by Liz Meldon
Chapter Four
Too many shots.
Too many shots.
Too many—delicious—shots.
Her balance sucked. The edges of her vision blurred, the soft orange and white lights blending together. All the faces on the dance floor, all the people, were their costumes at this point. No more humans. Just creatures and things. Black, white, green, red, pink. Feathers. Lace. Latex. Cat eyes and exposed skin. Her hair had doubled in size, roasting her neck, and sweat dripped down her back. She needed the support of the bodies around her, moving and swaying and writhing, or she’d fall over. The Inferno had never been this wild before, not a soul on the patio or in the second-floor booths. All on the dance floor. All together. One. In unison.
She couldn’t feel her face, but Ella was having a damn good Halloween.
The song shifted to a remix of two top-twenty hits, and she threw her hands up to scream alongside all the rest of them. At this point, she was more alcohol than blood—a walking, talking bottle of vodka. And she didn’t give a fuuuuuuck.
All the drama from before—poof, gone.
No tension. No embarrassment. No fear. That gorgeous chaos demon ass was just one of the gang as soon as they’d arrived, and Ella hadn’t looked back. Two hours in, the clock ticking ever closer to midnight, and she felt like she’d been at it for weeks. Dancing. Drinking. Singing—poorly—alongside a slightly tipsy Moira.
Climbing onto their booth’s table, each of them drinking their own bottle. Dragging Cordelia up too and losing themselves in the music.
Nearly half her class from teachers’ college was out tonight, and Ella had made the rounds earlier, flying solo and giddy, her entire body light and boozy. Now, the dance floor called her home. The energy. The pulse. The fucking electricity. Was there something in the air tonight? People went hard at the Inferno, but never this hard.
It was like they were prepared to dance until their feet were bloody stumps.
At least that was how Ella felt. She could live here, in this spot, dancing into eternity.
Gone was the “authentic” Hogwarts robe that had cost her a small fortune. Her tie hung halfway down her chest; her socks had joined the black robe back in the booth. If the damn things refused to stay up, then they couldn’t party with her. No time to stop. No distractions. Just movement and energy and jumping, jumping, jumping…
Just chaos.
The thought made her stumble, and she gathered her hair with both hands, plopping it on top of her head as she chased her breath. The only ones seemingly immune to the pull of the nightclub were her supernatural companions, all of whom were still in the booth, chatting and drinking and laughing and eating that endless supply of upscale appetizers that had left Ella full to bursting hours ago.
She stood up on her tiptoes. Unable to see over the crowd, she jumped in place, higher and higher, until she had eyes on them again. Only the four. Only the couples. Missing one.
Well, missing two, but she was right here.
Ella jumped in place once more, turning with every leap, bobbing up like a little periscope to check out the rest of the second level. Malachi. Malachi. Malachi. Malachi.
Found you.
The chaos demon loitered at the periphery of the dance floor, leaning on the arched doorway that opened to an empty terrace. Cold October air rustled his glorious golden locks, blustering in unchecked through the trio of open doors. Ella finally dropped her curls; if all the doors were open, why was it still so fucking hot?
And why was he all by himself?
Always alone.
So unlike him.
So fucking weird.
And if Ella could stop being weird, then so could he.
He ought to know that—that she had stopped being weird and he could too.
Yup. Yup, yup, yup.
Mouth set in a determined line, she wormed her way across the packed dance floor, her drunken brain getting distracted here and there. So many costumes. So many familiar faces. So many—oh my god this song!
Midnight struck. Another Halloween come and gone, and yet all around her, the energy swelled. It licked across her flesh, up her neck, some invisible warmth nibbling at her ear before plunging down her spine. It made her heart pound, her adrenaline surge. Dance. Must—dance. Must move, get the feeling out, the electric hum crackling through her veins. Someone grabbed her by the hips, dragging her flush against him. A him, decidedly, because he either had an iron rod in his pants or he felt the pulse of the party too.
Ella wriggled free, shoving her way through the crowd at long last, stumbling the final few steps to freedom. She sucked in a lungful of crisp, cool air, the dance floor still clinging to her, an invisible hand tugging at her wrist. Come back. Come back. Come back.
Malachi straightened when he spotted her, confusion rippling across his features—all the way up to his full black eyes. And those eyes… Well, if Ella struggled to read their nuances when she was sober, tonight they were just deep, dark pits of mystery.
Deep, dark pits she wanted to get lost in.
“I thought you were downstairs,” the demon remarked as she teetered toward him like a little fawn on a thick sheet of ice.
“No.” The longer she held that black stare, the faster her heightened emotions surged to the surface. They danced across her skin, prickled beneath it. Her heart raced. Her breath fell harder. Stroking her neck, trailing her fingers over her breasts, down her abdomen and back up again, Ella was a raw, wild thing. “I’m right here.”
If only he had bothered with a costume. Had they been on speaking terms, perhaps she could have conjured something for him; Ella might lack magic, but Moira was evidence of her other talents. Still, he looked so damn fine in that suit. Deep, deep burgundy made his hair especially golden, a rough mane around his head like a halo. The rich, lush fabric clung to rippling muscle beneath, to ridiculously broad shoulders, to a core that felt like steel, to a tapered waist with a deliciously sharp V she’d had the pleasure of feeling once before.
And she’d feel it again. Now, in fact, while she had the courage—while the pulse of the room spurred her.
“I’m right here,” she whispered, clutching a lapel in each hand and arching up his figure. “And I feel so alive.”
Malachi snatched both her wrists, her forearms positively snappable in his large hands. So strong. Her eyes dipped to the rings adorning his fingers, and her tongue swept across her lower lip. What would he do if she flicked it over that large gold one—the one with the family crest? Fire ignited in her core, a languid, wet heat gathering between her thighs.
“Ella,” he said stiffly, all prim and serious and not Malachi again, “I—”
Her lips caught him with his mouth open. The fire inside exploded, whipping about like a hurricane, all else fading to black as she pushed up on her tippy-toes to kiss him. His hands tightened around her wrists, keeping her at bay, but, like always, that mouth was his undoing. So hot and firm against her, open and toe-curlingly fierce. She moaned, eyes fluttering closed. He tasted like bourbon and sin, and she needed more.
When he finally released her, she all but climbed his impressive frame, her feet off the floor when he thrust her up against the doorway. The unyielding wood bit into her back, and she hung there, pinned, with Malachi’s imposing figure snug between her thighs. One hard hand beneath her chin; the other gripped under her knee. She could feel them—the bruises starting to pepper her skin. He growled when his tongue invaded her mouth, ever the plundering conqueror, and Ella thought… She thought…
Well, she thought, decided, that she would let him fuck her. Right here. Right now. Trembling, her hands dropped to his belt, his cock so painfully hard against her center that the first buck of his hips had her crying out. In shock. In pain. In fucking ecstasy. Crying right into his mouth, all that feeling, that adrenaline, that energy reaching a zenith inside her.
Something needed to happen or she’d just explode.
The wildness. The passion. The need
—to kiss, to bite, to rip and tear and destroy and oh fuck—
A pulse of energy crashed into her, literal and visceral, no longer just a feeling tickling the nape of her neck and coaxing her to dance. A rush of heat ripped through her, over her, a godly exhale that warmed her from head to toe. A shudder of wood to her right, a rattle of glass to her left—and in the crowd, someone screamed. Ella stilled, Malachi’s belt open, an end in each of her quivering hands. Out of the corner of her eye, the writhing mass of costumed people morphed into something different.
Something violent.
A brawl erupted in the dead center of the dance floor, men tearing each other apart, dragging others into the vortex like the fight had its own gravitational pull. Ella pushed at Malachi’s chest, panic skittering through the spitting furnace inside her, and when he didn’t set her down and step back, her wide eyes darted to him.
She found him grinning, the look positively savage. More screams; his smile sharpened.
Chaos. She’d thought before had been chaos, all the people, all the movement and energy and goddamn that was nothing. This was chaos—unbridled and brutal, the crowd shifting in an instant from good-time partiers to drunken brawlers.
Drunken brawlers who wanted to slash each other to ribbons. Literally.
Ella’s breath hitched, and she squirmed against the chaos demon trapping her in place. The slight wriggle of her hips, the pressure of her hands against his chest, seemed to coax him out of the moment, and when he blinked down at her, the black had vanished, replaced by icy blue. Malachi lowered her to the ground without a word, then shoved her behind him as the fight thundered their way like a herd of charging wildebeest.
Arms over her head, she squeaked when the first wave hit, a gaggle of humans, men and women, crashing into Malachi. Costumes torn, eyes wild, they ripped into one another like their very lives depended on it.
Moira.
Where the hell was Moira? Was she safe?
Ella tried to find her best friend, peeking around Malachi’s burly bicep, but with people swinging from the pumpkin chandelier and bouncers in black swarming the crowd, it was impossible to see the VIP booth anymore. Impossible to hear, too, the screams deafening. She clamped her hands over her ears, crouching behind Malachi’s knees as visions of that horrible night on the street, demons and angels at war, flashed in her mind’s eye.
The nightclub security team had the chaos settled within minutes. When the screaming stopped, the music at half volume, Ella finally cracked one eye open, then the other, and peered through Malachi’s legs. Bouncers escorted snarling humans toward the stairs, while a few others were restrained against the wall, to the floor. People were crying, clinging to each other—bloody and bruised, though it was hard to tell if it was real or not. After all, it was Halloween.
Or, at least, it had been. Twenty minutes ago.
Gripping the doorframe, Ella tried to stand—tried and failed, her knees giving way, all that pulse-pounding energy from before gone. It was like some supernatural force had kept her vertical when all the booze in her system wanted to knock her flat on her ass. When she finally did manage to get upright, the world spun, but at least her head felt clearer.
And she couldn’t stop shaking. Teeth chattering, she slumped against the doorway as Malachi faced her, his expression unreadable. He caught her chin with a crooked finger, tilting her head up as he assessed her in a thick, brutal silence. A few deep breaths stilled the world around her, but the sick churning in her gut refused to quit.
Why did she feel like this? So… So… drained. Minutes ago, she had never felt more alive.
“Ella—”
“Mr. Saevitia?”
A flicker of rage crossed Malachi’s features as he side-eyed the approaching bouncer. “What?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll need to leave.”
“Excuse me?” Malachi hissed, his voice coaxing some awful blend of need and nausea out of her. She swallowed thickly and tipped her head back against the wood frame. Guh. Arms wrapped around herself, Ella drew in a shaky breath and glanced between the two demons before her, both their eyes black. Malachi stood roughly a head taller, but the bouncer seemed not to care about the size difference as he squared his shoulders and puffed his chest.
“House rules—”
“Do you know who I am?” Malachi peered down his nose as he spoke, one hand in a fist so tight his knuckles paled. “I own this city.”
“Yes, right, well, you can take it up with Lord Verrier.” The bouncer’s black gaze flickered to her, but Malachi’s immense body soon blocked him completely.
“Take up what, exactly?”
“His lordship doesn’t tolerate that kind of influence on his human patrons.”
Malachi snorted. “Mine is not the only influence at work here—”
“Yes, but yours is the only one to make our patrons bleed.” The demonic bouncer stepped aside, gesturing toward the bright red Exit sign over the stairs on the other side of the room. “If you don’t mind…”
Influence.
Oh my god.
Chaos demons could influence demons and humans and…
Me.
Nausea won out, crushing every bit of need inside her until bile started to climb up her throat. Cheeks burning, Ella pushed off the doorframe and staggered around the pair, vision blurring in and out of focus.
Need to leave. Need to get out of here.
Need to get away from him.
“Moira!”
Malachi hadn’t meant for it to go that far.
At first, it had just been a bit of fun, something to relieve the boredom—to distract him from the fact that the human woman who made him weak was the most social fucking butterfly in the bar.
Then the chaos inside won out, whipping the humans into a frenzy, drawing all those susceptible to his influence into the fray. He had kept his unseen touch exclusively to the humans around him at the Inferno, sensing the utter mayhem chaos-kissed demons could cause would be bad for business.
And for him.
Verrier would gut him if Malachi turned his demon employees wild.
After all, he had done it before in Farrow’s Hollow—the night of the raid on Seraphim Securities. He had driven the demon mob bosses and their underlings mad, so rabid that they’d hurled themselves at the angel garrison. Cannon fodder. They had made excellent cannon fodder.
Yet tonight was just supposed to be a bit of fun. See how far he could push them before violence won out. Chaos was a scale with a thousand little pinpricks along the way. It touched everyone differently.
Apparently it turned Ella Thomas into a carnal creature of lust and desire, her eyes alight with the most spectacular wildfire. As his feet pounded the pavement on the forced march back to Alaric’s home, Malachi couldn’t get the image out of his head. Her hands everywhere—on herself, on him. Those eyes, so raw and wild and hungry.
As soon as her mouth found his, the inner demon had won out. Once more he had her, drunk and desperate, pliant and eager. Fuck playing the hero. Malachi had attempted it for a split second, but her hitched skirt dusting the tops of her thighs, that unbuttoned white shirt exposing the exquisite delicacy of her cleavage…
He was no hero.
He was a demon, a creature of vice and sin, and in that moment…
Malachi had lost control.
Which, ordinarily, mattered not to a chaos demon. Uncontrolled spiraling was encouraged, praised. Chaos wasn’t orderly. It was—chaos.
But then… Well, the aftermath had been less pleasant. The others seemed only mildly annoyed that his shenanigans had gotten them booted from the nightclub. Not them, mind you—him. Malachi had been asked to leave, and for some reason the others followed. Ella had refused to look at him, not even once they were free of the nightclub, swathed in the frigid midnight air, the first breath of November.
She had been off like a shot, blitzing ahead of the group, far steadier on her feet, that great black cloak billowing
behind her. Moira trailed after her friend, Severus a few steps behind her, while a canoodling Cordelia and Alaric brought up the rear.
Malachi knew he ought to saunter along behind them, but something drove him onward, eclipsing Severus and Moira with his much larger stride. This something—it demanded he apologize for spoiling Ella’s night. After all, she had seemed rather excited for the outing. The party was supposed to go on for another three hours, but here they were, toddling home because Malachi couldn’t behave.
Severus’s words, certainly not his.
He quickened from a trot to a gallop when Ella wrenched open the front door to the narrow, four-story home squished between two brick apartment complexes. The others still trailed behind him, and as he darted in after the human, he contemplated locking the door, just to give them a few precious seconds alone.
Seconds—because a simple lock meant nothing to his witchy cousin.
He found Ella struggling with her hideous black loafers just inside the front door, her balance improved but nowhere near sober. His inner demon practically purred at the sight of her, the memory of her mouth, her heat, her curious hands a more ardent distraction than Malachi cared to admit. Grim-faced, he shut the door soundly behind him as she all but hurled her awful shoes in the closet.
“Ella—”
“Was it really you back there?” she demanded, huffing a curl out of her face. It fell back into place defiantly, and she brushed it away with a scowl.
No point in denying it. That fucking security oaf had already outed him. Braxus. Malachi would remember his name. “Yes, that was me.”
Ella shrugged off her robe, the black cotton slithering down her arms, and then hung it over the bannister.
“It was just a bit of fun,” he added in the silence that followed, not quite sure what else to say. He had no reason to defend himself.
“Fun?” She all but spat the word, and Malachi threw his shoulders back, drawing up to his full height. If he needn’t defend himself, then why had defensiveness flared in his chest, white-hot and indignant? Why did his inner demon snarl at her tone—a snarl that suggested he’d been caught red-handed?
