Page 24 of Malice: The Mate Games (Apocalypse #3)

Chapter

Eighteen

GRIM

“ A re you fucking kidding me?” Chaos grumbled as soon as we caught sight of the gate.

Well, what remained of the now broken gate.

“Uh, buddy, I think we’ve got bigger problems,” Sin said, giving Chaos’s arm a light slap while pointing to the group of twenty-plus humans that had yet to notice our approach.

“That isn’t possible.” The disbelief in Malice’s voice only added to my unease. It most definitely shouldn’t have been possible, but here we were with a small army of unwanted adversaries armed with weapons, rage, and desperation coming for us.

“Do you think they know who we are?” Merri asked.

“Definitely not,” I said, categorically dismissing the notion. No one was that fucking stupid. “They’re scavengers in search of supplies. They have no idea their decision to come here is the last one they’ll ever make.”

I snagged Merri’s sweatshirt-covered arm and pulled her back until she was behind me. “Hey!”

“Not another word, wildflower. They might only be humans, but they’re still dangerous. You aren’t immortal.”

She huffed in frustration but didn’t refute my claim. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised. Me saying something true had never seemed to stop her from disagreeing before. She liked to argue for argument’s sake when it came to me.

We had minutes at best before the horde noticed us. “Divide and conquer?” I asked, glancing at Chaos.

“My favorite game,” he replied, his voice edged with violence.

“I would have thought you preferred Hide the Salami,” Sin muttered under his breath.

“He is really good at that one.”

We all looked at Merri and she shrugged.

“It’s a gift.” Chaos returned his attention to the approaching humans. “Don’t let them get off any shots. We can’t risk Merri taking a stray bullet.”

“Consider it handled,” Sin said, the reminder that Merri could still be hurt sobering him up in a way not even the impending fight could. There was very little Sinclair took seriously, but Merri had worked her way to the top of his short list.

Chaos bolted toward the crowd, his presence causing the five men in the front to shout in surprise. He made quick work of them, cutting them down with his sword in moments.

I spared Merri a glance, annoyance creeping in when I caught her look of awe. For someone else.

She thought that was impressive? She hadn’t seen anything.

Stepping away from the group, I stalked toward the invaders with deadly intent burning through me.

Slowly, I removed first one glove, then the other, and when I reached the first man who stared up at me with terror on his face, all I had to do was brush a fingertip over his cheek.

The light left his eyes instantly, his soul claimed by me in the space between breaths.

See? So much more impressive than needing a weapon.

I was a weapon.

Between Chaos and I, these fools would be dealt with in seconds.

A sharp whistle cut through the air, preceding the sound of hammering footfall.

Fuck. I jinxed it.

Had Sin been the one to make the mistake, he’d already be wiping the blood from his chin.

“Merri, stay fucking put. Do you hear me?” Malice bellowed as he raced into the fray. “There are too many of them. They can’t come through.”

I swiped my palm over another’s forehead, dropping him like a fly meeting a swatter.

Malice touched the man next to me, and had I not known the power of pestilence, I would have thought him ineffective.

But in mere heartbeats, the man he’d touched began twitching involuntarily, his eyes rolling, mouth frothing as he coughed bloody spittle into the face of the fighter next to him.

And so the infection spread. One by one, those taken by Malice’s gift turned upon one another, only adding to the madness. Or at least they did until they succumbed to the inevitable.

I continued working my way through the throng beside my brothers, sparing a single glance for Sin, who had just taken a man by the throat and brought his face a hairsbreadth away from his own.

With a wicked smirk, Sin inhaled, pulling the poor bastard’s soul out of his body through his mouth.

The man’s body shriveled up, as though all the moisture had been sucked from him in one fell swoop.

When he fell to the ground, he was little more than a mummy.

We continued on in this fashion until I was certain we’d be finished in less than a handful of minutes. But, alas, I hadn’t counted on the fifth member of our hunting party.

Not content with sitting the fight out, Merri worked magic of her own.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I shouted back at her.

“Helping!”

She had a group of men mesmerized, staring at her as she projected lust magic onto them. “Get on your knees for me,” she purred.

They fell to the gravel road, still staring up at her.

“How dare you look at me. Take out your eyes. Put them on the road for me as an offering.”

My stomach twisted as the men she had in her snare used their fingers to claw out their own eyes, screaming as they did it.

“Holy shit,” Sin breathed. “Is it just me, or is that the fucking hottest thing you’ve ever seen?”

For perhaps the first time in his existence, Sin wasn’t wrong. I was definitely hard when I hadn’t been mere seconds prior.

“She’s like an avenging godde—” Sin’s words cut off in a wet gurgle at the crack of a gunshot. Blood spilled from his mouth, his eyes wide as his throat exploded in a mess of gore and tissue and thicker things.

“Sin!” Merri screamed.

He fell to the ground, gurgling and twitching as he struggled to heal. He would survive, but it wasn’t an injury he could immediately recover from.

Chaos let out a primal roar, mowing down the men in front of him. But once again, it was Merri who stole the show.

In a move straight out of a horseman’s handbook, she took several steps forward, palm out, eyes narrowed in rage and swirling with power. I watched in a mix of terror and fascination as her eyes turned milky white and two tiny black horns appeared at her hairline.

She was the spitting image of her mother.

Then, as Malice, Chaos, and I stood by, Merri sucked the souls out of every remaining human on our property.

They crumpled into heaps, eyes staring vacantly, pure horror etched onto their deathly visages while she positively glowed from the power.

Hands held out at her sides, she lifted her face to the sky, and her hair swirled around her as her feet lifted from the ground an inch.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat as I watched the woman I had pledged to protect fully come into her power. She turned those milky eyes on me, and her feet returned to solid ground.

All I could manage was a heartfelt, “Fuck.”