Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,82
ceiling to floor and every piece of furniture in the place. There wasn’t much of that anyway—a lab table behind Tempest and a smaller table laid with similarly glinting instruments next to it.
I really didn’t like the look of those.
The flames in my cheek had smoothed the lump there into a thinner mass that tucked against my gums. I flexed my jaw and decided it was safe to speak. “Where’d you get this place—from the set of some low-budget alien horror flick? I’ll skip the probing, if it’s all the same to you. With the way you treat your guests, it’s a wonder you’re not more popular.”
Tempest chuckled at my sarcasm, her languid voice turning the sound sultry. “You could have been a proper guest if you hadn’t attempted to incinerate me on our second meeting. But look at all I’ve done for you regardless! I had this entire space constructed just for you, my darling phoenix.”
Well, that was certainly some level of obsession. I shifted my weight, my arms already starting to ache from the awkward position I was lying in. “Any particular reason I’m getting this star treatment? I’m assuming it wasn’t just so you could taunt me.”
If she’d wanted me dead, I’d already be kaput. She’d had me helpless while I was knocked out. Instead I was here, so clearly she needed something from me… How exactly did she think she was going to get it?
Hopefully not with that spread of torture tools, but knowing how her Company tended to operate, I suspected those hopes were worth about as much as the ashes I’d like to leave this place in. It wasn’t so much a matter of whether I’d face a version of those extra-terrestrial bodily excavations as how soon.
“You met one of my instruments,” the sphinx said. “I suppose you didn’t learn enough from him to connect the dots. That’s quite all right. The less you know, the easier it’ll be to take it from you.” Her smile somehow turned even sharper.
Psychotic bitch. A fresh flare of anger erupted within my ribs, and flames crackled across my back. I gritted my teeth, biting back a hiss and yanking the fire inside me as well as I could.
Tempest cocked her head with a twinkle in her eyes as if she found my erratic powers highly amusing. “Just FYI, in case you get any ideas of martyrdom: if you start letting off too much smoke, your cage is rigged to douse you with rather a lot of water. You’re not getting away from me by that avenue either.”
I had no hope at all of getting through to this maniac in my current state, but I couldn’t help prodding at her non-existent conscience anyway. “Does it really not bother you even a little that you’re helping people who hate you and every other being like you? How are you winning when getting what you want depends on years of giving them what they want?”
“Ah, but once I have this, so many more mortals will sicken and fall than ever enjoyed carrying out my business. This realm will never recover. Forever is worth quite a lot.”
“So then what? You get to sashay around, gloating about how horrible things are for eternity?”
Her eyes glittered piercingly. “I’m sure I’ll find plenty of ways to occupy myself.”
More frustration was trawling through me, dredging up flames with it. “They think you’re all monsters, and you’re proving them right.”
“Who says they’re wrong? I’m a monster. I’ll own that. And no one is going to stop me from being just as monstrous as I please.”
She stepped back with a sway of her hips. The dress suit she wore today wasn’t quite as extravagant as her robes from our previous meetings, but she’d still managed to find or manufacture one with diamonds stitched in patterns across the collar of the jacket and the hem of the skirt. They sparkled against the deep violet silk. She waved a hand that was just as sparkly with all the rings it was laden with.
“It’s time for you to give me the last piece I need to make this scheme come together. Isn’t it lovely that you’re the one making my apocalypse possible? I’ll leave my lackeys to it. Oh, and before you get any ideas about them, I should mention that it’s not only your cage fitted with water pipes.”
She vanished into the shadows under the larger table just as at least a dozen sprayers clicked on overhead. In an