The Darkest Touch

“Ignoring me?” she asked. “Do you have any idea the being you provoke?”

Torin never paused in his task. He would bury Mari. He would find a way out of this hellhole. He would continue the job he’d abandoned when he’d chosen to come with the girl. The search and rescue of Cameo and Viola, who’d gone missing several weeks ago—friends who comprehended his need for distance.

“I am Keeleycael, the Red Queen, and I will be more than happy to take a coat hanger and fish out all of your internal organs...through your mouth.”

Disease went still and quiet.

That, too, was a first.

The Red Queen. The title was somehow familiar to Torin. From a children’s storybook, yes, but there was more to it than that. He’d heard it...where? An image flashed through his mind. A dilapidated bar in the skies. Yes, of course. While working for Zeus, the king of the Greeks, he’d tracked many fugitive immortals there. The words the Red Queen had been whispered behind the trembling hands of fearful men and women, right along with insane and cruel.

He’d always enjoyed pitting his skills against the strongest and vilest of predators, and such a visceral reaction to the supposed Red Queen had intrigued him. But when he’d asked the whisperers who she was and what she could do, they had gone quiet.

Maybe this prisoner was the one they’d spoken of, maybe she wasn’t. Hardly mattered anymore. He wouldn’t be fighting her.

“Keeleycael,” he said. “That’s quite a mouthful. How about I call you Keeley instead?”

“An honor reserved solely for my friends. Do so at your own peril.”

“Thanks. I will.”

A soft snarl from her. “You may call me Your Majesty. I’ll call you My Next Victim.”

“I usually prefer Torin, Hotness or The Awesome.” Nicknames to help smile through the pain. Should probably have gone with Proctalgia Fugax—meaning a literal pain in the ass.

“Why has Mari gone silent, Torin?” Keeley asked as if they were discussing nothing more important than tomorrow’s dinner menu. (Rat casserole.)

She knew Mari was dead, didn’t she? Making him admit it was some sort of punishment.

“Before you reply,” she added, “you should know I would rather save the enemy who tells me the truth than the friend who tells me lies.”

Not a bad motto. Lie and die happened to be his.

And, really, if the situation were reversed, he would have wanted the same thing: answers. But again, if the situation were reversed and she had led to the demise of one of his friends, he would have moved heaven and earth to administer justice. But trapped as they were in these cells created for the strongest of immortals, there was nothing she could do but stew in her rage, helpless as the emotion grew darker and darker, perhaps even driving her mad. It was a cruel fate.

It was also an excuse.

Time to put on my big-boy panties. “Mari is... Dead. She’s dead.”

Silence.

Such oppressive silence and, with it, darkness, as if they’d somehow fallen into a sensory-deprivation tank.

He spoke in a desperate bid to dull his mounting sorrow, explaining, “Since you know about Cronus’s deal with Mari, you must know I’m a Lord of the Underworld. One of the fourteen warriors responsible for stealing and opening Pandora’s box, unleashing the demons from within. As punishment, we were each cursed to house one of those demons inside our own bodies. I was given Disease, the world’s worst SSTD. Skin-to-skin-transmitted disease. I make people sick. That’s what I do, and there’s no stopping it. She touched me, like I said. We touched each other. But that’s all it took. She died. She’s dead,” he repeated hollowly.

Again silence.

He locked his jaw to prevent himself from admitting the other Lords hosted baddies like Violence, Death and Pain. That thousands of innocents had died at their hands, and thousands more had lamented the vileness of their deeds. That, despite everything, none of his friends were as wretched as Disease. They chose their victims. Torin did not.

What a freaking prize I am.

Who would ever want him? Single immortal male looking for someone to love—and murder.

He couldn’t even comfort himself with memories of past lovers. When he’d lived in the skies, he’d concerned himself with his war duties and very little else, women nothing more than an afterthought...until his body demanded attention. But every time he’d chosen a lover, his warrior instincts to dominate and subdue had overtaken him, and his unintentional roughness had made the females cry before their clothes had ever come off. Which meant their clothes had never come off.

Perhaps he could have coaxed the females to continue, but his disgust with himself had been too great. He excelled on the battlefield but couldn’t master the mechanics of sex?

Humiliating.

Now he would trade what little remained of his integrity for skin-to-skin anything, desperate to have what he’d once disdained, unable to fight his enemies in the down-and-dirty way he’d once—still—loved.

“Torin,” Keeley said, and despite the strain he heard, he still reacted with the same raw hunger as before. “You realize you killed an innocent girl, yes?”

He settled in the hole he’d dug, pulled on his gloves and rested his head against his upraised palms. “Yes.” His gaze flicked to Mari. She might have known about his condition, but some part of her must have trusted him to keep her safe.

Now look at her.

“Torin,” Keeley said again. “Have you also realized I will punish you for your crime?”

“You can’t hurt me any more than I’m hurting right now.”

“Not true. I have heard of you and your friends, you know.”

What did that have to do with anything? “Explain where you’re going with this, and I might decide to invest in the rest of the conversation.” Otherwise, it was time to find his way free.

“You may have the world’s worst SSTD,” she said, “but I throw the world’s worst temper tantrum.”

Interesting, but not applicable. “Are you chastising me or applying to be my sidekick?”

“Silence!”

Disease recoiled like the coward he was.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of Atlantis,” she continued easily. “What you probably do not know is that I ensured the island was swallowed by the sea simply because I was a wee bit annoyed with its ruler.”

Truth? Or exaggeration?

Either way...it excited him with the same fervency as her voice. At last. The opponent of my dreams.

“You have garnered more than my annoyance, warrior. I had one friend here. Only one. She is—was—my family.” A pause as Keeley sniffled. “Not by blood, but something far greater. I was once a creature of hate, but she taught me to love. And you took her away from me.”

Her pain sliced at him.

“Torin,” she said, and he knew instinctively this was the final calm before a great and terrible storm.

“Yes, Keeley.” If she asked for his heart—a life for a life—he would give it to her.

The storm broke, revealing the temper she’d lauded.