Until then, I had another plan for her. A game of sorts, one I wouldn’t make easy for either of us to win. I knew she wouldn’t make it easy for me either, giving her some credit, which was fine.

  I wanted to push her.

  I wanted her to push back.

  Something told me when the princess got down and dirty, if pushed just far enough she owned up to every bit of her namesake.

  I was looking forward to finding out just what that entailed.

  Chapter Nine

  Novem

  I had sort of been expecting him to try and murder me in the middle of the street, but alas, he did what he claimed he was doing.

  So for that, I didn’t mind his massive, bloodied hand holding onto my wrist the entirety of the walk. He didn’t talk much either, which was a plus and a minus.

  Had he spoken I would have been able to distract my curious thoughts. Like, how was he able to see so well in these conditions? Or, where did the early rumors come from that he was sickly?

  Some people claimed that the Venomous Prince would be dead before he reached maturity?

  Whoever dropped that grape of gossip along the vine had majorly missed the mark because the latter rumors about him being perfectly healthy were all most likely true while the older obviously weren’t. Not only were they right about him being healthy and alive,but it also seemed to me he was thriving.

  I tried not to dwell on any of that. It really was of no importance to me.

  After this, I never wanted to be in his proximity again, so I obediently followed behind him even though I wanted to take control of the situation and find my way back.

  It became apparent he knew just where he was going because the closer we got to the threshold of town, the more the fog lessened, and clearer multiple sets of voices became.

  Voices that sounded upset.

  I had to tug twice before he let my wrist go. The first time his grip tightened instead of loosened, the second he simply let my hand fall away.

  “Thank you,” I bit out under my breath as I moved past him.

  I heard his laughter in response.

  Whatever, I didn’t have to say anything. I was just aware of how unfortunate things would have been for me had he not shown up. Twice.

  “Addy!” Nyx called my name, relief evident in her tone.

  “I swear I am about to chain us together,” she stated meeting me halfway back to the XL.

  “What happened? You were right behind me.”

  “I don’t know. One second we could see you the next we couldn’t. And then Annie and I ran into that guy.” She nodded over her shoulder.

  I peered in the general direction, seeing the man named Maliki had removed his mask and was watching her with a thoughtful expression.

  He met my eyes and a slow smile spread across his face. Suddenly I was grateful that Nyx had Butcher. This dude was gorgeous, I hated even to admit that, but he was—with honey-colored skin and jet black hair.

  “Where is…Annie?” I asked, losing my train of thought for a second when Zane walked past us.

  Nyx being Nyx and knowing me sometimes better than I knew myself picked up on the slight pause instantly and the reason for it.

  “We have an issue,” she said, looping her arm through mine.

  “What kind of issue?” I could see Annie behind the XL, so it wasn’t that she got hurt.

  Then I took in the rest of the scene. All the Venom were staring at their vehicle, which had clearly been vandalized. Luce was beside his Jeep with nearly the same look on his face.

  Both had cracked windshields. The Venom truck had all four tires sliced, and the hood was partially lifted, so I assumed there was damage there too.

  Luce’s truck was much harder to harm due to the moderations on it. His windshield was cracked but not near as bad, and their attempt at slashing his tires seemed to have been much more successful with the front driver’s side one.

  I wasn’t as concerned with their cars as I was the shattered glass glinting in the moonlight.

  Beneath that was a smear of blood on the ground, a sign someone had been dragged—Makayla had been dragged because she was missing.

  “That was a fucking set-up,” Cameron exclaimed, pointing back towards the town.

  “Why, though?” Butcher asked as we walked up. “And why is the XL fine?”

  The Venom were quietly talking amongst themselves now. I ignored all of them and the Savages. I stayed silent, piecing together the timeline of events until things made perfect sense.

  “It wasn’t a set-up it was a warning, a statement,” Luce replied to Cam, giving me a quick once over.

  I nodded my head in agreement with him.

  “He’s right if they wanted to kill us all they would have known to use more than that small amount of Stags. And their marker was fresh,” I pointed out.

  “And, they let Makayla go knowing she would report back where Lilith, Sam, and Bella were,” Nyx added.

  Whom they still had, I thought to myself. I wanted to plan for the worst and foolishly hope for the best, something I never did but this was our family, my baby sister, my little cousin and their best friend.

  They had to be okay. I still didn’t understand why they would take them in the first place. It wasn’t just toying with the idea of a war between the two factions; it was flat out deciding there would be one.

  “They thought we’d take each other out,” Zane said from beside his truck.

  I turned to look at him, promptly diverting my gaze when I saw he’d taken his mask off and was now shirtless. I didn’t want to know what he looked like.

  I realized that was ridiculous, but for the first time in my life, I was unsure about someone of the opposite sex. I was unsure what to think of him, what to say to him—how to look at him. All I knew was what I’d been told, and that was a rumor mill I wasn’t prepared to wade through.

  “My little brother is missing too,” he continued, surprising the hell out of me with that nugget of information. No one ever mentioned him having a younger sibling.

  “So they knew we would both show up and start killing one another? Naw. What was the point of the Stags inside the school then?” Luce asked.

  “In case we didn’t kill one another? Look that was as far as I got, man. They sure made sure we would be stranded,” the girl with colorful pixie hair answered.

  “They dragged Makayla to a vehicle, and then went right,” Nyx said, following tracks I hadn’t noticed until just then.

  “While we handled their sacrificial friends, they did this,” Maliki tacked on, lightly smacking the side of their truck.

  “If they knew all of that, then they would have known our moves before we made them. And we all know what that means,” a woman with a strong accent pointed out.

  No one had anything to say to that. No one wanted to confirm what it meant. It was acknowledging someone close betrayed you.

  It was never an easy thing to accept but seemed to always be the case. It was why Jesse would be missing too.

  Rubbing my brow, I broke away from the group and walked back to the turnoff point.

  “What is that way?” I pointed to the right. “If I wanted to hide my faction somewhere remote, but large enough to accommodate where would I go?”

  Annie came and stood beside me, looking in the direction I’d just pointed, speaking under her breath for a minute. “Hocking Hills,” she said, adding, “An abandoned campground completely off-grid.”

  The moment she said the name my mind latched onto it. I had no solid proof, and acolytes had been supposedly searching for this faction’s base for months with no leads.

  Yet, there I was in spite of all that, believing my intuition was correct in assuming that’s where they were going.

  “You know how to get there?” I asked her.

  She turned her head and looked at me, a rare, knowing smile on her face. “I know exactly how to get there.”

  “What are you thinking?” Nyx asked, coming to stand on my other side.

  “I’m thinking that we should go after them. If it’s off the grid, the kids can’t be there yet.”

  “I agree with you. We—.”

  “No,” Butcher’s voice cut across the clearing. “Nyx are you really that insane? Why would you do—?”

  “Did you just tell me no? And why would we…? Because they have my brother, my cousin, and your sister.”

  “Do you need a better reason than that? We have no clue what kind of place they’re taking them to.”

  “Exactly the point, Nyx,” he stressed.

  I looked between the two of them, understanding both sides but agreeing with Nyx full heartedly.

  “Addy,” he tried to reason.

  “I see your point, but I see hers too. Like I just said, we don’t know anything about these people, and apparently neither does my Dad. Isn’t it better to get the kids back before they’re surrounded by a faction we know nearly nothing about?”

  He glared at me, pissed I didn’t try to talk her out of it. “What happens when you have no choice but to go all the way there, huh? Or you get there and find you were chasing a ghost? You think you can take on a whole faction?”

  That question was rhetorical.

  I didn’t plan to run up on them with no type of plan or firepower. But I also had no intention of returning home without Lilly, Sam, or Bell. My intuition told me this was the way to go and I was listening to it.

  “She isn’t going to be going all the way,” Luce cut in. “She’s going to get as close as she can if need be and then wait for me to arrive with the acolytes I’m going to get. If she gets her back before then, that is always the best case.”

  I glanced down to hide my immediate surprise. That was not what I expected him to say.

  “And I’m going with her,” Zane casually stated.

  I looked back up so quickly there was a slight pop in my neck. “What do you mean you’re going with me?”

  “I mean I don’t trust your kind not to hurt my brother to get your sister back.

  “Or run off and get a bunch of satanic fucks with ‘good’ intentions. Besides, princess. You shouldn’t go alone.”

  His first point was valid. The second didn’t make any sense until I considered the fact he and Lucifuge had obviously associated at some point outside of tonight.

  “I am not going halfway across the Badlands with you,” I laughed at the asininity of the very notion.

  “Adelaide. If you don’t. I will. You’re not going halfway across the Badlands with just Annie and Nyx either. And he isn’t going to be alone with you. Cam is going to,” Luce directed.

  “Zane you can’t be serious with this bit—.”

  “Darrian and Tobias will go with you. Just to be on the safe side,” Zane cut off the accented woman and spoke directly to my brother.

  “Then you take the XL, and I’ll take my Jeep. I’ve got a spare underneath, and these tires were made to be damaged. I can get close enough to the compound before they give out.”

  Nyx and I stood there in complete disbelief, our gazes ping-ponging between the two men who should have been at each other’s throats. Even Cam muttered a, “What the fuck?” running a hand through his red locks.

  I began to openly stare at Luce, mind scrambling to understand what the hell he could be thinking.

  No one outside of the woman with the accent and a man who looked as if he should be out riding waves seemed surprised by this.

  Not even Annie.

  This was not happening.

  I didn’t know my brother at all anymore.

  “It doesn’t look like they touched our gear. We should load up the SUV,” Maliki added to their conversation.

  They continued to talk as I stood back and watched everyone start preparing for this odd exchange.

  “What just happened?” Nyx mumbled.

  I didn’t open my mouth for fear of erupting. I remained quiet and simply went to stand by the rear of XL, leaning against its cool metal and closing my eyes. My head was beginning to pound and with adrenaline fading, all the muscles I used for the day were reminding me of what they had done.

  I felt him approach me after maybe five minutes.

  I sensed it was him somehow but remained as I was with my eyes shut.

  “So it’s you and me then?” he asked, stopping pretty damn close in front of me.

  “It will never be me and you, Zane,” I said his name for the first time.

  He laughed like I’d made a joke, and the sound sent a shiver racing down my spine.

  “Is that why you haven’t looked at me since I took my mask off? You afraid you might like what’s underneath?” his tone went from jovial to taunting just like that.

  “Don’t think so highly of yourself.”

  “I want to know we have a deal. You take care of me; I’ll take care of you.”

  “You mean you scratch my back, I scratch yours?” I dryly replied.

  Feeling a bit petulant with my eyes still closed, I opened them, and immediately wished I hadn’t.

  He was closer than I expected, his height giving me no choice but to look up at him, and where the fog was less, and the moon was bright, I could see him clearly.

  I could see the exact way his lashes curled, and the perfect lineup of his undercut quiff, leaving coal black hair smoothly slicked back on top of his head. The tattoo on his neck, a V with a black snake wrapped around it, had a slight variation from the usual Venom brand, telling me exactly who he was.

  Glancing up at his face I found myself staring into a pair of napalm eyes darker than the bottom of the ocean.

  A barrage of foreign emotions shot through my chest.

  It took more effort than I’d like to admit not to shrink away from him. His eyes drilled into mine, holding no ounce of light, containing something sinister and wild. I had never felt so repulsed—yet at the same time enthralled.

  Shaded tattoos traveling up both of his perfectly toned arms now clean of blood, and all over his chest.

  “I know that look,” he said, a smirk hitching up the right side of his mouth.

  Ugh. “There is no look,” I immediately objected.

  “Do we have a temporary truce?” he switched the subject and randomly asked, holding a hand up between us.

  It was then I felt the eyes of an audience watching us, seeing if we could truly work together without killing one another.

  I wasn’t sure about that, but for my sister, I would do anything.

  So with more than a little reluctance; I placed my hand in his.

  Suddenly, his lips were at my ear, whispering something illicit. Something wrong and so out of the blue that when I blinked and found myself staring back up at him, I was almost certain I’d imagined it.

  I was even more convinced when I saw the new look on his face. It went against everything he’d just said. I’d never been on the receiving end of such cold, cruel hatred by a man I’d barely uttered more than a few words to.

  I knew then, truce or no truce that he and I would fight like lions. Just as I knew hating him would forever be innate.

  What I didn’t know, never expected, was how well our demons would get along.

  I didn’t understand the budding desire of something forbidden, something that could never be but begged to flourish.

  I wish I would have reconsidered. I wished even more that I never crossed his path that night. In any case, it was too late.

  There was no way to turn back the hands of time. Fate had a plan for the two of us, and she was just the kind of bitch that would make sure we saw it through until the bitter end.

  I naively thought I’d be able to handle this—handle him—but nothing could have prepared me for the beautiful tragedy that was Zane Belial.

  Duo

  illictus

  Tuus perdite sodalis amans

  Chapter Ten

  Decem

  I leaned against the side of the XL, watching Zane swap gear with my dickhead brother.

  After his whispered declaration he swaggered away and had yet to look back in my direction once. I told myself it was nothing; he was trying to mess with my head. The way his eyes told me things he hadn’t, did not matter either.

  I simply didn’t care.

  That was also bullshit.

  If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have been staring him down the past fifteen minutes.

  Nyx walked over and stood beside me, placing her back parallel to mine. “What did he say to you?”

  “Nothing important.” Nothing I’ll ever tell anyone.

  “Really?” she questioned.

  Her tone successfully ended my one-sided staring contest. I blinked and shifted my gaze to her.

  “Yes. Really.”

  “Okay,” she clipped, crossing her arms across chest. “So what do you think the deal is with those two?”

  She kept her voice low, but as if he’d heard her anyway Zane turned his head and looked over at the two of us, eyes briefly meeting mine before going back to Lucifuge.

  “Who knows?” I sighed and pushed off the truck, turning so that I could face her head on.

  “Luce is just like our Dad, which means he has a reason for it…”

  “But we won’t know until, or, unless he wants us to,” she finished my sentence for me.

  “Exactly that, and fuckboys aside, are you going to be okay being alone with them?”

  Her forehead creased in confusion. “Who am I going to be alone with?”

  “The Venom backpacking across the Badlands with us,” I answered slowly.

  “Oh.” She glimpsed down at the ground for a moment before replying. “I have no idea how or what to feel right now, Addy. All I know for sure is that we can use them just like they can use us to all get what we want. I can’t dwell on anything else.”

  Her gaze shifted to something behind me and stayed there.

  “But if they try to hinder us, or hurt you in any way, I’ll fucking kill them.”

  I didn’t have to question if she was serious or not, I knew she’d meant every word. Nyx and death walked blissfully hand and hand as lovers did.

  Peering over my shoulder to see what had warranted the last sentence to be spoken so coldly, or in this case, whom—I spotted Maliki.