MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

The chanting stopped.
The silence was absolute. More terrifying than the chanting had been.
Trixie forced her eyes open. The temperature had dropped so suddenly that frost now covered the altar beneath her. Her breath hung in the air. The candles that ringed the chamber guttered and died.
And something moved in the darkness above.
The presence descended like a physical weight, crushing the air from the room. Trixie felt it in her bones, in her blood, in the terrified hammering of her heart. This was not human. This was not even a demon, not like the others. This was something older, something that existed before demons had names.
A figure detached itself from the shadows at the back of the chamber.
He was tall enough that he had to duck beneath the archway, broad-shouldered and radiating a cold that burned. His hair was dark as a starless sky, falling past his shoulders. His face could have been carved from ice and cruelty, beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful, in the way a winter storm is beautiful. Deadly. Merciless.
His eyes, when they swept over the chamber, glowed with a light that had nothing to do with the green flames. Eternal. Furious. Absolute.
Every member of the coven dropped to their knees. Even Seraphine, who had seemed so powerful moments ago, pressed her forehead to the stone floor.
Only Kai remained standing, frozen with the dagger still raised above Trixie's heart.
"Azrael." The name escaped Kai's lips like a prayer and a curse.
The demon lord's voice, when he spoke, was a low rumble that vibrated through the stone, through the altar, through Trixie's paralyzed body. "You dare."
It was not a question. It was a judgment, and Trixie understood with terrible clarity that the sentence had already been passed.
"Sire, I did this for you!" Kai's voice cracked with desperation. "For us! This power could make our coven unstoppable. You could rule not just this territory but entire realms!"
"You did this," Azrael said, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper, "for your own pathetic ambition."
He moved. Not walked, but simply was suddenly there, standing before the altar. Kai stumbled backward, the dagger falling from his nerveless fingers to clatter on stone.
"You would waste such potent celestial blood on a common power grab?" Azrael continued. His gaze had not yet fallen on Trixie. She was not important enough to look at. Not yet. "You would risk exposing us, risk breaking the oldest laws, risk my wrath, for this?"
"Please." Kai fell to his knees. "Please, Father, I only wanted to be worthy of you."
"I am not your father." Azrael bent and retrieved the bone dagger. His movements were precise, economical, the actions of someone who had killed so many times that violence had become an art form. "I am your sire. I gave you immortality, power, a place in my coven. And you repay me with this insult."
"I am sorry! I will make it right! I will..."
"You will do nothing." Azrael looked at Kai then, and even from the altar, Trixie saw her boyfriend's face drain of all color. "You are already dead."
The dagger moved faster than thought. One moment it was in Azrael's hand. The next it was buried to the hilt in Kai's chest.
Kai gasped. Blood, darker than human blood, spilled from his lips. He looked down at the blade, then up at his sire, and in his eyes was not anger or fear but a terrible, childlike confusion.
"I..." he whispered.
Azrael twisted the blade. Something inside Kai's chest cracked, a sound like breaking ice. The demon's body convulsed once, twice, then crumbled into ash so fine it scattered on the next breath of frigid air.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Trixie could not move, could not scream, could not do anything but stare at the small pile of gray dust that had been Kai seconds ago. Her mind could not process it. Would not process it.
Azrael turned.
For the first time, his eyes met hers.
They were not one color but many, like an oil slick, like the heart of a bruise, shifting between silver and midnight blue and something that had no name. Older than memory. Cold enough to burn. And looking at her with an intensity that stripped her bare, that saw through skin and bone to whatever made her worth killing for.
He moved to the altar. Stood over her. The scent of him overwhelmed everything else, winter night and old stone and blood and something darker, something that whispered of damnation.
"The sacrifice was forbidden," he said, and his voice was different now. Softer. More dangerous. He reached down, and one finger, tipped with a black nail sharp as glass, traced along her collarbone. Ice and fire followed that touch. "Virgin blood cannot be taken by force in these lands. Not without consequences that would see this entire coven burned to bedrock."
His thumb brushed across her throat, resting against her racing pulse. Where his skin touched hers, frost patterns bloomed and faded, a visible mark of his claim.
"But an offering." Those shifting eyes held hers, and she could not look away, could not even want to look away. "An offering, given to the master of a house, to be used as he sees fit. That is permitted."
Understanding crashed over her like a wave of ice water.
She had not been saved.
She had simply changed owners.
"The offering," Azrael said, and the corner of his mouth curved into something that was not quite a smile, "is accepted."
His hand closed around her wrist, and the drug-induced paralysis shattered like glass. As if his touch alone commanded her body to obey him now. Sensation flooded back. Cold. Pain. Terror. Her body obeyed her again, and she sucked in a breath to scream.
His other hand covered her mouth. Gently. Almost tenderly.
"Scream all you want," he murmured, his face so close to hers she could see the inhuman patterns shifting in his irises. "These walls have heard it all before. And where I am taking you, little morsel, no one will hear you at all."
He lifted her from the altar as easily as if she weighed nothing, cradling her against his chest. She fought, but it was like fighting stone. He did not even seem to notice.
Azrael turned to address his coven, still kneeling in the ashes of his progeny.
"Let this be your lesson," he said. "I am the law here. I am the beginning and the end. The next one who forgets that will join Kai in oblivion."
He carried Trixie toward the stairs, toward the darkness. Against his chest, her traitorous body began to warm. And in the darkness, she felt his lips curve against her hair.
"Not dead, little morsel," he murmured, so soft only she could hear. "Reborn."