Page 20 of Queen Takes Blood

I still wasn’t sure of her house, but that wouldn’t matter.

If she would use me.

To kill.

* * *

Shara takes Xin as her Blood in Queen Takes King.

There’s also a bonus short story, “Queen Takes A Life,” featuring Xin.

QUEEN TAKES… MEHEN GORGON (LEVIATHAN)

Songs: I’m Not Sorry by Royal & the Serpent; Bodies by Drowning Pool

Special thanks to Colette Elliott for recommending Bodies!

11

MEHEN

Fuck it all. Burn it all down.

I’ll fucking destroy. Every. Last. Fucking. Thing.

Rend and tear. Gobble you whole. Feast on your blood. Wallow in your entrails. Crunch on your bones. Smash your pretty little skull.

Starting with this fucking Aima queen who dared intrude in my prison.

So sly with her lies, so clever with her platitudes. Granted, I wasn’t easy to find. My prison lay beyond the veil, a place outside of time and space with only glimpses of the earthly world from which she came.

I’d been trapped here for so fucking long that I wasn’t even sure that I was awake. Time was meaningless, whether I was awake or asleep. A million years became a day. A second. And I couldn’t tell the fucking difference. I had no way to mark the passage of time other than the occasional rat that wandered into my lair.

And I didn’t speak of four-legged vermin.

Creeping closer, she whispered soothingly, “I’m here to free you.”

They all said that.

They who?The thought flickered like puffs of smoke. Queens. Aima queens. I remembered what they’d done. Fuck that shit. I’d neverforgetwhat they’d done. Whatshe’dfucking done to me.

Hatred sparked in the blackest corner of my heart. “I’ll kill you like I killed my mother and her entire House.”

“Who was your mother?”

As if I would tell another queen anything. Truth became a weapon to slice and rend.

Cracking open one eye the barest slit, I watched her slide into my trap. Hunger sparked to life, quickly blazing to a murderous conflagration. A feast awaited. And maybe…

A way out.

It’s been so fucking long.

Endless hunger tormented me, but I lay still and quiet on the ledge above the bone-littered floor of the cave. Eating her in one gulp would be fucking delicious, but I needed her alive.

For now.

Though any motherfucking queen was imminently dangerous. She had one purpose only for coming here, and it sure the fuck wasn’t to free me.