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The moment I saw Amelia stepping out from her chosen hiding place it took me just a single look at the devastation on her face to know that the conversation she had heard, hadn’t been the same one spoken. I had even started to quickly replay certain parts of it in my mind, ready to begin to rectify the situation as soon as I first overcame what I knew was her urge to run from me.
But then I noticed the blood, after scanning the length of her body, starting with her blood-soaked shoes and trouser hem that continued on as splashes of crimson up her jeans. There were also smear marks on her cream sweater that I knew was from the only blood that belonged to her and was no doubt from the injury I could see on her hand. But there was also something there on the side of her head where her hair was soaked with blood too.
Gods, but what had happened to her this time?! I was fucking furious at the idea and almost grabbed her to me, caring little for what her reaction would be. But then it was the tears in her eyes that stopped the impulse. As I knew that I could heal her body in moments, but I was only free to do so after first attempting at healing what looked to be her damaged heart. Something that, by the looks of things, wasn’t going to be easy.
“Oh Gods, Fae! I...we...didn’t mean for you to find out this way...we didn’t know you...” Keira started to say having no clue where her daughter’s mind was really crashing towards. For it was of little doubt in my mind that Keira was thinking the worst of her daughter’s heartache was solely based on the fact that her mother’s knowledge of our relationship had been kept from her. But the second Amelia snapped back with utter distaste,
“Oh, I know you didn’t!” That was when I knew that both Keira and I had far a worse problem on our hands. One that for me personally, seemed as if it was going to become a battle of the past all over again. Which was why I told her,
“It is not what you think it is, my Khu...”
“NO!” she roared at me with such anger I swear I could hear it echoing around me as if the walls were about to crack from the force of her pain.
“You don’t EVER, ever get to call me that again!” she screamed at me and I couldn’t help but physically react, flinching as she openly scorned my love for her. It was starting to become clearer still, with the level of rage and hurt that she felt had been inflicted by a shadow of the truth. Which was why I raised my hands slowly, knowing any moment I would have no choice but to strike out by reaching for her quickly, to contain her and grab her to me before she fled.
“Lucius, what is happening?” I heard Keira asking in a pained and worried tone that told me the true horror of what her daughter believed she’d just witnessed was only now just starting to penetrate.
“Alright now, Pet, let’s just take a breath and calm things...”
“Calm things down...are you fucking serious right now!?” she snapped, interrupting me after I had ignored her mother’s question and focused solely on her. Then she stepped up to me, getting close, and I was seconds from making my move when suddenly she thrust the box into my chest with a hard shove into my body, one I barely remained immobile against, flinching only against the roar of anger she threw at my face when she screamed,
“YOU’RE FUCKING MY MOTHER!” I closed my eyes for a few seconds at the grief throwing those words at me inflicted, knowing the true meaning of pain as they ripped through me. To believe that was what she truly thought of me. To know that after everything I had done, all I had said, all the fucking love I had shown her, every second of it set alight and crumbling to ash at my feet in a single heartbeat...to know she believed it all to be lies just after one moment of mistaken affection shown for someone dear to me.
Gods, the pain of it rendered me unable to move.
Even as I watched as she had already started walking away, I could do nothing but roar in both anger and pain as it tore through my soul. Gods, but I wanted to hate her just as much as I fucking loved her! I was so Gods be damned angry that she could believe her words, I was struck unable to move!
That she could think of me as such was utterly unfathomable!
I vaguely watched as even Keira tried to reach out to her only to get Amelia’s venom lashed her way,
“Don’t fucking touch me! I never want to see you again! Either of you...you are both...lost to me!” She sobbed these last three words in such a way that I knew she had really meant them as something else, words that she couldn’t ever take back if spoken. Instead, she ran from the room with tears flooding those beautiful eyes of hers. Turning them into something beyond the realms of beauty...
...but into something breathtakingly haunting.
This was when I snapped.
“FUCK!” I flipped the nearest table closest to me, making the sound of it crashing against the far side of the room become an echoing shadow of my rage. The song of destruction doing little to ease my temper and neither did Keira when she ran to me and begged me to stop. To see reason and calm down before scaring her daughter with my anger. To let her be the one to go to her and explain everything, to show Amelia her thoughts, the images of the conversation before. She blamed herself and with tears streaming down her face she begged me to let her be the one. But I cared nothing for Keira’s tears.
I only cared for Amelia’s.
Which was why, without even answering her, I walked towards the door and ripped it from its hinges without taking a moment to think about the damage behind me, simply hoping that Keira had enough sense to get out of the way of it. I was both utterly numb and furious at the same time, that I could barely even think. To the point that the second I felt Keira following me out and grabbing me from behind, still begging me to stay, was when I turned to snarl down at her to let me go. But neither of us saw what was coming next...
Or should I say who.
Suddenly, before I could even fully register the reasons behind it, I found myself travelling backwards until I found my body being slammed back, smashing into the fireplace in the library. I groaned through the pain as some of my rips snapped. Then I gritted my teeth through the process as my body instantly started to mend, fusing the cracks and breaks, along with healing the puncture to my lung. I sucked in air as I started to breathe past the pain and after turning my head slightly, that’s when I noticed that the secret doorway into the Janus Gate was ajar. Something I knew wasn’t from my impact as I had landed against one of the cast iron sentinels.
Had this been where Amelia had come from? Was this where Dom kept his safe? For she had gotten hold of the box somehow, so it would make sense and might explain her injuries. But it didn’t explain the other evidence of blood, which now had me questioning, if this was the witch’s doing?
I located the box that in my rage I had thrown to one side, both damning its existence and questioning the reason for her trying to take it. But then these thoughts were ripped away from me the moment I saw the cause for my being back in the library with broken bones, which right now were nothing more than an inconvenience.
I didn’t have time for this shit.
I needed to find her!
But then, with one look at the Demonic King who had not an ounce of Angel in sight, then I knew I first had to deal with a son of Hell’s wrath.
“YOU KISSED MY WIFE!” his demon roared, and I found myself doing a double take the second he said the last words I believed his reason for attacking me to be.
“What the...” I never got the chance to finish as the asshole was charging at me, his dark wings taking him high first so he could gain leverage on his attack. Then he tried to barrel into me, making me move with only half a second to spare before he would have killed me from it, being as his twin swords extended from his wrists on his downward attack, making his wife scream out,
“DRAVEN, NO!”
Thankfully, my senses returned quickly enough to save myself along with his wife, for had he succeeded, then it would have not only been my end, but hers too. But it was clear he was out of his mind with rage and had given total control over to his demon, who wasn’t acting rationally enough to function beyond the need for death and revenge.
“Fuck, Dom, you have it all...fuck!” I ended this the second he lashed out against me with his swords raised, ones that flamed purple and licked out at everything they touched, scoring it black instead of setting it alight.
“DRAVEN, STOP THIS!” Dom paused long enough to snarl at his wife, telling her,
“I will deal with your deceit later, woman!” She jerked back as if he had struck her and I could see for myself her own anger close to erupting and when it did, then I knew it would have been nothing compared to Dom’s.
Twin pools of crimson fire were igniting in her eyes but seeing this gave me barely enough time to dodge the blades he continued to swing at me. Meaning that I had no choice but to summon my own blade to my hand, thanking my foresight in having Nesteemia place a summoning spell on the sword of Kings, Caliburnus. A spell which enabled me to feel it start to materialise into a solid weight in my hand. And it was just in time too, for I held it up above my head with barely enough of it appearing in time to save my head as his blades collided with its growing length.
“FUCK DOM, LISTEN!” I roared as I pushed back on the blade making him take a step back allowing my anger to fight his own rage.
“Good, I wanted a fair fight before I see your head fucking roll from your vessel!” he shouted venomously and I snarled back, before swinging the sword around in my hand and showing him that I was ready. Because this time it was a fight I was not going to use my will against him to win. For he would soon discover that I wasn’t the same man he had once fought before.
I was something much more and had the Venom of God running through my veins to prove it!
“Then, in doing so, you see your Chosen One fall also!” I reminded him before I lashed out, hitting against his twin blades so quickly he slipped slightly, which was enough that I caught his shoulder with my blade. Because my words had started to penetrate through the demon’s rage, and he was weakening to the fact. He even looked towards Keira as if seeing her standing there for the very first time and there was only one emotion now clouding his judgement in the fight...doubt.
“Please...don’t do this,” Keira whispered at him, holding herself ridged as if she were now witnessing her whole world as it came crumbling down around her. As if she had failed in some secret quest. But whatever the cause it finally made an impact on Dom as his demon simmered down.
“I will not kill you, Luc, but that doesn’t mean I won’t bring you to your fucking knees!” he shouted back the moment he made his mind up about my death.
“I make no such promise in return, old friend!” I snapped back fighting him now with a far more equal footing, allowing my hits to mirror my deadly mood. I was unrelenting with my sword, swinging it so fast he could barely keep up and on a punishing downward slash, he only just managed to block against it. It was clear to me now that the wrath of his demon had relented even further to the emotional reasons behind the fight. Something I used to my advantage when his guard lowered our collided blades enough for me to punch out at his face, feeling the crack of bone crunch in both his nose and my knuckle.
Then I grabbed the front of his shirt and threw him against the wall with my sword held high ready to strike.
“LUCIUS, NO!” I ignored Keira’s furious and desperate cries in place of something else. As just when I was about to deliver what I knew would be a damaging blow, I heard Amelia’s deep and tortured cry in agony...
A pain I had inflicted.
That was when I lost the fight in me and lowered my weapon. Then I raced to the door, ready to leave the battle behind me in search of one far greater.
The battle for her heart.
“AMELIA!” I shouted her name and nearly made it through the broken doorway when I felt myself behind yanked back before a fist connected with my face, jarring my senses.
“No weapons is fine by me!” Dom snarled at me before another fist connected with my jaw this time making me grunt from the impact as my jaw broke.
“Dom, stop it for fuck sake! You have got this all wrong!” Keira shouted at her husband and I blocked the continued hits long enough for my jaw to fix itself and enable me to tell him,
“You should listen to your wife before she puts you on your ass!” Then I brought up my fist and delivered an upper cut punch to his chin, knocking his head back from the force.
“LUCIUS!” Keira roared at me as I took another moment to hit back, giving it my all and caused blood to trickle from his nose the moment I got my second punch in. Of course, I felt my own blood running down my chin from the split in my lip that was at this moment trying to fuse back together from his powerful fist. Dom wiped away his blood with the back of his hand and stared at it, before grinning back, telling me,
“It’s been a long time since I have seen my own blood spilled by another...I look forward to this, Vampire.” Then he rolled his shoulders and I braced myself for the fighting machine that was my former King. I took a deep breath and told him,
“Fucking bring it, you Demon bastard!” I roared my words and let them fuel my rage just as we both collided. But this was also when Keira had found her limit. And what a fucking limit it was! As the moment our fists connected, a blinding light was all we both saw as our bodies separated from a force. One so great, my bones weren’t the only ones that suffered as we were both flung to opposite sides of the room. And there, at the centre of it all, was Keira. Now a glowing figure of white-hot fire that consumed her body, licking out angrily at the air as it crackled around her. She had both her hands out towards us, holding us in place so she could prevent us from fighting further.
She was utterly magnificent, just as she had been the day she had ended a war. A beautifully terrifying picture of Hell’s wrath as she panted through her rage. And I wasn’t the only one who suffered from it and needed time to heal from the force of her power, as Dom also had fallen victim to his wife’s fury. I don’t know how long it was that she kept us prisoner for, but long enough for bones to heal and organs to repair. A sight that seemed to flip the switch between thought and deadly action. As it was only then that she managed to get a hold on the power directed through her, one straight from both Heaven and Hell, when the flames finally started to simmer to nothing but a warm glow. She then lowered her arms and we both dropped to the ground, gaining our feet at the same time. After this she turned to her husband and told him in a calm tone that sounded as if it took great effort to do so,
“We did not kiss, Amelia has it all wrong.” I then watched as Dom closed his eyes as her words sank in and finally stayed long enough for his demon to evaporate back into the image of a man she knew well. Although, what I knew of Dom’s usual temper, then I assumed she knew his demon’s image well enough also.
“Then why was she so upset, my Electus?” he asked her with his tone still hard and obviously suspicious. Keira took a deep breath and released it on a sigh, before looking to me and the look of regret on her face said it all. This had been the deception she had been dreading telling her husband and it was one she had no choice but to admit to. So, I nodded for her to do so.
“Keira?” Her name came out as a rumbled warning for her to speak and do so quickly before he lost his patience completely. But then, as she first looked to me and then back to her husband, she must have decided to take action to prevent what she believed would happen next. I knew this when her hand raised and suddenly Dom’s body was pushed back against the wall and held there, clearly against his will. He snarled angrily and pushed against her force, making her hand start to glow brighter at the effort she needed to keep him there.
Only after she was assured that he was kept in place did she choose to speak,
“Okay, so there is something I have been keeping from you, but it’s not as bad as it sounds, so please...please Draven, just try and hear me out...yes?”
“I must say that I would be more inclined to try if I was not held against my will and therefore released from your grasp...one that I can feel weakening by the second,” Dom replied with the threat of movement showing through for he had been fighting her the entire time he had been kept to the other side of the room. A fact that was starting to show with the strain on her face at keeping him from reaching me. Because, as powerful as Keira was, Dominic Draven was equally so, for there weren’t many who could defeat such a being, his wife included. No, Dom just needed a little more time to break down his Chosen One’s defences and by the looks of things, he was close to doing so.
“Gods, but how the Hell do I...?” Keira started to say but I’d had enough of this shit! I just wanted to get the fuck out of there so I could find Amelia and explain everything to the only one in my life the truth mattered to.
So, I quickly snapped,
“Oh, for fuck sake!” Then I walked over to him,
“Luc, don’t please... just let me...” I then ignored Keira’s plea, and said the words I’d wanted to say since the very beginning,
“I am the one dating your daughter, Dom.”