“Do you plan on bringing your body onto this plane?” Damian asked softly.
Amore slipped her hand across Damian’s chiselled stomach and between his legs. She wrapped her fingers around him and felt his soft skin become hard as she coaxed pleasure from him.
Sharing her essence and teasing him to the brink, Amore leant down and took him in her mouth. Her plans went unvoiced as they fed on each other.
16.
Henry Blaire stood at the end of the hallway as I closed Damian’s bedroom door. A spike of shame ripped through my chest, and I was unable to look Henry in the eye. We walked side by side. Quietly pretending that my body hadn’t spent the night with another man.
To me, it felt like I had had a good night’s sleep. I couldn’t remember anything of what had happened between Amore and Damian.
Sometimes Asmodeus would show me memories, other times she would push my consciousness into a cramped and hidden place inside of my own mind; head first into a nightmare of nothing but swirling darkness.
Sometimes when Amore showed me her memories, I got the impression that it opened a crack in her armour. A fissure that I could slip through. But then maybe she was just fucking with me.
It went unsaid (mainly because I did not know the extent of Damian’s reach) that Henry and I wouldn’t talk in the open about how to get out of the twisted claim that Asmodeus had on my body. Maybe it was possible, but maybe it wasn’t.
Asmodeus was one of the original Seven and the ruler of the Seventh Circle.
I hovered in the space between denial and screaming hysteria. I reached forward, silently, never voicing my inner turmoil.
Henry’s hand clasped mine tightly. I wanted to ask him if he felt all my emotions; if Lillian’s curse was still active.
In that way, I considered myself lucky. I could see feelings, urges, and the colours of people’s auras and intentions but I didn’t experience them as if they were my own.
I couldn’t imagine how difficult it was to have a sense of self when everyone else’s emotions battered at your own.
“You’re very pensive,” Henry noted.
I sighed, and he reached into his pocket and produced a penny. Taking my hand, he placed the copper piece in the centre of my palm and closed my fingers around it.
“We share a soul.” He looked down to the onyx butterfly tattooed on my wrist, the mark of his consort. “I can hear your misgivings. Even if you don’t voice them.”
I kept my eyes forward, confident that I would have blushed if I could. Every passing day took another human aspect from my body. Tears. Sweat. Blush.
“How can you stand it?” I whispered. “Knowing that my body has been touched by another person?”
Henry pulled my hand and used it as leverage to envelope my body in an embrace. He tangled his deft fingers in my hair. Henry held me to him as if I was a life raft.
“It is comforting to know that you’re not inside of your body when it’s being touched.” Henry’s frigid breath tickled the shell of my ear and sent shivers down my spine.
“Will you erase his touch?” I asked, breathily.
Henry licked his bottom lip and leant forward without hesitation. His mouth hovered over mine and I felt like every blood vessel in my core would combust.
“Gladly.” He said.
Katya Klein looked prim and proper as she stood in the hallway of Damian’s estate. I wondered how she had gotten in with relatively little trouble, considering that the first time we had met she had tried to use something called an ‘Anima Mundi’, which would have killed all the daemons within a fifty-foot radius.
Damian stood by my shoulder with his arms crossed over his chest. Henry was on my other side. If someone didn’t know any better, they might have thought that I was in the middle of an international love triangle between a classic English gentleman and a Californian surfer.
I marched forward, fully prepared to take the Witchling by the ear like a small child. Katya Klein did not belong in daemon territory.
“What are you doing here?” I snarled.
Katya shifted from one foot to the other, and her chest flushed red. Her face didn’t change, and I quickly realised that her makeup was thick enough to cover the blush on her cheeks.
Katya Klein dressed like a demure solicitor, but she gave the distinct impression that if someone got in her way, they would die. She would get them between her teeth and refuse to let go.
“I’m not paying for the damages on that Witchling bar.” Damian surveyed his nails without a care in the world.
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Katya said lazily. “After all, when does a daemon ever face the consequences of their actions?”
“Twas but a small explosion.” Damian pinched his fingers together with a smirk.
If I had watched the exchange in a separate medium like a film or book, I would have laughed. But it was hard when I faced the reality of what they said. Damian had burnt a bar down; all for some feud that I couldn’t even begin to understand.
Katya smoothed the front of her pristine skirt. “Beatrix is sick. I need to take her home. She needs to be healed by her own kind.” She informed us lightly. She looked over my shoulder as if she expected Trix to step out of the oak doors at any moment.
“She’s not here,” I said. “How do you even know that she’s sick?”
Henry placed his hand on my shoulder. He could sense that I was a few seconds away from doing something that I may have regretted later.
A flash darkness crossed over Katya’s face, and it scared me. “None of your business.” The Witchling sniffed in disdain.
“Trix does not want any connection to the London Coven,” Damian informed her. When Katya’s expression did not change, he continued to speak. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“My sister’s place is with me, at the head of the London Coven.”
Damian snorted a laugh and pushed his dirty blonde hair out of his eyes. He wouldn’t have looked out of place in a photo spread in a magazine. His eyes were pale, almost all white as his power flared in annoyance.
“You can leave now.” I supplied helpfully.
Katya placed her hand on the door but turned to us one last time. “Trix needs to be around her own kind. She will weaken and become sick. I only want what is best for her.”
And then she left.
The unease that I had felt whenever Katya Klein was around had increased tenfold. Every one of my instincts screamed not to trust her.
St James Park was a stone’s throw from Hyde Park, by London standards; meaning that it was walkable.
We stepped out of the safety of the Cross Estate, past the obtrusive iron gate. Traffic was heinous. Cars lined up around the block, and the streets were dotted with temporary traffic lights every hundred yards.
It wasn’t until Henry, and I reached the edge of the barricade, and I smelt the tang of sweat, that I realised that we stood by finishing line of the London Marathon.
Loud pop music vibrated against the pavement, and I saw the metal archway in the distance. It was the early afternoon, and that meant that we were witnessing the middle-rung runners complete the race and get their medals.
The crowd was friendly, but not fevered. People passed out bottled water and Henry, and I navigated through the crumpled plastic on the pavement without a thought. Our plan was to walk until the traffic thinned and then call an Uber.
The shouting started in the distance. At first, I thought that it was the beginning of a fight, but instead, I recognised it as a plea. A scream of warning.
The crowd silenced with a ripple; a shockwave of tension. With the Boston Marathon terror attack still a fresh memory, everyone started to pile away from the commotion. The screaming was in a language that I didn’t recognise. People around us took out their mobile phones and began to film the disturbance while a good portion pushed past us and tried to move the crowd away from the barricade.
Frantic footfalls and gasping breaths were our sound
track. Punctured by the echoing scream of someone in the middle of the crowd. We were going to get trampled. Henry grabbed my hand as the mass of bodies began to surge away from the commotion.
I saw Katya Klein’s side profile flash past me. She quickly disappeared into the fray. My fists clenched and I ached to reach out to her and find out why she was in the centre of such a public, horrific mess.
I felt magic pulsate through the balls of my feet, travelling through the ground and seeking the thin golden threads of Hell. I didn’t know how I knew what it was searching for, but an unfamiliar residual memory floated to the front of my mind. Katya Klein had set something off. A bomb?
Every daemon in crowd shed their humanity in a blink. Witchling magic forced their corruption to the service.
I could barely resist the thrall of the magic, and I had a direct pipeline to the Queen of Hell. Henry’s hand clasped mine, and his expression was strained. He was a Pureblood again, and even Henry had trouble resisting the urge to rip and maim.
I felt the connection our connection as our skin touched. It was a tangible thing. We were probably the most powerful people in the area, but we still struggled against the urge to rip into the crowd.
I sensed three daemons in the area, but it was enough They had once been human, but as their humanity floated into the air like ink in water, they became beasts.
Henry and I were swept up in the hysteria of the crowd. I heard the wet squelch of flesh tearing, and I tried to turn to look but was unable to.
“We need to go back,” I said, my ears began to hurt from the sounds of the crowd. It was overwhelming. “Those daemons don’t know what they’re doing.”
Henry shook his head. “If we get involved it’s going to turn into something else. Something bigger than three people going cannibalistic in a crowd.”
Henry pulled us behind a parked Ford Focus, and we ducked behind the curve of the boot to watch the action from a safe distance. A high keening sound rang out as the metallic finish line archway toppled over.
The area was significantly more deserted than it had been a few minutes before. I watched the silhouette of a she-daemon, skulking through the streets with her fingers curled into claws. The slap of sneaker soles as they pounded the pavement slowed. The stream of people thinned; lost in the destruction.
I fought against static electricity in the air, the subtle magic that attempted coax and seduce me to submit to rip and tear into the humans. To kill.
I shook my head against the sickly-sweet darkness. “Why would the Witchlings do this?”
Henry wrapped his arm around my shoulders as if I was someone to be protected. I looked over the edge of the iron railing, a couple of streets over, and saw a line of police in riot gear. Clear visors over their faces and shields that looked as tall as me.
Another scream ripped out from the platform, my head whipped around and from the view under Henry Blaire’s arm, I saw a woman being pulled out by her feet from under a car. The whipping, air churning sound of helicopter blades filled the air. A police-copter or a news crew? I had no idea.
Henry’s jaw was set in a hard line; his eyes were sharp gems of Lapis Lazuli as he surveyed the area for threats. He was calm as if nothing could phase him.
We had to run. We couldn’t be caught. I was already on the police’s radar for several crimes. These people might die at the hands of a spell, but what if I was trapped in a cell and Asmodeus got loose? How many deaths would be my responsibility then?
We managed to slip down a side alley. I recognised the long grooves in the brick. The metal door at the end.
We were in Vincent Rose’s territory. In the very alleyway where I had crashed a stolen Lambo and then drained a daemon dry.
The city was filling up with memories, and not all of them were good. My stomach lurched as we disappeared into the Fold.
The sounds of chaos and the smell of bleeding flesh disappeared with a pop. I staggered forward, unused to the sudden change in atmosphere.
Henry’s stepped were slow and sure, his Italian loafers clacked against the dance floor as we walked up to the bar. The scent of my adrenaline leaked into the bar, which was empty. The dancefloor was bright but depressing in the light of day. Without saying a word, I leapt over the chrome surface and grabbed a shot glass from under the bar. I needed a shot of whisky, or twelve.
It had been a long day, and it wasn’t even over yet.
A bar-daemon rounded the corner but halted when he caught sight of us. Covered in blood and dust. The stranger wasn’t an incubus but must have been something else—he opened his mouth to speak, but Henry Blaire covertly shook his head.
I poured Henry a shot but doused my mouth in whisky straight from the bottle. I felt the warm rush of alcohol hit my belly with the promise of drunkenness. My body quickly swallowed the reaction, and it became the same as drinking water.
“Dammit!” I swore as I grabbed another bottle from the bar and took a long slug. The alcohol had no effect as my metabolism fought it. I wanted to get lost in the bottle. I wanted to disappear for a while.
“It’s not working,” I said petulantly. My voice was small as if belonged to a child.
“It won’t,” Henry said, tapping his knuckles against the bar.
“I should have saved them. I shouldn’t have run away. I could have done something.” I seethed, slamming the bottle against the bar.
“There was nothing that either of us could have done,” Henry said slowly. He reached for my hand, but I pulled it away and lifted the bottle to my lips again.
I gasped around the world’s longest inhalation of whisky. “That doesn’t make me feel any less shitty.”
My daemon sighed; his Celestine blue eyes gave the impression that he saw directly into my soul.
I hadn’t realised it before, but we were similar that way. I had been called cold and emotionless more times than I could count. I had thought of Henry the same way when we had first met. Methodical and aloof.
But I knew that he felt deeply. He experienced emotions so fervently that it felt like he was burning on a pyre.
I knew because of our bond. Connected by the tattoo on my wrist. I was certain that that was the only reason I could feel any emotion at all.
Henry’s eyes flicked to the movement in the corner. His eyes dimmed, but his face was a mask.
I recognised the scent immediately. He was autumn. Warm fires and cloves; and most importantly, he was insanity personified.
“How is my favourite Vessel?” Vincent Rose cooed. He strode into the bar with his arms wide, clothed in a well-fitted designer suit. The material hugged his every line. If I had seen him on the street, I would have thought that he was an eccentric billionaire. I knew the truth, however. He was bat-shit crazy.
Vincent swept in, with a flurry of wild red hair. He leant down and kissed both of my cheeks with an exaggerated smacking sound.
My brow was furrowed, and I stayed stock-still. “The last time you saw me, I am fairly sure that I was in chains.”
Vincent giggled like a school child and took Henry’s shot off the bar and downed it in one. “Well, yes. I do like my chains.” Vincent smacked his lips together and placed the crystal glass down on the bar surface with a clink.
Henry’s eyes were alight with barely contained rage. When I looked at his fist, which Henry had placed on his knee, his knuckles were white.
“Vincent Rose? I presume?” Henry said in a voice that radiated power. I had never heard him speak like that before. It was the same multi-layered effect that I had heard come out of my own mouth when Amore took over.
The air became stale. Stifling, like the wasn’t enough oxygen to go around.
Henry cocked his head to the side. I heard Vincent’s shoes scuff across the floor as he took an abrupt step back.
Vincent’s lips gaped for a second, before relaxing into a bashful smile. “You caught me.” He shrugged. “Hands in the cookie jar.” He wiggled his fingers in a mocking salute to Jazz-hands.
A rumble started inside of Henry’s chest. It was a territorial growl, and God help me, I kind of liked it. It sent tingles from my stomach to my core. It made me remember the times that Henry had proclaimed that I was his. When he was inside of me.
Damn. Being inhabited with the embodiment of Lust was not good for my libido. I needed cold showers and some Valium.
“Haage, I presume?” Vincent said in a sweet voice. “My Dearest Pet, you did not mention that Haage was in London, last we spoke?”
I slid off my barstool to put some distance between Vincent and myself. I allowed my fingers to weave into Henry’s. I draped my body over his shoulders as if I had no shame.
Something about Vincent told me that if I showed even a modicum of weakness, that he would strip the flesh from my bones and eat me alive.
Henry and I were chameleons, it seemed. Our personalities moulded to fit the situation. Taking in our surroundings and changing ourselves to fit.
Henry bared his teeth in a snarl, and I smiled lazily. We coiled together, perfectly in synch.
“It was hard to give you an update while you hog-tied and delivered me to Damian.”
Henry cocked his head to the side, facing Vincent Rose. His eyes remained on the side of my face. When he spoke, his words were slow and measured. “You dared to put my Consort in chains?”
Vincent’s expression faltered, insecurity slid over his face like a flickering lightbulb. “Yes…?”
I wiggled my finger. “Be nice for now.” I reminded them both. I wanted nothing more than to rip Vincent Rose to pieces but I knew that it was wrong. You can’t reason with crazy. In some sick and twisted way, I understood why he had thrown me under the bus.
“I had thought that Damian would have completed the ritual by now?” Vincent probed. His forest green eyes were full of schemes.
“He did.” I picked up the bottle of whisky and took another casual slug of the dregs. I was still draped over Henry like a fox shawl. In some way, I felt more like a daemon than ever, using feather touches to pull and push energy between Henry and me. He was my comfort blanket. From the warmth that I felt through our bond, I knew that he felt the same.
The Purebloods Page 11
