I glance at the bathroom door and exhale as Monika steps through the doorway, the tension in the back of my neck dissolving. It takes her a moment to find me with her gaze, and when she does, she smiles at me and I tense up all over again.
“Hey,” she says, “is it working?”
“Is what working?” I respond, confused.
“The Tunnel of Lights? Keeping people away from you?”
She blinks at me, and I notice she’s put on more lipstick. Gloss. Whatever shade it is enhances her natural one. Darker around the edges, pink in the center. Her eyes are delicately rimmed in mascara, making her naturally curly eyelashes appear thick. Her hair is cut to her chin—not a millimeter longer, not a hair out of place—and falls there in perfect waves. She has light bangs that cut across her forehead and frame her face. Her eyebrows are thick and perfectly plucked. The red lights from the lanterns bounce over her curves, making me hungry. I swallow hard.
“Hmm,” I answer.
My jaw is clenched tight, my temples blazing with hatred as I’m hit with a terrible realization: I want to fuck her. I want to do terrible things to her body. I want to wreck her perfect makeup and tousle her perfect hair. Her dress is far, far too low cut for me not to want to tear it into so many pieces she’ll have to leave my apartment in absolutely nothing or stay there forever.
I never fuck women who know what I’m like, preferring to maintain the illusion that I’m nice and polite and charming, even in the bedroom, and I’ve never had the urge to fuck an employee. I rarely want to fuck humans. Humans, by nature, disgust me.
But ... I’m not disgusted by her.
I reach out and lash my hand around her neck. She gasps, jolting in my grip. I can feel the way her throat works, and the cords of muscle there tense ... but then relax a moment afterward. I narrow my gaze. What is she playing at? She knows me but she’s not afraid. And I hate her for that.
I hate you,I go to tell her, but those aren’t the words I whisper when I open my mouth. “Your skin is so soft,” I snarl, “I could tear through it with no effort at all.”
Her breath is coming in shorter, hotter bursts. “It’ll make it easier for Bia’s creatures to devour me, then, when I get left behind next time.”
I take a step to close the gap between us, bringing our bodies close. Too close. “I heard what those guys were saying to and about you. You really think they deserved to live?”
She scoffs, still so unafraid. That fearlessness will be what kills her one day, but will it be by my hand? I’m no longer sure. “I don’t think they’d have won any Nobel Peace Prizes, but I definitely don’t think they deserved to go down likethat.”
“Should I have just killed them myself? Ended their suffering with a quick electrical pulse to the brain?” I couldn’t quite stimulate enough electricity to lobotomize someone with one internal attack—I am still missing the power that the Marduk has to corrupt from within—butMonika doesn’t know that. I give her throat a little zap, which makes her gasp in a way that does things to me.
“I wouldn’t have put it past you,” she whispers.
I lean over her a little farther, forcing her body to arch back. Light trickles across the bridge of her nose and reflects in her glossy eyes. They’re so dark. I can’t make out her pupils—if she’s hating this or if she’s excited. She should feel the former, but all I feel is the latter radiating from her hot fucking body. I didn’t find her attractive before I knew her, but now, looking at her, I can’t remember any other woman I’ve ever seen.
“They’d have deserved it. Like most of your fellow humans.” I’m revealing too much in trying to unseat her, but she takes it all in stride.
“People aren’t all good or all bad. They’re a sum total of all their weird and wicked parts.”
“And what are your wicked parts?”
She smiles. Her eyes are so fucking round. “Few and far between. Not like yours. You’re wicked down to the bone.”
I’m starting to get erect. I feel my cock stiffening in my pants, and want nothing more than to punish her for the discomfort she’s causing me. “You’ll pay for that,” I vow.
And then this woman says the last thing I would have ever expected. She all but pants, “Please, Taranis ...”
One of her knees buckles, and I’ve got no choice but to let her fall or catch her. I catch her around the waist, my other hand tightening around her neck. Her eyes roll back, and I shift forward, searing our bodies together at the hips.
My jaw drops, my eyes widen, and in the next split second, I see a new color they’ve never turned before reflected in miniature in Monika’s glossy eyes.Blue.Like the sky.
Her lips part. I stare down at them. Feel the pulse in her neck go wild.
“Monika, is that you?”
An annoying fucking voice beheads the moment with a single strike.
Monika jerks in my grasp, ripping herself gracelessly from my grip and stumbling until she finds her own feet. “Oh, wow. Cynthia, hi! You ... you look fantastic,” Monika gasps, flustered. The words sound forced and strained in ways she didn’t sound with me when we were debating her death and when I was debating whether or not to force her to her knees right here, surrounded by so many lights.
I reach out and steady her by the elbow, but she quickly yanks her arm away from me. Electricity zings up my entire arm, causing me pain at the shoulder socket. The electricity isn’t mine—I mean, it wasn’t caused by me. I frown down at my own hand, troubled by the strange color the red lights have turned my skin. My brown tone looks purple. So does Monika’s, though in a darker shade. That’s when I realize she’s put space between us, like she doesn’t want me there.
