Bitten Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 3)

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” she snaps, glaring at Slade as he snarls and climbs back up to his feet.

“No, but apparently you have.” He wipes his mouth that somehow got a little bloody, and he picks at the gashes she left on his side.

“She’s one of them now. It’s like a declaration of war if you kill her. What the hell are you doing?”

He narrows his eyes while pulling his shirt over his head, revealing all the scars and tattoos that mar his body, and he tosses it aside.

“She’s not one of them. They’re just fucking stupid enough to think she is. Who do you fucking think you are?”

“I’m the one keeping you on track. This isn’t our mission. We’re after revenge. Not chasing suicidal missions with no reward. This is about her, right? The fucking princess you can’t stay away from?”

He growls and his silver eyes shift into an array of different colors before finally turning silver once again.

“This is revenge, Kya. Don’t forget your fucking place. If you want your blood, you gotta let me have mine.”

He takes a step toward me, but she steps in front of me, blocking his path. I can’t see his face now, but I can still hear that thunderous growl.

“Don’t fuck with me. You know damn well you can’t take me.”

“No, but I can beat some sense into you,” she snarls. “Don’t underestimate me, Slade.”

He curses, and I see red blaze from her hands again, but it’s too hard to see beyond her. Suddenly, she drops to the ground beside me, and he rolls his eyes before waving his hand over her. She disappears from sight, and he turns his eyes back on me.

I stagger back to my feet, swaying on unsteady legs as my mind searches for answers to what he just did.

“You just made my most loyal follower turn on me. You’re fucking toxic.”

“You killed her?” I croak, launching myself at him.

My knife slashes through his arm, but he slings me off him, and I roll on the ground, climbing back up to my feet a little slower. Blood oozes from his arm from my cut, and faint black lines of poison slowly fade away, but he doesn’t even seem to notice it.

If I could get the knife to stick in him, it would be like a poisonous, paralyzing stab. I could kill the bastard. I’m possibly the only one who can.

“She’s alive. But she won’t be if she holds a grudge. Because you’re not making it out of here today.”

When his foot kicks my stomach, I land against the wall, and he crashes against me with his knife pressed to my throat. I try to stab him in the side, but he catches my hand with his free one, and a garbled cry escapes me when he breaks my wrist and forces me to drop the knife. It clanks to the floor like a promise of shattered hope, and I bite back another cry when he squeezes my wrist.

“Who do you think the hexer was that placed the curse?” he asks in a rasp, almost breathless whisper.

There’s a pain in his voice that I don’t care about or understand. I’m barely staying vertical and practically choking on my own blood, and it’s clear Zee isn’t going to crash through the wall and save me this time.

Everything hurts, but my adrenaline is pumping so fast and so hard that it’s almost numbing me as the will to survive overpowers everything else.

I struggle, pushing against him with both hands, including the one attached to the broken wrist, and ignore the shooting, hot pain that surges up my arm and into my neck.

“I told her not to do it,” he goes on, getting right in my face and giving me a much better view of one scar that travels from his eyebrow down his cheek and touches the corner of his mouth. “I told her to cast something that would destroy all of you. But she wouldn’t. She was too compassionate. Weak. She should have been ruthless, and they never would have been able to kill her. The worst she did was hope you’d hate every second of being with one of us. Turns out you get off on it, which means it was all for nothing.”

I try to swallow, but the blade nicks my neck, reminding me it’s there.

“The Aquarius started this. He went in, and he never came out. They stole him. They crucified him. They tortured him. Everything they learned and documented became the tools the other ones used against us… To find us… To hunt us… To capture us and torture us. To use us for their own sick, sadistic pleasure. And all she did was give you a curse that tied you to us forever. Be glad hexes are built from passion and righteousness. Otherwise, you’d be fucked, because I’d leave the nastiest fucking hex there was to make this long and painful.”

He? She? Who are these people he’s talking about? He acts like I should know.

“Who?” I ask, but it sounds muffled and more blood spits from my mouth as I slowly die against the wall.

He eyes me with nothing but cold emptiness behind those silvery orbs, and he leans in. “This will hurt. This will go slowly. You’ll bleed out for a long time, because your blood takes longer to drain. Just like mine. Just like theirs. You’ll still have more mercy than they were shown.”

A cry escapes me when the blade slices across my throat, and he backs away. It burns and aches, and it feels like there’s something fiery pressed against me. I gasp and gargle, unable to speak, as I clutch my throat and try to keep the blood from pouring out.