Rise of a Queen

Chapter 26

But the Count tossed Lumiere aside like a rag doll, flinging him through the air and far from his leader. Then the Count drew back his foot and kicked it against Dustin's stomach. Again and again the Count kicked, over and over until the front of his boots were dyed a deep red from Dustin's blood.

In one rapid, sudden motion, I ripped myself free and darted towards the Count, seeking to distract him enough to give Dustin a chance to recover. The Count saw me coming of course, I was too loud and clumsy to be stealthy. He turned on me, catching my right arm as I swung it back to punch him.

Just as I suspected.

His eyepatch produced a large blind spot and what the Count didn't see was my left hand curled into a fist. As he moved to catch my right hand, I swung my left, and I punched my knuckles against his face with more power than I knew I had. His head snapped to the side, causing him to stumble, and he released me to catch himself from falling.

With the Count out of my way, I dropped down beside Dustin. His midsection was saturated from the Count's attack, and I squeezed both of my hands over his injury to keep pressure over him. He barked out a broken curse of pain, not directed at me, and the sound of his voice ripped raw and hoarse had my heart aching for him.

"How long has it been since the last time I was punched?" I heard the Count ask quietly.

There was a quiet murmur amongst his cohorts before one of them gave an answer, "Years? Longer? I honestly can't say I remember."

Animalistic and ravening, like a wolf bloodied by recent kill, "Neither do I."

Dustin's head was tilted back, too far and too strained, but his head rolled towards the sound of distinctive mania and through hooded eyes, he peered upon a man who has lost all humanity.

"You continue to surprise me, my angel."

"How can you do this?" I yelled at the Count, already aware of him recovering behind us. But as I watched Dustin gulp breath after labored breath below me, my fear for him and my hatred for who did this to him, chased away any rational sense. With my hands still tightly capped over his stomach, I turned on the Count with a fire burning in my stare that rivaled his own, "Why save him if you want him dead so badly?"

"Dead?" The Count was massaging his cheek that was plump both from my punch and from a possessed, boundless grin – deliriously excited and volatile from newfound obsession, "What makes you think I want him dead?"

"Look at him!" I cried out, "Look at what you are doing to him! You are killing him!"

"I am training him, my angel." Count Marx approached me slowly and in the iridescence of dim firelight, sweeping wings of black smoke swirled around him from where they sprouted from his shoulder blades in disastrously sharp angles, too wispy to hold shape and resulting in a cloud of darkness that billowed around him in funnels and whirlwinds. Suddenly, he was right behind me and his voice rumbled deeply in my ears where it vibrated through my bones in a way too demonic to be human, "And I will kill him a thousand times more before I ever let him think he is anything more than a tool for me to exploit."

"He is not-"

"He has always been, nothing more. He is my property, my pet for playing, a weapon to be wielded by my hand. The only reason for his existence is to serve me and I intend on working him into the ground, one way or another." Count Marx leaned over my shoulder, nudging my head with his chest while we both stared down at a man neither of us could live without but each for very different reasons, "I only hope you are there on the day I succeed, the day when Dustin King finally learns his place. Only then will you realize that angels were never meant to sing with slaves."