists, tiny tilts of her head—insignificant gestures and men fell as though an invisible scythe culled stalks of wheat in their wake.

Blood splattered the grey walls of their fortress and soaked the earth. Its pungent, rotten odour made her stomach lurch as venom flooded her mouth.

Lightning whipped from her fingers to destroy the last four. She fused guns to hands, hands to faces. Crimson and viscera fountained when they misfired.

Silence fell as stuttering heartbeats stopped. Finally. Peace. She loosed a breath, nose wrinkling at the stench of death fogging the air.

She paid the carnage no mind. Liora’s boots squelched and crunched through bone as she approached the iron door. The power she’d spent over a week gathering rose within her.

She sent a surge of blackest magic to atomise the iron. She hadn’t used it since Russia. Too destructive. Too easy to lose control with.

She’d reduced a palace to nothing after Rasputin had called her a whore. One minute the door was there. She blinked, and an open mouth led straight into the heart of their operation.

She moved to enter, but a warning rang through her shadows.

He’s fleeing. Hurry!

She grit her teeth, hands curling into fists, claws scratching her own skin.

Power tried to detonate. She barely held it back as her heart pounded and she turned away from the building. Every step away felt like she broke bones to do it. She phased.

In a second, she stood beneath the helicopter as it lifted, up, up. The blowback forced her into a crouch to keep from flying back. Her shadows braided into a rope, and she flung her hand toward the machine’s underbelly.

The obsidian cable bound around the metal skid and drew tight. Liora inhaled and jerked her arm downward. She wanted to let it explode into a fireball. But then she’d have nothing to send back.

Her darkness flew over and softened its landing. A loud thump rattled the ground as the helicopter shuddered and parts clattered off. She phased inside and grabbed Silas.

His pilot froze as she appeared. She reached out her hand, borrowing Ash’s frosty tricks while making it her own. Instead of his preserving ice, her touch unmade the man.

His ruddy, wide-eyed expression folded in on itself as her power flowed through him. No mercy.

This island would have no survivors. She refused to let the plague rise again. Silas shouted for help. He begged.

“I have a family! You can’t do this. I made a deal—”

She ignored him, teeth bared as she dragged him out, claws tearing through his harness. Whatever deal he’d made was null and void.

She tossed him onto the grass and straddled him. He thrashed and bucked under her. Hands flying at her face, her stomach, and chest.

The blows were those of a kitten batting at a fly. His olive skin paled as she chuckled.

His grey eyes were chips of dirty ice as the smell of piss flooded her nose. Thin lips quivered as she leaned close.

Pathetic. All the money in the world and this is what he became?

She shook her head. Adrenaline honed and propelled her every move. Her talons necklaced his throat as her shadows forged her a blade.

“You took what is mine,” she said. It was more of a growl, her voice a flat, frozen, hollow plain. Her talons sank into his skin. Coppery blood glistened. “Now you get to be the warning.”

He tried to beg for his sorry life. She didn’t allow it. Her claws tore through muscle and sinew, slicing into bone. Hot blood poured from his neck and splashed her face.

She breathed easier as it slipped down her jaw. Its acidic, sickeningly sweet smell made her glare at him. They were rodents, and she would exterminate them all.

His gurgling got louder as she cut through him. His death rattle breathing ended the second his head came free of his shoulders. He stared unseeing at the sky as the sun slowly rose from its watery grave.

She wiped her hands on his exquisitely tailored suit. There was no time to second-guess herself. She gripped the hilt of her shadow knife, her other hand sliding under her leathers and pulling out the crumpled envelope.

One word marked the front of it.

Surrender.

She pressed it against his unmoving chest and stabbed her blade into it. She ensured they would hear them by pinning her terms to his body.

Then she instructed another chunk of her darkness to take him away. Take his headless corpse back home.

To that blasted glass house. Where the rest of his middling groupies would be sure they’d bested the worst monster of them all. No.

They’d unleashed her.

Liora stood and bolted back to the base. Her remaining shadows whispered to hurry again. She leaped over the broken bodies she’d left on the ground and landed inside the building.

Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. Clinical white walls glowed as her blood roared in her ears. She glanced left and right. Which way would get her to Ash?

The left corridor had no lights. The right blazed like it had its own personal sun. Her eyes swung around. The alarms still blared.

But no one came running to stop her. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t anything obvious. More like a charge thrumming beneath the floor that told her to brace herself.

Her instincts sat up, skin prickling with gooseflesh as her stomach tied itself up. Left. She turned left. She knew darkness.

It was always her friend. She stalked down the hall. Claws flexing and power swelling as she held her breath. The click of her heels on the tile floor was the only other sound.

It echoed oddly. Specular, almost. An excessive reverberation that resounded in her ears like thunder as she prowled deeper into the darkness.

Static prickled her face. The notion of eyes watching her on all sides made more adrenaline flood her system. A sensation like a breath on the nape made her whirl.

Her shadows curled close and went silent. Not right. Not right. Not right. The warning screamed in her head.

A chill slithered down her spine. She went rigid as the lights abruptly turned on.

She blinked furiously. Trying to clear the glare and dark spots from her vision. Pulse ratcheting. Lip curling as a growl lodged in her throat. Nothing seemed out of place.

She glanced at the walls on either side of her, and they appeared normal. Painted concrete. But the stench of magic hummed from them.

That ozone scent. Metallic and dry, tickling the back of her nose. What had she walked into? A trap?

Or a distraction? Her claws lengthened, and she fell into her usual stance as the hall rippled and the scent of magic intensified.

It was as if a fog lifted, and thirteen witches stood in front of her. Mothers, maidens, and crone. Ah.

At last, the traitors deigned to appear. The vein in her temple throbbed as she eyed them. The grey-haired elder lifted a hand, and a flame sparked alive at her fingertips.

Her coven followed behind her in loose formation. It was almost intimidating, but they were sheep pretending to be wolves.

Nothing more. The youngest four at the back, expressions blank but their hands shook. Their eyes were glassy with unshed tears.

A redhead shook her head as her chin trembled. Perfect weaknesses to exploit. She earned a scathing look from the raven-haired woman beside the crone. Liora relaxed an inch.

She’d fed on and stolen the magic of witches. Their power came from the earth. The elements. A gift from the Shroud she protected. That she was.

They’d chosen the wrong side to fight for. Every supernatural creature possessed a thread of the very fabric that gave them their power. Cutting that thread weakened the Shroud.

It was why she’d tried to forge an alliance between monsters and hunters.

To protect the sanctity of everything that held the world together. She just had one question for them before she ended them. “Why? Why help the rats who hunt us for sport?”

Her voice ricocheted off the walls again. It didn’t sound like concrete. She smothered a frown, eyes darting back to the witches. The crone’s wrinkled, scowling face only grew more determined.

“We saw the throne of bones your love will build. It will bring the end of all of us.”

“You’re an abomination!” The blond behind her said.

All except the four youngest nodded. Beautiful women, all that power... such a waste. Liora arched a brow and ignored the frantic thumping of her heart as coldness spread from the deadened bond inside her.

She didn’t need a bond to know Ash was hers. He was hers to ruin, not theirs. And denying her that right because of their wrong interpretation only strengthened her resolve.

“You saw wrong.” Her head shook. “The world only burns if you keep him from me.”

The witches chose violence. The crone threw a ball of flame at her.

It singed the flyaway hairs that had escaped her braids as it shot past her head. Adrenaline made it appear as though it happened in slow motion. Its warmth was like a caress to her unimpressed face.

Then, a blast of frigid wind knocked her back a few paces. A raging, hazel-eyed witch held out her hand. Fingers flexing as she twisted her wrist. Water arced toward the ceiling.

Liora ducked as a stream of it morphed into an icicle. Aimed straight for her heart. It shattered off the wall.

Chunks of ice slid across the floor as the reek of magic heightened. She didn’t want to kill them. They’d sold their souls out of fear of a misunderstood prophecy.

The Shroud might weaken, but it would fall if Ash died. So would she. The aged woman with waist-length silver hair gathered enough fire between her gnarled hands to devour a forest in one blow.

It twisted and twisted in the air. A threatening orange glow stained the hall. Sweat bejewelled Liora’s forehead as its heat sucked out the oxygen. They were patsies playing with matches.

She’d been reborn in fire. Her human self died demanding vengeance against the priestesses and the man who’d sacrificed her to help stem the tide of vampires.

Now she had come to save one. The only one who mattered. The universe adored irony. Her heart stung, hunger gnawing at her with blunt teeth. If she burned here, would she wake up in her old grave?

In Elora’s old pine box? She didn’t want to find out. The witch made to launch the scorching mini-sun she’d conjured at Liora.

She was faster.

Her shadows lashed, darker than death’s embrace and twice as bloodthirsty. They enveloped and ate the sphere of rotating flame.

Her smokey vipers changed form the instant its amber glow extinguished. The well inside her started draining. It was a slow, pulling trickle as she focused the darkness’s attention on the witch.

The woman tried to jump back. As Liora tilted her head, the coven’s remaining members froze.

Kill her, she thought.

They listened. Their razor edges opened a thousand cuts on the woman’s body. Papercuts that bled single drops of maroon blood. The shadows snaked inside the open slices.

The three matrons broke out of their petrified state and formed a line. Those Shroud-given threads that fueled their attacks frayed. The women had gone against their own kind.

It was her duty to end them. The decision still made her insides wrench. Frost and rot fused her internal organs together. The bond was even colder than that.

It tingled a bit as her brand throbbed, freezing her collarbone. He was alive.

Suffering, but alive. She almost sobbed in relief. The witches clustered around the woman bleeding out.

“If any of you are here under duress—now is your last chance to flee,” Liora said, her dual-tone silken-rasp resounding off the strange walls.

Five ran. Including the four near tears.

Tenderhearted, short-sighted fools, she derided them in her head.

After this, she would keep monitoring them. Her attention returned to the woman she’d sliced. She pulled her shadows back from her.

Ripped them out of her. Taking her magic, too. The wounds they’d left behind widened and wept rivers of sanguine tears.

Blood pooled thick on the floor as the dying crone fell on her back, her daughters kneeling in it as they failed to stop the flood. Her stomach sank as the injured witch only smiled.

The hair on her nape lifted. A shiver streaked down her spine.

Iron and death choked Liora’s airways as the witch spoke a single word, making the world warp.

“Dimittere.”

Release.

The hallway juddered and protested as the walls melted away. Or the illusion did. The floor quaked. It groaned. Transformed.

One second: tile. Next, a sheet of glass. It reflected the cavernous ceiling that hadn’t been there a moment ago. She stumbled. And sent her shadows across to the witches.

She ordered her magic to devour them. Leave nothing behind. No time left for fancy, skilled attacks.

Only efficiency mattered as the floor under her boots shifted and rumbled. She barely heard the snap of bone, the gush of spilling blood. Their screams snuffed out fast as the void took them.

She swayed. Gold veins cracked her hands and began creeping up her wrists. The wall straight ahead of her vanished. Dragged into the abyss by the shadows she’d sent beneath the earth.

She was running out of time. She had about fifteen minutes left. Adrenaline roasted her inside out.

Her muscles coiled, jumping under her skin as everything changed. She gazed around her.

The ceiling had transformed into a dark cavern. Heat spread behind her cheekbones and salt stung her eyes. Mirrored walls reflected her.

She stilled. Her internal organs withered. Her bones turned brittle as though rusted. The urge to flee almost knocked her over. Fuck.

No. No. No. Her glamor shivered. A clammy sweat broke out all over her. Limbs trembling as she spun and saw the trap.

Sigils drawn in black blood—Ash’s bergamot and pomegranate blood—scorched the reflective glass lining the walls. They activated as she risked a glance at them.

Wrong move. She should’ve run. Turned right instead. Everything in her died and revived and died again. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

She just stared at herself. Hundreds of her. Horrible and hideous. Her heart pounded.

Her ears rang. She felt as if she were choking, but nothing was there. Blood rushed in her ears. Howling, screaming, shrieking. On and on it went.

It was a noise she couldn’t hear over. And the sinking thing in her gut made her swallow hard. Vomit rose in her throat, heart breaking. The mirrors ensnared her.

She’d spent eternity erasing them from her life. Hiding from them. Using glamor and shadow to avoid them. They knew.

They had the other succubus. She must’ve told them mirrors could weaken them. If they allowed it.

And Liora did. She couldn’t take her eyes off them. Her feet rooted themselves to the glass floor. Hollow cheeks, sunken eyes flashed in and out—mortal.

She hadn’t seen this coming. Had avoided facing herself for centuries. Now it was too late.

Her glamor dropped with an audible crash. Copper hair turned to void tendrils as beauty became the beast.

Scales popped out of her glamor. Freckles sprinkled her skin before the scales covered it.

Her horns curled free from her temples, jagged as the pain piercing her chest. Her teeth lengthened and formed into points, dripping venom.

Her reflection wavered, its tail and leathery wings exploding out of her. Massive, monstrous. When she risked reaching behind her to feel them, they weren’t there.

The horror was genuine, though. It built too high. She remembered what Ash had shown her.

How he called her ‘magnificent.’ The image wouldn’t stick as the truth of her monster confronted her.

Her true form was like a humanoid dragon, but far ghastlier. She hadn’t seen it in centuries. She’d spent her life trying to outrun it.

Disguise it. She was... ugly, broken, too demonic. Worthless. Ash’s reverence didn’t exist here now that the bond lay lifeless.

The fight left her as she whimpered. Her throat closed. She couldn’t breathe or move or shout or do anything.

Every insult she’d received played on a loop in her head. She wasn’t a woman. She’d never be chosen in a way that mattered. That would last.

Her shadows sagged. Pooling at her feet. Useless and limp. She sobbed.

A hand flew to her throat. Her pulse thrummed under her fingers. Too fast. Saltwater slipped free of her eyelashes. There was no way of escaping it.

It was over.

Not even the thought of losing Ash could make her break the illusion. No memory of his gelid touch, his promise never to leave helped her now.

She slapped her hands over her supernova eyes and crumpled. She curled over her knees and hid her face in them. Let the rats have him.

The monster in the mirror was proof enough. Rotten to the core—disgusting. She wasn’t a saviour. Ruin was all she’d ever be.

She wasn’t a queen or a lover. She was death wrapped in shadows and spite.

He was better off without her.