Three Trials (The Dark Side, #2)

by Kristy Cunning

“That’s not at all what I said, and a touchable vagina makes me very much an actual being. My independent thoughts and emotions make me a being too, but mostly the vagina. And it’s a good vagina, by the way. Not an evil one, despite the house vote.”

“Just curious, but do you think they’re searching for the Four Horsemen?” I ask.

I grew attached to all of you—infallibly loyal, viciously protective, savagely lustful, and tragically devoted.

“I mean, it’s right there in the word. Menstruating. It’d make more sense to define moody men.”

“If we could have you, I wouldn’t be so selfish. I’d make sure you were well sated before taking mine, and I’d make you crave me as often as possible. The fact that I’m not your favorite kills me. But because of that aching need to be your favorite, I know you’d be the end of us.”

“My evil vagina is impressed with her powers of temptation,” I deadpan.

“I’m all of your types, really, minus the preference in hair color. I had no control over that. It was there when I got here. But all your wants, desires, needs, debaucheries of choice…everything. I’m molded to your specifications, because the only thing in the world I knew was all of you. I learned what you liked, and it became a part of me. It shaped me as the person I am now, because I was learning who the hell I was then. Blame yourselves for all the things you don’t like.”

“Don’t worry, he just used his fingers. He didn’t give it up to the nefarious vagina. My point is, it seems I’m going to be running low on firsts pretty soon, at the rate I’m going. You boys better not come crying to me when you missed all the firsts for being completely unreasonable pricks.”

“That’s twice you’ve called me comoara trădătoare. What does it mean?” I ask him. He holds my gaze for so long that I think he’s not going to answer. Just as he closes his eyes, I hear the words that are almost whispered. “Treacherous treasure.”

My milkshake brings all the boys to naptime…

“Well, I’m glad you decide to share that after I’ve been lighting these thirsty bitches up for a while,” I point out. “You just used thirsty bitches wrong as well,” Kai states from in front of me.

“Who’s your favorite now?” he drawls as he turns and starts backing away, a knowing grin on his face. “Definitely you,” I say with one hundred percent honesty.

“For the last fucking time, they can’t touch you in that form, so stop screaming. I have welts all over my body because these trees really like your little shrieks.”

“Give me a few days to be thankful I’m alive, to be thankful I somehow managed to see you all home safely, and give my heart a break, before you remind me how very little you care.”

“Jude is playing his game. He secretly needs you to be a worthy adversary, but the more you prove you are, the more he truly believes no good can come from it. We’ve been burned in the past many times. And you’ve already penetrated farther than any woman before you,”

“We used to always sit in the same spots. For centuries,” Kai says, almost as though he’s thinking aloud. “Until about five or so years ago,” Gage adds quietly.

“For fuck’s sake, so what if she cheated? She spent an hour trying to paint the damn things just because you bought her the fucking polish. Give her a compliment already,” Kai says, confusing me, until I realize he’s angrily directing that toward Ezekiel.

“It’s clear I was designed just for the four of you. Whether or not I’m a Trojan Horse is beyond my knowledge. But even if I am such, I’ll destroy whoever wants to use me against you. My loyalties are sealed and undivided. The four of you are my only charge. If Lamar had been truly trying to hurt you, I would have burned his heart in his chest without blinking an eye. And I happen to like Lamar.”

“The answer would be simple if you stopped to think about it,” he says so quietly I almost miss it. “You inspire a fear none of us have known before.”

“Famine is Gage. I saw what he did to that beetle. It was like he drained it until it was shriveling from starvation,”

“And Ezekiel is War, surprisingly enough. He doesn’t create chaos. Chaos would have them running in a frenzy and spurred by random events. War is a simple-minded thought to kill the opposition at any cost. Ezekiel just confused their minds with who the opposition was and created a civil war from thin air.”

“As I said, you’re clearly death. Death can come in any form. You didn’t need a spear to kill them, because you were Death itself.”

“Two years ago, the four of you shared her,” I say on a shaky breath as Jude goes to hug her right in front of me like she’s nothing more than an old friend.

It’s now I realize why. They shared her more than once. I just got to view a reunion.

“I mean it. I will not be the little magic gem that offers you an independent boner so you can screw another girl in my presence.”

“You being turned on by her definitely makes you my least favorite,” I mutter under my breath. Pettiness is my new shade of personality lately.

I don’t even hesitate to turn whole, pain lancing through me as the blade gets jammed in my upper stomach, slicing through my spine as I shove power out of me. She’s launched backwards, cracking the wall and hitting the ceiling, pinned there but not dying. Because it hurts too much to strain for the acid.

I never even got to tell them why I’d give everything to keep them safe.

Gage lets me down when I start wriggling, and I test my theory. The floor doesn’t start burning under me. I knew it was linked to all of them, just like the horrible pain. They weren’t together, and I couldn’t sense them like usual. I think them being separated from each other was what was making me hurt and tearing my heart in four different directions.

This wasn’t a struggle to survive. This was a grieving tantrum. They grieved me?

“I thought so,” Lamar says as he takes them in. “We heard of a botched attack on one of you in New Orleans last month. Then I lost the feel of her,” he goes on, stepping closer. “Then I felt her again, and knew this time without a doubt it was her. She feels weakened, though.”

“She loves hard,” he goes on. “Very hard,” he adds, smiling like he’s proud of that. “She’s the most jealous person you’ll ever find.”

“She’ll go to the ends of the earth to save you four. And she’ll always be serious when it counts. Because while she distracts you from the intensity of the situation, she’s cataloguing each new piece of information, filing it away, recording it for later, then she puts it all together with the most reasonable way to approach a situation. Though to us, we often find it maddening or just crazy. But we don’t have the same ability to reason as she does.”

“The point is, I know her. She’s actually my best friend,” Lamar adds.

“I figured it’d be obvious by now, but you’re the Four Horsemen,” Lamar tells them.

“New bodies. New faces. No doubt hand-selected by her. I’m almost positive that’s why you’re built with bodies and faces that perfect.”

“Look, there’s no way you could have survived that course without remembering those riddles and having a great deal of prior knowledge of hell. Paca was there telling you the riddles and offering hints to the answers when you struggled the first time,” he tells them.

“She actually has some of the most random, irrational fears. It’s the things that actually require bravery that make her serious and fearless. And it’s good she’s not always that way. The intensity of those moments…the pure, determined, fearless, selfless way she makes the impossible happen…those are the times she made all of you fall in love with her over and over and over again. If she was that way all the time, Hera would lose her title as the world’s best seductress, because Paca would be the only one considered irresistible.”

“In all your mortal lives,” he says, smiling grimly. “I’m just realizing she would have taken that gift from you. It was a game to see if you could fall in love in every life, and you always did. All of you fell in love with her, and she fell in love with all of you. It should have been impossible.”

“She could send you back for mortal lives because she gave you each a piece of her balance and broke every law when she did it. But as I said, she never cared much for rules. In doing so, she made all of you stronger. And she saved your lives back then. Dragged you all from imbalance’s insanity and did what had never been done before in accomplishing it. She saved your lives the first time she met you, and you all saved each other over and over. But this last time, she truly died. Or so we all thought. I’m wondering if it was just the bond that managed to pull her together and allow her to defy the impossible once again.”

“Paca, I know you’re probably overwhelmed if you prevented yourself from remembering all this for whatever reason. But trust me when I say we’ll figure all this out together. You sought me out in hell’s throat. I spent five years convincing myself it was not you I kept feeling, because it was impossible. Then I felt you. Then they said she, and I finally knew we’d been right. They were yours and you were back.”

“The more things change, the more they stay the same. The air in here just got considerably warmer. You four were always pissed or serious when you used her nickname. And she always loved it when you did. She loved angry sex,” Lamar says, smirking.

“The last language was Romanian, I think, because you’d just come back from mortal lives there before…” Lamar lets his words trail off.

“Yes,” Lamar says with a shrug. “Comoara trădătoare,” he says, causing the air to get sucked from the room. “I think that’s roughly the Romanian translation for treacherous treasure. You always called her that in numerous languages.”

“Oh, I thought that was obvious by now,” Lamar says, frowning in my direction. “Especially after telling you that you’re the Four Horsemen. Everyone knows you’re the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse.”

“I’m saying she’s The Apocalypse. Her name is Apocalypse. She puts the in front of it when she wants to remind everyone she’s the only one who can truly level the world. As I said, she’s rather vain that way,”

“It figures that’d be the first question you ask. You see, when you gave them that piece of you, you said you started to feel more. Soon, the five of you were inseparable. Those pieces pulled your souls into one bond, and it made you all invincible. Or so we thought. But it certainly made you all…better.”

He tugs the tarp off, and my breath catches as I look at the woman in the painting. It’s me. With different hair. And four guys are all crowded around me, looking just as menacing as the four in this room. But that’s where the similarities end.

“They were your harem when you were Cleopatra,” Lamar finally says. “It was one of your favorite lives. You all loved that life, except for War. He didn’t get to be the favorite as often in that life.”

“Because,” Lamar goes on, “for the past five hundred years, no one has been able to utter your name. Lucifer made it a law when he started going crazy from suffering the loss of his favorite child. Even Manella didn’t dare utter your name, and he’s your favorite brother. It hurt him the hardest.”