Iniquitous: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Marked Book 3) Read online

  “I trust you’re finding your new accommodations enjoyable.”

  Seriously? What a sadistic prick.

  His grin widened as I silently scowled at him. “How about the food and drink?”

  My stomach rumbled at the mere mention of food.

  “Hmm, I guess she isn’t in the mood to gab,” he said, feigning surprise as he glanced around at his men.

  I mumbled something inaudible under my breath, clenching and gritting my teeth as I grumbled the words out.

  “Did you say something, child? Speak up,” he demanded.

  “I said I’m going to kill you when I get out of here.” My voice was cold and hard and filled with the promise of death. I almost didn’t recognize it as my own. Almost.

  “When you get out of here?” He laughed. “That’s an admirable dream, but I assure you, Daughter of Hades, you will not be seeing the light of day again in this lifetime.”

  A chill traveled down my back, but I didn’t utter a word in response. There was no point going back and forth with him. He was just a middleman anyway. I had bigger fish to fry, namely the Dark Legion, and when I was done with that cookout, I would make sure to come back for Engel. In fact, I vowed to.

  I glanced around the room, noting the number of men he had, and any possible escape routes.

  “Do not bother,” warned Engel, catching my roaming eyes. “I have guards posted at every possible exit.”

  “Good for you.” I tried to cross my arms in defiance but couldn't shake my arms free from the two leeches beside me. Exhaling loudly, I focused back on Engel. “As much of a blast as this is, I’d really like to get this moving along.”

  “As would I.”

  “Good. So…” I exaggerated another glance around the room. “Where are they? When's the big reveal?”

  “Where is who?” He looked around at his men again, a smile wrinkling the corners of his beady eyes.

  “The Dark Legion.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The. Dark. Legion,” I repeated ridiculously slow as if to insult his intelligence. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? They put a contract on my head and you’re the lucky gopher who won the prize, right?”

  His lip twitched at my insult. “As a matter of fact, the Dark Legion and I have decided to part ways.”

  I blinked fast, trying to process his words and the ramifications of what he was saying. Wait. Isn’t that what Dominic had been warning me about that night in the woods? That Engel wasn't working with the Dark Legion anymore? I tried to recall the conversation but couldn’t piece enough of it together to make any sense.

  “As it turns out, we no longer have a shared interest in you.”

  “Meaning what?” I swallowed the cotton ball in my throat and tried to keep my shoulders squared. I was starting to panic a little, but I wasn’t about to let him know that.

  “Well,” he smiled, straightening his back in his chair as a breeze swept in through the windows, flapping the tattered curtains behind him. “Quite simply, it means they want you alive, and I wish you otherwise.”

  The blood drained from my face.

  “Regrettably,” he went on, “That ancient trinket around your neck is making things rather complicated for me, and as such, I’ve had to get a little…how do you say it?” His eyes lit up like two flares. “Creative.”

  “Creative?” I really didn’t like the sound of that. “What does that mean?”

  Ignoring my question, he nodded to the two men beside me. “Bring her to me.”

  I immediately dug my heels into the ground and tried to pull away from them. I didn’t want to be anywhere near that decrepit, bloodsucking monster. Unfortunately, I barely had enough strength to swat a flea away let alone to power off two very large, well-fed vampires. Still, I tried. I tried my ass off and wasn’t about to make this easy on them.

  Less than twenty seconds later, they had me kneeling before his chair. A clawed hand dug into the back of my neck, forcing me to bow down to Engel as though he were my master.

  “Get the hell off me, you bloodsucking carcass!” I tried to push up, but it only made Deep Throat dig his claws deeper into my skin. He was the next one on my hit list.

  “Silence!” boomed Engel as he bent forward and wrapped his cold fingers around my neck.

  I gasped as he tightened his hold on my throat and then forced me to look him in the eye. A strange, sickening feeling came over me. I'd never felt anything like it before but it was throwing alarm bells all through my body.

  “You will learn to revere me, Princess.”

  “Actually, I’d sooner die.” I looked him dead in the eye and then hawked my pasty spit at his face.

  There was an audible gasp from the peanut gallery. I imagined Dominic's mouth was hanging wide open, but I didn't dare break eye contact with Engel to check; not even when he tightened his grip around my neck and cut off all airflow to my lungs. I wasn't the same scared little girl he met that night in the church, and I was going to make damn sure that he knew it. Besides, what the hell else did I have to lose? I’d already lost everything that mattered to me, including my freedom.

  “Yes, all in due time,” he said as his pale, boney finger came up and swiped my spit from his face. His lips pulled back over his teeth as he brought his finger to his mouth and licked it.

  My stomach heaved at the sight of it.

  “By the time I am done with you, you will be begging me for your death,” he promised and then clicked out his fangs.

  In the next blurred moment, his face was fastened against my neck as his teeth tore into my flesh like a well-trained beast. The pain came immediately, as it always did, and I flinched back from it, but it was quickly erased by that bittersweet feeling of euphoria that always accompanied a Revenant’s bite. Regrettably, I sank into him as time drifted away from me in immeasurable seconds.

  And then, nothing.

  3. A DEADLY GAME

  I awoke sometime later, back in my cell and curled up in the fetal position on the dirty mattress. My head was pounding hard and my brain was hazy, confused about whether I’d actually been out of my cell earlier or if I’d dreamt the whole thing. I pushed off from the contaminated bed and crawled back onto the floor where I felt better—safer. Fragmented pieces of Engel’s face against my neck returned to me and I lifted my hand to the spot, slow and measured as though afraid of what I might find there. I grazed my fingers along my skin, looking for that all-too-familiar wound.

  And there I found it.

  Two puncture marks.

  Deep ones.

  “He really did a number on you,” said a voice from the other side of the door.

  I startled back, instinctively crawling away from the sound as my eyes surveyed the small peeper window.

  A pair of onyx eyes, backed by pure white skin as fresh as the winter snow, stared back at me expressionless.

  “Dominic.” I pulled in a breath but forgot to let it out.

  “Have I ever told you how much I enjoy the sound of my name writhing from your lips?”

  I scowled at him. “What the hell is going on? Where are we and why are you just standing there? Get me the hell out of here!”

  “Settle down, love.” His voice, while steady and calm, only further rattled my emotions.

  “Settle down? I’m in a freaking dungeon, Dominic!”

  “Yes, I’m aware. I’m working on a plan to get you out of here; however, it’s not going to be easy. The circumstances have become rather muddled as of late.”

  “What do you mean ‘muddled’? What the hell are you talking about?” I snapped back at him, my heart pounding harder and faster with every second of inactivity that went by.

  “You need to keep your voice down,” he warned, glancing over his left shoulder to make sure no one was coming. “I told you I’m working on it.”

  “It’s been days, Dominic. I’m starving. I can’t even think straight anymore.” I shook my head as tears attempted to creep up from b
ehind my lids, but I shut them down before they had a chance to break out. “I’m losing my damn mind!”

  “Yes, and you’re not looking all that good either, I might add,” he said, inspecting me.

  I'd never wanted to hit him more than I did in that moment. “You better be here to help me or so help me God—”

  “There's no need to bring Him into this. I'm here to help you, angel. I promise.”

  I hoped to God he meant that because right now, he was the only hope I had. “Do you know what's going on?”

  “Isn't it obvious?”

  “No, Dominic. It's not. I thought this was about the Dark Legion, but he isn't even working with them anymore, so why am I here? What's the point of all this?” I asked, gesturing to my less than desirable bedroom quarters.

  “He's trying to stop the Dark Legion from raising Lucifer.”

  “What? Since when?” My head ticked back at this strange new information. I was about to assault him with a string of other questions when another thought occurred to me. “Wait. If he’s trying to stop them, doesn't this put us on the same side?” A glimmer of hope bloomed in my heart like a flower.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Of course not.” And just like that, the flower was squashed. “Explain.”

  “He wants to lead my kind out of the shadows. To rise up and take power,” he said, waggling his eyebrows as he spoke the words I preferred never to hear. “He can't do that if the Dark Legion raises Lucifer. It would only push our kind further down the chain, and believe me, temptress, Engel isn’t going to willingly allow that to happen.”

  Shit. There it was…The Uprising.

  Trace’s Alt had warned me about that when he traveled back in time to give me the Amulet. He warned me what would happen if Engel ever got his hands on the Amulet and made me promise I would never take it off.

  “And since the Dark Legion needs my blood to do it, Engel now wants me dead,” I concluded for him.

  “Precisely.”

  I was so screwed, I needed a new name for it.

  Panic rose at the back of my throat. “You have to do something, Dominic. I don’t want to die here. I can't die here!” At this point, the Dark Legion was looking more and more like a better alternative. At least they didn’t want to kill me. At least they needed me alive. In desperate times like these, that stood for something in my book.

  “You aren't going to die here,” he said coolly, though I could see the uncertainty in his otherwise haughty eyes. “You still have the Amulet. And he needs it.”

  “Oh, the Amulet. Goody. I feel so much better now,” I said tartly.

  Dominic looked back at me confused.

  “It’s always about the stupid Amulet. All my problems started when I put this damn thing on.” I gritted my teeth in disgust as I contemplated ripping it off my neck and sending it to Engel with a big red bow attached to it. “I swear, this old piece of crap is going to get me killed, and for what? It doesn’t even work! It’s freakin’ broken and useless!”

  He snorted under his breath as though I’d said something funny. “I assure you, angel, The Immortal Amulet is not broken.”

  “No? Then where’s my protection, huh? My sister said I would be safe as long as I kept it on—that I would be untouchable. Well I’m not! All I’ve gotten from this thing is a target on my back and one attack after another!”

  “That's because of your blood, angel—not the Amulet,” he said as he leaned into the small window frame. “It's only meant to protect Descendants.”

  “I am a Descendant!” I roared back at him and immediately felt the blood rush away from my head at the effort.

  “Yes, you are certainly a Descendant, but the Morningstar bloodline is dominant in you, and the Amulet’s magic can sense that. It’s not meant to protect His Descendants,” he said emphasizing the word as though he got a kick out of it.

  And by His Descendants, he meant Lucifer. The first fallen angel, also known as the devil himself. I felt sick to my stomach just thinking about the blood that was running through my veins. Even though I’d known about my blood for a while now, it still hadn’t settled well with me. And by well, I mean not at all.

  “Wait a minute. How do you know all this?” I asked him, suspicion lighting me up inside. “And more importantly, why am I only hearing about it now?” If he was keeping secrets from me again, so help me God I was going to rip his arm off and beat him with it.

  “I've been suspecting something was off for some time now, but it only came together when I overhead Engel discussing it the other night,” he said without any semblance of emotion.

  I searched his face for any signs of deception, but couldn't find any. “Okay, so, basically what you’re saying is, the Amulet can sense my devil-blood and is purposely leaving me wide open to attacks because of it?”

  “In laymen’s terms, yes.”

  “And Engel knows it?” I verified.

  “Yes.”

  “Fucking perfect.” Open season on Jemma Blackburn has officially commenced. I dropped my head into my hands as my tired mind tried to wrap itself around the dire news. There were still so many gaps in this story, so many missing pieces that didn’t make sense. My head popped back up as one of them slapped me in the face. “Wait. Why am I still alive then?” I asked, the question nagging its way to the surface. “If the Amulet won’t protect me, why do I keep coming back?”

  It was no secret that I should have been dead on more than one occasion. There had to be a reason why I wasn’t. And I prayed it was a good reason. I needed it to be a good reason. Frankly, the chances of that were slim, but my heart was running wild with it anyway.

  Dominic paused as if searching for the right words, though I wasn't sure if he wanted to soften the blow or revel in it. He was sick like that.

  “Just spit it out, Dominic.”

  “Self-preservation.”

  “Come again?”

  A coy smile teased the corner of his lips. “The Amulet is protecting itself, angel. Not you. If you die while wearing it, its magic ceases to exist. It's as simple as that.”

  “Wait. So, he can’t actually kill me then?”

  “It appears that way.”

  Finally, some good news! “And since I’ll never willingly give him the Amulet, this whole thing has to be over then, right? He has to know that.” I mean, seriously, this was a standstill if I ever did see one.

  He shook his head, his dark eyes never straying from mine. “Far from it, love.”

  The choking hands of panic were pressing down on my throat again, closing off my airway. The truth was right there within my reach, circling the waters like a shark out for blood.

  Dread descended as I forced myself to reach out and touch it.

  “He’s just going to keep me trapped in here for the rest of my miserable life, isn’t he?” My voice hitched up unnaturally as my body began to quiver. “Or at least until he comes up with some other demented plan.” I looked up at him for comfort, for reassurance that my fears were unfounded, but there was none to be found.

  “Unfortunately, Engel always has a backup plan.”

  My mouth opened to cry out, but no sound came. I was startled silent.

  He leaned in closer, ready to drop another bomb on my life. “He’s going to try to form a bloodbond with you, angel.”

  I wasn’t speaking or blinking or even breathing anymore.

  “And he’s going to use it to compel the Amulet from you.”

  His words circled my mind like a virus, numbing every cell that it touched. I seriously couldn’t catch a break. Every time I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they somehow always did. How long was I expected to keep fighting? How much was I expected to take before I broke? Before I shattered into a million little jagged pieces that could never be put back together again? Maybe that’s exactly what they wanted.

  Maybe they wanted to break me from the inside out.

  “Did you hear me?” he asked, staring at me for what felt
like an eternity. “Say something.”

  I didn’t want to say anything. I wanted to vanish into myself. To disappear from this cruel world and never look back at the unfortunate path I’d been set on. I wanted to be with Trace; to see those eyes and hear those perfect words in my ears and feel those warm arms around my body. I closed my eyes and searched for him in my mind.

  “Angel.”

  My sanctuary. My only relief from the ever-storm that kept pouring down on my life.

  “Speak dammit.”

  “Trace.” His name escaped my lips like a prayer. “I need Trace.”

  “I’ve already thought of that,” he answered, misunderstanding my words. “I can't get to him. Engel isn’t allowing anyone in or out. He isn’t taking any chances this time. If any of us are unaccounted for, he’ll change your location.”

  I needed to see Trace again. I needed him to know what happened and how I felt about him. I needed to expose the guilty and make them pay for their sins. I needed...I needed him.

  And he needed me.

  It couldn’t end this way. I couldn’t let it. Somewhere in the depths of my despair, a small flicker of fight ignited in me, drawing me out from within myself. I had to get out of here. I had to find my way back to him.

  “You have to do something, Dominic. You have to help me get out of this cage.”

  “I’m already working on it, love, but it’s going to take some time. It took me days just to get access to the dungeons—”

  “I don’t have any more time, Dominic.” I stood up and moved closer to him. He needed to see the desperation in my eyes. He needed to see I wasn’t playing around anymore. “I’m starving and I’m tired. I won’t survive another week like this—let alone with him draining me at every meal.”

  His pitch eyes softened as he took me in. “What would you have me do, angel? Do you want to Bonnie and Clyde our way out of here? Make a run for it or die trying?” There was something lacking in his joking tone; something that made me think he would do it if I asked him to.