Samson was pulling his blade out of one’s chest a crazy smile spread across his face as he lifted his hand calling another to him.
But for every demon cut down, three more poured from the treeline, shadows twisting into new forms, teeth gnashing, limbs clawing across the ground in unnatural jerks. The grass was slick with black blood, the soil churned into mud under the weight of bodies, demon and vampire alike.
It should’ve looked like chaos but to me it was clarity. They were between me and Sorcha which meant they were already dead.
I ripped one in half, my fingers sinking into its ribcage and tearing it apart as its shriek split the night. Another transformed from human to demon form before me, before it lunged for my throat, and I caught it midair, slamming it down hard enough the marble path cracked under its body before I stomped through its chest.
More came, a knot of five moving as one, their limbs contorted, their eyes glowing like coal. I met them head-on, steel and claw, fangs bared. One swipe of my blade severed a head, anotherswing carved through two torsos, but claws still raked my arm, searing through muscle. Pain flared, but I welcomed it, let it fuel me, let it remind me of the price these fuckers owed.
They thought they could breach my gates. They thought they could smell her, touch her air, breathe where she breathed. I would make the ground drink them dry for even trying. I didn’t feel the hilt in my hand anymore. Didn’t feel the sting of the claw marks burning across my arm.
The world narrowed into nothing but motion, claws, fangs, black blood spraying hot against my face. My own teeth tore into the throat of one before I even realized I’d dropped the blade. I ripped, shredded, spat its essence to the dirt as another leapt, and I caught it with bare hands, crushing its skull between my palms until bone cracked like brittle glass.
The screams blurred together. They were my roars of absolute rage and their screams. I didn’t know anymore. The only thing I knew was Sorcha’s face behind my eyes, Sorcha’s scent just beyond the storm of rot and sulphur.
I tore one’s arm off and used it as a weapon to bludgeon another into the ground. My fangs punched through flesh, my nails dug trenches through demonic hide. I wasn’t Lucien anymore. I wasn’t strategist, brother or man.
I was violence. I was hunger. I was the storm made flesh. I had turned into the predator that I was.
“Lucien!”
The voice cut through the haze like steel on stone. Deep. Commanding. Draugr.
A hand slammed into my chest, not hard enough to knock me back because at the moment no one could, but it was heavyenough to stop me mid-lunge. His eyes burned, fire meeting fire, and grounding me. Behind him, the fight still raged, my men driving the last of the demons toward the treeline.
“Enough,” Draugr snarled, his face inches from mine. “She needs you whole, not lost to your inner beast.”
I blinked, breath ragged, blood dripping from my fangs. My hands were slick, claws curled into fists that ached to keep tearing. But Draugr’s words struck deeper than claws ever could.
She needs you whole. I staggered back a step, chest heaving, and for the first time since the first scream split the night, I felt the weight of what I’d done. The ground was carpeted with shredded Demon bodies, the scent of ichor choking the air. My men were staring, not in fear, not in disgust, but with the wary respect of soldiers who had just watched their commander nearly vanish into the abyss.
Draugr’s hand stayed on my chest. It was solid, steady. “She’s waiting,” he said. No softness, or pity. Just the truth.
Sorcha. Her name broke through the haze like sunlight through smoke. I ripped myself free of the trance, snapping my blade from where it was laying on the ground back into my grip, and turned toward the mansion. Toward her.
I could feel her fear under my skin. The way her panic clawed at me, choking me. She was cornered. And if they got to her…
I snapped.
“Lucien!” Draugr’s voice, rough and sharp, his expression grim. “She’s in the panic room. They didn’t touch her!”
The words barely registered. All I heard was panic room.
Safe. But not safe enough I realized as I approached the front door to see that it was shattered, splintered open. I tore through it, past the bodies of my own men and the corpses of demons that had fallen before them. My boots pounded the marble, my vision nothing but red.
The panic room was hidden, but not from me. Not from the bond. I felt her there, shaking, terrified, her hands pressed against steel.
I slaughtered two demons that had managed to survive and were in the hall with my bare hands, one the spine was ripped out, and the other the skull crushed against the wall until it was nothing but pulp.
Then silence. Only my breath, ragged as I rushed upstairs until I was standing outside the panic room. I pressed my blood-slicked hand against the cold steel, my forehead leaning hard against it. “Sorcha,” I growled, low, guttural, broken. “It’s me. I’m here.”
I punched in the code and heard the lock disengage with a metallic hiss. And then she was there, staring at me, her eyes wide, her lips trembling, her hand flying to her mouth as she saw what I was, what I had become.
A monster painted in blood, but I was her monster.
I reached for her, my hands still dripping black, my chest heaving like I’d just clawed my way out of hell. “You’re safe,” I rasped. My body shook with it, with the truth of it, with the need to see her breathing in front of me.
“You’re mine, Sorcha. No one, no one…will ever fucking touch you.”
