Chapter 6
Vaelenor
My parents are grade-A, top-shelf assholes.
I know most kids think that about their parents at one point or another, but I have literal proof.
Proof that’s currently trying to blow out of my joints in real time.
“Godsdamnit, Vae. Get yourself together.” Gavran glares at me over his shoulder. “Take a deep breath. Reign it in. You’re no help to anyone flying apart at the seams.”
“Literally,” Daxen pipes up from the comms unit in my ear.
Big fucking help he is. Like I don’t know what happens when my Bone Curse activates. Like it isn’t already the most obnoxious part of my life. Even lurking in the background, it’s a constant pain in my ass.
Pun not intended.
“Yeah, guys. Got it. Appreciate the play-by-play of my imminent destruction. Maybe less talking and more trying to keep those fuckers off of me so I can try not to explode,” I snarl.
Under the smart-ass tone, my anxiety is hitting hard.
My fingers clench around my sweat-slicked steel, limbs spasming while I fight to pull my shit together.
My breaths are coming too fast. Each one is rough and uncontrolled.
With every exhale that passes my parted lips, I fight to leash my fraying instincts, but I know things are about to go sideways, fast.
I rarely lose control like this. It’s been ages since I last felt that low, vibrating hum under my skin that signaled the Curse’s activation. Years since those sharp little blades detached themselves from my bones to rip out of my skin and go flying like the world’s deadliest confetti.
Once that starts, those blades will rip through the air searching for a home in anything with a pulse. Nothing within a two-hundred-foot radius will be safe. Doesn’t matter if they’re friend or foe.
And why the hell am I suddenly losing my shit tonight?
Oh, that’s right.
Because Daxen, who has his happy ass planted behind his screens back at HQ, failed to catch the entire swarm of Deadwalkers holed up in this warehouse at the edge of town.
Just fucking squatting here like a bunch of NPC’s whose programming glitched out.
Seriously. They’re low-level, which means they’re basically mindless fodder for the Severed’s army, but they were just hanging out like fucking rent was free.
Not even guarding anything.
Pointless. And just my fucking luck.
Riven, a friend of ours who owns a gym and a network of informants so large I don’t think even he knows who all of them are, called Gav and me in while we were on patrol. He told us there’d been rumors of people creeping around this area by the docks. So naturally, we came to check it out.
And got ambushed.
To be fair, as much as I want to blame Dax for not catching these assholes in time to warn us, that isn’t why my Curse went off. It isn’t fucking helping anything, but it wasn’t the catalyst.
The cataylst was the scent.
I caught it as soon as I walked in. It lingered in the air, barely noticeable; the echo of an echo. One whiff of that lavender, ozone, and amber, and everything in me locked up. My mind went black, and then it was like I’d been reprogrammed.
Only one word flashed through my mind:
Protect, protect, protect.
I roared. Actually fucking roared. Like Aragorn preparing to charge the Black Gate with his Main Character energy turned up to a thousand.
I haven’t roared since I was a preteen Alpha who just found out his scent glands worked.
By the way my instincts went off the rails, I thought I was scenting an Omega on steroids. Or like… two-thousand Omegas in heat. That’s the only thing that could kick my protective instincts into overdrive like this.
And Fates… it smells so fucking good. I want to roll in it. Lick it off the warehouse floor and bathe in it.
But it isn’t Omega. It isn’t biological arousal. I know what it is and it’s…
So much worse.
It’s magic. Ancient magic. The kind of old magic that seeps under your skin and makes you addicted.
The shit I’ve only felt one other time in my life.
When, as a child, my parents tricked me into the blood ritual that gave me this fucking Bone Curse that turned me into a highly sought-after, extremely rare assassin whose very bones are a weapon.
Now, one of those bones is about to rip out of the base of my spine and stab me in the ass.
Which, considering getting cursed wasn’t my choice to begin with, seems wildly unfair.
Thanks, Mom and Dad. Fucking 0/10. Do not recommend.
My fangs are throbbing, threatening to drop all the way.
Sweat beads on my forehead and drips down my temples, and it feels like my spine is about to be pulled out of my neck.
I groan, bending over and planting my hands on my knees.
There’s a low, primal sound deep in my chest crawling up my throat without my permission.
Again.
My limbs shake so hard I can barely stand. Before I know what’s happening, my back bows and I fall to the ground, slamming my knees against the cold concrete.
Part of me wants to lie down on the cool stone. It’s freezing against my flushed skin and feels so fucking good.
The vibration intensifies until it’s all I can feel and—
Son of a bitch.
I’m about to—
“Get down!”
The roar stuck in my throat finally escapes. The deep, feral sound rolls through the warehouse.
Gav doesn’t ask questions. With practiced moves, he drops the two Deadwalkers he’s grappling with and dives, disappearing behind a large metal wall where a fucking kitchenette of all things is set up.
Thank the Fates. He’s safe.
The moronic, half-dead psychos surrounding us aren’t so lucky.
I scream as my body bows in half. Burning, white-hot agony shoots through every one of my nerve endings, starting in my chest and working through my arms, legs, and back. Even my Fatesdamned skull isn’t spared this special brand of hell.
I’m being ripped apart from the inside out. Pain sears through my limbs that’s so all-consuming, I can’t do anything but scream and pray for it to end.
My vision blacks out, like my nerves caught fire and decided to burn the world to ash around me.
I fucking hate this. I hate how it owns me. How, even after decades of not succumbing, the moment the Curse surges back, the pain and memories rip through me like a gunshot wound that’s never healed.
My parents swear that if I work with my Curse, I can learn to control it.
Well, they’re full of shit. Especially if they think I’d listen to a fucking word they say.
I’m like this because of them. This shit is their fault. I never asked for this. Never wanted it. Never gave a fuck about a family legacy of creating the only known Marrowblade Assassins in the world. Never gave a shit about the money or prestige the assassins brought to our house.
I don’t want this shit now, and I didn’t want it when I was a nine-year-old boy.
Mom and Pop didn’t give a shit what I wanted, though. I’m one of fourteen children— a feat so insane in this world that no one bothers to ask my parents how the fuck they’re able to conceive so often when most couples can only sire two or three children max over the span of centuries.
The vampires consider my family’s blessing to be a blessing for the entire race as a whole, so they let them get away with foisting bullshit like life-long curses using illegal dark magic no one else understands on their kids before they’re even old enough to hold a sword.
I never hate them more than I do in moments like this. When I’m on the ground of some shitty warehouse by the docks, lying in fuck knows what, covered in sweat and blood and gore and screaming for this fucking pain to just… stop.
There’s no taming this. It’s not a weapon. Not a gun, a sword, or a spear. It’s nothing but the raw, naked power of destruction carved from my very marrow that brings death to everyone around me.
It’s wild and untamed, and no matter what I’ve done or try to do, it’s uncontrollable.
It’s a fucking liability.
I’m a fucking liability.
My body warms, growing hotter and hotter as I scream and writhe in pain on the dirty floor. The pain comes to a crescendo as my skin splits along invisible seams. Shoulders, spine, skull, ribs, limbs—it doesn’t discriminate. My stomach rolls at the sight and I close my eyes, unable to face it.
Blades, two to three inches long and sharp as sin, punch through my muscle and skin before tearing from my body with a wet, sucking sound that has bile surging up my throat.
Once free, the blades tear through the air like a thousand screaming arrows.
The sounds of flesh slicing apart follow, accompanied by the terrified screams of dying Deadwalkers.
Their screams blend perfectly with my own. A fucked up melody of destruction.
Hundreds of razor-sharp blades home in on anything around me like fucking heat-seeking missiles. They cut through skin, muscle, and bone the way a hot knife cuts through butter.
Blood mists through the air in sheets, an endless summer storm of gore.
Twenty-something Severed packed into this warehouse means a lot of fucking blood.
Through the haze of pain, I wish whatever team gets called in to clean this mess all the luck in the world. I sure as shit won’t be doing it. Not when I’m the one who did all the killing—intentional or not.
The good news is, after less than two minutes, the Deadwalkers are down.
The bad news is, so am I.
I collapse to my side with what I think is a yell, but is actually a gurgle.
Breathing hurts. My lungs are rattling like they’re trying to escape from my ribs, and my brain feels like someone’s wrapped their fist around it and is squeezing until it pops.
My wounds are closing already, thanks to my vampire nature as well as the only perk of this shitty Curse, but I’m covered in sweat, blood, and other substances I really don’t want to look at too closely.
The warehouse reeks of iron and death. The cacophony of screams has died out, but the sound still rings in my ears. The air in here is so thick I’m damn near choking on it.