Death Lord

4

He dropped me in a heap in the corner of the room on the dirty floor, and I let loose another stream of swear words he couldn’t understand. I fell silent when the clink of metal against metal met my ears. My fears were confirmed a moment later when Belial pulled chains out from a cabinet and started toward me with them. I scrambled back, my bound feet trying to catch footing and failing, and then my back hit a wall. I was well and truly trapped here with this psychopath who seemed impossible to kill.

Belial let the chains drag along the floor as he cornered me at the wall. He released the darkness cocooning my wrists, but only to snap a chain to the silver cuffs. I watched helplessly as he attached the other end to a hook on the wall. I didn’t bother tugging on it. The chain was thick enough that I’d almost call it overkill.

He quickly searched me all over, presumably for other weapons, his hands roaming across my body over my combat leathers. I froze as he touched me, and even though there wasn’t anything s****l about it, my breath hitched anyway at how near he was. He found no weapons, but did confiscate my phone, the bastard. Then he reached into a cabinet and pulled out another set of silver cuffs.

“No!” I cried out through my muffle. I strained against the length of the chain, trying to get away from him, but there was nowhere to run and no way to escape. He captured one foot and held it tight so I couldn’t kick him as he attached the cuff around my ankle, and then quickly slapped the other one on before I could try to kick him again. He added another chain to those cuffs, and attached it to the same wall hook. Why did he need a wall hook? Did he keep many prisoners down here? f**k, what kind of sick bastard was he?

Belial stepped back to admire his handiwork. I glared at him, hating him with every fiber of my being. He waved his hand and the pressure sealing my mouth shut vanished. Finally.

“Let me go, you f*****g psychopath!” I snapped instantly.

He arched a dark eyebrow. “Now why would I do that when I just got you here?”

A tremor of fear ran down my spine but I refused to let it show on my face. “What are you going to do to me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” He leaned against a stack of crates, crossing his arms, and observed me. His dark gaze wandered over me in a long, lazy roll, and then came back up to my eyes. He smirked as if he’d just seen something incredibly funny. “Tell me who you are… or better yet, what you are.”

I debated not telling him a single thing. But then, what was the point in hiding it? He already had me chained up, and he could probably torture the information out of me if he needed to. “My name is Eira, and I’m the daughter of Fenrir.”

Understanding flickered across his face, so slight that I would have missed it if I wasn’t watching so closely for his reaction. “Is that why you’re here to kill me?” He sounded almost amused. “Revenge for your father’s death?”

“That’s not the only reason,” I growled.

I hadn’t been at the battle in Hell where my father had been killed, but my older brothers were there and they’d told me everything. Sure, my father had fought a war against Lucifer, but it was Lucifer’s eldest son who’d dealt the killing blow. My father had made many mistakes, but I’d loved him anyway, and I couldn’t forgive Belial for his death. Even so, I hadn’t planned to go after him until shifters started going missing or turning up dead all around New Orleans, and when my brothers came to investigate, they disappeared too. The media had called the “vigilante” the Grim Reaper of New Orleans, mentioning how he only killed criminals, rapists, and others the police never caught, but I knew what he truly was—a murderer who had to be stopped.

“Where are my brothers?” I asked. “Have you killed them?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Belial said.

“Liar! You’ve been killing off shifters in this city, and even more have gone missing. Did you bring them down here before killing them? Is that what you’re going to do to me?”

He snorted. “You’re the first I’ve chained up down here in many years.”

“Wow, I’m honored,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “How about you free me and we finish what we started in that alley”

“Are you so quick to go to your death?” He smirked, looking haughty and amused and way too f*****g handsome for his own good. “We both know you can’t kill me. After all, I am Death.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, shock running over me like a bucket of ice water.

Belial just shook his head. “You want to kill me because of Fenrir’s death when you don’t even know the whole story.”

“No, I want to kill you because you’re a murderer and you have to be stopped. The trail of bodies you’ve left across the city is proof. Just like the shifter you were about to murder tonight.”

Belial let out a sarcastic laugh. “Is that what you think? I was only attacking that shifter because he was going to kill that homeless man. He’s killed many over the last few days, and I’d finally tracked him down and was about to stop him—when you attacked me.”

“I didn’t see any homeless guy.” I’d watched Belial from the shadows as he’d jumped down and grabbed the shifter by the throat, completely unprovoked. “Just you and the shifter.”