Jegudiel (Deadly Virtues 2)

She was the darkness.

The darkness was her …

… and she was never giving it up.

Noa sat upright in bed. Her breathing was labored, and sweat clung to her body like a second layer of skin. Her soaked pink hair was stuck to the back of her neck and cheeks.

The dream … it was the dream. Noa’s blood rushed through her body, as if it was searching for the darkness she had just dreamed about. Like a child awaiting the return of a parent, frantic and excited at the prospect of being united once again after too much time forced apart.

And Noa wanted to submit. She wanted nothing more than to lower the iron gate that kept the two parts of her separated. She wanted to just fucking rest and let the twin parts of her soul re-merge, so she could be at peace. To stop the torture that plagued her daily.

Noa lifted her shaking hand and pushed the sweaty pink strands of hair from her face. She tipped her head back and stared at the white-painted ceiling. Diel. This was due to Diel.

From the minute he had wrapped his hand around her neck in the priest’s home, he had awoken a long-slumbering part of her. He hadn’t just awoken it; his internal monster had roared at the blackened part of her soul to rise and take its place at the forefront of her body once again.

She could feel it now, circling her body, looking for any loose brick in her fortress. Threatening. Stalking. Promising that it would it find its way through soon.

Noa knew she should be fighting it. Pushing it back like she had vowed to do. Noa could lie to everyone else, reassure her sisters, that she was okay, that she was in control.

But she couldn’t lie to herself. And just remembering blue eyes looking over her like they possessed X-ray vision, she knew there was one person who saw through her bullshit too.

Diel. Diel, with his monster who had placed Noa in its sights.

Noa threw back the comforter, stepped into the shower, and turned it to its coldest setting. She ducked under the icy spray and tried to take back hold of her senses. But her darkness was stronger, thrashing at her walls, heavy artillery pounding at her weakening defenses.

So she took herself to the place that always gave her a swift victory. To glazed eyes and a parted mouth. Skin and bones and graying skin.

Noa’s fists clenched on the tiles before her as the water sluiced down her back. Her darkness had caused that tragedy. Her thirst for blood and revenge had caused that irreparable sin that she could never forgive herself for.

Noa held her breath and fought back the threatening force within her, reminding herself over and over again why it had to be this way. It was a minute later when she gasped out a much-needed breath. But just as she let down her guard, a voice inside of her whispered, “He’s just like you.” Noa froze, body still. “You are just like him.”

Noa shook her head, heart pounding. She scrambled for the shower’s controls, turned it off and jumped out, escaping from those words, from that truth.

The alluring temptation of that truth.

She dried herself off and threw on some clothes. She went to make her way out of the door, but she stopped dead on seeing her reflection in the full-length mirror. And Noa just stared. She stared at her long pink hair, her black clothes, and the brown eyes that she rarely recognized these days.

Noa stepped closer, one step, two step, three … She reached out her hand and ran it gently over the glass. She was a mannequin in this skin. The hair, the lack of bitter vibrancy in her gaze were only a mask for what she and her sisters knew resided underneath.

Diel was the first person outside of her coven who had taken one look at Noa and known what lay in her soul. Shivers ran down her spine as she recalled him in the cell, goading her to come closer.

He was a magnet drawing her in. Her stomach turned. She didn’t know how long she could hold herself back from his allure.

The more she stared in the mirror, at the woman she no longer knew, the less she was sure that she wanted to.

The sound of screaming cut through her inner war. Noa rushed to Beth’s bedroom. When she walked through the door, the rest of her sisters were already there. Beth was thrashing around on the mattress, her skin red with exertion and her eyes wide with the fear of the disease she believed constantly poisoned her blood.

Jo pressed a wet cloth to Beth’s forehead. Candace pinned her arms down, and Naomi moved bed-side, her bloodletting kit in her hands. Naomi sat on the edge of the mattress and, as she had done so many times before, placed a tourniquet around Beth’s bicep and cut into the skin. Crimson blood trickled down Beth’s arm. Her body jerked; her eyes were glazed. But as the warm blood flowed from the wound, her breathing turned from choppy and labored to quiet and calm.