like him. When he was unconscious, anyone could kick his ass, making his suffering a thousand times worse.
I suck. Maddox shouldn’t have asked him to help.
With a roar of frustration, Maddox strode to the defunct punching bag and kicked it...into Strider’s chest, knocking the guy to his ass. Oops. “My bad.”
“Well, that’s something to cross off my bucket list,” Strider said drily. “Magic sandbag ride.”
“Sorry.” Maddox hopped from one foot to the other, more amped by the second.
Sabin, the keeper of Doubt, and Reyes, the keeper of Pain, stalked into the gym, stopping abruptly when they spotted Maddox practically foaming at the mouth and Strider, who’d pushed free of the bag and now stood in a growing pile of sand.
Both Sabin and Reyes grinned with relish.
“Came to work out, but my spidey senses tell me something better is afoot.” Sabin rubbed his hands together. “Does someone need an old-fashioned beating?”
“Yes. Let’s start with you.” The guy was within reach. Maddox swung his arm with considerable force. Crack! His fist slammed into Sabin’s jaw, sending his friend staggering to the side. At the moment of impact, Maddox’s thin thread of control snapped. He—utterly—unleashed.
He punched and kicked, and Sabin and Reyes punched and kicked in turn. He never ducked, but accepted every blow as his due. When furniture got in his way, he destroyed it.
You can’t win. Stop. Stop now.
Sabin’s demon whispered doubts through his mind. Maddox laughed and delivered a punch so powerful he broke Sabin’s neck.
Oops again.
This wasn’t the first time they’d fought to such an extreme, and it wouldn’t be the last. However, Sabin was usually the one who broke Maddox’s neck in order to end a rampage. Today, with darkness driving him, Maddox wasn’t sure he could be stopped.
Besides, the guy would heal...in a few days.
Reyes delivered a hard jab to Maddox’s throat. A dirty move. Also welcome. As Maddox gasped for breath, Strider jumped on his back and jackhammered a fist into his temple. As Maddox stumbled from the impact, Reyes sealed the deal by knocking his feet out from under him. By the time he hit the ground, two others had joined the fray. William the Ever Randy, and Cameo, the keeper of Misery.
Well, well. A boot party.
As different members of the group took turns kicking him, the demon hummed with happiness. This. This was what it had craved.
Cameo pressed a booted foot into his throat. “Had enough?”
“Not yet.” The words were slurred, his lips and tongue wonderfully swollen.
“Let me help with that.” William straddled his waist and grinned down at him. “You want action, shithead? I’ll give you action. Too bad you’re not going to like it.” He punched, his fist somehow pushing past skin, muscle and bone and reaching Maddox’s spirit—reaching the demon.
Maybe Maddox could be stopped. Shrieks of pain sounded in his head just before darkness swallowed him whole...
What seemed a mere second or two later, voices woke him. Water sloshed around in his ears, so he couldn’t make out the actual words. He blinked open his eyes, shook his head—good, movement. As he rolled his shoulders and bent his legs to check that he still had use of them, the water—nope, blood, he realized—drained out of his ears.
“...is going on with everyone?” demanded Paris, the keeper of Promiscuity. “We finally got Cameo and Baden home, and as of yesterday morning, Cameo has no memory of her time away from the fortress and Baden, the Gentleman of Olympus, has morphed into a cold-as-ice bastard. He’s plowing through women as if there’s a going-out-of-business sale and, dude, his temper grows worse by the day. He even puts Maddox to shame.”
Something rained over Maddox and, judging by the smell, he guessed it was popcorn.
He sat up, shaking off a round of dizziness. To his delight, Violence remained quiet.
He looked around the gym. Every piece of equipment had been shattered, and there was a fresh crop of holes in every wall. He noticed most of his friends had congregated in the room. The wives and children were missing, though. Lucien, keeper of Death, had probably flashed them away from the fortress the moment the fight had broken out before returning alone to wait for everything to calm.
Even Galen was here. Once the hated enemy, now the tolerated enemy, he stood off to the side, watching the others interact with something akin to envy in his eyes.
Maddox ignored him. It was either that or kill him. Might have forgiven his crimes but haven’t forgotten the results. He