Page 86 of All Your Deadly Truths (The Filthy Duet #2)

Kairhyse

“ X eraphine!” I scream so loudly that it shatters any remaining glass still clinging to the frame.

Dropping the last of my kills, I rush to the window, my gaze fixed on the ground below. I can see them falling fast. There’s no surviving that drop for either of them, and while I know Xera will eventually come back, that isn’t something we can just wait around for.

I’d jump for her, but the momentum coming out of the shadows matches our velocity. If I fucked it up and we hit a solid surface on our exit, my body would burst on impact—and I can’t risk my head going with it.

“Son of a bitch!” I rush back through the room and to the hall, picking up speed. Not entirely sure what I’m going to do—it’s not like I can just catch the both of them.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

I know I won’t make it down before she hits the ground, maybe Mister can catch her? I have no fucking clue, but I’m grasping at anything to stay centered, forcing myself to focus on each step as I race down this absurdly tall building.

I nearly slip on the Necroth blood as I exit, but I’m out of Sidence Tower in less than a minute after leaving Lars’s office.

If we thought the stairwell was a bloodbath, the outside is its superior.

Beyond the chaos Xera left, more and more bodies litter the ground—some in their own death, others in someone else’s.

I don’t focus on the countless lives lost, but search for my girl. First, I find Brice standing beside Sydni, both covered in crimson but alive. They are staring, and even in the Werewolf’s animal form, I can see shock riddled in its expression .

Maybe even fear.

“Let me go!”

My breath catches as I quickly turn my gaze to where their eyes are fixed—right on the spot where Lars’s voice continues to scream.

“Let me die, don’t do this. Let me die!”

Xera has her hand wrapped around the pale Shifter’s throat, lifting him up to where he barely can reach his toes to the ground. I’d question what happened, but there’s no need—not when she has fucking wings splayed out from her back.

When Sydni and I went through the book back in Ashfer, the photo of a Succubus had horns, a tail—just like we’ve seen with Xera—but it also depicted bat-like wings, though a Beyond of a lot bigger.

These, however, don’t look like actual wings. They’re dripping with her blood, and I know it’s hers, because she smells like a godsdamn dream. They’re leathery, tall, and menacing, but I can tell she’s used her hemokinesis to create them.

“X-Xera…” Sydni whispers, and before she can even say another word, I rush between them. I can tell my little demon is lost at the moment, and I can’t risk her accidentally lashing out at her best friend.

“Pone, domine mi,” Mister says as he steps up to Xeraphine.

She shifts her gaze down to him, her eyes completely consumed by darkness, and while her arms are black as they are, it hadn’t taken all of her over.

Her veins are protruding and they, too, are the abyss that is her Amoro. “Vivit, hoc est quod volebas.”

“Nodus hic mortalis nobis nocuit!” When Xera screams in Latin, my eyes widen in shock. From my understanding, she doesn’t know that dialect, and she’s never practiced it. Like nearly every other foreign tongue besides the common language, it was lost in the war.

Could this be her Amoro?

“He did,” Mister answers her, then continues his path up beside her. He doesn’t fear her, and while I don’t either, this isn’t my time to intervene.

“Mittam eum in Void!” Her cadence is distorted, and I know it’s not my girl speaking. She’s always talked about losing control, and now I see exactly what she meant.

“He will linger in the Void when he dies later. Si mortuus est, non satiaberis.” Mister moves in and out of Latin, and I take a few steps in her direction.

It’s then she looks up to me, and I smile at her. “You’ll be happier torturing him, little demon, but I understand the impulse.”

Her chest rises as Lars squeaks in discomfort. Then comes the loud thump of him hitting the ground, followed by her nodding her head. Not a single argument like she had with Mister.

Hah , take that, feline.

I think she’s going to come to me, but instead she lands a kick right into Lars’s stomach, causing him to scream out in agonizing pain. I know that it had to hurt, because she did not hold back.

The wings at her back fall to liquid as she rears back another kick and sends him flying across the eight lane street.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you right now.”

She stalks toward him, and as Lars attempts to grab at the vehicle he slammed against, his hand slips on all the blood smeared across it.

“X-Xeraphine, please?—”

I laugh alongside my girl who approaches him, popping her neck and cracking her fingers.

“You told me you enjoy pain, Lars.”

I shift my gaze to the bastard only to see he wears a crooked smile on his face. It’s sudden, and when he laughs, my eyebrows furrow in confusion. The fear and distress I’d just seen in him melted away, like her blood wings had.

“You should just kill me, baby ” — oh, fuck no— “because any touch by you will be the Vayl’s light.”

“Sicko!” Sydni spits.

Then it’s Xera’s turn to laugh. “Karma is a real bitch, because I would love to use my own fingers to remove your flesh, piece by piece, but I guess I’ll just have to watch.”

In a swift motion, she grabs hold of the prone Lars and begins dragging him back to us.

Her arms are still consumed by her Amoro, visible now that her sleeves are torn off, but her eyes have returned to their beautiful silver hue.

She stops right in front of Sydni, and her princess stares up at her best friend in stunned silence.

“What’re you doing?!” he shouts, attempting to stand and maybe run, but she’s got him tight in her grip.

“Syd,” Xera says, thrusting Lars on his knees in front of her.

“He is one of the reasons you’re a Vampire now, and you already know the despicable things he did to me.

” The smile that crosses not only my girl’s face, but my butterfly’s, has my cock fighting against my zipper. “Show me that violence, princess.”

I know that Syd hasn’t fought more than the couple times since becoming a Vampire, but the punch she lands square into Lars’s nose was made with precision. The loud crunch of bone breaking sends a shiver down even my spine.

“Asshole!” She grabs at the collar of his shirt, and hits him again before he can fall back. “You’ll fucking pay for what you did to Phiny and me!”

The Shifter’s head turns, and she goes in for another, and then another. He went quiet after the second hit, but he’s alive and awake, I just assume he’s in too much pain to actually scream. He’s whimpering, but nothing more than that.

It takes Xera leaning forward and stopping Syd from actually killing Lars for her to stop.

When she looks at me, she gives me the acknowledgement of, “He’ll be yours soon”.

She promised if this were to be the outcome, that we were successful in getting him, I could have my time with him. I have his mother’s heart still in Alaric’s freezer to feed to him.

I give her a wink, and take a deep breath. “Kayn,” I call to my friend who takes a step to me.

“I haven’t had this much fun in centuries,” he jests. “I’ll rush him to Alaric’s dungeon and come?—”

“No,” Xera cuts him off, and with a swift hit to Lars’s neck, his body goes limp, falling to the ground with a thump. “You won’t come back.”

I knew this was coming. We’d spoken about it before meeting up with the group.

In these seconds of quiet, I feel a shift in the air around us—a dark, haunting presence that consumes me entirely. It’s like a foreboding tale, warning me that I, too, need to leave.

Xera releases a breath, and as though I can feel it as well, she reaches through the blood link between them. “Niyla, Brice, Alaric, Sydni… you will leave and hide until this is over.”

When I shift my gaze, they’ve all gone stiff.

“You will not come back unless the fight is done.”

“Kayn.” My friend looks at me as I speak to him. “This was the plan all along. Only Xera and I are going to fight Tali.”

His brows pinch in frustration. “You have to be fucking kidding me.” The moment he steps to me, I throw my hand up. “Kai, the more people fighting her, the more likely we will win.”

“You’re wrong.” My girl never shifts her gaze from staring at Sydni.

Her best friend is bubbling out a sob. “Please don’t do this, please don’t do this! Let me fight with you!”

“You’ll be targets for her to weaken me. She can’t kill Kai, because that would be damning her. He is my greatest chance of winning this, and you all will only get in my way.”

The feeling of doom grows closer, and I don’t remember this when I was just a mile away from Tali on a boat. I wonder if it’s because we completed our bond, and her Amoro is warning me something is coming for what’s mine.

“I’d rather die by your side, Phiny.” As Sydni steps toward Xera, my girl raises her hand, halting her. I can tell she’s using the blood that runs through her best friend’s veins to do it.

I look to Xera, who shakes her head and smiles softly. “The thing is… I’m unwilling to risk your life more than I already have. I can’t live without you.”

Those words cause Sydni to nearly buckle and fall, tears stream down her blood covered cheeks, creating lines of light pink. “And I can’t without you, Phiny, please!”

It’s then that, for the first time likely in their entire friendship, Xera rushes to Sydni and wraps her in a hug.

“I’ll be fine,” she whispers against Syd’s frazzled blue hair. “Let me protect you and keep you safe.”

A moment of silence follows, broken only by sniffling, but I don’t bother looking to see who’s crying. I just watch my girl close her eyes and bury her head into her friend’s shoulder.