The chains from the dream are missing; another difference I vaguely pick up on.
I’m plastered to this couch just the same, glued to it by the shock of what’s happening.
I tilt my head back to take in her mind-bending glory, one that I have memorized by now. Not only because I’ve dreamt it countless times, but because I’ve been obsessed with the recollection of it during my waking hours as well.
Her black coat flares out into a skirt and each step she takes parts the folds, exposing the straps of a garter belt connected to black, silk-edged thigh highs.
Her hair falls in brown waves down her shoulders—a cacophony of different shades that’s highlighted by the fire trickling along her silhouette. Her skin is a golden tan and my befuddled mind muses how apt that is; after all, a woman of flames would be kissed by its glow.
Ice-blue eyes asses me in the coldest of ways.
My soul freezes even more.
My heart nearly disappears in a burst of molten ashes fanned by her presence.
She scares me to the core.
Fascinates me like the quintessential abyss calling my name.
I’m sure I’m not the first man to get aroused by the cause of his demise.
“It’s you. You’re the one here to collect.” I should be free to move now without the chains, but I’m sluggish.
Broken by what’s happened and by the sight of her.
I killed all these people, didn’t I? I’m the reason they’re torn to pieces, why organs are scattered throughout the space.
Oh God, what have I done?
She tilts her head, staring at the pitiful fool by her feet. “You gave them your soul and you’ve become the abomination you’re meant to be. Now you shall burn for your greed.”
Greed? Can she not see how wrong she is, this glorious creature of myth. She calls me the abomination, yet she’s the embodiment of all that shouldn’t exist. Proof that what happened a decade ago—me selling my soul to that bedraggled woman—was real.
Proof that there’s a world beyond human pettiness, poverty and glitz, desires and strife.
I knew this. For a decade, the dream was there, as well as that thought, a reality I ignored as I continued to bask in my accomplishment.
As I continued to amass money, prestige.
Continued to chase after everything that’s wrong in life because it helped me deal with the trauma of my early years.
She’s right. I do deserve to burn for my greed, as much as for what I did to the people in this room.
Except, I won’t burn.
Not in the way she and her kind intend for me to, anyway.
I jerk my head, unblinking, drunk on the sight of my intended executioner. Not that she’ll have the chance to become that. She’s here for something much worse. “They sent you here to kill me, but that’s not what you’re here to do. You’re here to own me . . .”
An undeniable truth.
A damming one.
A punishment far worse than my death.
I don’t know her, yet my molecules recognize the danger she poses.
Her expression flashes; fire-framed fingers twitch at her sides. Every inch of her is in denial of my claim—ready to destroy the lowly being that would dare to utter such a claim. She’s a vision of incoming disaster.
A symphony of bad intentions.
I know what comes next, have lived this moment a thousand times in my dreams.
She’s going to try to kill me.
She’s going to fail.
Damn us both.
“The only thing I own, foul creature, is the life still coursing through your veins. And I shall be taking that now.” She lifts her hand, the flames bursting into an even more blinding whirl—
Last thing I see is that fire coming for me.
The disgust in her gaze.
My own limbs shifting, overcome with . . . fur?
Someone’s haunting howl is the last thing I hear.
And I’m pretty sure that sound came from me.
My vision is gone for maybe a second, perhaps even less, then it snaps back with a fury, overwhelming me.
It’s enhanced.
Sharper than my mind can handle.
I see everything like I’ve never seen it before, almost down to the molecules it’s all made of.
That’s not all. Now that my vision’s returned, I realize that in that single second it was gone, I also managed to do the impossible.
I manage to somehow jump across the room, away from that burst of flames she aimed at me.
The settee I’d been on is covered by fire, almost nothing but ashes left behind.
She whirls in my direction, gorgeous face twisted by disbelief and fury. With my vision enhanced like this, the sight of her strikes me straight in the heart, stealing my breath and every ounce of self-preservation I possess.
“How . . . you’re even faster than most of your kind, foul creature.” Holding up another fire-framed hand, she aims in my direction again. “But I’m even faster. There’s no escape for you.”
My kind? No time to think about it. Merciless, she sends another blast my way. There’s no thinking about it, I simply move by pure instinct, escaping it by a hairsbreadth.
Literally.
That fire is hot enough to burn the air and it rushes over the hair on my back.
Wait. Hair? Back?
My arm was sprouting what looked like fur as she sent that first volley toward me.
I land on the floor across the living room—on the completely opposite side from where I started—and it quickly becomes obvious that I just moved at what seems to be hyper-fucking-velocity.
A blast goes off from where I just ran from, and a look over my shoulder shows me that an entire side of the penthouse is now being consumed by fire.
Unnatural fire.
It has to be. Never heard of a blaze spreading that quick.
As quick as I just ran across the room.
Or maybe I flew? Who the hell knows?
The goddess sent to kill me spins my way, the ends of her coat flaring around her legs, her hair sweeping in the wind.
It’d be easier to escape her if I wasn’t so damned enraptured by her.
“What the fuck?” she cries, aghast, her fires rising around her as her emotions play out on her face. “You’re the quickest werewolf I’ve ever come across. Impossible. You just turned!”
Werewolf?
Just turned?
What the hell is she going on about?
She clenches a fist, fire pulsing in her grip like lightning about to strike, and I don’t waste time waiting around.
My next step is in the direction of the doors she stepped through, there’s just one problem:
It’s not only a step. It’s four near simultaneous ones and the reason for that becomes obvious—
I’m on all fours.
Werewolf. Fur. Carnage around us, blood dripping from my mouth.
What that means—what I’ve somehow become—slams into me and steals my next breath. I dodge another stream of fire and skid into the grand piano in the middle of the room. The impact forces my head down and I see the truth I’d love to deny.
I’m trapped in the body of a huge, black dog.
A wolf.
“Stay. Fucking. Still,” my executioner shouts, nearly lost in the cyclone of fire that’s starting to eat away at the floor beneath her. She sends four shots in my direction, in quick succession, and two of them almost get me.
The entire penthouse is on fire by now and I can hear screams rising throughout the building.