Iniquitous (The Marked #3)(18)
“You’re joking, right?” I looked at Dominic again but he just sat there expressionless. “You want me to what, join your little hive? Be the permanent blood donor that keeps you all protected? No thanks, pal!”
“That’s one option, though not a very appealing one, I’m sure.” He titled his head to the side, his eyes burning holes into me as though he were trying to infiltrate my mind. “Or,” he said, holding his finger up, “You could Turn…walk amongst us as our equal.”
“Turn?” A burst of nervous laughter pealed out of me. “That is never going to happen. I’d rather die!”
“Well, yes. That’s precisely the predicament you’ve found yourself in, isn’t it?” He leaned forward onto the table, his hard eyes weighing heavy on me. “Use your head, child. You have the ability to make all of your problems go away in one glorious night. To be stronger than you’ve ever imagined. To become the hunter and not the hunted. To live…forever.”
I shook my head so hard I nearly gave myself a migraine. I didn’t want to hear this. He was trying to put wicked things into my head. To turn me against the only world I’d ever known, and I didn’t want any part of it.
“I’m not Turning, Engel. Not now or ever. You can keep me prisoner for as long as you want. The Order and The Dark Legion can hunt me until the end of my days. I will never be like you. I will never give up my humanity.”
“Tsk, tsk. What a pity to see such potential wasted on the young.” Something darkened his eyes as he continued to watch me. “Perhaps if your mother were around to better guide you, you’d be able to see this as the gift that it is.” He pushed back the chair and slowly stood. “She certainly did.”
The blood drained from my face. “What are you talking about?” I asked, my hands gripping both sides of the table to keep myself from toppling over.
Calm down, angel. You’re spiraling, said Dominic to my mind.
“What did you just say about my mother?” I repeated, louder this time, my nails digging into the wood.
“I think you heard me just fine. Whether you choose to listen is entirely up to you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? What do you know about her? Answer me!” I shouted, slamming my hands on the table as I rose from my chair.
Dominic quickly sprang up beside me, snagging my elbow as he tried to pull me back down to my chair.
“Get off me! He knows something about her!” I roared into Dominic’s face as I pulled my arm loose from his grip and snatched up a dish from the table. He pulled my arm back just as the china left my fingers, throwing off my aim by at least two feet. The plate smashed into pieces on the floor beside Engel’s feet.
“Enjoy the rest of your evening,” said Engel as he straightened out his shirt like he hadn’t just dropped a bomb over my life. “Take her back to her cage until she learns how to behave herself.”
8. PRETTY LITTLE LIAR
My adrenaline was still surging when Dominic and Maz returned me to the dungeons. They left immediately afterwards on Engel’s orders, neither one saying a word to me. And I couldn’t care less. I was glad to see them go—both of them. I needed some time on my own to make sense out of everything that had been said tonight, to let it sink in, and I couldn’t do that with Dominic hanging around in the shadows of my consciousness, distracting me.
Always distracting me.
And Engel? Always tormenting me.
That twisted son of a bitch was taunting me with something. Something about my mother. And of course, just like with everyone else in my life, the secrets he was keeping from me were a game to be played.
Only I didn’t have a playing piece.
I was powerless, completely alone, and standing on the outside of my own freaking life again.
“You stupid coward! DAMN YOU ALL!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I fell to my knees on the dirty concrete floor. Tears stung the corner of my eyes, but they weren’t tears of sadness or self-pity. They were tears of anger—of unbridled rage that prickled through my veins like a roaring tsunami.
My palms burned like fire and my heart was racing at dangerous speeds. My anger was raw and it was coiling and clawing inside of me like a vicious bird, screaming at me to release it. I needed an outlet, someone to unleash my fury on or I was going to self-implode into a million unfixable pieces right here in the gallows of a dead man’s dungeon.
Faces of my enemies twisted through my mind, taunting me with their crimes and their lies, laughing at me as I struggled to make sense out of their senseless riddles. My hand balled into a fist—shaking, pulsating—cracking like I had on the inside. There was no more space inside to keep in it. No more place for me to hide it.
I crashed my fist against the solid concrete slab beneath me. My knuckles immediately split open as crimson liquid peppered the floor around me, littering the ground with my pain, but it felt damn good. I stared down at my blood—my devil blood—and then punched the ground again, and then again. I wailed on it like a madwoman let out of her straitjacket, stopping only when my tears finally ran dry and my hand stopped feeling pain altogether.
Only when my fuel dissipated into fumes was I able to pull myself away from the bloodbath.
Dazed and eerily calm, I crawled back into my corner and sat there, stunned and unmoving until Dominic came back down to see me later that night.