Page 13

13

Black Widow

NYX

W hen the shadows around me faded and the incredible view from the penthouse of the Sun & Moon Hotel emerged, I knew I was dreaming.

It was always the same dream—well, a memory, really. One I enjoyed a little too much.

I came back here every time I shut my eyes.

The night my magic was returned to me. After unleashing myself in the desert, I was delirious from finally being reunited with my own power. It coursed through my veins, white-hot, clouding my judgment in more ways than one.

Solaris released me, his fingers lingering on my arm a beat too long.

“There you are!” a shrill, aggravated voice shouted. “Why have you brought her back here?”

The little raven-haired vampire crossed her arms as she glared at me, her red eyes raking over me from head to toe. I beamed and strutted right for her, my arms splayed. It caught her off guard and she froze like a deer in the headlights. I cupped her face in my hands and planted a fat kiss to her red-painted lips. Her eyes bulged out of their sockets, but she didn’t fight me off. I kissed her like I really meant it. She tasted like blood and Chanel lipstick.

Then I pulled away and sauntered over to the bar.

“Pour me something strong, would ya, Sol?”

Silence.

I glanced over my shoulder to find Solaris Adder and his vampire sister gaping at me with their jaws practically on the floor.

“What? Can’t a girl kiss a vampire and get a drink around here?”

More silence.

Ra’ah turned to her brother slowly. “What did you do to her?”

Solaris stared at me. “I gave her magic back.”

Her brows narrowed. “Should she be acting like this?”

“ She’s right here.” I was growing impatient. “Pour me a drink or I’ll attempt to do it myself using telekinesis and I’m a bit rusty, so it might be messy.”

Solaris finally moved behind the bar and reluctantly poured me a glass of vodka. He stared at me like I was an alien creature, one that was here to destroy the Earth. He didn’t trust me, and he didn’t understand me. But that was his problem. He was the one who chose to rise from is prison realm and steal my magic and blackmail me with it. Now that I had my power back, and I’d officially signed my soul to the devil, I needed a drink.

I couldn’t go back to Luna Academy, not yet. Not while my power was this fresh, this potent. My fingertips buzzed, gold flames dancing across my knuckles. I could barely contain myself. Better to detonate here than anywhere else.

Ra’ah hopped up on the barstool next to me. Solaris poured her a drink when she nodded to the bottle. It was comical how uncomfortable he looked.

“So, you like girls?” Ra’ah wondered before she slammed her drink in one go.

I shrugged. “You’re not really a girl , are you? You’re a vampire. Maybe I’m into monsters.”

Her red eyes flicked to Solaris. “Hear that? There’s hope for you yet, brother.”

He grimaced at her but said nothing.

Solaris stood there like an awkward freak, his silver gaze darting spastically between his sister and me.

“Pour yourself one,” I ordered. “Don’t be a square.”

This comment befuddled him. “How would not drinking render me an equilateral shape?”

I blinked at him. Ra’ah and I shared a look. Then we both burst into a fit of laughter.

“Gods above,” Solaris muttered, rolling his eyes.

But he drank. We all did. We just sat at the bar and drank and drank and drank.

This went on for some time, then I complained of being hungry, so Ra’ah ordered a pizza. We drank some more. When the pizza boy showed up, she grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him inside. “I’m starving,” she crooned, luring him into the penthouse.

I hopped down from the stool and strutted over to the pizza boy, grabbing the box from him. “Thank you,” I chirped, my mouth watering.

Ra’ah, to my horror, opted out of mortal food and ate the pizza boy instead.

I watched through wide eyes as she pinned him to the wall and latched onto his throat. He didn’t make a sound, most likely because she Compelled him. I’d never seen a vampire feed before. I chewed the pizza slowly, my appetite beginning to evade me as I watched her devour him. His body began to go limp, until finally she pulled away and he sank to the floor, his throat coated in blood. His eyes fluttered closed.

She turned away, wiping the blood from her mouth.

Solaris rolled his eyes.

“Is he dead?!” I squeaked, my heart racing.

“Nah.” She waved me off nonchalantly. “Just passed out. He’ll regain consciousness in a bit and be on his merry way, remembering nothing.”

I dropped my piece of pizza, no longer hungry at all. I went for more vodka instead. Then I went and sat on the sofa in between Ra’ah and Solaris, who was in an armchair across from the fireplace that was always unlit. I waved my hand, summoning flames over the charred wood. The warmth made me release a sigh of relief. It was always so cold up here.

“Shouldn’t you be heading back to your precious school?” Ra’ah wondered, a dark brow cocked.

I shrugged, loosing a sigh. “Probably.”

“So why are you still here?”

I couldn’t help the way my eyes flashed to Solaris. His silver gaze was already on me, electricity zapping between us. He rubbed his palms over his knees, which were covered by his long jacket. There was an undeniable nervousness to him. It had been there all night. Having me here like this unsettled him.

How curious.

He had come into my life out of nowhere and stole everything from me with ease. Yet in a social setting, where our power struggle was obsolete, he seemed to fear me.

This was the part of the dream I enjoyed reliving the most.

“You say your brother is a monster, not a man,” I murmured, my glare still locked on him. “Right?”

“Uh…” Ra’ah muttered, slightly confused. “Yeah.”

I rose to my feet, staring him down as I approached his armchair slowly. He was as motionless as a statue, yet still managed to freeze as I came and stood before him. In between his legs. The alcohol lighting up my belly was definitely in charge here, but I didn’t question it. I knew my eyes were hooded and heated, keeping him trapped. His chest rose and fell, his lips parted.

“Yet right now, he reminds me of nothing other than a boy ,” I said, my voice low and husky. “Do you see how nervous I make him?”

I watched as his gaze dropped to my thighs, covered in tight leather. He swallowed, his breathing audible.

I swung my leg up and then dropped onto his lap. The world stopped. I heard Ra’ah suck in a sharp breath. Solaris didn’t move, but his eyes widened, the pulse in his throat thrashing.

“I have this theory…” I breathed, grabbing the collar of his warlock jacket. My heart was beating so fast that it was hard to speak. My stomach quickly became a mess of knots. I pried his jacket open and then placed my palm in the middle of his chest, feeling his heart slam. I leaned down, pressing my lips to his ear, a shiver tumbling down my spine. “That you are not as formidable as you pretend to be, oh mighty Darkbringer.”

His hands instinctively moved to my hips. A sharp, hot voltage shot through me. At first, I thought he would shove me away. But he seemed to be holding on for dear life, his fingers digging into my flesh.

“You fear me,” I accused, my voice barely audible.

He was a serpent entranced by the tune of a snake charmer. He couldn’t break away from me.

“What the hell is happening?” Ra’ah squawked, but her voice sounded miles away. Neither of us paid her any mind.

I leaned back a little to meet Solaris’s eyes. The desire, the vulnerability, the confusion I found in them, made my limbs turn to jelly. I held his gaze as I sunk down further, grinding myself over him, feeling how responsive he was beneath me. Fire shot up my spine, my breath escaping me shakily. A heartbeat formed between my thighs, the sensation coaxing a soft moan out of me. This sound seemed to bring a dormant part of him to life. I watched pieces of his soul I’d never seen before emerge behind his eyes.

“See, you are a man,” I rasped, rolling my hips. “Beneath all your shadows and your threats and your masks , you are just a man.”

He sat up straight, the movement so sudden I gasped, bringing his face millimetres from mine. Our lips were nearly touching. He breathed me in, his fingers gripping my hips hard enough to leave his mark on me.

“You have tried so hard ,” I emphasized the word as I ground into him, making him hiss, “to keep me in your pocket. I thought it was my fire you feared. I see now, I was wrong.”

“Yeah?” he murmured, fully entranced by me.

“It’s not my fire that will be your undoing, is it?” I whispered. I moved fluidly over him, my fingers knotted in the back of his dark hair. His parted lips blew gusts of cool air at me, unleashing goosebumps all over my skin. “When you watched me from the shadows, it wasn’t my magic that hooked you in, was it? Not my fire that made you target me. It was this .” I rolled my hips again and pulled him closer, our lips touching ever so slightly. He made a soft, fractured sound. “ This will be your end.”

“What are you doing?” he managed to ask, pulling away to see me better, his voice like gravel.

I could hear his pulse. Or was it mine?

“Jesus! You guys are freaks!” Ra’ah squealed, and I heard her leave us.

Good.

I ran my tongue up his cheek, his skin tasting like snow. He bristled under my touch, a low moan escaping through his lips. “I am killing you slowly,” I vowed. “You will not die by fire, but by desire. I know this is what you crave, deep down in that delusional, psychotic mind of yours. I will unleash myself upon you any time I see fit, and you will let me, because you cannot help yourself. And each time it will feel real.” I pushed myself down on him, gliding slowly. His eyes rolled back. “You will want to believe with every fiber of your being that this tension between us will amount to something. Something other than your demise. But you will know, in your soul, that this ,” I pressed my lips to the skin beside his, my tongue lashing, “will lead to nothing other than your death. This I swear to you, Solaris Adder. I am no fucking firefly. For you, I am a black widow.”

His breathing was hard and ragged, his fingers still digging into my hips. “Stop,” he rasped, desperate.

I chuckled. Oh, how the tables had turned. “You—”

“Nyx.”

A new voice made me stiffen.

For fuck sakes .

He found me.

I let out a long-suffering sigh, leaning away from dream-Solaris. I turned to find the mortal boy standing in front of the fireplace, chewing his lip ring as he stared at me through horrified eyes.

“What the hell do you want, Michael?” I slid off Solaris’s lap, unable to find it within me to be embarrassed. He had found me like this at least a dozen times before. His little Dreamwalking disturbances were getting beyond old.

“Always the same dream,” Michael mused, his brown eyes wandering throughout the penthouse.

“I’m going to wake myself up,” I threatened, crossing my arms over my chest.

“You’re lucid,” he remarked, slightly mystified. “You could dream any dream. But it’s always this.”

“Does my little sister know you’re constantly spying on my subconscious?” I cocked a brow, challenging him. The penthouse began to fade away, dream-Solaris disappearing into smoke. Every time Michael showed up, my dream was ruined.

Bastard. I was just about at the best part.

“Tell me where you are, Nyx. We will come for you.”

I scoffed. “So, you can’t find me based off my dreams alone. How convenient for me and embarrassing for you.”

“Emilia needs you,” Michael deadpanned. As if that would change things.

For a moment, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Michael looked at me expectantly. But he didn’t understand.

“She’s better off without me,” I snapped. “Everyone is. Now get the fuck out of my head.”

“Tell me where you are.”

“No.”

He reached out as if to touch me, so I forced myself out of there. I had every intention of waking myself up, but sleep had its claws in me too deep.

I managed to shift the dream, but at what cost? My surroundings morphed from the dissipating penthouse to a small, dark space.

I stood in the center of a circle of women who all sat on the pale stone floor with their backs to me. Their naked backs with infected ominous runes carved into their flesh. Runes that circled a shiny implanted stone that was shaped like a scale. Each of the women had one fused into the flesh of their spine between their shoulder blades. They sat motionless, heads down, their hair wrapped in silver shawls.

I hated this dream. It made me sick, breathless. I forced my eyes shut and attempted to will myself elsewhere. Another memory or fantasy…Perhaps one of Jedidiah…

“Nyx.”

I whirled, fucking miffed to find Michael. Again! Goddess damn him, he was getting better. Quicker.

The ominous circle of women went up in smoke, leaving me alone with him amid nothingness.

“When are you going to get the fucking message?” I growled in annoyance.

“When will you grow a backbone and come back where you belong?” he deadpanned, looking me straight in the eye. “Next time, I’m going to bring Emilia.”

His words were jarring enough to jolt me awake.

My tomb was shaking.

I roused, groggy from a long, chaotic sleep. The world around me rattled and quaked. My confusion only lasted mere seconds before the truth dawned on me.

He was here. I knew he would come.

Panic and anticipation shocked to life in my stomach. After being alone for so long, the idea of seeing someone in the flesh had my nerves scattered and frayed.

I lay on the stone ground, curling into myself, a few muted everflames lighting the small space.

How long had it been? Months? Years?

It felt like lifetimes.

Yet not long enough.

Solitude had morphed from a background truth to a living creature, nestled in my soul, perfectly content. Here, in the darkness, in the Earth, I finally found solace. At first, it was pure agony. Being away from Solaris, away from the world, my sister, the sun, the city and life in general…it had been gut-wrenching. Each breath had been tainted with the choking loneliness, and the ache to get back to him. To stand at his side, to be close to him at all times. That urge lived inside me as if it were a baser instinct. As if he were a necessity, like food and water and air.

But after being in this tomb long enough, after starving myself, robbing myself of all humanity, the urge waned.

I discovered I really was immortal. At the beginning, I thought the hunger and thirst would kill me. It had been so painful, so long-stretching. Until it just…snapped off. Like a branch being broken from a tree, those needs were broken off of me. I no longer felt hunger, no longer yearned for water rushing down my throat. Therefore, the need to be with him was cut off too.

But perhaps not fully. For when I slept, I dreamt of him.

Judging by the look of my skin, though, I wasn’t surviving as effortlessly as I thought.

My veins were ink black, my skin nearly consumed by darkness.

The tomb shook violently. Thunder cracked, a fissure spreading down the wall. I wanted to sit up, but I couldn’t move. I watched from my spot on the ground as the wall split apart, dust and rubble raining down. My white-gold everflames danced and jerked wildly in response.

When the world stilled, a mouth had been cracked open on the stone that kept me hidden.