A Hand in Hell

Chapter 12

"Only a bit of trouble, you say?" he said, his words teasing but not his tone, as silky and businesslike as always. "I haven't even begun to try yet."

I felt my lip pull back in an involuntary snarl. "And you think I have?" I lurched to my feet and sprang toward him, nails forming claws as I swung a set of arched fingers at his ugly mug. I watched him intently as I moved, and the moment I detected the barest twitch of his muscles, I reached out for his entire somatic nervous system with the power I kept spindled inside my mind. But the second my figurative fingers touched upon that first tendon, a blinding pain lanced through my skull and turned my field of vision snowy white, and I fell.

As the ringing in my skull faded, the leader's deep laughter filtered in, and my vision slowly returned. I was on the floor at the man's feet, my hands tightly clutching my head, and he was watching me pant and cringe on the floor like I was some pathetic animal to be mocked and prodded. I tried to glare at him, to shut him down with an icy stare, but my head still throbbed violently, and all I could manage was a halfhearted sneer.

"You may have beaten Mishakkon, but it seems she's still giving you hell, hm?" He chuckled lowly as he dropped slowly into a crouch before me, his smirk much more apparent now. "I don't think we need to continue this any longer, do you?"

I heard a soft squeak from Lauren, an all-too-audible gasp of fear, but I did my best to ignore it. I didn't need to worry about her, too, and what this son of a bitch demon could do to her if I fell. "What do you want?" I asked, and my voice grated so harshly that I wasn't sure if it was even really my own. "Why did you come here?"

"Certainly not to finish this little spat of ours," he answered coolly, "or you would be very, very dead by now." He chuckled again and added, "Not even to beat you into submission as you deserve, or you would've already met the same fate."

"Then what?" I snarled, then gritted my teeth against an extra-sharp stab of pain through my skull.

He paused, and I watched as he carefully observed my shifting facial expression — savoring my pain just as I always savored the pain of my own victims. How could he deny me my prey when he would always have access to his? It wasn't fair! "I've come to offer you another stepping stone for this little path you've taken," he finally said, once my glare had settled back into place. "Another round to keep this game of ours going, if you will."

My nose wrinkled. "And why in the fuck would you do that?"

"Because," he chortled, "this is proving to be quite the entertainment. You know how little upheaval there is in our world. You know how rare it is to find true enjoyment among our own kind. Without you, what fun would I have?" He straightened from his crouch, his glowing eyes sweeping across the kitchen to land somewhere behind me, and I glanced back to find Lauren flush against the center island counter, hands gripping the edge and her wide eyes glued to the man's smirking visage. "Humans aren't much fun for the rest of us, you know, even after they've caught on and begun to come after us."

"If humans aren't fun for you," I grunted as I rose to stand in his line of sight, the pain in my head thrumming, low and steady, like a bass drum, "you're just not doing right."

His lips tightened in a thin mockery of a smile as his gaze dropped to me. "I'm sure. Now, are you interested, or should I just put you out of your misery now?"

"You're offering me mercy like I fucking need it," I growled, pleased to find that the gravel had finally left my voice. "Screw you. No."

"Vera!" Lauren snapped, and I could almost feel her glare burrowing into the back of my skull. "Shut up and listen to what he has to say!"