The Book of Broken Creatures: (A Broken Creatures Novel, Book 1)

by A L Hart

My lips curled back.

  What was that pain in her eyes as she looked up at me?

  Do it, Peter, tear it off. Listen to her scream. Take from her. Take everything.

  It made sense, but deep down, I knew it wasn’t me. It was the dark energy talking. She’d never brought me pain. Not like the physical one I was threatening. She may have taken my choice away from me and she may have been unapologetic about it, but she’d never intentionally harmed me.

  She needs you alive.

  I thought of her hands on me in the bathroom, when I’d been experiencing the first true wave of pain from the wings. I thought of how she’d tried to alleviate it—but then, she’d gone ahead and ripped a feather from the core of my would and lied to me, told me this was all destined to happen.

  I was just playing the role she needed me to play.

  Falling into the steps she’d orchestrated.

  I growled down at her again, and again I caught a glimpse of something in the silver slated gaze. Not fear—I didn’t think for a second her fiery spirit was capable of such a thing—but something I was wholly unprepared to see in a woman like this one.

  What I saw a forlorn loneliness, forged of the strongest steel and embedded into her genetic makeup. I didn’t get it. This creature who burned all within her path, who stole every opportunity to show the world her hideous, self-serving nature, who made no attempt to rectify the flaws cradled in her personality, looked downright isolated.

  She didn’t deserve to wear such an expression.

  And even so, I couldn’t push my rage into action.

  Not when I was basically looking into a mirror.

  I’d never admitted to my own loneliness. Taking off your shirt and examining the rust around your heart, it’s not something anyone likes to do. It’s the very reason we avoid mirrors, glimpsing ourselves and facing the harrowing truth of our state. It stuns us. Carves us down. And leaves us more ignorant than when we were blind to the fact.

  That was exactly how I felt looking at the reflection of my own loneliness in her eyes. Ignorant. Because I didn’t understand loneliness. Or why it was all of my rage was scrambling and becoming discombobulated beneath the true threat. The truth.

  We were but two sides of the same coin.

  How angry was Jera? What had she lost? And when had she met the blade of loneliness because of it?

  “Do it,” she challenged, and the mirrors shifted, molting to earlier’s rage, hoping I piggybacked off of it.

  I swallowed. A rustling noise picked up around us and I was aware of our world darkening, my feathered obstructions closing in around us. The dark energy was retreating and with it, my fury.

  We are what we are, Ophelia had told me.

  And Jera and I were irrefutably lost in our own isolation, sipping the tea of loneliness like a daily medicine.

  What we do with that fact can define what we potentially become.

  Five years I’d existed in the gray. Did I want five more?

  Rip it, Peter. Or she’ll keep steamrolling you, chewing you up just to spit you out.

  I eyed the horn in my grasp. My fingers were pale, trembling with indecisiveness.

  Then, all at once, rather than tear the beautiful instrument free, I ran my hand down the curving black horn, the material hard as marble and just as smooth.

  Beneath me, Jera shuddered violently, just as she had the first time.

  Except . . . this time heat rolled through me as an aroma wafted up into my nostrils, a midnight flora, violet, saccharine sweetness. I was in a field, the scent crashing through me, heady, dark. Yet I was still entangled with her body on the cold kitchen floor.

  The dark energy surfaced again. It wanted something more than death.

  “Peter, don’t—”

  I ran my finger along the horn again, mystified, testing.

  The scent attacked my sanity, sending a hard tremble through my own tightening muscles. It was delicious. A vial of mystery, a jagged shot of blue, and the vibrating spirit of something wild. Something free. Something I wanted to catch.

  And watch it move.

  Against me.

  Me against it.

  Inside of it.

  Fascinated, the aroma settling into me like a drug, I massaged the black protrusion with the pad of my thumb, familiarizing myself with the girth of it near her skull, and when I wrapped my hand around it completely, Jera’s eyes rolled back, a moan breaking free.

  I swallowed hard, eyes locked on her lips, my grasp of her throat easing . . . and before I could stop myself, my hips moved forward involuntarily.

  The sound she released could lead a man off a cliffside. Her legs opened wider and that was all the invitation I needed.

  I brought my lips to hers.

  In the past, I’ve had kisses that were full of blind fumbling and uncertainty, and then kisses that made me reevaluate the meaning of life.

  But in my lifetime, I’ve never had a kiss that made me want to utterly consume the other person.

  I didn’t mean fiery, mind-shattering epicness.

  But starved, soul-breaking tragedy.

  When I kissed Jera, I expected fire. I expected our rage to collide and our desires to touch, to vie for total dominion of the other and for neither of us to relent. It was a logical expectation in lieu of our personalities.

  Instead, as my lips rolled over hers, when my tongue slid between the gates that spewed such tenacious words on clockwork, I found more of what I’d been trying to get rid of.

  Alone.

  Alone, alone, alone.

  The word echoed throughout me, rained down like acid, coated on the warm belly of the tongue that danced with mine in a gown of barbed wires, and it roared. Shouting with teeth enough to make me quiver and need enough to ensnare me in the kiss. Unable to pull away. Even as it tore at the inside of me. Mocked me for what I thought I knew.

  Here, loneliness wasn’t a state of being. Here, it was a congealed, curdled blackness that didn’t even know it was wretched, isolated, and more horrifying than any monster in the back of our minds.

  It was an endless vortex. One in which I drove my tongue deeper into, unsure what I was trying to do.

  Swallow it? Harbor it inside of me?

  No—it was swallowing me.

  Urging me closer and closer, almost as though it was trying to show me something. Something that existed behind its ghastly construction. And I knew—even as I kissed her harder, fell into the shadows faster—I knew whatever was hiding away back there, would tear apart my mind.

  Despite it, Jera’s lips moved, soft, smooth as silk, and her hips lifted to meet the growing disaster between mine.

  I gasped against her mouth, but it came out in a gnarled web of pain and need. Her scent, that floral, poisonous meadow, closed around me, a Venus flytrap, and suddenly I could taste her misery. The one I’d thought I could inflict by merely snapping a horn.

  She wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me against the tangled complex of her.

  Around us, the air began to change. Something terrible raked its claws against it and the wings at my back drew around us closer. Shielding. Uncaring as to just what it was that thought to steal this blissful damnation away from me.

  That was when Jera buried her teeth into my tongue so hard, I was sure she’d bitten it off.

  Crying out, I jerked back, covering my mouth as if that would cure the pain, but I tasted no blood.

  The world became flush with the kitchen’s light, giving me a perfect view of Jera’s furious, murderous gaze.

  “What did you do?!” she shouted at me with volume enough to kill off my arousal, leaving me staring.

  “I kissed you?” I ventured. At this point, I’m wasn’t even sure that was a kiss.

  Suddenly, in tempo with the succubus’s rage, fire erupted on the steel countertops, a jet of red and orange flames claiming the surface and spreading fast.

  “It was a kiss,” I said slowly, coming to a stand even slower. “I thought—
”

  “Hear me, Peter. I will make your life a living hell from this day forward. I will make you wish you never set eyes upon my face. I will ensure you suffer for an eternity and more. And if you think for a moment you’re the victor of me, your time spent in agonizing, neverending true pain will have you begging for mercy before your day here is done.”

  I blinked. Opened my mouth. Wet my lips. And accepted that, just maybe, the kiss had turned her into a raging lunatic. More so than before. “It was just a kiss . . . Granted, I see now I shouldn’t have done it without asking—”

  “You shouldn’t have done it at all!” The fire dripped onto the floors, threatening to devour the supplies on the neighboring cabinet. Sweat began to break out at my temples as the heat breezed by it.

  “Jera, listen to me, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to calm her down, subdue the flames. “I wasn’t thinking. It was never my intention to make you feel unsafe here.” Though, if anything, I was the one who should feel unsafe in this moment.

  Ophelia burst into the kitchen just as the fire alarm sounded. She took one look at both of us, then asked, “What happened?”

  “You happened,” Jera fired off with such vehemence, Ophelia stumbled back. “You told the human what I did, because you cannot bear the thought of being unloved. Because you’re foolish, Ophelia. You always have been. And now, yet again, I’ve paid your price.”

  “What price?” I asked tentatively.

  “He kissed me!” Jera threw at her sister.

  Ophelia’s eyes widened. Then horror entered them.

  I swallowed, not sure I even wanted to ask why that was such a massive crime.

  As usual, Ophelia’s observant gaze caught my very much raw confusion, and she whispered over the crackling flames, “A kiss bonds a succubus, Peter. Forever.”

  Ch. 14

  “How. Was. I. Supposed. To know?!” I yelled for the seventh time.

  The thing about being locked within one location out of fear of being hunted by gun toters, was that when you’re filled to the brim with untainted, pure buckets of a mind-bending wrath, there weren’t a whole lot of places to storm off to. Or a lot of things to do.

  Jera found that out the hard way.

  She couldn’t calm down, and because of that, she couldn’t kill off the flames. Even when she realized she was burning down her only standing safe haven.

  I carted the fire extinguisher around, but new flames kept erupting over the kitchen’s battlefield. Ophelia had buckets of water at the ready and had, on multiple occasions, attempted to calm her sister, but it seemed Jera’s anger was even more fueled towards the “traitor” than me.

  Which left the calming in my hands.

  I didn’t know what to say. Jera was the one who’d chosen to be so secretive of a succubus’ nature and overall pretenses. I’d only discovered through Elise that succubi had one lifelong partner with whom they needed to have sexual intercourse with in order to persist—and often at that for those newly bonded. But—and this was my fault—I’d ignorantly assumed to implement the bond, you had to actually have sex.

  Apparently not.

  That dark charge that’d been sidling around Jera and I had been nothing more than our fates being forged together. By a mere kiss.

  I felt dirty for it.

  For my oblivion.

  For the location it’d happened in.

  And because deep down, far, far in a tiny corner of myself, the dark energy inside of me rejoiced. Sneered with triumph because she hadn’t been bonded like I’d feared, and now there was no way she was getting away from me.

  By the sudden blaze of promised torment to flare in Jera’s gaze, she could read my thoughts flawlessly.

  Fire rose at my feet.

  I jumped back, spraying the white foam over the floors, where it began to sputter, then desist. Empty.

  The kitchen was covered in black blotches and foam.

  I didn’t have a second fire extinguisher.

  Inhaling deeply, setting the tank down slowly, I held up my hands. “Jera, please. I didn’t know.”

  “You knew! With all of your anger at having been made a fool of by me, all you wanted was retribution. And so you took it. In any other situation, I may have commended you, but in this one, there will be hell to pay, human.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a bad thing—”

  “I will ensure it is.”

  The shop’s bell rung.

  I looked to Ophelia across the kitchen. “Didn’t you lock up?”

  She gave me a confused, panicked look. Of course she hadn’t. I’d never specified for her to lock up and it’d never been her duty in the past.

  My lips thinned—then I felt it.

  Her, to be precise. I knew without going into the lounge area that it was the succubus by one thing alone: the string of energy like tiny pricks running along my wing’s radius, the bones lining the span. The sensation poured through me like a chill at first, embodying me until it reached my nostrils, where I scented the sunshine and daffodil tints of none other than Elise of the Addington Household.

  This was what Jera and Ophelia had been training me for before. Sensing dark energy. I’d thought it would come in the form of an abstract sensation felt along the planes of an alternate mindset. Instead, the extensions at my back comprehended the new arrival of dark energy like one recognized someone by their perfume. Second nature.

  I gave Jera one last apologetic look, then eased passed her glare of death and out into the lounge, hoping that was the end of the baby fires.

  Elise was perched at the bar area overlooking the shelf of imported coffee beans, a bright magenta tea dress containing that same unnervingly feminine air about her. Today there was no hat, but blond curls braided back into an elegant bun.

  I’d forgotten I’d told her to come back tomorrow. Today.

  She smiled at me, then appeared startled, her eyes traveling to the goliath wing I was currently fighting to push down and yank through the kitchen door. And the fact that I was shirtless, covered in foam, dirty mop water and who knew what else. “So it’s true,” she said.

  The leathery muscle snapped down and free from the door’s arch, feathers ripping off and floating to the floor. Resisting a shudder at the sheer unsanitary nature of it all, I rubbed the sore tendon and met the demon’s eyes. Suddenly I was just tired. Unsure what to do or say when I was already knee deep in lies. And my council was currently vexed at me due to my accidentally stealing her only chance of freedom to choose her lifelong partner.

  There was still Ophelia . . .

  But I’d learned this morning she had no interest in supporting Jera’s bid to lie and lure paying creatures into the shop only to con them of their hard earned money. Not that I blamed her. Not that I myself advocated the idea. If anything, I was just in the midst and unsure how to get out of it.

  Especially with those like Elise who looked up at me with such a gleam of hope, my brain short circuited in the rejection department.

  How did I tell this creature with woes of the body, that her husband had stopped by the other day with the same exact problem? How do you tell two people their relationship is toxic and would ultimately be their downfall, when the only other option was separation, thus leading to the same dilemma: death?

  Jera burst from the kitchen then, took one look at the succubus and flashed a snarl that no longer exhibited fangs, but straight, gleaming dentures.

  Elise placed a surprised glove to her chest, eyes widening at what was no doubt perceived as feral in light of her own elegant background.

  “Office,” Jera hissed, stalking towards the back room.

  Elise gave me an uncertain look.

  I cleared my throat and hurried to wipe away my own hesitation.

  Maybe Jera was going to offer council?

  Elise followed.

  I started to, but paused at the kitchen door where Ophelia was scraping up the shattered glass of multiple plates.

  She didn’t look at
me as she whispered, “Go on. They need you.”

  I heard her loud and clear: they need your lies.

  Pushing down the moral discomfort, I made my way into my office, careful to avert my gaze from the demolished bathroom near the entrance. It would be fixed later, along with the staircase.

  Jera was at my desk, arms thrown behind her head, work shoes crossed and tossed up on the oakwood. She eyed Elise without a trace of anger now. Face literally the epitome of cool and composed.

  It didn’t make Elise any less nervous as she fiddled with her gloves. At my entrance, she dared a glance my way.

  “Don’t look at him, look at me.” When the woman actually obeyed, her spine straightening under the harsh tone, Jera instantly barked, “Are you aware your husband was here yesterday?”

  That was one way to introduce the news.

  By the ‘o’ on Elise’s face, the succubus had been entirely oblivious.

  Jera carried on before the woman shook her head in negation. “Well, he was. And I must say, he was not well.” So she’d sensed it, too? “But you, you look ripe as a plum.” Jera smirked at the woman’s blush of shame. “Do not be ashamed of it, dear. Feeding from your mate is no crime. You were just taking from him what is rightfully yours. Substance you need for survival. And now you need a cure from Peter here who shares the Maker’s gift. Is this correct?”

  Cheeks still resembling that of roses, she gave a bare nod. “Yes, what I am doing is hurting his very—”

  Jera waved. “Spare me the lamentations. My own husband here has been working on a sure concoction to relieve you of your woes, oh frail, pathetic one.”

  There it was again, that spark in the woman’s eyes that I was beginning to identify well. A dilation of pupils, rush of joy, sense of saving. Jera had delivered what the succubus needed to hear, and yet again I was left standing awkwardly in the back, mulling over how this was bound to fail.

  Unlike with Kyda, the succubus’ affliction was one bred into their existence for what was no doubt centuries. Jera had said it herself, there was no undoing the bond. Which meant I would be forced to lie to yet another pair, only this time, they wouldn’t enter my shop the next day as Anisah had. They wouldn’t tell me that my “concoction” worked. They would come to me with dread shadowing over the previous hope, informing me the “medicine” had failed and ask if there was any other way.