Page 92 of Villains and Vengeance
The impatient demon in front of me lunges and I tip the contents of the bottle into my mouth, swallowing the last of the syrup that tastes a little like honeysuckle nectar just as he grabs me, punishing me by snapping my arm like a brittle piece of plastic.
I scream, but the sound is cut off abruptly as I lose the ability to make it. My legs give out a half-second later. He lets my floppy body hit the floor but stops my head from smacking into the wall.
I lay on the stone floor. I can feel it under me, hard and cold. I focus on it instead of the pain radiating from my arm that’s taking my breath away. I stare up at the ceiling, remember all the times I came down on my Siggy rope to steal this asshole’s stuff, all the times he never caught me. If it wasn’t for Maddox and the others, he never would have and that fills me with a weird sort of pride. There aren’t many humans who could have survived the way I have. If I die right now, I know I gave it everything … and I can count my regrets on one hand.
He can’t take that from me.
Fuck you, Dante.
He looks down on me for a few moments, and I see admiration on his face until his anger and frustration take over.
‘Silly little bird,’ he mutters, and his tone alone would make me cower if I could.
He’s pissed. He yells less and kills more when he’s in an actual fury. Maybe this really is the end for me.
And, while I’ve decided I’d be ok with that, I don’t want this to be it. I’ve never wanted to die. Everything I’ve done has been to ensure the exact opposite.
But he doesn’t pound me into the floor. All he does is call his guards and has them put me back on the bed, clearly too angry to risk touching me himself right now. My body lies immobile, but my eyes take in a new shifter a minute later as he leans over me.
He plucks at my eyelids and opens my mouth, taking a sniff.
‘Arania venom, my lord,’ he says.
Dante clambers onto the bed and roars in my face. My lack of reaction makes him glower. He pinches my broken arm between two of his thick fingers and shakes it.
Despite my familiarity with it, the pain is almost unbearable. Internally, I’m screaming.
But, on the outside, there’s nothing at all to signify the agony he’s inflicting on me, and I hope that’s enough for him to lose interest at least until I can give him the response he craves. I intend to have a plan by then.
‘She’ll be like this for at least twenty-four hours. If she took more than a drop, longer,’ the shifter, doctor guy says.
The demon king roars again. This time it’s at the shifter-doc who backs away, but the fool should have run as soon as he finished his sentence. I thought everyone knew enough about Dante to realize he hates bad news andalwayskills the messenger.
Dante demons up in an instant and a second later the shifter’s head and spinal column are hanging from the demon king’s fingers. For the second time in the past few hours, I’m covered in supe blood. I can feel droplets on me, sliding down my skin, making me itch. I yearn to wipe them away, but I can’t.
I lay there in the bed as Dante’s guards scatter, and he lays waste to his room like a child denied a treat. Except this child is one of the biggest demons I’ve ever seen. I yearn to run and hide, but I’m splayed out on the bed like a sacrifice, just waiting for him to remember I’m there … hopefully before he throws something across the room that crushes me.
He finally calms down enough to glare at me, and he lets loose a laugh that chills me.
His eyes narrow. ‘I underestimated you,’ he confesses. ‘The portal is opening very soon, isn’t it, and you just made sure that no matter what I do to you, you can’t tell me where.’
Realization dawns on his face.
‘Find that fuck Maddox and his clan. Bring them to me!’ he bellows and the guards remaining in the room rush away to do his bidding lest he rip them apart too.
He comes back to the bed, standing over me. ‘You’d sacrifice yourself for them?’
He guffaws.
‘They hate you,’ he laughs. ‘You’re here with me, in my hands. You’re going to die humiliated and in pain because of them. That’s pathetic even for a human.’
He sits down next to me. ‘Now, let’s start over. You seem to be covered in someone else’s bloodagain, my silly little pet. How am I going to tell what’s yours if I don’t clean you up?’
He rips the shirt I’m wearing down the middle, baring my body to his eyes and, while all I can do is lay there, he uses a wet sponge from an ewer by the bed to bathe away all the blood coating my flesh.
So, the torture has begun, I think as I stare at the holes in the ceiling.
After he’s cleaned me up, he moves on to his preferred next step. He administers a thoroughand painfulinspection of my body starting from the top of my head down to my toes. He jabs his fingers into nerves that cause excruciating pain. He plays with my broken limb, moving it back and forth and up and down. By the time he’s done, there’s a bone sticking out of my forearm that has me choking on my own vomit.
