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“I’m not going to kill you,” Knox told him. “Even a long, painful death would be merciful, considering all you’ve done. And I’ve never been merciful, have I?”
“Oh, Jolene will want her shot at you, too,” Harper told the siblings. “And my uncle Richie, Heidi’s dad. Oh yeah, he’ll want some quality time with you both. Hey, Knox, we don’t have to take these fuckers straight to the Chamber, do we? I don’t want to kill the bitch, but I do intend to kick her skanky fucking ass. It’s been a long time coming.”
Torturing her would be fun, sure, but it wouldn’t be enough. Harper needed the bitch to feel defeated. Needed her fear. Not fear of pain that Harper would inflict, but fear of Harper herself. She also needed to vent every bit of the helplessness she’d felt when they’d kept her separated from her son.
“No, we don’t have to take them straight away,” replied Knox. He liked the idea of toying with his prey for a while. “There’s no harm in you and I having a little fun first, baby.”
“Excellent. Why don’t you—”
Alethea stomped her foot like a kid having a tantrum, which would have been funny if the ground beneath Harper’s feet didn’t suddenly give away. Harper threw out her arms, swaying. A crack spiderwebbed along the ground in front of her and Knox, who grabbed her arm and pulled her backwards as the cracks widened. Her body shook, and her teeth clattered as tremors bucked the earth. The earthquake seemed contained within the circle of flames, as only the trees inside the area swayed and cracked.
Knox raised a brow at Alethea. “You don’t think a few cracks in the ground will truly be enough to keep us away from you, do you?”
The ground beneath their feet settled, and Alethea narrowed her eyes. A strange haze then rippled the air, blurring objects and muting colors. The trees began swaying again, but there was no earthquake this time. Instead, a harsh wind built around them, tossing Harper’s ponytail, flapping her clothes, and sending leaves skittering along the ground.
She planted her feet wide, standing firm against the biting, buffeting wind. She had to squint and raise a hand to her face to guard her eyes. It howled and moaned as it rushed around them. Trees creaked, branches splintered, and loose leaves hit her face and arms—it was truly surprising the wind hadn’t uprooted any of the trees.
“Lower the flames!” shouted Alethea, wind whipping her hair into her face. But, of course, Knox didn’t.
The wind went from cold to glacial as snowflakes whirled around them. The blades of icy wind sliced at Harper’s skin just as the flakes pelted her hard enough to sting. Within moments, a carpet of snow began to build on the ground and weigh down branches. Harper had to admit that the raw power of it was impressive.
“The cold won’t put out the flames, Alethea!” Knox yelled over the sound of the whistling wind. A wind that began to ease, lowering the onslaught of snow until the blizzard finally stopped.
Their once-green surroundings were now almost completely white, and Harper honestly felt like she was in freaking Narnia or something. I’ll take care of this bitch. You concentrate on Jonas.
Trusting that Knox could deal with the asshole alone, Harper put the two of them out of her mind. In that moment, no one else existed but her and the bitch in front of her. Harper smirked. Oh, she was going to enjoy this. It had been a long time coming. “There’s nowhere to go, dolphin,” she taunted in a little singsong voice.
“No one plays with me like I’m prey,” Alethea spat, glaring at Harper with utter hatred. Then the weirdest fucking thing happened. Black cables shot out of Alethea’s sides. No, not cables, Harper realized, as she spotted the octopus-like suckers. Tentacles. Worse, they were barbed tentacles.
Harper whipped her stiletto knife out of her boot, infused it with hellfire, and braced herself. The tentacle lashed at her like a whip. She sliced at it, making it jerk back as Alethea hissed in pain.
Two tentacles came at her this time. Harper ducked, avoiding one. But the other wrapped around her waist and lifted her from the ground, contracting around her body like a snake. The suckers felt like rough sandpaper, and they scoured their way through cloth and skin, drawing blood. Worse, the barbs lodged themselves in her arms and sides.
With a war cry worthy of a highlander, Harper stabbed the tentacle hard over and over. Alethea let out a cry of her own, though it seemed to be a mix of pain and fury. The tentacle threw Harper at the ground, which earned her a mouthful of snow. Spitting it out, Harper pushed to her feet and faced the dolphin. And she noticed something … odd. There were stab wounds on the dolphin’s arms … as if each wound that Harper had inflicted on the tentacles had somehow transferred to Alethea’s limbs. Maybe the appendages were linked somehow due to the tentacles functioning much as an extra set of arms—Harper didn’t particularly understand it. Didn’t care to. But she did like knowing that the more injuries she delivered onto the tentacles, the more hurt Alethea would be.
So each time one of the tentacles tried
belting, flaying, or grabbing her, Harper slashed and stabbed and sliced at them. The hellfire ate at the flesh of Alethea’s arms, and each screech of pain made Harper’s inner demon laugh.
At the same time, Harper tried digging the barbs out of her skin, but there were some she couldn’t quite reach. It wasn’t until she found herself feeling strangely weak and lethargic that she realized that—fuck a duck—the barbs had released some kind of drug in her system. If she wasn’t powerful and anchored by Knox, they might have knocked her on her ass long ago.
Swaying, vision blurring, Harper couldn’t brace herself for the next attack. A tentacle struck her hard, sending her flying through the air. The breath gusted out of her lungs as she hit a tree hard and then fell to the snow. Oh, this bitch needed a few of those barbs lodged in her rectum.
Snatching her knife from the depression in the snow, Harper charged at Alethea on unsteady feet. She stumbled to a halt as her foot got caught in something. It was a crack in the ground, she realized. Fuck. She struggled to pull herself free. Couldn’t. A tentacle lashed her face, scraping strips of skin away. “You motherfucking bitch!”
*
As his mate focused her attention on Alethea, Knox locked his on Jonas. The male kept glancing around, as if hoping a gap would appear in the flames surrounding them. “There will be no escaping this, Jonas. You’ll have to face me. Or do you prefer letting your sister fight your battles for you?” he taunted. The male’s eyes narrowed to slits and—
Knox blinked, suddenly finding himself stood in a boardroom with his sentinels and the other Primes. It wasn’t real, he knew. It was an illusion. But he didn’t know how the fuck to break out of it and—
Red-hot pain slammed into his chest, burning and sizzling his flesh, and Knox was once more in the rainforest. He didn’t need to look to know he’d been hit with a ball of hellfire. Fucking asshole. With a snarl, he conjured a lethal orb and launched it at Jonas.
The bastard stretched and arched his back at an odd angle like he was boneless and fucking elastic, avoiding the orb—but barely. Jonas tossed an orb of his own. Knox returned the favor. And on and on it went.
Snowflakes and tree bark flew in the air each time a ball of hellfire missed its target. A couple had hit Knox, but they weren’t powerful enough to really hurt him. Jonas, on the other hand, was weakening. Several patches of flesh were blackening and peeling from his body. The scents of blood and burning flesh pleased his demon immensely and—
Knox was standing in his Underground office. Another illusion, he knew. Recalling that pain had snapped him out of the last one, he dug his fingertips into a wound on his arm. The world around him shifted back to normal … just in time for him to see a long beam of fire soaring his way, aiming for his head.
