The Darkest Secret

CHAPTER TWO

IN BRIEF MOMENTS OF LUCIDITY, Amun knew who he was, what he used to be and the monster he’d become. He wanted to die, finally, blessedly, but no one would take mercy on him and deliver the finishing blow. And no matter how hard he tried—and oh, did he try—he couldn’t seem to inflict enough damage on his own body to do the deed himself.

So he fought, trying to expunge the black images and disgusting impulses constantly bombarding him, yet at the same time hold them inside. An impossible challenge, and one he would soon lose. He knew it. There were too many, they were too strong, and they’d already burned away his immortal soul, the last tether that had bound them to his will. Not that he’d ever had control.

He’d fight with every fiber of his being, though. Until the very end. Because when those images and impulses, those demons, were loosed on an unsuspecting public…

A shudder rippled through him. He knew what would happen, could see the destruction in his mind. Could taste the sweet flavor of devastation in his mouth.

Sweet…yes…

And like that, this newest moment of clarity evaporated like mist. So many images swam through his head, a deluge of memories, and he didn’t know which belonged to him and which belonged to the demons—or their victims. Beatings. Rapes. Murders. Rapture in the face of each. Pain. Trauma. Death. Paralyzing fear that consumed as it destroyed.

Just then, he only knew that fire smoldered around him, melting his skin, blistering his throat. That thousands of tiny, stinging bugs had managed to dig their way into his veins, and they were still feasting on him. That the smell of rot filled his nose, and had infused his every cell. That—

Dead bodies were piled around him, on top of him, smashing and burying him, he suddenly realized. He was trapped, suffocating.

Help! he screamed inside his head. Someone help me! But no one ever came. Hours passed, perhaps days. His frantic struggling waned until he could only smack his lips. He was thirsty. Oh, gods, was he thirsty. He needed something, anything, to wash away the ash caked inside his mouth.

Please! Help!

Still no one came. This was his punishment. He was to die here. Until he came back to life to suffer some more. Desperation renewed his struggle to free himself—but that only made things worse. There were too many bodies, the weight of them drowning him in a ceaseless sea of blood, rot and despair. There was no hope of escape. He truly was going to die here.

But then his surroundings changed again, and he was looking down on that mountainous, decaying pile, grinning and holding another body to toss on top.

This one had died too soon, he thought, gaze shifting to the motionless female soul he held in his scaled, gnarled arms. Souls were as real and corporal down here as humans were up there, and for seventy-two years he’d kept this one chained. She’d been helpless as he’d sliced her piece by agonizing piece. He’d laughed when she’d begged for mercy, revived her when she’d thought to find that same mercy in sleep, and forced her to watch as he did the same to her beloved family, two members he also owned.

So much fun…

A female’s tears had never tantalized him so exquisitely, and he’d meant to enjoy her suffering at least another seventy years. But he’d gotten carried away this morning, his claws just a little too sharp, the tips sinking just a little too deep.

Oh, well.

He was Torment, and there were a thousand other souls awaiting his attention. Why mourn the loss of this one?

He rid himself of the body with the barest flick of his wrists. She landed, the other damned mortals clanking around her. He waited, expectant, and was soon rewarded. One of his minions, his hungry, hungry minions, crept to the body and began to feast, snapping and hissing at any other creatures who attempted to thieve the delicious meal.

Such a pretty picture they made, the scaled, crimson-eyed fiend and the naughty human who’d dared to die before he’d finished with her. Oh, well, he thought again. Her soul would soon wither, materialize, and solidify somewhere in this endless pit, and if he were the one to find her, he would have another chance to torture her.

Whistling under his breath, he turned and strolled away.

In the next instant, Amun was swept out of hell in a blinding gale of fury and sorrow, Torment no longer, but a female. Human. She huddled in a corner, no more than twelve years old, the harsh material that covered her body like something out of a historic reenactment, tears scalding her cheeks, fear a living entity inside her chest. She was dirty, pale, the straw surrounding her the only source of comfort.

“Have you forgotten how I saved you?” a hard male voice asked. In Greek. Ancient Greek.

His booted feet slapped the ground as he paced in front of her. He was on the short side, his face scarred by the pox and his body rotund. His name was Marcus, but she called him the Bad Man. Yes, he’d saved her, but he’d beaten her, too. When her words pleased him, she was given food, shelter. When they did not, she was forgotten, locked away, terrified of being sold as a slave.

She didn’t want to be terrified anymore.

He’d plucked her from the hut where she’d lived her entire life. Until he had arrived, she’d been too afraid to leave, even though there’d been no one left to care for her. Somehow, he had known about the terrors that filled her every dream, both awake and asleep—memories no little girl should have, much less replay over and over again, eyes open or closed—and he had promised to help her.

For some reason, she had hated him at first sight, just as she’d begun to hate everything—herself, her hut, the world—but in her desperation, she had believed him. Now she wished she had run.

“Have you. Forgotten how. I saved you? How the evil one wanted you dead, how I whisked you away before he could return? Don’t make me ask again.”

“N-no, I haven’t forgotten,” she replied in that same lost language, the words trembling from her throat in a panicked rush.

“Good. Nor will you forget how the evil one infected you. Or what, exactly, the evil one is.”

She didn’t understand the part about being infected, but the rest had been drilled into her head. “He is a Lord.”

“And who killed your family?”

“A Lord.” Her voice was stronger now, a flash of mutilated bodies appearing in her mind.

A memory quickly followed, the Bad Man disappearing from view. A memory only three weeks old, and yet, it seemed an eternity had passed already.

“You were promised to someone,” her parents’ murderer had said, his voice eerie, unnatural, as he’d splashed over the crimson river between their bodies. He was the evil one, and something in his voice had caused a blanket of ice to form around her soul. He’d had no face, and his feet hadn’t quite touched the floor. He was tall and thin, a black robe swathing him from head to toe, shielding every inch of him, floating around him and dancing in a wind she couldn’t feel. “They should have kept their promise.”

“Who are you?” she’d asked shakily, terrified and numb all at once. She had only stumbled upon this scene a few minutes ago and hadn’t quite processed what she was seeing.

Now, looking back, with the Bad Man’s warnings about the creature’s evilness ringing in her ears, she quaked. Despite her wonderings, the memory continued on.

“Who I am matters not. Who you are is all that matters,” the faceless being said. He scooped her up, obviously planning to leave with her, but she fought him with all her might. When he couldn’t subdue her, he stabbed her. Once, in the side, barely missing vital organs.

The pain that consumed her was devastating. And yet, with the pain, more of that aberrant cold stormed to life, seeping from her. A cold that didn’t just numb. A cold that raged liked a blizzard inside her.

And then, ice actually crystallized over her skin, seeping from her pores. What she was seeing couldn’t be real. Couldn’t possibly be real.

As the creature strode outside the hut, still holding her, she reached up and pushed at the face she still couldn’t see, skin meeting skin. He howled with an agony that matched her own.

For several seconds, neither of them could pull away. Perhaps they were locked together, frozen by the ice. Then he dropped her, and she scrambled backward, bleeding, hurting. Still howling, he disappeared, there one moment, gone the next. Leaving her reeling, uncertain of what had happened and how she’d done what she’d done.

“How are you going to repay these Lords, my darling Hadiee?” the Bad Man asked, drawing her back to the present. She didn’t like him any better than she liked the evil one.

Another answer that had been drilled into her head. One she wouldn’t forget, one that was as much a part of her as her arms and legs. Perhaps more so, because it was a shield of armor around her, keeping her safe. “Slaughter them all.” They were murderers, after all, and they deserved to die.

A pause, silence, and then soft fingers briefly ruffled her hair. “That’s a good girl. I’ll train you yet.”

A split second later, the image inside Amun’s mind changed. He realized he was no longer reliving a memory, her memory, but was now staring down at the girl. She was bathed in light, older, a woman now, and sleeping so innocently on a bed of silver silk.

There was something familiar about her name, even though he knew she had changed it. Hadiee then, but Haidee now. There was something familiar about her surroundings, too, but his mind refused to bridge the gap from questions to answers.

She had a shoulder-length crop of pale hair that she’d streaked with pink. Her face was lush in its femininity, despite the silver eyebrow ring she sported. Perhaps because her dark blond brows arched like a cupid’s bow.

Lashes thick enough to be a raven’s wing fluttered open, one moment fanning over the rise of perfectly sculpted cheekbones, the next framing eyes of pearl-gray, the next, fanning again. She fought to awaken, as if sensing his scrutiny, but failed, allowing him to continue.

Her delicate nose led to lips that reminded him of a freshly blooming rose. Her skin appeared eternally flushed, as if she were constantly lost to arousal, the undertones kissed by the sun. No, he thought next. Not just kissed by the sun, but sprinkled with its rays, as if she was lit from the inside, a thousand tiny diamonds crushed into her flesh. Not like the Harpies, whose luminous, multihued flesh rivaled the brightest rainbow. This woman, this Haidee, didn’t actually glow. She was simply beauty personified.

He could have watched her forever, he mused. She was his first glimpse of paradise in what seemed an infinite nightmare. But, of course, even this was to be taken from him.

Though he fought, the image shifted again, orange-gold flames suddenly filling his line of vision. Plumes of smoke curled upward, painting the acrid air with what looked to be a demon’s breath.

A city burned in front of him, huts crackling as timber fell and grass disintegrated. Mothers screamed for their children, and fathers lay facedown in the blood-soaked dirt, weapons protruding from their backs. All of them wore the same type of clothing little Hadiee—Haidee now, he reminded himself—had sported. Dark, threadbare linen, rough and stained.

He wasn’t the only one watching the destruction. Eleven warriors stood at his sides, their eyes glowing bright red, their skin merely a mask that concealed the hideous monsters lurking underneath. Monsters with sharp-tipped horns knifing from their skulls, poisonous fangs jutting from their mouths, and oozing scales rather than peach-tinted flesh.

Their gore-covered chests lifted and fell with the force of their breaths, their nostrils flaring. Their hands clenched around blades as their thoughts invaded his mind. More. They needed more. More flames, more screams, more death. For only when the entire world was flooded with the blood and bones of these precious mortals would they be satisfied. Fulfilled.

Except…

Amun didn’t want to kill just then. He wanted to return to the little girl. He wanted to hold her close and tell her everything was going to be all right, and that he would save her from the Bad Man. He wanted to return to the woman. He wanted to curl beside her and hear her tell him everything was going to be all right, and that she would save him from the demons.

And he would. He would return.

Amun struggled to reach her. He didn’t care when skin tore and bone snapped. No, he welcomed the pain. Liked it, even. Perhaps too much. And he didn’t care when flames rushed to him, licked over him, hundreds of spiked tongues leaking acid. He welcomed the sting, because with these newest wounds, the bugs in his veins were finally freed. They raced out, crawling all over his body, the bed.

The bed. Yes, he was atop a bed, he thought hazily.

Suddenly he could feel the shredded sheets underneath him, every savage gash carved in his muscles, the pain so much greater than before, and not so welcome now. Worse, steel pressed into his wrists and ankles, preventing him from stanching the flow of blood or shooing away the bugs.

Though every instinct he possessed shouted that he continue to fight, he forced himself to stop thrashing. In and out he breathed, realizing the air was heavy and coated with decay. But underneath the rot, he smelled something else…something crisp, like the earth. Pulsing, vibrant life.

And beneath the flames, he could feel the sweetest kiss of winter ice, soothing his burns, gifting him with tendrils of strength. What—who—was responsible?

He tried to open his eyes, but his lids were sealed shut. He frowned. Why were his lids sealed shut? And the steel…chains, he thought as the haze began to fade. Binding him, holding him prisoner. Why?

A startling moment of lucidity.

He hissed in horror, even as he clung to every thought now forming in his head, praying he continued to remember. He was Amun, keeper of the demon of Secrets. He had loved, and he had lost. He had killed, but he had also saved. He was not an animal, a brutal killer, not anymore, but a man. An immortal warrior who safeguarded what was his.

He had entered hell, knowing the consequences but willingly overlooking them. Because he couldn’t bear to see his friend Aeron hurting, crazed with the knowledge that his surrogate daughter was trapped in hell’s torturous blaze. So Amun had gone, and had emerged with hundreds of other demons and souls all trapped inside him, writhing, screaming, desperate for escape.

But he was home now, and he needed to die. Had to die. He was a danger to his friends, the world. He would die.

There would be no comforting Haidee, nor taking comfort from the woman she’d become, for he could never allow himself to leave this room, his sanctuary. His coffin. And that, he found, was what he would mourn most. Whether he’d encountered her soul in hell and absorbed her memories there, or had stumbled upon her years ago, her voice lost in the dark, thorny mire of his mind until now, he would never know. This was it for him.

This was the end.

Flames.

Screams.

Evil.

Once again they battled for his attention and threatened to overwhelm him.

Amun knew he couldn’t hold them off for long. Too demanding, so demanding… He focused on the earthy perfume and cooling breeze, head automatically turning to the left, following invisible threads wafting in the air. Leading from this bedroom…into the one next to it? Power.

Peace.

Salvation.

Perhaps he could leave this room, he thought then. Perhaps he could be saved. That small sip of salvation, the barest taste…a frosted apricot, juice so sweet his throat would forever rejoice.

He just had to—flames, screams, evil—get there. Must…fight. FLAMES. Amid the growing black thunder in his brain, Amun jerked at his bonds. SCREAMS. Already torn flesh surrendered, and already broken bone dusted to powder. EVIL. But he couldn’t pull himself free. He’d already used up his strength, he realized. He had nothing left.

FLAMES, SCREAMS, EVIL.

As he slumped onto the mattress, he laughed silently, bitterly. He’d lost, and so easily, too. He’d truly, finally lost. He couldn’t even call for his friends. A single word spoken, a single sound made, and everything inside him would spew out, his clash against the evil all for nothing.

FLAMESSCREAMSEVIL.

Closer…closer now…

A shocking burst of hope as that sense of defeat shattered.

If he couldn’t reach whoever was in that bedroom, perhaps he…she…they…could reach him.

As the evil swamped him once more, Amun shouted as soundlessly as he’d laughed. Come to me!