Queen of lust, p.1
Queen of Lust, page 1
Queen of Lust
Destiny Diess
Contents
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
Also By Destiny Diess
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2021 by Destiny Diess
All rights reserved.
This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at “Attention: Permissions Coordinator” at the email address below.
Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.
* * *
Front cover image by Lena B. Wolf.
Editing by: Zainab M., Heart Full of Reads Editing Services
Beta reading by: Kayla Lutz and Madi
* * *
Destiny Diess
destinydiess@gmail.com
Created with Vellum
To Sean.
Thank you for believing in me.
Chapter 1
I never thought killing would feel so good.
Sitting on the Lust throne, toying with the tines of my ruby-red crown, licking the blood off the corner of my swollen lips, I reveled in the chaos around me with a smile on my face. Demons from Wrath, Envy, Greed, and Pride hurried out of the vast colosseum toward the portal, trampling each other and scurrying away from me in pure, agonizing fear.
Black mist danced around the ruby crown, my maroon painted fingernails drifting through the haze. Maybe it was the angel inside of me who loved seeing demon carcasses littered on the marble floors, or maybe it was my demon who bathed in the feeling of swelling terror. But all I could feel was immense pleasure rushing through my veins and a desire for more blood, more bodies, and especially more souls.
The souls of the demonic wicked that I unapologetically inhaled clawed at my insides, talons cutting into my cold, dark heart, trying to puncture it, trying to tear me down. But nothing could destroy me now.
Everything I believed it, everyone I loved was either dead or had been hurt.
Now wasn’t the time to give into wailing demons who I killed.
I shut my eyes softly and inhaled the sweet aroma of decaying bodies, smelling almost everyone’s scent under my pink Lust sun except my favorite scent of cinnamon. My chest tightened at the thought of Eros actually leaving. When I told him to get out of here to stay safe, I thought, at least he’d stick around within a few hundred meters of the colosseum to stop me from killing everyone in sight.
But I smelled nothing.
Did he, like Lucifer, want me to lose control? Maybe he wanted to see just how strong I was too. And I knew that if I devoured more meaningless demon souls, I could become the most powerful demon in all of Hell.
When I brushed my fingers across my family ring, I was suddenly brought back down to reality. No… Eros was gone because I told him to protect the last few people I cared about: Dr. U and Jasmine. Killing more souls wouldn’t make me stronger. I couldn’t do it.
Though I wanted to.
Setting my crown upon my soft brown hair, I sat up and gazed around the marble colosseum. While others screamed in terror, Biast sat five feet away from me with a body in his hands and his fangs sunk deep into someone’s neck. He had transformed into a true Wrath demon with eyes swimming in blood; horns longer, thicker, and curvier than moments ago; and a red aura exuding from his red skin.
After sucking as much blood out of the poor caracasses as he could, he let them slip from his talons, sat back, and chuckled wickedly to himself. He lifted his gaze to meet mine, the intense malicious look inside them making me suck in a breath. Claws piercing through the man’s throat, he ripped a sheet of his skin apart and sunk his hand into the body, soaking it in blood. “Come here, Dani,” Biast snarled.
Unable to resist his command, I found myself slipping from the throne and onto my knees, crawling to him in a haze of lust. “Give me control, Dani,” Javier, Biast’s dead brother, whispered in the back of my mind at the mere scent of blood. Ignoring him, I knelt beside him and pulled Biast’s hand from the body, admiring how the blood rolled down his forearm.
Harshly, Biast snapped his large calloused hard around my throat and squeezed. I inhaled sharply and grabbed his wrist, but I didn’t push him away. A wave of pleasure rushed through me, heat gathering in my core. He strummed his fingers across my throat and pulled me closer, pressing his lips back onto mine, the irony taste of blood slipping into my mouth and consuming me.
“Control,” Javier said again, but this time he was so distant, so utterly far from my consciousness that I barely heard him. Hundreds, if not thousands, of souls begged for control, taunted me, spoke so loudly that I could barely think straight.
I was sure there were more voices inside of me than demons that I had killed. But how could I feel or hear them? Was it some kind of sorcery? Could I feel the demons and people that they had killed before I slaughtered them?
Memories that certainly weren’t mine flooded through my mind, the first of a man lying on a dirty wooden floor, clutching a cracked picture frame. Inside the frame was an image of a naked woman tied up and mutilated. Rage rushing through me, I sank my claws into the man’s chest and pulled out his heart, his squirming body turning into nothing but a corpse.
Shifting my focus to another soul’s memory, I found myself pointing a gun at a bank teller, forcing her to open the back vault and shovel money into my duffle bag, the scent of fresh and filthy dough giving me a rush of adrenaline.
Both satisfying and terrifying thoughts these demons experienced flashed before me. They were so loud in my head that I almost couldn’t think straight. But as Biast’s rough lips moved against mine and his wet fingers trailed up my gown, they quieted.
Until the red eyes of Mom’s killer flashed in my head.
Through the memory of another demon, I watched the red-eyed woman climb on top of a young human woman and draw a knife across her chest and carve out her heart. The demon screamed at her to stop, not to touch the woman he loved, to take him instead, but the heartless red-eyed killer only stopped when she had finished the job, had pulled out the heart, and had consumed it entirely in one enormous bite.
I shoved Biast away, my chest tightening, and sucked in a sharp breath. Whoever she was, I needed to find her as soon as possible. I was Queen of Lust now. I had taken care of everyone who wanted to openly defy me. I was close to being invincible. Now was the time to avenge Mom.
After stumbling to my feet, I walked around the maze of bodies to Lucifer who sat alone, the other commanders’ golden thrones vacant. He sipped on his glass of Vemon and drank in the madness with a smile on his face, like this was all his doing. And maybe it was.
“You really outdid yourself this time, Dani,” Lucifer said, lifting his icy blue gaze to mine. He tilted his head to swallow the red of his drink and grazed an iced-horn across the chair, the gold glinting against it. “To be feared by even the strongest of demons is the second greatest feeling you’ll experience in Hell.”
“And the first?” I asked.
Lucifer stood and placed his cup down on the chair. “The first is how you feel when even Mother, that heavenly woman in the sky, is so terrified of you that she rips off your wings and banishes you down here forever.”
My lips curled into a smile, and I glanced over my shoulder at the other commanders huddled together by the colosseum entrance. Even Sathanus had cowered away from me today. I would never know the feeling of Mother exiling me, but now I knew that my powers far exceeded Sathanus’s or else he would’ve tried to kill me right in the center of this ten-story arena in front of thousands of demons.
“Don’t get too arrogant now, Dani,” Lucifer said, studying my face.
“Says the most prideful man in Hell.”
Lucifer chuckled, the sound chilling right down to my very bones. “We have a war ahead against the angels that we must prepare for, because the Beginning of the End is here, the prophecy has begun. Death will reign upon us all.”
“Beliel’s prophecy,” I whispered, brows furrowing slightly. “But how do you know?”
“Look around,” Lucifer said. “It’s the 18th day of the twenty-fifth year of this century. Bodies are littered around us, Biast is drinking their blood, and—”
“And their souls are bound to me,” I said, my stomach turning into knots.
If this was truly the beginning of the end, then Hell was about to rise from the ashes, and war with Mother was about to commence sooner than I hoped. We weren’t prepared, at least I wasn’t. Not when I wanted to kill the red-eyed woman and couldn’t control my urges for souls.
A rightful wave of guilt washed over me. I needed to find Eros, Dr. U, and Jasmine, because I had some explaining to do and a lot of sh
Placing a hand on my back, Lucifer guided me to the colosseum exit. Huddled in a circle, the commanders chatted quietly until we walked over. Envy crossed her arms across her chest and strummed her mint-colored acrylic nails on her elbow. While she had that usual envious look on her face, I could see the fear deep in her eyes and could smell a salty and sweaty stench drifting off her.
Greed stood beside her with one hand on her golden-clad hip, eyes trembling when she looked in my direction. She tugged on some pearl earrings and quickly looked back at Envy, as if she was unsure glancing at me would piss me off again.
Sathanus stood with his fists clenched by his side and his eyes completely red balls of fire, hatred and anger spewing from his sanguine-colored lips and—what looked to be—steam fuming from his ears.
And the good ‘ole Sloth and Gluttony commanders refused to make eye contact with me but both munched on some Fervor Crisps that were supposed to be for the after-party. Though it didn’t seem like any other demons wanted to party after now. The colosseum and castle had cleared out, demons running down the white stone paths to Chastion, the nearest town.
“Not at all what we expected from this crowning ceremony,” Envy stated boldly, the first commander to say a single word to me.
“I didn’t expect two Envies to nearly murder my family,” I said, grinding my fangs together. “And I certainly didn’t expect one of those Envies to have been friends with me, Commander. It all seemed a bit too… coincidental, don’t you think?”
Envy glared at me with emerald green eyes, similar to Kasey’s. Instead of cowering back in fear like I used to, I stared back at her twice as hard until she grumbled under her breath and looked away from me.
“Now is not the time to make accusations, Queen,” Greed said, straightening out her back and glancing at Lucifer. “We shall set a time to officially meet and talk about what happened, because killing innocent lives cannot be tolerated.”
“Innocent?” Lucifer laughed. “Dani was challenged, and she stepped up and proved herself. There is nothing intolerable about that. Unless, you believe that Dani has accumulated too much power, and for that, I kindly tell you to fuck off.”
Trying my best to suppress a smirk, I cleared my throat. “We will meet on Sunday morning when the Lust sun is highest in the air, but my crowning will not be the topic of conversation.” I paused, my stomach tightening again. “A war is approaching, a war with the angels.”
Sathanus barked out an empty laugh. “War with angels? Are you still going on about that prophecy, Lucifer? You know that shit isn’t real. It’s made-up shit that Mother whispered into Beliel’s ear before she fucking banished her.”
“Made-up like your religion?” Lucifer asked, arching a platinum blond brow and clasping his hands behind his back. “Didn’t you just make Satanism up, so your subjects blindly follow you? Or was that someone else?”
An unruly growl exited Sathanus’s mouth. “Fucking watch it, Lucifer.”
“Or what?” Lucifer challenged.
When Sathanus lunged in our direction, Lucifer grabbed his forearm, stopping him completely, and shoved him back. I stepped between them and stared pointedly at Sathanus. “Be here at noon on Sunday. Don’t be late.”
This wasn’t the time to fight, because fighting led to soul-sucking madness. And, God, if I started again, I didn’t think I’d be able to stop. I had killed so many demons and felt nothing but a nagging numbness and a deep, plaguing fear that something much worse was coming.
My mind might’ve now been haunted by thousands of demons, but the beginning of the end was here, and we had to be ready for the worst. It was our time to rise, our time to rule, and my time to kill Mother for betraying Mom and letting her die in the hands of the red-eyed woman.
Chapter 2
Following the sweet scent of cinnamon up my white marble steps, I wandered down the halls and to one of the many spare rooms Eros and I had in the castle. On my way up here, I had come up with a thousand and one things I wanted to say to everyone I cared about. But now, standing in front of the closed door, I couldn’t seem to open my mouth.
Deciding that I’d wing it, I took a deep breath, pushed open the door, and gazed at a beaten and bruised Dr. U who laid in the canopy bed. Eros stood over her, brushing some strands of Dr. U’s graying blonde hair off her face. When I cleared my throat, Eros looked over his shoulder and blew out a deep breath, his piercing emerald eyes softening. “Thank the fucking heavens you’re okay.”
I closed the door behind me and gave him a small smile, knowing that now wasn’t the time to embrace him after everything I had done. While my hunger had been satisfied, I had just hurt and killed so many people. Part of me thought I didn’t deserve the pure adoration he gave me every waking moment.
But, despite my inclination to stay away, all I wanted to do was run into his arms, bury my face into his chest, and lie with him in our bed to forget it all and to thank him for helping me become stronger. If I hadn’t gotten stronger, we all would’ve died, and Maeve would’ve been ruling Lust by now.
Eros extended a hand out of me, his brown hair parted to the side. I smiled a bit wider at him and intertwined my fingers with his, finally allowing myself to relax beside him in his cinnamon aroma. I rested my head on his shoulder and looked over at Jasmine who sat by a large glass window, probably staring down at all the people hurrying out of Lust.
She didn’t look at me, and I didn’t blame her.
This was all my fault. I let this get out of hand, hurt people, scared people, endangered them even. If someone didn’t stop me, I could’ve devoured Jasmine and not have given a damn at the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jasmine wanted to go back to Earth and work at the Lounge again, instead of living with us.
What I feared the most was that Jasmine would never want to be friends again. She was the only other person besides Eros that I had down here, and I didn’t want her to leave too. But if she did, then I had nobody else to blame except myself. I drove her away, whether I meant to or not.
After forcing myself to pull my gaze away, I hesitantly walked over to Dr. U’s bedside and knelt next to her, taking her shredded hand between both of mine and silently praying that these injuries would heal and that she wouldn’t die on me.
It hadn’t been less than a couple hours since I last saw her, and she already looked worse. I wanted her better as soon as possible, so she could get back to what she loved doing—helping people figure out their lives and guiding young interns like I was onto a better path for the future.
If she was awake, she wouldn’t want to be in Hell with me.
“Has she woken up yet?” I asked, softly.
Dr. U stirred and shifted her bandaged face toward me, opening her swollen eyes as far as she could. “Dani,” she said, voice dry and scratchy like nails on a chalkboard. She weakly squeezed my hand and mewled in pain.
“Someone get her water, please,” I said.
Jasmine disappeared into the hallway, the door clicking closed behind her, and returned a few moments later with a glass of water. I took it from her, my fingers brushing against her slightly, and placed it against Dr. U’s lips, like she used to give me antidepressant medication after Mom died.
She drank it willingly, then pushed it away. “Thank you.”
“The doctor will be back soon for you.” I gently glided my fingers across Dr. U’s bandages and cursed at myself for everything that happened. Every bruise, every scratch, every fucking hair pulled out of her head was because of me being an angel and leading one of the most powerful kingdoms in all of Hell.
Dr. U pulled my hands away from her face. “Are you okay, Dani?”
