Predator

by Liz Meldon

  Before she left, she fired off a response to her best friend’s recent text about her ETA; after Ella’s hot mess of a date last Friday, they had plans to watch a movie tonight before bed with a tub of ice cream each to help her get over it.

  Moira had insisted that she wanted her own tub of ice cream, which, given her love of the stuff, had gone unquestioned when they’d made their plans. However, she too needed to drown her sorrows in a bucket of cookies and cream—because her Friday night hadn’t exactly been all roses either.

  She clenched her eyes shut and slapped a hand to her forehead. Just the memory of her, what, forty minutes with Russ the Scrumptious Escort made her want to dissolve into a puddle of goo on the floor. Not only had she been a nervous wreck about paying for sex, acting like she’d never seen a member of the male species before, but she hadn’t enjoyed an earth-shattering, heart-pounding orgasm either. Instead, she could have sworn she saw his eyes change, both orbs completely black as he pounded into her—and that particular memory made her shiver for more reasons than one.

  Later, when she’d had time to think, she decided the whole eye-changing incident was probably just her imagination giving her an excuse to get the hell out of there.

  Because, as intense as it had been, as amazing as the sex had felt when it finally started, she shouldn’t have been there. She shouldn’t have hired an escort—hello, illegal—and she shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up that she would finally experience what pretty much every other woman her age raved about. It had all been a huge mistake, one she couldn’t stop dreaming about days later. As sexy as her dreams about Russ had been, with his smoldering stare and sinful smile, the rumbling vibrations of his voice always getting dream-Moira off, they left her feeling restless. Distracted. Exhausted, honestly.

  In short, the whole evening had been downright mortifying, and as much as she had wanted to spill it all immediately to a pissed-off, post-date Ella when she’d stormed into the house that night, she couldn’t. It was too embarrassing, even to share with her best friend.

  Instead, Moira planned to eat an entire tub of ice cream tonight, the first free night she and Ella could justify taking off together, and pretend it had never happened.

  If only her subconscious could just get onboard with that, because she could really use a decent night’s sleep. If she kept passing out trying to grade all these admittedly boring-as-hell essays, she’d never get them done—and being stuck with them for longer than necessary was almost worse than having to grade them in the first place.

  As she loaded her things into her messenger bag, Moira caught her reflection in the small window facing the courtyard. Frowning, she tugged her wool cap down, then tucked the wisps of white hair underneath. She had dyed her hair for her night with Russ, hoping that might give her more confidence, and just as it had many times before, the dye washed out of her hair the following day. Permanent dye, at that.

  So, not only had her hair fallen out last year and grown back in the exact opposite of what it had been her whole life, but it couldn’t hold dye worth a damn anymore either—and it grew like nobody’s business. She had to trim it weekly now just to keep it manageable.

  And it was getting a little too warm to wear her wool caps every day. She shot her reflection a scowl, then grabbed her bag and shuffled out of the TA broom closet—“office”. Thick, unrelenting silence blanketed the library this time of night, with just a few students here and there working at the individual study cubes, headphones on and the world tuned out. She waved at a cluster of softly murmuring English lit TAs in passing, but didn’t stop to chat—mostly because they only knew her as Ella’s weird roommate who never went out anymore.

  Rather than taking the rickety elevator down to the main floor, she took the winding cement stairwell. Here, the air was even more oppressive, cold too, the silence thicker and more disconcerting. Gripping her pleather bag strap, she picked up the pace, all but throwing herself through the thick, heavy doors that led to the main floor.

  Breathing in the scents from the coffee stand, she found her unease dissipating at the quiet, constant chatter of the first floor; upper floors had noise restrictions, leaving the sprawling main level, with its archival rooms and long tables with bench seating on either side, the one place study groups could meet and talk as loud as they wanted.

  She almost stopped to grab a coffee, knowing she’d need one to stay awake through tonight’s movie, but decided against it when Ella sent a string of texts telling her to hurry up or she’d start without her. The weekend would have been a better time to do this, but Ella had been reluctantly visiting family, then had TA work of her own to tackle over the last couple days—so a midweek movie night featuring what Moira suspected would be a lot of date bashing was the best they could swing.

  Pausing between the two doorways at the entrance of the library, she texted Ella back, insisting that she was coming and to not take her ice cream out of the freezer just yet. When she was through, she tucked her phone away and pushed through the exterior door, marching out into the night.

  Only to stop when she felt it again. Arms crossed, Moira scanned the empty courtyard before her, the looming shapes of the social sciences building on one side and the arts building on the other casting long shadows that engulfed the entire yard. She paused at the top of the steps, nibbling her lower lip.

  For the last few days, every time she had stepped outside, a chill had skittered down her spine—because she felt like someone was watching her. Thus far, Moira couldn’t validate her feelings. Couldn’t confirm or deny. Couldn’t decide if her overactive imagination from her night with Russ just hadn’t settled yet. But it was there, the sensation of a stranger’s gaze creeping across her body, and it hadn’t let up yet.

  Slowly, she descended the cement stairs one at a time, pausing again at the bottom. Beyond the lamps on either side of the courtyard, one flickering, and the arrangement of benches and trash cans, she was totally alone. The path from the library steps carried on across the courtyard, between the two buildings, and into the huge grassy area in the middle of campus. Its informal name was the Hills, and even it looked empty this time on a Wednesday night.

  FHU campus was shaped like a giant rectangle, with buildings making up the four exterior walls, and grassy, gentle, rolling greenery and gardens in the middle. Frosh orientation week was held on the Hills, along with other big outdoor events, but most of the time students sprawled across it when the weather was good, enjoying the much-needed green space amidst the oppressive gothic architecture that made up most of Farrow’s Hollow.

  She glanced at the narrow windows of all the buildings around her, momentarily searching for the source of that feeling. It followed her even after she gave up and headed for the bike rack, the hairs on the back of her neck standing upright. The pumping adrenaline made her a bit uncoordinated as she dug her keys out of her bag, searching for the one to open her bike lock, but when she turned her attention to her trusty bike, Moira realized it didn’t matter that it had taken her a few seconds to fumble with her keys. She wouldn’t be using her bike tonight anyway.

  Because some asshole had stolen her seat.

  Last September had been the month for bike seats to mysteriously disappear. The cold, snowy winter had put a dampener on that, and now apparently the culprit was right back at it. Jaw clenched to the point of pain, hands balled to fists, Moira stared down at the six other bikes also locked to the metal rack, all of them with their seats. Why hers and not theirs?

  Sure, she lived on the outskirts of campus—it was a twenty-minute walk, fifteen given how fast she hoofed it at night, but it could have been an easy three-minute bike ride instead.

  “Fuck!” Not knowing what else to take out her sudden blinding rage on, she kicked at her back wheel—and clamped a hand over her mouth when the entire thing bent in half. Spokes, metal, wheel—everything bent, like a folded piece of cardboard, and she hadn’t even kicked it that hard.

  It was moments like th
ese that made her think she wasn’t, in fact, dying—that her physical transformation into this walking white corpse had to be something else entirely. She’d never been a weakling, but Moira had chosen choir over sports growing up. She was a sprinter, not a fighter. Cardio was her friend.

  And now, apparently, she had enough strength to kick the back wheel of her bike in half.

  Breathing shakily, she forced her hand to her side, turned, and power-walked out of the courtyard.

  All the while ignoring the way those unseen eyes continued to follow her—straight to her front door.

  “My, my, my…” Severus crouched before the warped bicycle wheel, his fingers ghosting across it. “Someone has a temper.”

  From his position in the shadows across the courtyard, he hadn’t been able to see what had caused Moira’s outburst. Now, however, he could deduce it was likely to do with the fact that her seat was missing. Not exactly conducive for comfortable cycling anymore, was it?

  Not unless you wanted a bit of kink with your ride.

  He cocked his head to the side, eyes roving the bent wheel. An ordinary human couldn’t have done that. In a burst of anger, she’d folded metal and plastic like they were nothing. Each day that he watched her had steadily confirmed his suspicions that she wasn’t entirely human, which, for Farrow’s Hallow, wasn’t out of the ordinary.

  At the sound of students leaving the library, chatting animatedly as they went, he stood and started off down the path next to the social sciences building. He needn’t have tracked Moira to know that she’d gone home, as she did every night, afternoon—anytime she wasn’t in class or working, really. He grabbed the cigarette he’d tucked behind his ear earlier and stuck it between his lips, then fished out his silver lighter from the pocket of his black trench coat. Normally he wasn’t one for dressing so obviously demonic, but he lacked the ability to warp the shadows to his liking as others did. So, he’d opted for all black on his nighttime prowls, and typical college garb when he followed Moira between lectures during the day.

  A flicker of flame in the darkness. He held the fire to the end of his cigarette, breathing in the burning bitterness of the initial puff for a few moments before returning the lighter to his pocket. He really ought to let it go. He ought to let her go. Logically, Severus knew that. But he couldn’t. Not after the way he had responded to her on Friday night—and especially not after she’d coaxed the demon to the surface, igniting the fires of his true self as no one ever had before.

  He just needed to know, damn it.

  “You’re just annoyed because you didn’t get her off,” Alaric had teased over breakfast Saturday morning, bleary-eyed and grouchy after working the night shift at his father’s bar downtown. Severus had ignored his roommate’s blatant attempts at goading him into an argument, opting instead to continue with his digital stalking before commencing the physical.

  It hadn’t been difficult to locate Moira, a graduate student at the local university. Unfortunately for him, most of her social media channels were set to private, and she hadn’t accepted the friend request he’d sent from his alter ego nice-guy profile, which he sometimes put to good use in this digital age.

  She did, however, have a brief profile on the university’s art history department website. Moira Aurelia. Twenty-three, with a bachelor’s degree in art and psychology. Her little biography professed an interest in pursuing a career in art therapy, and she supposedly planned to get her doctorate in social work after completing her master’s in art history. Ambitious. Private. Social, to a degree, given the number of other pretty, albeit loud, women she lived with in that old Victorian on the edge of university limits.

  None of that really mattered, of course. What mattered was her personhood—her essence. Why hadn’t he been able to take anything from her? If she wasn’t a demon, and he was about 99.9 percent certain she wasn’t, then what on earth was she?

  With tonight’s surveillance complete, he lost himself in thought, mulling through all he’d read and seen of her. Her eyes were different in most of her photos—green, not that unearthly blue he’d been so taken with. Sometimes he still saw them when he closed his eyes, staring back, unblinking, burrowing straight to his core and picking him apart.

  Distracted as he was, Severus trusted his feet to steer him right. Forty minutes later, he’d walked from the FHU campus to downtown, through the more family-oriented suburbs separating them and straight to Alaric’s father’s bar—The Inferno. Given it was owned by Verrier, a retired prince of hell, and located in a city on the cusp of an active hell-gate, the name wasn’t exactly subtle.

  Despite it being just before ten o’clock at night on a Wednesday, the line for the human side of the Inferno was already halfway down the block. Cigarette smoke pluming alongside him, Severus strolled by the row of humans standing about three deep between the wall of the enormous black-brick building and a thick velvet rope. A few of the women tried to catch his eye along the way, but he carried on with a grin, then took a sharp turn into the alley between the two-storey nightclub and Rose’s Corner, the restaurant next door, both of which were owned by Alaric’s father. He’d used a little more tact in naming the restaurant—after Alaric’s human mother—than he had with the Inferno.

  The bulk of the two-storey club catered to humans. Farrow’s Hollow had a young, vibrant population, thanks in part to the thriving university campus. Although they didn’t know it, humans felt a draw to the Inferno; there were lines out the door every night of the week, even in the winter. Demons always had a special pull with humanity. Their auras, their beings, were elusive and intriguing, and most demon business owners used that to their advantage. A human couldn’t explain why they were drawn to demons of all kinds—they just were. Therefore, the Inferno’s street-facing bar, rooftop patio, and second-floor dance club thrived in Farrow’s Hollow, overflowing with young, adventurous humans enticed by its darkness.

  The true heart of the Inferno, however, was strictly for demons and their guests. Off the street, halfway down the alley between the bar and restaurant, was a black steel door. No exterior handle. To a passerby, it looked like an emergency exit for the interior of the bar. Severus, and the entire demon population of Farrow’s Hollow, knew better. With his fifth cigarette of the night hanging between his lips, he leaned against the brick and rapped his knuckles against the steel. Once, twice, three times in rapid succession, then once more. The code changed monthly. No code, no entry, demon or not.

  He stepped back at the sound of clicking lock mechanisms, then slipped inside when the door popped open about two feet.

  “Dartanious, always a pleasure,” Severus said, flashing the doorman a smile. The seven-foot-tall demon ignored him, sliding all the locks back into place.

  “Leeches should pay full price for what they drink,” he growled when Severus finally turned away, intent on joining Alaric at the bar. He paused, jaw clenched, and glanced at the grey-haired giant. Generally not one for smiling in any capacity, Dartanious wore just a hint of a smirk. Sliding one hand into his coat pocket, Severus pursed his lips, flicked his cigarette butt at the demon’s chest, then gave him a quick salute before sauntering into the bar.

  Behind him, the doorman all but snarled, but he couldn’t touch him. In fact, the Inferno was one of the few places Severus was untouchable, despite his lowly incubus status. As the best friend of Alaric Crowley, famed son of Hell’s former prince Verrier, he had special privileges inside these four walls. Not that he ever pushed his luck more than necessary; all he needed to do was insult the wrong demon, stumble drunk into the alley, and find himself smeared across the concrete. It wasn’t worth the risk, but he did enjoy pissing Dartanious off whenever he could, the prickly old bastard.

  While the human side of the Inferno was likely wall-to-wall people by now, the inner sanctum offered more breathing room. Even so, the place was curiously busy for a Wednesday night. Just about every table across the main floor was full, succubus and witch waitresses expertly naviga
ting the controlled chaos with full trays of every sort of alcoholic concoction available on Earth and below, and any empty booth along the walls to the left and right of him had a reserved placard on the table. As Severus made his way through, he spied Alaric waving him over to the back bar.

  His friend usually worked the smaller of the two bars by himself, while a trio of pretty women managed the larger bar near the front door. The outer walls’ exposed black brick flecked with red and gold carried on inside, paired with dark wood furniture throughout. Upstairs were Verrier’s private rooms. Downstairs was the dance floor, along with additional sublevel chambers for more salacious activity.

  Farrow’s Hollow boasted an impressive bar scene, but the Inferno had long been one of Severus’s favourites.

  As he neared the back bar, he spied his usual seat at the end of the row empty, one of the black reserved signs resting on the padded leather barstool. He snatched it off and set it on the other side of the counter, then reached over and helped himself to the bottle of malt whiskey that Alaric always left out for him. Ignoring the miffed stares of the other demons seated at the counter, he treated himself to a healthy dose of the seventy-five-year vintage, filling the glass he’d also swiped from a row of clean ones, capped the bottle, then settled in for the night with a grin.

  “Be with you in a minute, Sev,” Alaric said, his coppery hair slicked back, wearing a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a black apron, and a scowl for the demon sitting next to Severus. He spoke with the poshest of English accents, courtesy of a childhood in his mother’s London high-society circles and an education at Eton, though it would be a mistake to think that had softened him any.

  “Take your time,” Severus insisted. The first sip of whiskey burned the whole way down, but it settled quite nicely, warming him from the inside out. “No hurry.”