{Phoenix, AZ | Cult of Night}

“General, what do you make of her progress?” Nox asked. His eyes stalked Rayne’s every step, every spin of the knife in her in hand, and every heave of her ample—

“Speed, agility, and strength are most impressive for three-months time. Good follow-through. I’d estimate another month or two before she’s a worthy adversary. It’s astounding for someone raised as a human.” Korac reported his expertise without hesitation.

Nox nodded his agreement. Although, he’d give her one month. He ordered, “Send the message to every compound. Remove the self-righteousness, but keep the rage.”

“Yes, sire.”

Within an instant, Nox’s second-in-command vanished into the night to televise Rayne’s conquest.

Nox stayed behind, hidden in the collapsed ceiling of the burning hospital while his favorite pet project unleashed her wrath below. Rayne glowed in the low light. Her eyes brilliant, her pale skin radiant, and her black hair a curtain surrounding all that brutal loveliness. He wanted to twist his fist into it and bend her till she broke. Kiss the brand of his ring on her cheek.

Rayne spun and trained her sights right on him. With the moon new in the sky, Nox assumed some protection in the dark pocket of the atrium. But she made eye contact with him. With no reaction from her. He tilted his head and stared without further movement. Her eyes roved over him like a predator. She opened her mouth to speak, and a thrill surged through him. This was proving interesting.

“Take me to the children,” Rayne said. Her eyes had hardened into shards of sapphire.

It wasn’t what Nox had expected, but intriguing nonetheless.

“Rayne, no…” The irritating redhead attempted to intervene.

Rayne swallowed and turned to her people. “Please.” A wave of disgust washed over Nox. Leaders never said ‘please.’ They demanded compliance. She repeated, “I need to see.”

The Traitor Prince said, “This way.” He waved for her to follow him back outside. His deep voice was calm. Putrid. Twisting the knife in Nox’s back.

Once the lobby was cleared, Nox opened his substantial wings and hurried through the shattered ceiling. He needed to see every second of Rayne’s guilt and shame. Unlike her predecessor, the Cult of Night interpreting his order as filicide would slow Rayne down, significantly. She’d disabled four of his largest installations and thirteen railways before he’d devised the most gruesome means to stop her. It was impressive for a creature limited to ground travel.

Nox alighted on the roof, pleased he hadn’t missed the show.

Rayne approached the mass grave, slow and solemn. His warrior paid her respects to the fallen, and Nox reminded himself that Celindria’s descendant deserved such cruelty.

From the grave, a voice shouted, “Now!” And nine—no—ten sizable men dressed only in khaki shorts shifted the bullet-ridden bodies of their children aside to ‘ambush’ the Progeny and the Traitor Prince.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kyle cried.

Rage emanated off Rayne like heat on pavement. His girl waited for the dead-men-walking to breach the grave’s shore before swinghook kicking the first one in the face hard enough to send his head all the way around.

Perfection.

The others joined in on the fun. The bastard and his bitch disposed of Nox’s minions thoroughly and efficiently—stabs to the heart, a slit throat.

Quick. Professional. Boring.

Kyle wielded a mace from absolutely nowhere. He made quick work of them.

But Rayne made it personal. The ugly state of her dead arm didn’t slow her down. She killed three more with her bare hand. The last one she punched through his heart.

The Traitor Prince said, “That’s enough, Rayne.” Committed as always to limiting her experiences. He never stopped tempering the storm in her.

It was unforgivable.

Shucking gore from her arm, apathy lined Rayne’s face as she looked at him. She was growing up, and Nox was so proud of what she was becoming.

His.

Rayne brushed by her guardian and his red-haired tramp without a word.

The Traitor Prince made to follow, but he let his woman stop him. She said, “Let her cool off. Tonight was a lot.”

Kyle confessed, “Man, this is the most fucked up CoN we’ve hit, yet.” He shook his head and peered around. He discovered a pile of shovels and set to work. The others soon followed. And with that, it was time.

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The orb in Nox’s hand flared blue with electricity and through the screen he saw Rayne step by. Before he opened his mouth, someone else interfered, invoking his ire. “You are just a weapon, you know?” Fucking Caedes. The bald prematurely ejaculated fecal excrement.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rayne ground out. She threw her hand up in exasperation as she faced him lurking in the dark.

“That size seven boot to my face earlier was real cute, but I want you to know you’re a bomb waiting to explode.” Caedes stepped closer, attempting to loom over her. “You’ve always questioned my loyalties because you’re smart. Smarter than I originally gave you credit for. Rest assured, I’m on whatever side holds your detonator. Because when you do finally blow, you’ll wipe out the opposition.” He reached out to touch her, but she fast-grabbed his hand. Proving his point. “I can’t wait to see it.”

Rayne threw his hand away from her. He gave her a threatening smirk with a chuckle and turned his back on her, walking away. She scrunched her hand into her hair as she decompressed. Alone.

Despite the bullshit Caedes interruption, Nox maintained course. Into the orb, he said, “You looked beautiful dancing with Sagan tonight.” He wanted to compliment her on a talent unrelated to killing. Appeal to her sultrier qualities. She was a woman, after all.

Rayne spun and threw an object at the projection. He heard the sizzle of the signal flaring through the orb. He turned the visual around. A ten-centimeter throwing knife was buried in the brick behind him at eye level. He turned back to her and beamed with pride. “If I were actually here, that would have done me in.”

Rayne let out a hoarse, infuriated cry, “Coward!”

“Sticks and stones, lover,” Nox growled. In the distance he heard the calls of her friends as they approached, hearing her distress. He wanted a private meeting. “Why call them?”

“I knew you were here. I could—” Rayne grimaced. “—feel you. And I knew if I went off somewhere alone, leaving myself vulnerable, you’d show. Did you enjoy the demonstration? Me isolating myself for you?!” Yes, she was coming along nicely.

Predictably, the Traitor Prince arrived to her rescue first. He hissed at the screen, baring his fangs. “Short-range projection. This is underhanded even for you.” His Progeny girlfriend followed close behind. She glanced from her boy-toy to the new King of her world, checking the resemblance, no doubt.

“Look what the cat dragged in.” Kyle went to Rayne’s back. Solidarity. Loyalty.

The Lieutenant General, the next notch in Nox’s bedpost, blanched at the sight of him. She immediately adhered to the side of the object of his primary desires, asking, “What do you want?”

Nox ignored the roadies, gazing into Rayne’s sharp, clear eyes. “Caedes was right about your intelligence. And other things. I won’t underestimate you, again.”

“Nox, if you ever get near me again, I’ll rip the nacre from your chest and grind it into dust.” Rayne sounded certain as if she were making a promise.

Her fierce expression and blood-drenched skin simmered Nox’s blood, sending it low. He smirked. “And I invite you to try. But if you do, we can’t negotiate terms of a ceasefire, and my men will implode the planet.”

“Ceasefire?” Rayne scoffed. “I wouldn’t trust you to uphold a promise, let alone a ceasefire.”

“I’m far more trustworthy than your closest friends.” Nox gestured at them, encompassing. “In fact, one of them already contacted me to betray you.”

They peered at one another. Sagan shifted. Kyle growled, “Don’t listen to him, Rayne. He’s trying to get to you.”

Nox reasoned, “Besides you’re only traveling around getting stronger because I allow you to live. At any given moment, I can destroy every Iona installation with you and everyone you love inside it. I need not be there to kill you, Rayne.”

The Traitor Prince dared opened his mouth to say, “That’s not possible. Kyle’s right. Don’t listen. Let’s walk away.”

Rayne narrowed her eyes at Nox’s projection. He had her. She asked, “When and where? I also have terms.”

“No, Rayne,” muttered the man more responsible for her suffering than even Nox. His woman pleaded to Rayne with bright green eyes.

Sagan interrupted Rayne’s view of Nox. “We can’t do this. We can’t let them manipulate us like this anymore.”

Through the attractive young blond, Nox watched Rayne struggle to abate the rage always toiling under the surface. Pride suffused him. His project. Nearly complete.

Nox cleared his throat, startling the group. He spoke only for Rayne, and she listened with rapt attention. “Bring the Traitor Prince if it makes you feel safer. He’ll know our location. You have one week to prepare.”

Sagan moved aside, staring at him through the orb with her ancestor’s mysterious violet eyes. “How can you think for one second we’ll let her go?”

Rayne stared through the screen, gauging his location from what she could surmise by his surroundings. Clever.

The Icarean race’s number one enemy started in, “It’s so typical of you to act this way, why can’t you stop—”

“And Rayne?” Nox interrupted.

She met his eyes again.

He continued, “In the meantime, avoid my army’s compounds. They’re on alert to prevent you taking their offspring by any means necessary once they learn of your approach. It’s simple. Don’t attack the compounds, and the children remain with their parents.”

Rayne sucked air through her teeth and cried, “He’s on the roof! Xelan, take me up there!”

The sound of the infamous name glaciated Nox’s blue blood. The fun was almost over. Two seconds after he shut down the projection orb, Rayne appeared on the roof with her bothersome escort retracting his wings. With nothing but a roofline between them, Nox witnessed the failure of her resolve. Her frown indicated she’d charged up there with every intention to kill him.

Upon arrival, Rayne had stalled at the sight of him. The breeze picked up their hair, carrying the scent of slaughter and unlit Kerosene into the surrounding air. Conflicting emotions passed across her face. Between her lost eyes and the grim line of her full lips, the torment was ecstatic.

Rayne couldn’t do it. She wasn’t ready for a world without Nox. He let his satisfaction with her bitter truth reflect in his grin as he said, “Rayne.”

The defector peered from her to the King of Cinder. The depth of Nox and Rayne’s torturous connection was too much for the Traitor Prince. He cried, “Monster!” and rushed at his former King in a fury of wings.

Nox vanished, refusing to give the Traitor Prince the satisfaction. He used the technology capsule to conduit-skip twelve paces at a time away from the hospital compound until he took to the sky for long-distance travel. Rayne’s scream of frustration carried on the wind.

Not yet, lover.

Nox passed the journey to base by recalling Rayne’s wealth of improvements. While he’d enjoyed when her unhealthy mental state had kept her starved, distressed, and weakened, this matured, more robust fighter posed new and interesting challenges for him to surmount. He understood her anger and enjoyed nurturing its irrationality. Tonight, she proved, that with rational thought and strategy, she made for a dangerous adversary.

Nox smiled into the night. He wanted to explore fresh ways to cripple Rayne.