Bad Influence (Seven Deadly Sins #2) ✅ Completed

Chapter Ten: Brothers Dark

Brothers Dark

Dante stood outside the town line of Blackwater on the side of the road. His truck was pulled over onto the shoulder and out of sight of anyone who would happen to come by. It mattered little however – no one would be coming through this patch of highway until he allowed it.

And he had some business to take care of before that happened.  

“Show yourself, Asher! I know your punk ass is still here,” Dante shouted into the night. The normally clear summer sky had grown dark and ominous, with large clouds rolling in too quickly to be anything natural.

Dante knew his brother was there, waiting for him. “Come take on someone your own damn size, you simpering lapdog,” he called out once more.   

“Why, big brother…whatever has you so riled up this evening?” Asher asked casually stepping out of the shadows. “Surely it couldn’t be due to my short visit with Eliza? Though I must say, I do like her. She has so much…fire,” he taunted.  

Dante looked at his brother and felt the black rage at the core of his being split through his human form until he was more in line with his original form. He was bigger, heavier than humans – as tall as he wished to be though for the moment he was roughly the size of one of the highway’s light posts. The night encompassed his body giving the appearance of wings made of shadows. In his true form he was even bigger than fallen angels but more importantly, in his true form he was stronger than Asher on his best day.

And tonight he was here to make sure he got the message loud and clear: Eliza was off limits.

Asher smiled and shed his smaller human form, his black shadows forming wings not quite as large as Dante’s – a fact not gone unnoticed by the both of them.

A corner of Dante’s mouth quirked up in a humorless smile as his eyes ran over Asher. “All that evil and you’re still just my ‘little’ brother,” he remarked.

Asher had been living under Dante’s shadow since the day he was born. No matter how much pity he’d taken on him, Asher had grown to despise him. It was inevitable – their father had seen to that personally.

Asher bristled, his face growing savage and hateful once more. “I am going to end you,” he spat.  

Dante fully knew the monster Asher was inside – anything of the brother he’d once pitied was gone millennia ago.

“Shut up and get it to it, bro. I’m not going anywhere.” Dante flew across the road and grabbed Asher by the throat, running him through several trees lining the side of the road. He smashed his fist into his little brother’s face without mercy, hearing the satisfying crunch of bones breaking beneath the onslaught.

He slammed his fist into his face twice more before Asher was able to block the next punch and throw Dante over his shoulder into the stand of trees behind them. Dante crashed through the first tree but planted his feet on the next and pushed off, ripping the entire thing out of the ground by its roots as he launched himself back at Asher, but this time his brother was waiting. They traded vicious blows, the asphalt cracking and rising beneath them as they rolled on top of it. The sound was deafening. Residents throughout two counties looked out their windows or stepped outside to see which direction the thunderstorm was headed in, never once knowing the true cause for the earth-shaking noise.

Asher threw Dante across the length of the highway, his body crashing into his parked truck, crushing the entire vehicle like it was made out of aluminum foil. Dante fell in a heap on the ground as Asher raised his hands over his head. He watched as the clouds cracked and thundered above them as Asher called down lightning, his fists crackling with the extra supercharge of power.