Текст книги "Darkest distiny"

Автор книги: Pepper winters

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Chapter Twelve

I STUCK TO THE SHADOWS AS night fell, and my stubborn headache finally subsided.

After three days of rest, an unwanted visit by the ruler of this place, and a cupboard of wine, I felt strong enough, irritable enough, to go for a walk.

Perhaps, while everyone else was sleeping, I would find a way out of this nightmare.

I already knew the perimeter wall didn’t hold much hope, but perhaps there was a back entry? Some sort of service area with lax security where I could hide in the back of a truck or disguise myself to sneak out.

Once again, the grounds of Cinderkeep completely bewitched me.

By day, they were visually stunning with charming flowers and pretty courtyards, but by night, they transformed into the infernal flames of hell. Torches lined the paths like sentinels, their flames licking at the dark. Bonfires smouldered in copper braziers, and lanterns bobbed in the trees as if the stars had descended to spy.

With my skin spangled by orange fire, I stuck to one of the white gravel paths, pulling the thick long coat I’d found in the wardrobe around me. I’d traded my worn flip-flops for lavender-coloured sneakers and did my best to be stealthy.

Overhead, a few drones flitted past like mechanical birds, hovering over areas of the garden before continuing with their patrol. My heart quickened as a girl appeared, her steps equally light and sneaky. Her blonde hair gleamed metallic, her movements elegant as well as menacing.

I paused, hugging myself as she cut across the path.

Where was she going?

What was she looking at?

I followed her stare and—

Him.

I gasped as my eyes landed on Lucien where he sat at one of the many tables and stools throughout his estate. A bottle of liquor rested in his hands, his elbows wedged onto the marble tabletop, and his head hanging low.

The panther wasn’t with him, and the aura of depression and rejection seemed to ripple, seeping out of him like a disease.

The girl sneered as she kept inching closer, careful not to make a sound. Dressed all in black, she became one with the night, gilded by flaming torches.

I inched forward, drawn against my will to get a better view as she pulled something sharp and shiny from her jacket pocket. Firelight glittered off the metal.

My heart stopped as she slipped behind the willow tree drizzling its fronds around the table where Lucien sat.

He didn’t look up or show any signs of hearing her as she ducked around the tree and tiptoed closer.

The urge to cry out and warn him came strong.

The reminder that we were all trapped in here because of him kept me silent.

I fought two polarising feelings.

Half of me wanted to stop him being murdered, the other wanted to run far away so I wouldn’t have to watch.

Her arm rose, her fingers wrapped tight around the dagger.

He raised the bottle and drank, his head tipped back, his throat perfectly exposed for a slice from behind.

She noticed the opportunity.

And took it.

With a flash of black and steel, she launched from the darkness and landed on his back. With a screech, she brought the knife around to his front and—

–in a whirl of power and speed, Lucien feinted to the left, tossed her off him, and avoided her slashing blade.

She pivoted on the spot, horror widening her eyes that she’d missed.

I rushed forward to do...what?

Too late.

With a snarl, Lucien spun to stand behind her.

His body so fluid, so lethal—exactly like the panther he’d tamed. His hand snaked around her, and with a brutal grace, jerked her back against his front. With one arm wrapped tight around her waist, he snatched the dagger from her hand. It flashed in the firelight just as her shrill scream split the night.

A wet, red-black waterfall poured from her throat as he slit her neck.

She moaned, choked, then collapsed at his feet.

My hand flew to my mouth.

A tiny gasp escaped me.

His head snapped up.

His eyes locked on mine, smouldering black and burning with hate. Out of the shadows, the panther stalked, growling low with its back arched.

Run.

I spun, pebbles scattering and my coat whirling around my legs.

My sneakers dug for purchase. I managed to flee for a few horrendous heartbeats, but then he was on me, shoving me into a young sapling and slamming me against its trunk.

Spinning me to face him, he locked one hand around my throat. Throttling me against the tree, he pinned me in place, his breath fast, and nose almost touching mine.

“Were you in on it too?” he growled, his voice ragged and rough. “If she failed, are you the back-up plan?” He smirked, his eyes almost alight with insanity. “Go ahead then. I’m waiting.”

His fingers tightened, making my pulse flutter. The torchlight etched his face with gold and orange, glistening on the scarlet streak over his cheekbone.

Blood.

Her blood.

An instant migraine pounded in my skull. My vision turned grey. My knees threatened to buckle and my body—well trained in cases such as this—reached for the nearest thing to stay upright.

My hands landed on his hips, my fingers digging into the hardened muscles and bone.

He froze, his eyes locking onto mine. “What are you doing?”

I licked my lips to answer but his hand on my throat flexed. I tried to let him go—to stop touching the very man who wore the blood of the girl who’d tried to kill him—but I really didn’t want to collapse at his feet.

“Well?” His gaze wasn’t steady as he studied my face. Deep in his almost-black pupils, madness seemed to flicker. But beyond that was something else. Pain.

Leaning over me, his lips pulled back in a sneer and any signs of agony vanished. “Answer me. What the fuck are you doing touching me?”

Did he think I could talk with him squeezing my voice box?

Keeping one stabilising hand on his hip, I raised the other and hesitatingly tapped his hand on my throat.

He narrowed his eyes.

I waited for him to snap my neck and get it over with.

Instead, he pushed away, letting me go and breaking my hold on him.

Crossing his arms, he looked me up and down with disdain. “Speak if you want to survive.”

My mouth was dry but, amazingly, I didn’t pass out. My heart skipped and tripped and I’d never felt so sick, but I managed to rush, “I didn’t mean anything by touching you. I felt woozy, that’s all. My options were to grab you or collapse.”

His jaw clenched as if he didn’t buy a word. “Are you here to kill me like she was?” He arched his chin at the body lying face down by the table. Ribbons of red covered the marble tabletop from where her blood had sprayed.

I struggled to stay conscious. “No.”

“No?”

Meeting his fury, I sucked in a breath. “I was taking a walk, that’s all. I have absolutely no intention of harming you—”

“Liar.”

My hackles rose, combating the brokenness of my nervous system. My voice came out stronger as I said, “I’m a lot of things, but I’m not adept at lying when my life is being threatened.”

“If you’ve been thrown in here, you’ve been trained to be the best liar possible.”

“Trained?”

He rolled his eyes. “Come on. Do you really expect me to believe you’re this clueless?”  His mood turned black as Hades. “I’ll ask you again. Why. Are. You. Here?”

“I-I don’t know. I—”

“Do you wish to kill me?” he asked quietly, his gaze cutting over my face like a blade.

“I’ve told you. No!” I shouted, probably a bit louder than I should. “I don’t even know you. Why would I want to kill you?”

His head tilted, a shadow of disbelief dragging across his features. “Do you want to seduce me and have my child?”

A morbid giggle escaped. “Can you at least buy me dinner first?”

Confusion slid over his features, mingling with his fury. “If you’re not here to do either of those things then...why. Are. You. Here?”

I swallowed hard. “It was a mistake.”

“A mistake,” he echoed as if playing along with me. “How so?”

“Wrong place, wrong time, wrong everything. I was promised hot stones and cucumber facemasks, not...whatever this is.”

Black wrath etched his features; he stepped closer as if to hurt me. “Twenty fucking years I’ve had to put up with this nonsense but you...you might be the worst one yet.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sometimes I’m lenient and let some of you go, but this time?” He smiled thinly. “This time I’m going to exterminate each and every one of you because—”

“Wait!” I threw up my hands even though he hadn’t moved. “I told you! I’m not like the others. I-I didn’t come here willingly. I’m not here to kill you or bed you. I’m—”

“Whisper,” he purred, cutting me off. “Kill this liar for me.”

“Whisper?”

The black panther coalesced from the night, its hackles raised and whiskers bristling.

That’s Whisper?

Staggering away from the tree, I backed up. My system threatened to shut down, but I fought back. I fought my broken mind like hell because I didn’t want to be torn to pieces by a jungle cat. “I’m not meant to be here!” My eyes flew between Lucien’s and Whisper’s.

What sort of name was Whisper?

“I’ll admit I was greedy at the thought of a fully funded spa weekend. I let consumerism get the better of me. I should’ve known it was too good to be true, but...I’m honestly not lying.” I continued to back up, the panther stalking my every move. “Me and a few other women are here by mistake. The rest of them, you’re right. There’s a bunch who want you dead, along with those who will happily do whatever you want if it means they end up impregnated but—”

“Enough,” he whispered, rubbing his temples as if in pain. “I haven’t heard so much chattering in decades.”

“Sorry, but...you’re not listening. And I should really be given the opportunity to prove my innocence before you kill me—”

“Quiet,” he hissed, stepping toward me in familiar black clothes. His coat was buttoned only at the waist, flaring out like an emperor’s cloak. “You’re so noisy.”

The urge to apologise came again but I pressed my lips together and stayed silent.

Our conversation seemed to hover, wrapping around us in the flame-flickering dark.

Lowering his hands, he winced a little as our eyes met. Beneath his mask of rage and hate, cracks of agony fractured like lightning bolts. Sucking in a breath, his fingers strayed to his chest, lingering over his heart.

“Are you...okay?” The question fell from me, completely against my control.

He went fatally still. “What?”

Uh-oh.

Now what had I done? Was I not allowed to enquire about his health, or had I somehow hinted he was weak?

“I can see you’re in pain,” I forced myself to say. “I was just—”

“Looking for ways to kill me?”

“God, will you stop? How many times do I need to profess my innocence?” My own anger rose to meet his. “I told you. I’m not here to kill you—”

“Ah, yes.” He smiled. “Just like you’re not here to fuck me.”

That smile.

It took my breath away.

That one action transformed his handsome face from beautiful to devastating. A smile full of scorn and sarcasm but somehow aching with suffering.

It moved me.

Affected me.

He stiffened.

Sucking in a breath, his fingers strayed from his heart to his cheek, rubbing self-consciously. “What are you doing? What are you looking at?”

If anyone ever asked for my story of what happened in Cinderkeep, I would tell them that that was the moment that my entire life changed. A moment as quick as all the rest, yet powerful enough to change my heart and fate and future.

Forever.

“Nothing.” I shook my head. “I mean...you do have blood on your cheek but that wasn’t what I was looking at.”

“What are you looking at then?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

No way would I tell him how drawn to him I was. How intrigued and afraid and...attracted.

He dropped his hand, balling it into a fist by his thigh. Padding barefoot toward me, he murmured, “It’s almost like you want me to kill you.”

Up close, he was too many things. Dangerous, obviously. Beautiful enough to break a thousand hearts. But his pain wasn’t a trick of the firelight.

It ghosted his eyes, bracketed his mouth. It lived in every motion and word.

His gaze drifted to my lips. Heat flooded my blood, treacherous and inconvenient.

Whisper stalked between us, silent and watching. Its shoulder brushed my thigh, before going to Lucien and headbutting him. Never looking away from me, Lucien ran his fingers down the beast’s spine as it trailed past.

The way he stroked it—such casual familiarity that spoke of so many prior moments like this one.

My tummy clenched.

“Careful,” he murmured. “You’re looking at me again.”

Flames from the torches transformed our shadows into flickering silhouettes. My headache pressed behind my eyes and despite holding my own this long, I was scarily close to burning out.

Swallowing hard, I backed up a step. “Are you?” I whispered.

“Am I what?”

“Going to kill me?”

He smirked. “Do you want me to?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Who in their right mind would say yes?”

His eyes darkened before he looked away almost as if he’d say yes. He’d say yes to ending whatever it was that he endured.

With a savage chuckle, he drew his shoulders back, hid all signs of such things, and looked down his nose at me. “Killing you is tempting but...not tonight.”

Relief slammed into me, ugly and bright. “You won’t?”

He merely shook his head, elegant and graceful.

“Why?” I breathed.

His eyes held mine with a blatant threat. “Because you’re infuriating.”

A laugh escaped, surprised and slightly deranged. “Is that meant to be a compliment?”

He didn’t reply.

“So you’re saying the moment I’m un-infuriating, you’ll kill me?”

“Perhaps.”

“What can I do to stop you from killing me?”

“I guess time will tell, won’t it?” He smirked. “Run along, little liar. Before I change my mind.”

Curiosity itched to stay—to learn more about him, despite his murderous tendencies—but instinct took control, and I fled.

I didn’t stop running until I crashed into bed and pulled the blankets over my head as if I could hide from the devil himself.

Chapter Thirteen

FOR SEVEN YEARS, SLEEP HAD BEEN my best friend and favourite medicine.

Sleep could erase a shitty day, heal a hurting head, and reset my messed up nervous system in ways nothing else could.

If I had the choice, I would sleep longer than I was actually awake, preferring to exist in dreams where I wasn’t so shattered and my parents were still alive.

Tonight, I dreamed of the very first place where I’d fled after watching my parents inject themselves with a chemical that didn’t grant immortality like they’d hoped but turned them into puddles of molten bone instead.

I hadn’t even gone home to shower off the strangely coloured blood that’d splashed all over me.

I’d ignored Frank and all the staff.

I’d grabbed my passport from the safe, my bag from the office, walked out of the company, and vanished. I’d spent seven months in the jungles of Vietnam—not to find myself or heal my grief—but because it was the first plane out of the airport.

I’d somehow ended up in a tiny village where no one knew me, no reporters wanted to interview me, and the pressure of ruling a company that Forbes claimed would single-handedly be the reason why death would become a pastime we could all avoid was non-existent.

I gladly and gratefully slipped into Asian provincial life.

It didn’t matter I couldn’t speak the language or that my credit cards were useless without an ATM. A local family took pity on me and taught me how to work in their fields.

I found salvation in long, hard hours—even though my condition tormented me—and collapsed into a deep, healing sleep the moment the day was done.

I’d often wake in the middle of the night to find the pack of local village dogs—all ownerless but fed by the community—curled around me on the floor where I slept.

So when something cool and wet nudged my hand, my dreams shot me straight back to that time when I was nobody. It filled me with profound peace, and I reached for those memories, longing to return to such simplicity.

My arms snaked around the dog that’d come to snuffle me awake, just like I’d grown used to. The dog seemed bigger than the scruffy mutts I’d cuddled before, but it was still warm and soft and wonderful.

Nuzzling closer, I sighed and sank deeper into dreams.

* * * * *

I woke to the raspiest tongue licking my cheek.

I giggled and tucked my chin, pushing the mutt out of the way. “Khoai, quit it.” My favourite of the dogs had been called Potato in Vietnamese, mainly because he was as round as one.

The cold kiss of a canine nose, followed by the huff of breath. My heart swelled enough to crack. After my parents’ death, I hadn’t been touched by another person. I didn’t allow anyone to get close enough because I wouldn’t be able to handle it. Yet I also ached for touch. I yearned for a hug that would protect me from everything. I wanted to be taken care of, even while pretending I needed no one.

The only times I let down my walls were around animals—hurling myself into their unconditional embraces and soaking up everything I was missing.

That raspy, dry lick came again, right on my temple.

“Eww, Khoai, what happened to your tongue?” Rolling onto my back, I opened my eyes and—

“Ahhhhhhh!”

Scrambling upright and shooting off the bed, I tripped in the blankets tangled around my legs and fell straight back down again.

The panther arched an eyebrow where it lay—where I’d been lying. It huffed as if judging me and then stood and stretched. Its claws punctured my pillow, its spine flattening and arching as gracefully as a ballerina.

My heart stopped as it yawned, revealing a mouthful of sharp fangs and extremely pointy teeth.

I tried to get up off the floor. To stop my racing adrenaline. But then the panther leapt off my bed and prowled toward me. Towering over me, it burned me alive with its golden, glowing stare before humming quietly and headbutting me right in the forehead.

“Oww...” I winced, rocking backward and rubbing yet another bruise. “You really don’t know your own strength, do you?”

It sat down, its leggy limbs perfect for loping through a jungle, its paws absolutely gigantic.

I didn’t move.

I could barely breathe—facing off with a predator as it cocked its head.

It looked confused.

“Yeah, you and me both, humongous kitty.”

Its jaws parted, almost in a grin.

“Was...was that you?” I asked quietly, eyeing up the bed and trying to untangle reality from fantasy. “I.... Was I hugging you in my sleep?”

It yawned again and flopped down next to me, flipping onto its back and showing me its sable belly.

The urge to smoosh my face into it came so strong I almost buckled, but I wasn’t suicidal and managed to stay stiff and alive in my blankets. “Where...” Glancing over my shoulder at the empty pavilion, I licked my lips. “Where’s your master?”

Writhing around on the floor as if trying to ease an itch, the panther didn’t reply.

Because it was a panther and couldn’t talk.

Leaving it to do whatever it was doing, I struggled to get free from my blankets and stood. My racing heart skipped a few beats and the faint headache that I doubted would go away until I escaped this place ached in my eyes, but...I hadn’t been eaten in my sleep so that had to account for something, right?

“Does Lucien know you’re here?” I ran my hands through my hair before collecting the blanket and tossing it back on the bed. “Shouldn’t you go?”

The panther shot to its feet and padded toward me.

I backed up. “Eh, what are you doing?”

It kept coming, pushing me toward the kitchen where I’d systematically worked my way through the fridge and cupboards.

“There’s not much food left, I’m afraid.” I dashed behind the counter. “Otherwise, I’d give you breakfast. Just to ensure you’re not tempted to eat me.”

It huffed and prowled to my side, its silky bulk nudging my hip as it went straight to the tall pantry.

“Honestly, there’s nothing in there.” Following the panther, I pulled open the door and—

“Huh. I guess they restocked.” Chills scattered down my back. When did they do that? When I went for a walk last night and got accosted by Lucien or while I was sleeping?

Shuddering, I pulled out a pack of cured honey meats. “Is this what you want?”

The cat planted its rump onto the floor and held up a paw.

“You even know how to sit and beg?”

It never took its eyes off the meat.

A laugh escaped me. “I have no idea what’s going on or how I ended up in this place but...you are rather adorable.”

It hissed, its whiskers bristling with impatience.

“Fine. Fine.” Tearing open the packet, I pulled out the honey-smoked meat and...did I just feed it to it? Those fangs looked far too dangerous. Could a panther even eat this sort of thing? Would Lucien kill me for giving unapproved things to his pet?

Before I could change my mind, the panther snatched it from my fingers and tossed it down with a single bite.

Licking its chops, it purred, headbutted my hip, then turned around and stalked out of the pavilion, vanishing into the woodlands bordering the last manicured strip of grass in front of my borrowed home.

My knees gave out.

I ended up eating the last piece of meat right there on the kitchen floor.

Every inch of me believed this was a dream.

Every sane and rational part of me couldn’t accept anything else.

But...it wasn’t a dream, and I couldn’t wake up, and I had no idea what to do about any of it.