Red Rain: Book 4, Night Series Read online

  Table of Contents

  Red Rain

  Red Rain

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Author’s Note

  RS Black’s Books

  Spinoff Night books written by Selene Charles | Tempted Series

  Hyperion Series

  Sneak Peek Codename: A | Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  About RS Black

  Red Rain

  Pandora has been through hell and back. Literally. She’s been kidnapped and tortured, found freedom, and then lost it all over again. She’s now the newest pawn in the age-old war between Heaven and Hell. The Triad owns her mark, Asher owns her heart, but the demon Wrath might just own her soul.

  Death—aka Dean—is her constant companion in these final days. She knows she can’t afford to trust anyone, and yet, she can’t afford not to. Armageddon breathes down her neck. Her only hope at redemption might just lie in the hands of her one-time lover now turned comatose enemy, Luc. Asher believes her a traitor to her people. Bubba and Vyxen are out for her blood. Friends are enemies and enemies might just be friends. Her only chance at walking away from this alive is figuring out who is who before it’s too late and she’s transformed into the creature of legend. The creature destined to bring about the end of all mankind, the Scarlet Woman.

  Red Rain is the final and epic conclusion to the bestselling Night Series.

  Red Rain

  Copyright 2014 RS Black

  Cover Art by Damonza

  Formatted by D2D

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  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, RS Black, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in the context of reviews.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of all people involved with the creation of this ebook.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to RS Black.

  Unauthorized or restricted use in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patent Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2014 by RS Black, Hawaii, United States of America

  Dedication

  Several months ago I ran a contest for my street team, giving one member the chance to name a character in my book. Dawn Kelly had no idea who she was choosing for. So Dawn, I hope you enjoyed naming one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Lilith, aka War.

  I’m still here. I have to fight this. I can’t let it take me. But God, how much more can I handle before I break?

  ~Pandora

  I didn’t almost die twice just to lose Pandora now. Everyone knows you should never rouse a sleeping dragon. They wanted war, well, now they’ve got it.

  ~Asher

  It’s taken me forever to figure it out. I marked her years ago. I won’t let them have her. Dora, she belongs to me...

  ~Luc

  Ah, immortals, bunch of amoebic parasites. Dance, puppets, dance...

  ~Death

  Chapter 1

  Pandora

  Turn around.

  Look at me.

  You want me.

  I’m your every fantasy, your every dream come to life.

  Walk toward me, mortal, open your arms and embrace your destiny...

  The night was dark, the streets empty. The man in the expensively tailored suit stood with one foot out the secure, non-descript door of its equally non-descript office building. His hair was brown, his eyes the same color.

  He wore a red tie.

  Brown eyes. So sexy.

  The building that housed one of the many arms of the Triad stood there like a giant monolith. No windows. No color. Just a giant, white box. Hidden out in plain sight. Walked past every day by mortals who had no idea that buried deep within its bowels lived nightmares of the most degenerate sort.

  The man, a doctor of molecular biology with shocking stripes of snow-white hair at his temples, sniffed the air.

  Oh yes, he’d been trained well. He sensed he was being hunted.

  I smiled; this part was always the most fun.

  Come, man. You are Adam and I...I am your Eve. Do you not wish to know me?

  I had no crew behind me as backup. I stood within the shadows of the parking lot, hidden by the veil of darkness. Like a good little soldier, I’d never run away.

  The Triad had me dead to rights; they owned me. It wasn’t often I got to run a mission where I was given carte blanche to kill one of them.

  For me, this was like Christmas.

  My legs were encased in leather so tight it groaned when I widened my stance. The leather jacket I wore hid many weapons. Knives. Guns. Poison darts. I really didn’t need any of them—my claws were more than sufficient to make heads roll—but there was something about a gun that made humans piss themselves in a way my claws never could.

  I chuckled as the hibiscus-tinged breeze riffled through the long locks of my jet-black hair. His head turned sharply in my direction. I pumped even more of my scent through the breeze, those sexual pheromones that would make you forget stupid things like caution and wariness, that would make you run headlong into an inferno just for a taste of my sumptuous flesh.

  Lust.

  She purred inside me.

  I was a machine. A monster.

  The very sort I used to hunt.

  There were demons, so, so many demons inside of me now. All of them powerful, all of them strong.

  I wasn’t who I used to be. Not anymore.

  The mortal stepped fully outside of the safety of those wards.

  He might be a Triad lackey, but demons weren’t very good at forgiveness. And Doc here had been a very, very naughty boy. He’d turned mole. Working for the other side. The Fabulous Four, I liked to call them—that is to say the other HCD Lords not part of the Triad—Gluttony, Sloth, Greed, and Pride. While the Triad worked night and day to secure their release from Hell, the FF fought to keep them there. Not because the FF didn’t want out, but because if they weren’t getting out, there was no way in Hades they were letting anyone else out. They were petty buggers that way.

  I cracked my knuckles.

  Doc here was hiding a secret. One he thought he’d gotten away with. Oh yes, I was going to enjoy breaking him.

  Coiling the shadow around me like my l
over had once shown me I rushed him, slamming my palm against his throat and shoving him up on the wall until his loafered feet dangled off the ground, twitching helplessly.

  I stepped into him, my nose close to his mouth as I purred, “Hey, baby. Daddy’s been a very naughty boy.”

  He jerked. “I...I don’t know what—”

  “Oh, come on, please don’t lie to me. If there is one sin in this life I cannot stand, it’s a lie.” My tone was sex kitten, but my touch... my touch was all demon.

  I trailed a hot claw down the side of his neck, bleeding him just enough to make him dizzy, to make him fear me. The stench of his adrenaline punched me in the face. Acidic and bitter, it landed on my tongue, making me want to spit it out.

  He blinked. Blood was coating his once pretty white collar.

  “Where’s the map, doc? I won’t ask you again. Now you tell me real nice, and I might just let you live.”

  I slapped his face when he began to whimper.

  Snot ran out his nose as his eyes began to shed globs of water.

  He opened his mouth, but I cut him off, smelling the lie he’d been ready to utter. Once upon a time only Luc had been able to use Lust in this way, but there were few secrets hidden to me anymore.

  “Do it, and I shove my fist through your gut.”

  His jaw snapped shut.

  I ran my palm up his chest, pumping heavy doses of Lust through him. Giving him a cock stand even as his pitiful life hung in the balance.

  “Crying, doctor? Hasn’t anyone ever told you how pathetic that makes you look?”

  Lower lip trembling, he moaned, “Release me, demon.”

  “Oh, now you know who I am. Well, a girl likes to be noticed.” I grinned, puffing up my hair with my free hand. “But you still haven’t answered my question and I’m getting tired of playing around.” I tightened my grip just a fraction.

  I was strong. So much stronger than before. And every night I only grew stronger. I was pumped daily full of a fun little concoction I liked to call demon’s brew.

  Or in layman’s terms, the souls of murdered Nephilim. Every night the Triad strapped me down to a chair and doped me up. I housed a hundred, two hundred, hell, maybe even a thousand souls at this point. I couldn’t remember anymore. I’d lost count after the first fifty.

  At the rate they were plowing through the Nephilim, we’d be an extinct species soon.

  I truly was Legion now.

  Smiling, I flicked at the tip of his nose. I could have swiped the memory like a hot blade running through soft flesh, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the doctor’s mind was a heavily guarded fortress.

  I slammed into a wall when I tried to penetrate his mind. And that wall was called Greed. The good doctor had made a deal with a devil. Which wouldn’t normally have been a problem for me, if I’d had more time. But trying to circumvent an HCD’s wards was about as easy as walking through a minefield and thinking you wouldn’t get blown to smithereens by guessing your way through it.

  His fingers were digging at me. Incredible—the mortal was still trying to get away.

  “Answer me, you little maggot. My arm’s getting tired of holding you up—soon I’ll just squeeze and find my answers another way.” My arm wasn’t really getting tired; I could have held him like this for all eternity.

  But contrary to my brave words, this asshole was the closest we’d come in a month to finding the Gates whereabouts.

  The human just blubbered harder, pissing himself. Dammit it all to the fires of Hell, I didn’t have time for this.

  I started to squeeze.

  “Pandora, is this the way to treat one of our brothers?” Dean’s voice—aka Death—sighed.

  He was always sighing around me.

  Snarling, I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Go away, Dean.”

  He lifted a dark brow.

  The man was sexy as... well, sin. I chuckled at the thought. Sometimes I even entertained the idea of doing the dirty with him. I mean, I do still house Lust, and months of forced abstinence makes a girl think things.

  Things like me being one step closer to Hell. Unlocking Wrath. Asher being lost to me forever...

  You know, the minutiae of my everyday life.

  Dean gave me a crooked smile, his tri-colored eyes glittering as if he could hear what I was thinking. Maybe he could, I didn’t know. I didn’t know a lot about my partner in crime.

  The only thing I knew about Dean was that he always wore an Armani suit, and silk ties. And that whenever he came around me I couldn’t stop wondering what it would feel like with him—could I feel alive again? Less numb to the shit I kept doing day in and day out? But as curious as I sometimes was, that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try to decapitate his dumb ass if he interfered with me again.

  “There really are better ways,” he sighed again.

  What the hell? I was fun. I was sexy. He’d never sighed like this when I was the old me. In fact, I think he might even have liked the old me, though he’d never admit to it.

  Bastard.

  Twirling on the doctor, I let the fires of Hell glow through my eyes. “Tell me now. Last chance, mortal.”

  Doc stuttered, his fingers digging at mine, but not as if to get away this time—as if he needed breath. Which, yeah, maybe he did. I hadn’t noticed how blue his lips had gotten.

  Oops.

  “I sold it...” he gasped, drooling everywhere.

  So freaking gross. My nose curled.

  “...on the black market.”

  “To who?” I shoved my face closer to his.

  “Don’t...don’t know.” He cried out when I let my pinky nail pierce through, touching the tensile strength of his carotid artery.

  “Eeny, meany, miney, mo, baby cakes. Lie to me, I dare you.”

  “I don’t,” he cried, his feet twitching even harder now, kicking against my shins. “I swear. All I know is he had buck teeth and a Scottish acce—”

  I snapped his neck, dropping him like a sack of potatoes at my feet.

  “Wow, what’d that poor man ever do to you, Dorrie?”

  Wiping my hands down the man’s no longer pristine shirt, I gave the body a hard kick to the gut for good measure.

  “One.” I rose, coming face to face with Death. “Don’t call me Dorrie. Two. The man was a perverted monster who raped and killed about thirty Neph and humans, all in the name of science—”

  Dean sucked in a sharp breath, his brilliant eyes dancing with laughter. “Oh, better watch it, demon girl. You’re sure starting to sound a lot like your other self.”

  I frowned, rubbing my brow. I hadn’t meant to say that. What. The. Hell? I shook my head, feeling the ghost of the good Pandora too damn close to the surface for my own good.

  “And did you really need to kill it?” Dean toed the body with a slick black Gucci. “Messy, woman. Very messy. You didn’t even get all the information we needed. You know what the Triad’s gonna say about this.”

  He sighed again, but his eyes still didn’t stop dancing.

  Rolling my own, I walked for the street. I needed a drink. “He gave me everything we needed to know.”

  “Oh, yeah? And that is?” His scent of peppery brimstone invaded my senses.

  But then a memory came, intruding in on my peace of mind. And I was no longer smelling peppery brimstone, but man and sandalwood. A heavy breeze shoved up against me, but instead of wind I felt wings.

  Dark, black wings.

  I hissed.

  “What’s the matter?” Dean asked, and I could no longer hear the antipathy or the laughter, but concern.

  Grabbing my head, desperate for something wet to ease my parched throat, I glanced down the empty streets.

  Well past two in the morning, there was no one around. No one for me to take.

  With a growl, I launched myself at Dean.

  He didn’t fight me. He’d always fought me. But he didn’t tonight.

  Opening his arms, he held me tight as I viciously attacked the
vein in his neck, drinking him in.

  Power. So much power, it slid down my throat. Filled my limbs.

  I was ancient. I was a god.

  Men bowed low. Women offered me their souls. I smiled down at them, welcoming them to my home.

  I was Death, and all trembled before me...

  Chapter 2

  Pandora

  I felt diseased.

  I was diseased, really.

  The darkness inside me, the darkness that I always thought of as a completely separate entity—as Ya-El—grew daily stronger. It was amazing. I could still see through these eyes. Still hear. Still touch.

  But it was wrong, all wrong.

  With the doctor in firm control of my mark, I couldn’t fight him. I wanted to. God knew how badly I hated what I was doing. Or, what she was doing.

  I couldn’t really even explain what it was that was going on with me. I wasn’t Ya-El, and yet, I was.

  I loathed her. But I also needed her. Because only Ya could do the things that the doctor asked of me without being forced to bear the crushing weight of guilt afterwards.

  Ya was what a true Neph should be. What Luc always wanted me to be. I think he always saw my potential, my capacity for great evil and destruction, but it was always tempered by a conscience I should not have possessed.

  I’d had to let Ya take control of me, but I feared that giving her all this power, all this control, I’d lose myself completely in the process. That the longer I allowed my mind and thoughts to be hers, the more that Pandora, the me I so desperately wanted to be, would die.

  As a demon Luc had always been rather terrifying, but everyone knew (including myself) that there’d been no one half as crazy or horrifying as Ya-El could be.

  I wouldn’t call what I was a split personality. Because I didn’t black out, and I wasn’t unaware of what it was I did. Rather, there were two sides to me. One who cared little for virtue, truth, or human life, and one who fought like hell to be the opposite of who she’d been created to be.

  It’d taken me millennia to repress that evil within me, and when I’d finally learned to control her, I’d given her a name. Ya-El the monster. The great evil.

  I’d been reborn Pandora the day I’d learned to value life.