Page 27 of Shattered Galaxies (Tears of the Siren #6)

Desmond

I would annihilate Malcroy—I would absolutely massacre the parasite.

Bloodlust consumed me with a level of ferocity that nearly shook me.

I steadied myself as I tried to examine the situation through a clinical lens.

There were so many aspects to Malcroy’s appearance that didn’t make sense.

How had he found us? How had he gotten through the wards placed around the house—hell, the pride compound in general?

How did he always seem ten steps ahead of us?

I would bet my own fucking soul it had to do with the faceless figures at his side, their attention wholly focused on Lorcan.

Lorcan’s words ‘I just talked to the Cosmos god…’ rang in the air as she slid out of Adriel’s arms and stood next to me, the shock evident on her face.

We’d been completely focused on Lorcan, the magic surrounding her, the pain she was in—that only the slightest sound of Malcroy shifting had alerted us to his appearance.

“You,” Lorcan hissed, looking not at Malcroy, but at the humanoid figures. “What are you doing here?”

“We told you that you can’t win—we are everywhere.

” The voice came from all of them, but also none of them.

It radiated from all directions, as if carried by the wind, and I watched out of the corner of my eye as Cormac and his bonded shielded Maggie, one of the women covering her ears as they slipped inside. It was obvious where this was heading.

“Who are they?” I asked her softly.

“These are the minions of the world eaters.” The sky cracked in response to her words as everything began to click together, especially Malcroy’s silence. He stood there like a puppet, almost unresponsive except for his dark eyes obsessively tracking Lorcan.

“They’re working with Malcroy?” Draven demanded.

“No, worse than that,” Adriel said as I nodded, Draven letting out a grunt of realization a moment before understanding flashed across Lorcan’s face.

“This is how the bastard appeared so powerful,” I murmured.

“Malcroy was never a threat on his own—they made him seem untouchable. They encouraged this.” Which is why we hadn’t been able to fucking track him and explained how they had gotten through our damn wards.

It also made sense that a power surge, like Lorcan connecting to the Cosmos god, would have been a massive beacon to these fuckers.

“We felt you connect with him,” they said as one stepped forward. “Surely you don’t believe the lies of a dying irrelevant god, siren.”

Lorcan stiffened. “It doesn’t matter what I believe—what I know is that you are the problem here. You have brought this fear, this trepidation into our home. Why? Why would you use him as a pawn? What fucking purpose would that serve?”

There was no answer, but I knew. I fucking knew. Zander spoke up. “Because if you were occupied and scared, it would keep you distracted.”

“We don’t suffer the same afflictions as you in this battle. We aren’t burdened by empathy or understanding. There is an end to all of this; you just need to accept it. There is no point in fighting it, siren.”

“Except there clearly is.” Lorcan put up her chin. “Because if there wasn’t, you wouldn’t be working so damn hard to stop me.”

In a sweep of a mere second, one of the humanoids appeared in front of Lorcan, set on intimidating her.

My magic reacted instinctively, collapsing around the creature in emerald smoke.

A guttural cry escaped the cocoon of suffering, and when my magic withdrew, I stared at the white puddle on the ground, satisfied—but hardly sated—with the violence.

Then, to my great fucking dissatisfaction, the puddle bubbled over and the creature reformed. White tendrils shot out from its arms toward Lorcan, and I threw myself forward to intercept—the back yard turning into a battlefield of chaos in mere seconds.

It wasn’t often that I found myself in battle, but I’d been trained for exactly that. With calculating strikes, I blocked out the rest of the yard, focused only on my ability to deliver death—or at least mass slaughter.

Malcroy hid behind a wall of the faceless figures as they expanded, their force growing in size. I sliced at each with equal vigor, a sword of pure magic gripped in my hand. But no matter how many times my smoke cut them down, they still came back.

My power became angry, snapping out with the slice of my sword as I blasted through the yard, trying to beat down their growing numbers.

The air grew hotter than before, but every time one of them reformed it felt like a cold blast ran across my skin.

A feeling of dread and forewarning—the fear of being overrun by them—grew.

“We have to do something else!” Adriel called out, experiencing the same problem. Draven fought by our side, and Zander was guarding Lorcan.

I had no idea what the figures’ goal was here, if it was simply to take Lorcan or to scare her, but neither of those things was going to fucking happen.

This was Lorcan’s safe place—her home—and anyone who brought destruction to it would be butchered.

“My violin!” Lorcan said to Zander. “Shit, it’s right in the kitchen?—”

The doors were thrown open as Cormac’s magic slammed forward, causing the white humanoids to stumble. The air grew more frenzied and panicked, and I realized with satisfaction that they were afraid of Lorcan—afraid of her violin and her music.

“Surround Lorcan! Keep a barrier!” I shouted as we moved back, keeping Lorcan close to the house. The water in the pool began to vibrate and wave as a singular note sang through the air.

What happened next could only be described as pure cosmic magic.

The humanoid figures grew frenzied, fighting harder and with more vigor to reach her, but their ability to reform slowed.

Our magic cut them down easier and with a much more satisfying result.

Lorcan’s music, a song filled with emotion—joy, pain, and a radiating sense of truth—set my chest on fire with determination.

The song hit a climactic swell of celestial energy, and a scream of pain came from the humanoid figures as, in unison, they melted into puddles. As if the frequency of her composition had broken them down on a molecular level.

Within seconds they laid in liquid form throughout the yard, the scared whimper of Senator Malcroy the only sound as Lorcan’s beautiful song cut off.

Awe replaced my rage as I realized just how fucking powerful her art was.

I turned to look at her as she stared down at her violin, tears covering her face and pride radiating through our bond.

I wanted to hold her in my arms, to tell her how proud I was of her…

“Please don’t hurt me! They made me do it.” Malcroy’s words cut off as I appeared before him, wrapping my hand around his throat and nearly crushing it. He gasped as I stared at him, not buying his absolute bullshit.

“You do not get to exist in her world. Not after the pain you’ve caused. Not after the torment you put her through.”

The low rumble of my voice erased the facade of fear from his face, and his last words were filled with celebration. “My son was weak in the end. He didn’t complete his purpose—but I did. I fucking did.”

I crushed his trachea.

I didn’t use my magic—I didn’t need to. The sound of cracking filled me with pleasure as I watched the life fade from his eyes, his fear—genuine this time—returning. With my other hand I broke through his chest cavity with one punch, my fingers wrapping around his heart.

Smoke leaked from my fingers and crawled across the vital organ, seeping into it and rotting it from the inside out. His eyes went cloudy, and a silent scream left his mouth before his heart stopped beating, his crimson life force soaking my hand.

Malcroy’s death didn’t satisfy me though. It was only step one.

My gaze moved skyward, to the dark cosmos and the approaching world eaters. There was only one thing that could fully satisfy me, and that was eradicating the threat that stood between Lorcan and true freedom.

“Desmond, I need you to look at me,” Lorcan’s voice was a soft tune as my lips traced the side of her throat. Didn’t she realize that I was looking at her? She was everywhere and everything. My arms tightened around her from where she sat in my lap on a pool chair.

“It may not be worth it right now,” Adriel cautioned. “He wouldn’t be much help in this state, to be honest.”

“We’ve got it handled,” Draven said. “Seeing them again—seeing him again, even to dispose of him, might make him lose it.”

“It was a rather brutal way to kill him,” Zander mused, almost sounding entertained by the concept.

Had it been? I felt like ‘justified’ was the correct word.

“Desi.” Lorcan’s concern finally had me lifting my head, and at her expression I leaned forward to brush my nose with hers. My hands tightened further on my woman when I saw Adriel try to move toward her.

My friend grunted and sat back. “This is fucking bullshit.”

“I mean,” Lorcan teased, “Desi isn’t exactly known for his rational responses.”

My response had been rational—to me. “He deserved so much more,” I said roughly, trying to keep the rage at bay.

“What he said at the end about his son…do you think he meant that Toris was always under their control?”

Adriel answered with what we’d all put together. “I think that they found Toris easy to encourage and manipulate. Whether that was before you two met or not, I’m not sure.”

Lorcan tensed, a low wounded sound coming from her throat. “So they were okay with me being…beat and raped, because it kept me fucking occupied? Distracted from my future destiny? Is that a fucking joke?”

“Your pain kept you compliant and easy to control, in their mind,” Adriel confirmed.

I was close to the edge of my sanity; possibly had already fallen over it.

My breaths were short and my grip on Lorcan was bruising.

If I’d wanted to obliterate the dark ones before, the need was almost unmanageable now.

The malicious cruelty, the indifference to human suffering was nearly unbelievable.

Lorcan’s hand was soft as she ran it over me, as if she needed to soothe me and not the other way around her. Her words, though, were cold and hard. “I don’t care what I have to do—what I have to sacrifice. Never again. They will never be allowed to do this again.”

Lorcan’s resolve echoed between us, and I could feel through our group bond that she was cemented in her determination—our support an echoed war cry. She wouldn’t stand alone in this.

The door to the back yard suddenly flung open as the glass shattered.

“What the fuck happened?” Rhett demanded as his, Dean’s, and Cash’s power rushed outward.

“Shit.”

A small smile tugged on my lips at Adriel’s curse. He and Zander thought that my reaction made me a fucking nutcase, but it’d be nothing compared to the Reid brothers’.