Page 24 of Fated In Forever (Nocturne Vampire Clan #4)

MALACHI

T he moment my feet touched the obsidian ground of the Underworld, I knew there was no going back.

That I was finally home .

I stalked across a vast plain of black volcanic glass, stretching endlessly in all directions.

The sky above was not truly sky at all, but a writhing canopy of darkness punctuated by veins of crimson light that pulsed like a heartbeat.

The cutting wind whispered with the voices of the damned, and I resisted the urge to cover my ears.

Above me, glowing souls drifted like luminescent moths through a perpetual twilight. They moved without purpose, without hope, lost in this sea of darkness, cursed, perhaps, to wander this realm forever.

Like me.

Orcus . The title sat heavy on my tongue, foreign and final.

What a fuckup . In the history of fuckups, this one was… epic , as Vicious would say. I shook my head, replaying the series of events that put me here and finding no one at fault except for myself.

With every step I took, I was being torn apart from the inside, those golden chains ripping and tearing through my heart, the further I got from the portal. From her . In the moments after I’d passed through, I’d tried clawing my way back, tearing at the portal with claws and teeth….to no avail.

My efforts had nearly destroyed me.

I couldn’t go back through, but I had seen everything happening on the other side.

Ravok, looming over Evie, that athame poised to carve through her slender neck and I’d lost it. Thrown myself against that opening, tried ripping my way back through the shadows, tried to fight my way back to her, but I’d failed.

Now I was leaving a trail of blood behind me and wondering how many predators lurked in the shadows and how fast I could run, once they caught my scent.

I kept walking, digging the heel of my palm into my aching chest. If I was truly trapped here, my heart shredded apart by this unholy bond, then on the other side, Vicious was suffering in the same way.

I hadn’t saved her at all. I’d sentenced her to a future of pain.

The irony wasn't lost on me.

My blind moment of rage had doomed the one person who mattered most.

And I’d left her alone, facing down a monster. With nothing but her wits and whatever magic she had left. And Vicious would fight. I closed my eyes and stopped walking, clawed toes digging into the rough sand for support. She would stand against Ravok, even when she had no chance of winning.

I reached down the bond, straining to find her on the other end, and there…a pulse of life, a heartbeat, as faint as butterfly wings. She was alive. Still alive.

I swayed, trying to get enough air in my lungs to clear my head.

I’d know if she was gone , I reasoned. I’d know . I would feel that loss to the depths of my soul, and that final stab of pain…that pain would destroy me.

But even as I ruminated over my failings and took in the hellish landscape, something else was happening. Something I fought with every fiber of my being.

It started as a burning in my chest, spreading outward like molten metal flowing through my veins.

At first, I thought it was merely the shock of transitioning between realms, the natural consequence of a mortal body being subjected to forces it was never meant to endure.

But as the burning intensified, as this realm began to reshape me from the inside out, I realized with growing horror what was truly occurring.

My transformation into Orcus had begun.

I doubled over as the first wave hit me, convulsing as something far more primal began to assert its claim over me.

My bones melted and reformed, stretching and thickening to accommodate what I was becoming.

The pain was beyond description—not just physical, but soul-rending, as if my very essence was torn apart and rewoven into something else entirely.

My spine arched with a wet, crackling sound as something pushed its way out from the base of my back.

I reached behind me with trembling hands and felt the emergence of what could only be a tail—thick, muscular, covered in skin that was warm to the touch.

The spiked end lashed involuntarily, and I stumbled forward, trying to maintain my balance when my center of gravity shifted.

“No,” I whispered, though my voice was already changing, becoming deeper, more resonant. “This can't be happening.”

But it was, my skull throbbing with an intensity that brought tears to my eyes, and I pressed my palms against my temples as I felt the bone beneath beginning to shift and bulge. Two points of agony emerged just above my hairline, growing outward and upward with deliberate, inexorable purpose.

Horns. I was growing motherfucking horns .

I fell to my knees on the obsidian plain, my newly formed tail coiling around me as I fought against the changes overtaking my body. My skin was taking on a darker hue—not quite black, but a deep, dusky gray that blended in with the shadowy light around me.

With the physical transformation came something far worse: the awakening of instincts that were not my own.

Hunger. Not for food, but for dominion over this place, for the darkness itself. These impulses rose within me like an unstoppable tide, threatening to drown out everything I had ever known in a sea of black.

“I won't let this happen,” I gasped, even as my voice continued to deepen and distort. “I won't become what you want me to be.” I raged against the silence, the directionless, lost souls.

The horns were fully formed now, rising from my skull like a crown of bone. My tail had grown longer, more articulated, ending in what felt like a barbed tip. I had become something out of a nightmare, a creature of darkness and malice.

And yet, even as my body transformed, even as ancient instincts whispered seductive promises of power in my mind, something else remained. Something that refused to be corrupted or consumed.

My love for Evangeline.

That revelation cut through the haze of transformation and the pain and the whispered promises of this shadowy realm.

I could still feel her, even here. Not physically—the portal had closed, separating us—but in my heart, in my soul, in how I would never forget her.

As if what we shared transcended even the boundaries between worlds.

Across time itself.

Because my bond with Evangeline still existed, a fragile chain around my heart, no longer hurting, just…there.

And much like those golden chains, Vicious was my anchor, my tether to everything good I had ever known. And as long as I could still feel her presence like a warm light in the darkness, as long as I knew she lived, I would never be lost.

Somehow, especially now, I found that comforting.

“I’ll always watch over you.” I whispered, and my promise floated away on the shadows.

A flash of light illuminated the hellscape, and I turned to take one last look at the portal, then the light disappeared as the opening snapped shut with a resounding boom, cutting off my last glimpse of my old life.

I peered through the darkness ahead of me, seeing nothing but shadow and desolation.

I was surrounded by broken walls of black marble stretching up to an equally black sky. Off in the distance, torches blazed with red fire, casting no shadows against the endless black.

Torches meant civilization.

I paused, inspecting my reflection in the side of a polished stone standing twenty feet tall, carved with runes I could not read, and scenes of judgment and cruelty that made my stomach twist. My eyes burned with an otherworldly light, skin that had taken on a penumbral darkness, and features that I no longer recognized.

There was very little left of the male who had toppled empires, who had only ever loved one woman .

But something had halted the transformation mid-process.

Oh, I was still changed—still bearing horns and tail, still possessed of claws and inhuman strength—but something essential within me remained untouched. On the outside, I’d become Orcus, that much was clear.

But inside, I was still the same.

The portal had closed, but I still felt Vicious.

I could still sense her fear, her strength and determination, as if she was close.

I closed my eyes and sent up a prayer for whatever gods might be listening.

Please let her survive this. She was stronger than she knew, stronger than I had given her credit for.

But the world was against her, and I was not there to protect her.

I flexed my new claws and pure power flowed through my transformed body. I was stronger now, faster, possessed abilities I could barely understand. I looked again into the distance at those glowing torches, a sign of… some sort of structure .

The Book was supposed to be my insurance, my ace up my sleeve, but that relic was on the other side, so I would have to use every bit of my guile and cleverness—and these wicked talons—to survive here.

I sensed pathways through the darkness, routes that led deeper into this realm, as if I’d been here before.

I began walking, stumbling, my tail swishing behind me as I adapted to my new gait.

Each step took me further from the sealed portal, every step made one thing clear.

I was still myself. Still guided by logic and reason rather than a monster’s hunger.

The transformation had given me the tools to survive in this place, but had not yet claimed my soul .

And I would carve a path through this darkness and make this realm mine. Ravok had turned me into something monstrous, but he’d failed to make me a monster.

That failure would prove to be his undoing.

I froze mid step, raised my head and sniffed, wondering if I’d imagined the scent of warm desert winds and flowers on the odorous dark breeze.

A hallucination, thankfully.

I didn’t want Evangeline anywhere close to this dark place.

The raw, primordial hunger of a realm that existed to consume and corrupt had no business touching my beautiful girl, and I had to believe—I forced myself to believe—she had slipped away from Ravok, and was even now, safely with Blake and Riordan.

I kept walking, carrying with me the memory of her touch, the sound of her laughter, the warmth of her smile. These were my armor against the darkness that surrounded me, my weapons against the despair that sought to claim me.

The shadows whispered promises of power, but I walked toward them without fear. Ravok had stolen too much from me already.

My life.

My soul.

My friends.

Rhiannon and Tyberius.

I would not allow him to take Evangeline, too. That bastard fucking owed me. And once I escaped this place, I would collect what I was owed.