The Black God (#2, Damian Eternal Series) (32 page)

He said nothing. His body shuddered under
his labored breathing, and he shook from weakness. He was a wounded
animal fighting the urge to eat.

She touched the drops of blood on her neck.
Her heart beating against her breast, she touched the drops of
blood to his lips and prayed he didn’t kill her.

“No!” He pushed her away, or tried to. He
was too weak. “I might kill you, Ash.”

“You’re the only one who can make sure Valon
never hurts Brandon or my family again!” She shoved his hands down
and touched his lips again.

Jonny shuddered. He caught her wrist in a
tight grip, and she sensed he was fighting an internal battle. He
didn’t want to hurt her, but she wasn’t about to give him a choice.
He needed blood to heal, and he needed to heal to face Valon.

“Please, Jonny,” she said more quietly. “I’m
telling you to risk it to save those I love. I need your help,
too.” She started to sag, unable to fend off the looming episode
any longer.

Jonny touched her again, this time more
gently. He sat up and drew her against him, his eyes brilliant in
the night, his focus on her. “This is why I didn’t want you near
me. I’m a monster.”

“I know,” she said. “But it’s kind of a turn
on,” she joked weakly.

“You trust me?” He bent his head and nuzzled
her neck, breathing in her scent with a tremble.

“It doesn’t matter.”

The pause before he bit her was always one
of pure misery for her. This time it was worse. This time she
suspected he wasn’t going to be able to control himself.

“I’m sorry for hurting you,” he whispered.
He touched her neck with one hand and wrapped the other arm around
her. His scent and heat melted her fear. She rested her temple on
his shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she murmured.

“You still hate me?”

She gazed at his profile framed against the
stars. He was gripping her more tightly, and his feral expression
did little to assure her she’d live through this. “Yeah.”

“Liar,” he said. “But you should. I told you
I’d destroy you.”

“And I told you I didn’t care what you are
or what happened to me. I still don’t.”

“I don’t want to lose you again.”

“You never really did lose
me,” she pointed out.
This is killing
me.
If she were going to die, she wanted to
die quickly. “I can’t take this anymore. Just do it, Jonny.” She
released her breath. “Drain me. Defeat Valon. Protect everyone
else.” She was sliding into the seizure, and her body began to
convulse.

The wild expression on his features
terrified her. She squeezed her eyes closed. Lightning stung her,
but she didn’t feel anything beyond Jonny’s warm breath on her
neck. His teeth sank into her without even a touch of pain. He
stopped her seizure instantly.

For the first time,
she
felt
him
sucking the life out of her. She soon experienced a sense of
dizziness, followed by general weakness spreading throughout her.
Tears pricked her eyes and spilled down her cheeks to leave hot
trails of moisture, and she fought the primal urge to survive. She
gripped Jonny’s t-shirt hard and stilled her resistance,
surrendering to him even knowing he was going to kill her. Aside
from the occasional lightning, it was a generally painless process.
Darkness closed in around her thoughts, and her body began to relax
of its own accord.

Jonny lifted his head, his eyes blazing with
need and his form rippling with power.

“Finish,” she whispered.

“No.” The word was quiet, fierce. “I am not
an animal.” He rested his cheek against hers.

“You are. It’s totally sexy.” She
smiled.

“Can you walk?”

No.
But for his sake, she nodded. “Just give me a
minute.”

“So you are a monster like the rest of
us.”

Vaguely, she recognized Valon’s voice.

“Stay here, Ash.” Jonny settled her gently
on the ground. She heard them talking tersely without being able to
make out their words. She was floating in her mind, too weak to
move, aware of the cool breeze but not much else. Her tremors and
quaking had ceased from Jonny’s patch, but she didn’t think it was
going to be enough to keep her from sinking into the darkness at
the edges of her mind.

Ashley started to drift away, when the shock
of a lightning bolt brought her back to her consciousness. She
wasn’t able to move away from it but neither did it leave her in
peace. Every time she began to pass out, it returned to prod her
back to her body.

She struggled to either slide into the void
or wake herself up fully without success. She was stuck in between.
Visions of Jonny and Brandon raced through her head and the anger
she often experienced with her life faded into sorrow. Was this
what death felt like? Sleep she never awoke from? Or was she more
fatigued than she could ever recall being in her life?

The sounds of scuffling near her came in and
out of her mind, and she began to fade away once more, this time
unaffected by the zap of Jonny’s lightning.

Someone wrenched her off the ground, and her
eyes flew open. Ashley stared into the dark sky above and managed
to regain her balance but not fight off the vamp that had her. Her
body was wooden and heavy.

So I’m not dead
yet.
The relief fluttering through her
didn’t last long once she realized she was too weak to
fight.

Valon was bleeding and furious, his tight
grip around her neck enough to send spirals of pain through her.
Ash tested herself and was beyond disappointed with her body’s
sluggish response.

Valon ceased speaking words she couldn’t
quite make out and shook her hard enough to jar her to her toes and
the rest of the way into the world once more. She reached into her
pocket to grab the knife Jonny had given her and gathered what
strength she had to shove him away when brilliant, burning pain
ripped through her.

His fangs tore into her neck, shredding her
skin and muscle tissue.

She screamed and stabbed the knife into him
blindly. Ashley slammed her knee upward into his groin and then
managed to drive an elbow into his temple.

“You stupid bitch!” Valon threw her to the
ground, and she hit hard. Her vision blurred, and the darkness
started to close in around her. She was starting to bleed out after
Valon’s puncturing of her jugular and made an effort to press her
hand to her neck. Someone knelt beside her. Ashley didn’t even try
to make out who. She wasn’t able to escape, and it didn’t matter
what someone did to her.

“Stay down,” Jonny’s whisper was accompanied
by his touch at her bloodied neck. His power seared the wound
closed, and she flinched. “No matter what. Stay down, Ash.” His
attention was riveted to his enemy, and charged energy made her
flinch. He rose and stepped between her and Valon.

Don’t leave me.
She wanted to cry, to scream out of frustration
from her paralyzed body.

Any thought Jonny had of being fair, of
fighting Valon honorably one-on-one, vanished the moment the vamp
laid a hand on Ashley. Already weak, unable to defend herself,
Jonny had watched Valon hurt her – and felt his emotion blast
through the careful guard he kept it under. He was reminded of the
night when Czerno had almost killed his sister. The pain and fear
he’d kept hidden away for the sake of learning to rule his domain
exploded inside him.

He hadn’t been in complete control when he
drained her, but he’d managed to yank back the animal side of him
when he realized how close she was to death. His successful
determination to only take what he needed left him a little
surprised given his hunger and state. He was stronger than he
thought, capable of subduing the animal inside him for the sake of
someone he loved. He needed that strength now.

He stepped between her and the rogue vamp
leader.

Jonny loosened his grip on his magic. Valon
had caught him off guard when they initially met, but he wasn’t
going to be fooled again. A flurry of arrows and bullets rained
from the forest. He stayed near Ashley, his power shielding them
both, and gathered up his strength. Taxed from the strange weapons
Valon had used, unable to reach full strength when Ashley was
injured, Jonny doubted he’d have more than one chance to level the
rebellion.

Red lightning built and pulsed in a
protective sphere around him. The air grew charged and thick enough
for even him to struggle to breathe. He was intimately aware of
Ashley starting to fade again. His lightning wasn’t going to prod
her away from the edge for much longer.

“You kill me this way, you kill your pet,”
Valon snarled. “You don’t have the balls, kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” Jonny said coolly. “I’m the
Black fucking God. And you have no claim to my domain or title. If
you’re smart, you’ll run.”

Valon sneered. Ashley had punctured his
stomach with the knife that killed Czerno. Valon’s face was covered
in her blood.

Jonny bent and picked up Ashley, cradling
her against him.

Her eyes fluttered open but she was
otherwise completely limp in his arms.

“My power will kill anything living in its
path,” he whispered against her temple. “I need you to trust me,
Ashley. Can you?”

“Sure.” Her somewhat delirious response was
accompanied by a vacant look.

“It might hurt.”

Some awareness returned to her eyes. She
touched his face with a trembling hand. “I never hated you,
Jonny.”

He allowed a tight smile to escape. “I know.
I never stopped loving you, Ash.”

“I
knew
it!” Her eyes closed.
“Hurry.”

Jonny studied her features a moment more,
fear flying through him at the one chance he had to destroy the
rebellion. He lowered his head to her neck and sank his fangs into
her once more. This time, he did drink like the animal he sometimes
wanted to be. He drained her as fast as he could, drinking hungrily
yet also aware of her heartbeat slowing. The moment it stopped, he
did as well and lowered her to the ground.

He had only a few minutes before her death
became permanent.

Jonny stood over her lifeless body and
pushed his power outward. It started at a crawl then began to roll
over everything around him, enveloping and killing everything that
lived, from tree to vamp to forest creatures.

But it left Ashley’s body alone.

Jonny knelt and lifted her. Immune to the
destructive power, he nonetheless ducked his head as red lightning
sizzled around them and arced away. Even fighting the Others, he’d
never unleashed this much power at once.

“It’s almost over, Ash,” he said. “Hang in
there.” He could do nothing for her, not even Travel, until this
mess was over.

Minutes passed quickly, and still his power
rolled outward. Terror and anger tore through him as he held her
lifeless body, fueling his power. Lightning ripped through the air,
demolishing the forest and everyone in it and smashed into the sky
overhead. Jonny held Ashley, too aware of the time it was taking
for this magic to wipe out every last one of the mutinous
vamps.

He shoved all his energy and emotion into
the world around him, unable to expel the images of Ashley
crumbling in Valon’s arms from his mind. He’d fought loving her for
too long and always lost. Now that he risked losing her forever, he
began to see the truth. His weakness wasn’t love but fear. The fear
of losing her. The fear of not being able to control himself or his
vamps. The fear of accepting all of what he was. Ashley knew and
found a way to love him. He had feared being viewed as too human by
his vamps and too vamp-like by the Gods.

But mostly, he had feared failure too much
to ask for help when he needed it until Ashley’s life was at
stake.

He experienced the same sense of emptiness
as he did the night he killed the last Other. Valon didn’t matter.
He never had. He was a speed bump, a distraction, a lesson Jonny
was finally going to learn. Of all the enemies and threats in the
world, not one of them was more important than his Ashley and his
vamps. Not one of them rated a moment of his time or attention, and
not one of them deserved an ounce of mercy or fairness.

He’d failed to act decisively for fear of
Damian’s involvement and judgment, and Ashley was suffering because
of it. If he couldn’t protect those he loved, what good was he as a
god? What good was all his power if he feared using it?

His fear, and his ego, had nearly crippled
him, and he wasn’t going to let that kind of weakness happen
again.

Jonny felt the last piece of the puzzle
click in to place. His fear faded away, taking with it the remnants
of the inner turmoil present since he’d taken his place as the
Black God. He had chosen to hide rather than face his enemy, and he
was never going down that path again.

He was the Black God. If he had it his way,
he was going to remain so for all of eternity.

The blast of red flame and lightning
flattened everything around him in a flash of radiance accompanied
by a roar. Jonny shielded his eyes to the brightness.

Finally, the world around him fell silent
and still, and he lowered his arm. Nothing stood for as far as he
could see. The world was smoking and black with flares of red
lightning.

Dizziness stemming from fatigue washed over
him, and he hugged Ashley to him. She alone was untouched by his
power, protected by him, from him, but only because he’d had to
render her dead.

“Ashley,” he whispered and touched her
gently. He had no read on her whatsoever. She was, according to
even his godly senses, dead.

Jonny scooped her up. He didn’t hesitate to
go where he knew he had to this time. He was never going to
hesitate again when it came to Ashley or his responsibilities. He
was never going to let his fear get in his way again.