Burning Blood

But for the first time, I didn’t want her help.

If I didn’t kill him, he’d hurt her. Torture her. Breed her.

Whisper crouched low, fur bristling and muscles coiled.

“Lucien—” Marcus stepped forward warily. “This is your last warning. Agree to behave and I’ll treat you well. Disobey and I’ll—”

“You’ll never lay another fucking finger on me again.”

The sky dripped with blinding gold. An instantaneous blast of apocalyptic destruction blasted toward the bastards who—

“Stop him!” Marcus screeched. “Do it! Do it now!”

The men braced against the shockwave of power as it tore the tops off the trees. Their hands came up. Black weapons raised.

I laughed as fire raced toward them, ready to turn them into pillars of ash—

PAIN.

EXCRUCIATING PAIN.

My mouth opened in a silent scream.

Rook sagged against me, her own scream shrill in the night.

Whisper howled and rubbed his head on his legs as if his skull was about to splinter.

My power snuffed out.

My strength gone.

For ten unbearable seconds, the shrieking, piercing pain made me want to die.

But then it stopped, giving us a chance to breathe.

“Did you honestly think I didn’t come prepared?” Marcus’s voice cut through the residual agony. “What you’re feeling is harmonic disruption. Frequency-based weapons are the only thing that work against Requiems. Which is why every person you tried to release tonight died the moment they went past the fence. They were programmed to a different frequency than you, of course. Couldn’t run the risk of killing you now, could I?” He came a little closer. “Would you like another taste?” His hand went up and the board members surrounding us raised their weapons. “Here...don’t say I never gave you anything.”

Another bolt of rip-tearing agony.

Whisper flopped onto his side, his claws digging trenches as he seized.

Rook buckled.

I took her weight, my entire body threatening to break apart.

“You see, Lucien.” Marcus strolled around us, kicking a pile of dirt into Whisper’s face, making the panther cough and sneeze. “You might no longer be human. You might be well on your way to becoming a god but...you can still be killed. You’re not immortal yet. And no matter what you do—no matter how many times we’ve tried—there comes a point where the fire turns against the host.” He stopped in front of me and kept torturing us.

Pain tore through every inch.

Rook trembled and my legs threatened to give out but I didn’t beg him to stop.

My eyes locked on his, promising death as he shrugged. “I think that’s what’s happening to you right now, actually. You’re dying. And I might be the only one who knows how to stop it.”

Rook glowered at him, hope cutting through her.

Marcus lowered his arm and the pain ceased.

Whisper howled and took off into the forest, vanishing in a streak of midnight.

Rook panted hard, her thoughts wriggling into mine. If he knows how to stop it then...he might be our only chance.

Betrayal cut through me before I smothered it with understanding.

She loved me. She wanted to keep me. But we both knew I was on borrowed time.

I hugged her and pressed a kiss to her hair.

Her wonderful scent filled my nose with frosty cherry and ice-cream. A part of me wondered if the heightened senses—the way I could smell her, taste her, hear her, were yet another gift of this awakening.

I smelled her very spirit instead of her body. Which meant...hopefully, I would be able to find her in another life. I’d track her across whatever realms or afterlife existed and make her mine again.

Lucien... Her horror echoed through me. But I couldn’t look at her anymore.

Marcus called me a god.

He made me sound invincible, yet I was still at his mercy.

I was still that pathetic child who had no one.

But I would never, fucking ever, let him put his hands on her which meant...he has to die. Immediately.

“Ah, ah, ah.” He waggled his finger as fire coiled around my neck. “Do you really want me to punish you again? Have you not learned your lesson?” He pouted as he pointed at Rook. “Do you really want her to suffer because of you?”

I bared my teeth, smoke coalescing into ember wings. “She’ll suffer if I don’t kill you.”

He laughed like he’d done for so many years.

A sarcastic arrogant chuckle and...

I snapped.

My skin split with snarling gold.

The air combusted in expanding rings and the trees protecting Marcus and his men ignited into hot torches.

I flung open my heart.

I gave the fire everything.

Kill them.

Kill every last one of them.

Marcus raised his arm again.

The harmonic wave slammed into me. Agony detonated. My spine arched as the last dregs of blood sprayed from my mouth but...the pain wasn’t enough to stop me.

I was too far gone.

No longer human.

Flaming fingers of fire wrapped around the men’s throats. Every last one of them—including the ones who’d held me down on the table for surgery and forced needles into my veins.

One by one, their howls lit up the night.

The fire pushed them toward that inescapable edge where flesh and bone turned into a rain of blood and brain.

A single decision and they imploded.

Marcus stumbled back a step. “I-Impossible.”

Rook yelled something.

My eyes locked on the trees where Whisper had vanished and...the fire just kept burning.

The crater I’d caused widened as molten fissures cracked through the mountain.

Pure anarchy tore free as Marcus went to run.

It caught him in an updraft.

Held him aloft as his skin charred to a crisp, his bones shattered one by one, and his heart—that twisted, rotten heart—flew from his chest and sizzled into nothing.

The fire took all my fantasies of torturing him and made it a reality.

His dismembered corpse smashed against the ground.

Rook gagged and another wash her ice tried to stop me.

This time, I reached for her.

I wanted her to cool me.

I’d done what I needed.

These men were dead—

I jerked as the power that’d lifted Marcus into the air lifted me. The smoke behind me erupted into thicker, larger wings, wrapping me in thermals and making me weightless.

Rook cried out as I grabbed her.

The higher we rose, the lighter my body became. My skin thi

“Lucien!” Rook clung to me. “Stop. You have to stop!”

I tried.

Fuck, I tried.

But I was no longer in control.

Below us, the world cracked open. The forest ignited in a roaring wave.

We kept rising, lifted by pure power.

The entire mountain range began to glow.

Heat rolled outward in catastrophic waves, feeding on darkness and death. In the far distance, a dormant peak cracked open with a thunderous roar.

A volcano erupted.

Fire met fire.

And I was no longer whoever I’d been.

I was...free.

The sky glowed a violent red. Clouds burned. Fire rained. Lightning bolts cracked the heavens. And birds took flight with smoking feathers.

And in the midst of such chaos...I felt what I did when I set Uncle Wen’s bonsai alight.

I felt the world breathing. Trees growing. Wind blowing. Every little thing and every tiny heartbeat fell into the palm of my hand.

With a single squeeze, I could slaughter everything.

With a single thought, oceans would boil and continents would fracture.

I gagged on such power.

I choked on such anarchy.

I tried to pull back.

To take control—

The fire swallowed me.

The earth quaked, spewing magma into the sky. Mountains that were never volcanoes turned into lava fu

On and on, it roared.

Scraping me dry, killing me.

The peak where we’d stood suddenly folded in on itself. Brimstone board members were swallowed whole. The bodies of those I’d failed to free sank back into the cave’s belly as it belched with sulphur.

The dead panther slipped down a ravine and vanished into a pool of red-hot liquid.

My eyes burned as I looked toward the horizon where Whisper had fled.

My heart fucking ached.

I hoped he was okay.

That my death wouldn’t take him with me.

I screamed again as the power kept building, building, stealing my final heartbeats, pushing me closer and closer toward the end.

Rook grabbed my face as we hovered in the sky, completely at the mercy of feral power.

“Lucien!” Her snowy hands blistered my cheeks. “You’re killing yourself! Stop it!”

Hot wind tore at her hair, whipping the ice-white dress she wore into ribbons.

My body began to break.

My skin tore open, not just fissuring but tearing like rice paper. Glimmers of bone. Drippings of blood. But I didn’t feel pain. I no longer had the capacity.

I just felt lost and alone and sad. Bone-breakingly sad that I couldn’t say goodbye to Whisper and soon, I would have to say goodbye to her.

“Lucien, please.” She kissed my cheek. “I love you. Please don’t do this. We’ll figure out a way, alright? There has to be a way to stop this.”

My tattered, bleeding arm wrapped tight around her.

I no longer had the ability of speech. I forced the words into her mind.

I can’t stop. I want to stop. But I can’t.

Her eyes widened in horror.

She pressed her forehead to mine; a blast of snow and sleet flooded me.

It flooded me and flowed out of me because my body was no longer solid.

It was fading...vanishing...dissolving piece by piece.

She sobbed as we hovered above the Gaoligong mountains and the entire valley caught fire. Leylines and geothermal pockets exploded with steam. Everything shattered. Everything smouldered. Rivers of molten rock poured down the slopes, creating a landslide through the trees. The air turned alive with fireflies as burning leaves danced and birds turned into flaming arrows.

I felt their little hearts give out.

I felt their pain—

I gagged as each death only added to my strength. I fed off their energy just like I’d fed off the sun.

I couldn’t help it.

It felt unbelievably good.

My head tipped back as I thrummed with new energy—energy given to me with every life that died in the fire. They became mine to wield—to crush or keep, use or discard.

Agony crushed me. Guilt crippled me.

So much death. So much agony—