The Darkest Pleasure

her of his demise; she refuses to eat and prays for death so that she can join him. You owe us now, don't you agree?'

As he'd probably hoped, his words filled her with white-hot guilt and that guilt cut deeper than the shackles. 'Please. I just want to go home.' Not that she had a home anymore. She laughed again, feeling a little crazed and a lot shaky. Dizzy. 'Please.'

Stefano's expression didn't soften. 'The Lords—Maddox, Lucien, Reyes, Sabin, Gideon, they call themselves. Shall I go on? They are demons, created in the heavens yet spawned from hell itself. Did you know that?'

She blinked, breath congealing in her lungs. 'D-demons?' A few months ago, she would have rolled her eyes at him. Now, she nodded. That explained so much. She'd seen her captors' faces morph into skeletal beings. She'd been flown through the city cradled in the arms of a winged man. She'd seen fangs elongate and claws sharpen. She'd heard growls and screams of pain and torture.

Demons. Like the ones in her dreams, her secret paintings. Had she somehow known, even as a little girl, that she'd end up in Budapest with Reyes and his friends? Then later, with this man? Had the nightmares she'd always battled been a means of preparing her for this?

'Yes. Oh, yes. You believe. You see the truth.' Stefano stalked toward her, hate radiating from him. That hate transformed him from calm and friendly to menacing beast. 'Death is a demon. Destruction is a demon. Disease is a demon. Every evil deed the world has ever known, every evil that has ever transpired, can be traced to their doorstep.'

The closer he came to her, the more she shrank into the mattress. 'Wh-what does this have to do with me?'

'So no one you've loved has died? Nothing you've owned has been destroyed? No one has ever lied to you? Sickness has never plagued you?'

'I—I—' She didn't know what to say.

'Still aren't convinced of their treachery? One of those demons seduced my wife. She was all that was pure and right and never would have betrayed me on her own. Yet somehow, some way, the very demon spawn who tricked her into bed convinced her that she was evil, that she needed to die. So she killed herself, and I was the one to find her body hanging from the rafters of our garage.' Each word sharpened his voice. His jaw had become granite.

Danika knew the pain of discovering a loved one dead. She'd been the one to find her grandfather after his heart attack, and the image of his pale, lifeless body still haunted her, tainting the memories of the vital man he'd once been. 'I'm so sorry for your loss.'

Stefano gulped, seemed to gather his composure around himself. 'That loss gave me a purpose in life—one I share with thousands of others around the globe. While the Lords are darkness, we are light, and we were not meant to endure the evil they have brought into this world. Our world,' he added. He closed his eyes as if he could taste the delicious flavor of his hope. 'Once we capture the Lords and contain their evil once and for all, things will be as they were always meant to be. Beautiful…peaceful. Perfect.'

Keep him talking. Keep his thoughts off you. 'Why capture? Why not kill them?'

Slowly his eyelids cracked open, the happy glaze already fading from his irises. He stared at her, seeming to probe her soul. The sensation was eerie. 'Killing them frees the demons inside them, allowing those vile beasts to roam the earth crazed and unfettered. We need man and spirit bound together.' He shrugged as if he didn't care, but his gaze razored. 'Until we find the box, that is.'

'Box?' Trying to appear relaxed, she wiggled her wrists against the chains. They were still too tight, but her skin was wet with sweat. If she could just slip free…She could, what? Run? Demons were chasing her family. Not humans. Would her loved ones ever truly be safe?

'Pandora's box,' Stefano said, still watching her intently.

Her eyes widened, and she stilled. Is this a dream, perhaps? Another nightmare? 'You're kidding, right?' Her grandmother used to tell her stories about Pandora and her infamous box. 'That's a myth. A legend.'

He crossed his arms over his chest, stretching the fabric of his shirt and defining the lean line of his muscles. Obviously he trained with weights and weapons, just like the Lords. 'And demons do not walk the earth, I suppose?'

Her stomach tightened with dread.

'I'll tell you a story, all right? Listen closely.'

He paused, waiting. She nodded, hoping that's what he desired.

Obviously, it was. He said, 'A few hundred years after the creation of the earth, a horde of demons escaped hell. They were the vilest creatures Hades and his brother Lucifer had ever spawned. They were uncontrollable, living nightmares. In a bid to save their world, the gods used the bones of the goddess of oppression to create a box. With cunning and precision they were able to capture the demons and lock them inside.'

'I know the rest,' Danika whispered, the tightening in her stomach becoming a sea of sickness.

Stefano arched a brow. 'Tell me.'

'The gods asked Pandora to guard the box.'

He nodded. 'Yes.'

'Pandora opened it,' she continued, because it was the most well-known version of the story. That wasn't what her grandmother had told her, however.

'No. That's where legend is wrong,' Stefano traced a fingertip over the tattoo on his wrist. 'Pandora was a warrior, the greatest female warrior of her time. The box was given to her for safekeeping. She wouldn't have opened it, even upon threat of death.'

Another tug against the chains, this one weaker. Danika found herself suddenly fascinated, listening despite her desire to leave. Stefano had just confirmed what her grandmother had told her, a tale unlike the one the world believed. 'And?'

'And the gods' elite soldiers were angry that they hadn't been chosen to guard it, their pride slighted. They decided to show the gods their mistake. While the one called Paris seduced Pandora, the others fought her guards. In the end, the soldiers won. Their leader, the one named Lucien, opened the box, releasing those vile demons upon the innocent world once more. Death and Darkness reigned.'

Danika once again sagged into the mattress. She stared up at the ceiling, trying to imagine harsh, rugged Reyes as Stefano claimed he'd been. Prideful, jealous. When Danika had been with him, Reyes hadn't seemed to care what others thought of him. He'd barked orders and snapped commands. He'd been surly and brooding. 'And?'

'The box disappeared. No one knew where it had been taken or who had taken it. Having no other alternative, the gods gathered the demons and placed them inside the warriors responsible for the travesty, then banished them to earth. Those men lost all threads of their humanity; they became their demons, bathing our world in blood. And they continue to be a blight upon us all. As long as they're roaming free, no one is safe.' Stefano rubbed at his Adam's apple, his head tilting to the side, expression intense. 'I asked you before, but I will ask you again. Can you imagine a world without rage, pain, lies and misery?'

'No.' She couldn't. For the past two months, those were all she'd known. They'd been her only companions.

'The Lords killed your grandmother, Danika. Are you aware of that?'

'You don't know that for sure!' she yelled, the words leaving her on a burst. Tears filled her eyes again, but she suppressed them as she had before. 'She could be alive.'

'She's not.'

'How do you know?' The question was panicked, hoarse. 'You can't know unless you've…unless you've…'

'Seen her.'

Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. No. Goddamn it, no! 'Have you?' She barely heard herself, but didn't have the strength to ask again.

'Yes and no,' he admitted. 'One of my men saw the creature Aeron carrying her limp body over his shoulder. The pair disappeared inside a building, or my agent would have followed.' Stefano pinched the bridge of his nose in regret. 'At first, we planned to watch you and wait for the Lords to come for you again. We assumed you meant to