Marked By Masks and Secrets (Everlasting Possession #1)

12

KYLO

I didn’t let Evie out of my fucking sight the whole way home. I’d kept calm in front of her, carefully tucking my true identity away.

The truth was, I’d never been more enraged.

Not only because she’d been attacked—a born vampire had laid hands on my perfect angel—but also because of what I’d witnessed just before the born had dragged her back into that enclave.

That sorry excuse for a man, Evie’s incompetent, selfish boyfriend, had seen the vampire confront her.

He’d stood there, peeking around the street corner after following her out of the restaurant. He’d seen the vampire threaten her, and at the first hint that he’d been spotted by the born man, he took off in the other direction.

Like a pathetic, sniveling coward.

It was more than likely he’d gone in search of help. But he’d done it quietly. Carefully. He’d chosen to prioritize self-preservation over helping Evie immediately, by whatever means necessary. Lest he stain his finely tailored suit.

Little did he know, it was failing to protect Evie that had truly sealed his fate.

It wasn’t until Evie was back to her princess estate that I felt my chest begin to untighten. From behind a shadow glamour and an impressive willow, I watched her collapse in her garden. She sunk to the grass, surrounded by flowers and herbs, a stone bird bath to her left and hovering witch lights above.

One of her light blue sleeves slipped off her shoulder as she cried. Her shoulders shook. Sobs escaped her, a cacophony of emotions spilling from some dammed up, secret place. In the sounds of her whimpers, I heard my own pain. My family’s pain. My clan’s. This city’s. This entire damned realm’s.

I wanted to scoop her into my arms and hold her tight to my chest. I wanted to taste the saltiness of her tears on my tongue. I wanted to shove my blood down her petite throat so I would know exactly where she was at all times. I wanted to mark and claim her, to prevent her from ever being touched by another man again.

I was unraveling. Possessed. Consumed.

It was a sickness, a deep obsession that had me pierced between its talons.

I would know her. Every part of her. The secrets she’d buried, the dreams she feared were too big for this world, every last yearning and desire hidden beneath her angelic mask. I would pry each piece of her out into the open. I would consume every last drop of her the way she fucking consumed me.

But first, I had an execution to attend to.

I found Evie’s ex-boyfriend halfway between her estate and downtown Etherdale. He was running his hands through his hair, visibly shaken. I imagined that by the time he’d found and brought back reinforcements, Evie had already been on her way home.

Perhaps he thought she was dead.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t much care what he thought or what had happened after he’d abandoned Evie.

Nothing about this person mattered. Not anymore.

It took little effort to flex just a drop of my rage, snatching him off the street, stuffing shadow in his mouth to gag him, and dragging him into the cemetery to the left. I threw him roughly against a tomb, letting his head smack into the stone.

His confusion transformed into terror, now facing Etherdale’s judge and executioner.

I was the clan leader of the Masked Order, shrouded in shadows that hungered for righteous violence.

My mask was in place, my tattoos proudly displayed.

The man—Jonathon? Jeffrey? Jason?

Fuck knew what his name was.

The man stared up at me in utter horror, shaking as he writhed against my shadows holding him in place.

“Would you like to know a secret?”

The boring narcissist stared up at me in nearly a glare, but not quite, as he seemed too terrified to display anger. His lip wobbled.

Sure would be nice if someone heroic was around to help him.

I casually reached for my favorite dagger, a beautiful silver blade with an onyx hilt connected to my magick. Tiny sigils glowed under the moonlight.

I spun it around in my hand as if it were a toy. I let the silence stretch, listening to his heart hammer fast and hard.

When Evie had been attacked, her heart had sounded similar, at first. Then it had slowed, as if she’d given up. As if she’d lost all hope of being protected long ago.

It snapped something inside of me.

I crouched down in front of him. My shadows were still gagging him and holding him down as he squirmed. He was the perfect captive audience.

“My secret is that I wanted to kill you from the moment I laid eyes on you,” I said casually, as if discussing my favorite way to prepare steak. I dragged the blade up his chest to the center of his sternum with feather-light pressure. When he whimpered like a child, I grinned. “I resisted the urge, of course. Because I’m a man , not a boy wearing a man’s suit.”

Beautiful anger flashed in his eyes, for the briefest moment, as I took a swipe at his comically fragile ego.

“I could say that it was because I knew immediately you weren’t good for Evie, due to my keen judge of character. And that would be true. But it is equally true that I wanted to kill you merely for touching her. For speaking to her. For thinking you have even the tiniest of claim on her body, her heart, her soul.”

His words were muffled nonsense against the gag, but I knew instinctively that he’d finally started to plead. To barter. He was likely offering Evie up on a silver platter and vowing never to touch her again, so long as I let him live.

“The thing about me is…”

In a flash of movement, I had the blade pressed up against his throat. He went perfectly still, and the smell of piss filled the air.

“…I don’t mind being unhinged. In fact,” I said, drawing the words out as if I were savoring a fine meal. I dragged my eyes down to his damp black pants and back up to his eyes. I jutted out my bottom lip, as if with pity. “I’m really rather fond of my insanity.”

My shadows pressed up against his chest and neck now, starving him for air as he gasped violently. Just like Evie had struggled to breathe when the born had his grimy hands around her throat.

Rage tore through me at that mental image. My jaw ticked. “You can afford a touch of madness when you’re also highly effective. And rest assured, when it comes to taking care of what belongs to me, there is no one more attentive, focused, and thorough.”

I let the gag drop, if only out of curiosity.

The fragile man’s lip curled. “King Earle is going to obliterate your kind from the realm. As soon as you come out from your cowardly hiding, you will be annihilated. You’re nothing but rebellious adolescents,” he stammered as his voice shook with fear and his lungs screamed for air. “You’re a delusional fucking freak! ”

When a droplet of his spit landed on my cheek, my grin turned vicious.

I laughed. “You are very bold for a man who just pissed himself.”

Rage twisted his ugly face into something uglier. “If you want Evie, you can have her. I’m no longer interested in her, anyway. Your band of criminals needs resources, no? Well, I have plenty. Spare me, and you can have whatever you want.”

“Johnny, you have not been listening to a word I’ve said, have you? Which tracks, given what I’ve observed about you.”

“Johnny? My name is?—”

I slit his throat. Blood sprayed and then ran down his neck and chest in a flood.

“Don’t care.”

Refusing to waste blood, no matter how unappetizing, I pulled back my shadows and fed.

When I was finished, I stood. I wiped the blood from my mouth and stared at the blood-and-piss-soaked man at my feet. “I don’t need weaker men to give me what I want. I am perfectly capable of taking it myself.”

A pleasurable, satisfied feeling washed over me. I flexed my hands and inhaled deeply.

Blood not only sustained vampires and kept us from mummifying, but it also fueled our power and magick. And given my station, I needed more blood than most.

I was the most powerful vampire I’d ever encountered. Princeton, my maker, wasn’t sure why some turned were born more powerful than others, or why certain gifts appeared. He frequently experimented with different sigils and spells in attempts to control how new recruits developed after the turning ritual.

But in the end, it was ultimately up to the gods and the spirit dimension how each individual was reborn.

Something inside me had found a home in the shadows—and the shadows had made a home in me. It was a symbiotic relationship built on a mutual desire for power and supremacy. A thirst for creation and destruction, two sides of the same coin.

Now, my shadows and I wanted her.

My little blonde angel.

Who was I to question such an undeniable, inexplicable gravitational pull? My intuition was never wrong. That was something my clan was keenly aware of.

Protecting Evie meant I needed to dispose of this body carefully. I was going to make it seem like he’d left Etherdale. I had no interest in unnecessarily harming her.

The threat to Evie’s safety had been eliminated. The fact that a man could no longer touch what belonged to me was merely an added bonus.

I descended the steep, spiral stairs bathed in darkness to the underground. Beneath the bustling streets of Etherdale lay a sprawling, hidden world.

To the mortals and the born, only a dangerous labyrinth of catacombs—mass graves from a failed mortal uprising hundreds of years ago—lay under city center. Tales of the harm that befell any soul who entered the catacombs were useful to ward off curious eyes.

Then, of course, our actual wards, spells, traps, and protections were added barriers. Because beyond the catacombs lay a system of hidden libraries, studies, training rooms, and social clubs.

The mortal loyalists and born were under the false impression my clan was merely a nuisance, a small collection of disorganized, impassioned flies buzzing in their ears.

Jonathon had summarized it well. We were viewed as adolescents. Merely a secret society of youth on Etherdale University’s campus, another failed uprising in the making.

Those outside of the Masked Order had no idea the numbers we’d amassed, nor how many years we’d been steadily building, planning, and plotting. They were unaware of the allies we’d secured in Etherdale and beyond. They were blissfully ignorant about the parts of the city we controlled above ground, nor did they know of the city we’d built beneath.

They had not a single. Fucking. Clue.

And that would remain true until the moment I decided otherwise.

At the bottom of the stairs, a long hallway came to life. An onyx sigil on my upper biceps burned, and torches erupted with white flame on both walls. As I passed through the wards, my essence was recognized, my presence welcomed by the magick of the underground.

Through the door at the end of the next hall, a din of chatter and laughter could be heard.

I pushed into the room, where my inner circle and several high-ranking officials were gathered for a debrief. Witch lights bathed us in warm light. To distract from the eerie nature of existing so far beneath ground, the space was adorned with tasteful décor, potted plants, plush furnishings. Thorny vines with blooming purple and black flowers that crawled up the stone walls.

The group went silent when I strode into the room and walked straight for the small dais in the center.

Harmony stood to my right, and my scariest comrade, Blade, stood to my left. Blade was easily the largest among us, both in height and in width. His bulging muscles stretched every article of clothing to its limit. His beard was light brown with auburn notes, the same as his cropped hair. He winked at me with a roguish grin before crossing his arms, accentuating his size even further, and putting on his mask of pure intimidation.

Harmony raised a dark brow with a smirk and pointed at her cheek. I lifted a hand to my own cheek, finding a dried speck of blood I’d missed during cleanup. Oops.

Blade and Harmony were my two closest and oldest friends. They’d been with me since the beginning, when we were merely human vampire hunters.

My entire clan was loyal, but there was something transcendent about the bond I shared with the first round of turned. They were the humans who courageously took the plunge with me, allowing Princeton to rebirth them into vampires with no guarantee he would be successful. We’d essentially been his test subjects, and it was a miracle we survived the initial torturous iteration of the turning ritual before it had been perfected.

I looked out over my most effective, powerful vampires, and they stared back with equal respect.

“Before we go through regional updates and discuss the matter of the new recruitment curriculum, I wanted to deliver news from Zander in the Isolde region,” I said, my voice ringing with power as tendrils of shadow circled my feet. “The Servants of Lillian cult is growing. This is no longer an issue of fanatical, brainwashed witches in rural areas. The ethos is evolving into something infinitely more dangerous, and it’s crucial to the growing slave trade.”

Servants of Lillian was a religious movement that had gone in and out of fashion over the centuries. At its core, it was a cult masterfully created by the born in order to justify mortal slaves and the marriage of mortals, often children, to wealthy born elites. These witches shunned their goddess Selena, choosing instead to dedicate themselves to the Dark Goddess, Lillian, from whom the born vampires, succubi, and incubi were descended.

Their myths and traditions were a vile justification and methodology for grooming innocents to serve their born vampire masters. There was even word from Valentin that Rune and his clan might be facing a similar resurgence among the born side of Aristelle.

“There are whispers of migration and infiltration. This city is full of young, idealistic mortals from rural lands. They’re the most coveted meal for born scum. If these blasphemous witches don’t already lurk among us, they will soon. We must prioritize their total elimination.”