by Liz Meldon
Really. What a fucking mess.
Had the bastard who dared touch her never done this before? So sloppy. So…
Malachi blinked through the gathering fog of unbridled rage, only to realize he was trembling. Now wasn’t the time for that. He moved in closer, appraising Ella’s neck—most of the blood seemed to stem from there.
From the…
“Fuck,” he muttered. Most of the blood stemmed from the twin puncture marks at her jugular.
Marks that had already healed, which could only mean one thing.
“Ella, honey, wake up,” Moira whispered, gently tapping her cheek with one hand, the other igniting in a flash of piercing white angel light that had Malachi retreating a few steps. The sheen was far brighter than he remembered, forcing him to shield his eyes, to look away, and before he could stop her, she wrapped that glowing hand around Ella’s bare wrist.
The hybrid’s intentions were pure—the angel light probably healed humans.
Yet within seconds, they were both assaulted by sizzling flesh. The smell. The sound. It stirred his inner demon, yet he fought through it as he charged forth and shoved Moira away.
“Stop.” The hybrid stumbled, catching herself on the pavement before she hit it, her angel light diminished, her face tearstained and pale. Malachi crouched beside Ella and gathered her hand, scowling at the melted flesh, the faintly visible bit of bone. Slowly, the skin started to repair itself. He exhaled softly, completely certain now. “She’s in transition.”
Her expression was oddly peaceful—but it wouldn’t last. No flickering glances beneath her lids, her brown, freckled skin creaseless, her full lips slightly parted, her breath faint but smooth. This was the easy part. The surrender to darkness, the descent into the black.
They had less than an hour before the darkness bit back, before the black started to rip Ella Thomas apart.
“In transition?” Moira repeated weakly, pushing up and shouldering him aside. She zipped up Ella’s coat with trembling hands, as if that would help, then wiped the blood from her chin. All around them, the temperature steadily dropped, her angelic sorrow cooling the air to the point that his skin prickled and his breath burned. She sniffled noisily, glancing at Malachi with wide, frightened eyes. “I-I saw someone standing over her. Did they—”
“We need to move her. Now.” For he had no time to teach, no patience to hold her hand. Not now. Not yet. Before she could object, Malachi scooped Ella up, cradling her in both arms. His movements were stilted yet confident; his calm exterior masked the inferno blazing inside.
It wasn’t new to him, swallowing his true feelings for the sake of the moment, for the sake of manipulation and personal gain, but the maelstrom savaging his innards was unlike anything he had ever felt before. Harsher than the biting gales of Hell. Worse than the decades of crushing loneliness in the Saevitia estate. More brutal than being torn to pieces by a pack of fucking hellhounds—this feeling, this disconnect, this pain was something else entirely.
For how dare some slimy, vampire fuck touch her?
Ella was good.
A good person with a good heart and a gifted mind. A smart mouth capable of eliciting devastating kindness from him. One of the only humans Malachi had ever considered worthy of his time and attention. She didn’t deserve this.
She didn’t deserve the suffering ahead. Hell-born vampires, demons with fangs and a thirst for blood, were bottom-feeders.
Yet the humans they turned…
In the world of monsters, those poor fucks were nothing.
And when he finally discovered the fanged shit who had done this to her, who had snatched away her life, who’d ripped apart her future—that vampire would beg for the sun before Malachi was through with him. Torment in the angel garrison’s prison would be far preferable over what he had in mind.
For now, he kept his cool. As they hurried across the pavement, Moira seemed to be in shock, stumbling along numbly, silently, not once protesting Malachi carrying her best friend, her beloved sister. They rounded the corner and her grief hammered every window they passed, ice skittering across the panes.
“Should we take her to the hospital?”
“There’s nothing they can do for her.” Damn Cordelia—why did she have to return to Hell now? They could have used her expertise on a night like this, but he would just have to make do with Severus and Alaric in the meantime. “It can’t be stopped once it starts. We need to get her inside somewhere safe.”
Safe and preferably soundproof.
Because as horrid as all this seemed, the night was about to get much, much worse.
Chapter Six
Ella awoke to darkness and pain.
A throat that felt like sandpaper.
Eyelids that refused to lift.
A hunger she had never experienced before.
What the hell is going on?
Without opening her eyes, she knew she was in a bed—her bed. The pungent scent of all her vanilla lotions, her jasmine perfumes, her sweat… It was enough to make her gag. Groaning, she rolled onto her side, but while burying her face in her fat feather pillow had once brought her comfort, now it only made things worse. The smells. The smells. Each one burned up her nostrils, down her throat, into her lungs. She coughed before finally forcing her lids open.
More darkness. Her bedroom on the third floor had no windows, and neither did the bathroom. She swallowed thickly, only to whimper as knives sliced down her throat.
What was she even doing here?
The last thing she remembered was…
Her brows furrowed. Why couldn’t she remember? With some difficulty, she hauled herself across her queen-sized bed, then groped around on her nightstand for her phone. The alarm clock tumbled to the floor. A glass of something scentless shattered when it toppled down to join the clock. No phone. Nothing to hint at the time.
Light flooded in under the door, around it. She squinted, rubbing the pressure point just above the bridge of her nose. Logically, she knew the light was soft. In fact, physically she could detect the amber hues, the gentleness of a sunset, yet it still blazed bright enough to burn.
Was she hungover?
Had someone drugged her?
This feeling, this awful heaviness, this deep dark pain, felt almost as bad as the hangover from Malachi’s influence. Bile climbed up her throat at the thought, and yet she didn’t feel the flash of rage she had experienced on Sunday when she woke up after that shitshow of a Halloween. Malachi’s handsome face danced across her mind—his piercing eyes, his strong jaw, his royal cheekbones. No rage this time. Just… hunger.
Not for him. Not really. In fact, as Ella inched off the bed, the bathroom feeling like a whole football stadium away, she couldn’t figure out what she was hungry for, exactly. It was there, that familiar ache in her stomach, that hollowness between her temples. Starvation. Desperate, gnawing hunger. Her mouth watered, but when she thought of her favorite takeout, she doubled over and gagged.
Someone must have drugged her.
Ella…
She stilled as a deep, distinctly male rumble tickled her ear. It whispered her name across her skin, and she lifted her shoulder to shrug away whoever had climbed onto her bed and—
Oh. There was no one there. No one in the room but her. No artificial light, yet she could see every detail perfectly, from the IKEA furniture to the overflowing laundry hamper to her FHU scarf hanging off the closet door. The color, the shape, the material—perfectly clear in the darkness.
But she had felt the whisper too, a man’s hot breath on her skin. The hairs on her arms stood, and her chest ached with a suffocating tightness. She clutched at it, wondering if she was having a heart attack, but this was nothing like her first-aid course had described.
Ella Thomas. My sweet, sweet girl…
She batted at nothing again, eyes wide and dry.
What the actual fuck?
“Hello?” she croaked, then clenched her eyes shut, steeling herself agai
nst the onslaught of sheer fucking agony. She swallowed again, as if that would stem the tide, but once more it was like swallowing a packet of razor blades. Jaw clenched, Ella forced herself off the bed. She teetered to the left, then the right, her legs shaky and weak—but they would hold her up, damn it. Determination pounded through her every cell as she staggered to the bathroom and collapsed on the toilet.
Only she didn’t need to pee.
Or vomit.
Or—anything, really. Her bladder was empty. Her whole damn body felt empty. Confusion needled through the pain. Confusion and fear and hunger. Oh, god, she was so hungry—it was a miracle she could even carry her own body weight.
But she did it. She stumbled to the sink and swiped at the faucet, the roar of fresh water like thunder. With a cupped hand, she scooped the freezing liquid to her mouth.
But it burned far worse than all the dry nothing she had swallowed before. It scorched down her throat, churned in her gut, and she fell to her knees in front of the toilet to dry-heave it all back up into the porcelain bowl.
Just the water.
Nothing else.
Lips trembling, Ella plopped down and wiped them dry with the back of her hand. Try as she might to fight it, panic was starting to win the war of feelings rattling around inside her. And yet—no short, shallow breaths.
No breaths at all, actually.
She pressed a hand to her chest, waiting for the usual rise and fall.
Nothing.
“Oh my god.”
On the far side of the bedroom, she heard a soft tap-tap of knuckles on her door. Seconds later, the hinges whined—they had never made a noise before—and light filtered into the space. She shuffled back, hidden away in the bathroom, until…
“Ella?”
She staggered to her feet, the relief palpable. There was Moira. Moira would know what to do. Moira’s body had also… changed. Ella dragged her hands over her hair, refusing to acknowledge that anything had actually changed, and her eyes prickled with the first sign of tears.
Only when she wiped a pinky under each eye, the damp there didn’t feel like tears.
It felt different—thicker.
Swallowing another mouthful of knives, she stumbled back to the bedroom, only to hiss and retreat at the assault of late-afternoon light. Moira cursed under her breath, then closed the door. Once darkness blanketed the space again, Ella tiptoed out, lingering in the doorway as the burn from those few seconds of light tingled across any bits of exposed skin.
“Are you… Are you back?” Moira asked softly, her hand resting on the doorknob, her outfit schlubby to the extreme. Food-stained sweatpants. A grubby old FHU T-shirt. Greasy hair. In fact, she looked like she hadn’t showered in days, a pair of dark rings encircling her overwhelmingly bright blues.
“Moira, what the fuck is going on?” she rasped, the pain of speaking far outweighed by the desperate need to connect with someone familiar.
Thump-thump.
What the hell was that? Both ears perked. Her vision sharpened.
Thump-thump.
A slow, steady drumbeat, one that only got louder as Moira raced across the room and dragged Ella into a hug.
“Oh my god,” her bestie murmured, holding her so fucking tight that she ought to break bone. “I’m so happy that you’re… You’re back.”
Saliva flooded her mouth, soothing the burn in her throat but sparking a vicious fire in her belly. Hunger steamrolled every other sensory detail, every conflicted feeling. Ella blinked rapidly, arms limp at her side.
Thump-thump.
“What’s…? What’s happening?” A painful twinge in her gums. Sharp and sudden. Moira sighed in her ear, her friend’s breath oddly sweet—her skin oddly sweet, so much more translucent than Ella remembered.
“You’ve been, uhm, kind of out of it for the last two days.”
She pulled back with immense difficulty, knees threatening to buckle under the weight of Moira’s hands on her shoulders—suddenly distracted by the blue veins twining along the underside of her pale forearm. “T-two days?”
Thump-thump.
The news should have left her shell-shocked. Two days—lost. And yet all she could focus on was the hunger, the pain in her mouth, the unprecedented, unrelenting, unmerciful need to satiate this dark craving bubbling up her throat and—
Thump-thump.
Why did Moira smell so sweet? And her skin—her skin had this magnificent glow to it, the bright blue shimmering below the surface a beacon in the dark. Ella staggered forward, and the hunger sharpened to an agony she couldn’t ignore a second longer.
“Ella, what are you—” Moira shrieked when Ella blitzed toward her. The edges of her vision tinged red, and all she could focus on was the thump-thump, the slow and steady rhythm drumming within her best friend’s chest. The glow of her veins. The sweet scent of her flesh.
Ella needed it. All of it. Right fucking now.
“Ella, stop!” Moira stumbled back across the room, fending her off with two strong arms, but the hunger spurred her on.
Don’t stop. Don’t stop until it drips down your throat and pools in your belly…
That masculine voice purred over the roar of need between her ears. And she didn’t stop. She threw everything she had at the hybrid before her, ripping at clothes, hair, flesh. At some point, Ella’s nails had turned bright white. Not a hint of pink to be seen. Just white and hard and dangerous and holy fuck were those talons?
Whatever they were, they scored up Moira’s forearm, and that sweet scent grew stronger. Another rush of saliva. A sharper ache in her gums.
Her throat burned—burned from the screaming.
No. That couldn’t be her. Those savage growls. That desperate screeching. Ella couldn’t be making any of that. But she was. She didn’t recognize the pitch, but she could feel it ripping her throat apart all the same.
“I don’t want to hurt you!” Moira shouted as a bright white light pooled in her palm. Ella hissed, the light scorching, but the hunger won out again. She took a few steps back, this new reptilian side of her brain analyzing the best plan of attack.
The best way to take down her prey.
Prey?
She charged when Moira’s glowing hands dropped to her sides. At that same moment, amidst Ella’s shrieks, the door flew open. Her low growls turned strangled and high-pitched, frightened as the light of the setting sun spilled into the room.
“No!” Moira cried, her back to Ella, her hands up again as three bodies came barreling in. “No, it’s fine!”
“You’ll hurt her.”
“The light is too much for her.”
“She won’t recover.”
“I’m in control,” her best friend argued, shoving back when hands grabbed at her—dragged her away. It took two of them—Alaric and Severus, from the looks of it—to haul her off. Hands in front of her face, Ella lurched after the thump-thump-thump, hissing and whimpering against the sun’s rays, until an enormous wall of muscle stepped in front of her and shoved her back. Hard. Hard enough to knock her on her ass and send her sliding across the hardwood.
The door slammed shut as Ella scrambled upright. Enveloped in darkness once more, she went after Moira with a snarl, only to be swept up in two burly arms—two steely restraints. Hair brushed her shoulders, slithered over her face; her feet left the ground, and her assailant grunted softly when she kicked back at—something. A thigh, maybe.
“Let go.”
“Enough of this,” Malachi growled in her ear, and a chill fluttered down her spine at the deep, rich timbre of his reprimand. Her flailing dropped to a pathetic wiggle, her back squished to his unyielding chest, her legs dangling a foot off the ground. His forearms, bare and taut, corded with muscle and veins, dug in just below her breasts.
The demon was like a damn bear trap. She wriggled her arms free, one questing for the door, the other smacking at him—at the way his forearm sunk into her chest, CPR-level deep, headed straight for her heart a
nd bound to break ribs.
And yet she couldn’t feel the pain.
Just the firm press of his body—and the sudden burst of manic energy fading, fading, fading from her system. The tantalizing thump-thump had disappeared entirely, and after a few tense beats, she found her mouth and throat painfully dry again. She sagged in his arms. The red hue skirting her vision finally dimmed.
And with a blink, she was back. Ella, yet not.
Hungry. Drained. Exhausted but somehow still so fucking alert to every little sound. Outside her bedroom, Moira’s voice clashed with Severus and Alaric’s, the trio drifting down to the lower levels of the house.
“What… What just happened?” she asked, her voice uncharacteristically small and strained. Habit had her swallowing thickly, as if that would loosen the knot in her throat, but all that brought her was more pain.
“You smelled her blood,” Malachi remarked gruffly. Torn between wishing he would release her and praying that he never would again, Ella hung limply in his arms, staring at the door, at the fiery outline around it. Smelled her blood? That sweet, sweet scent was blood?
“Uh, I don’t—”
“As a hybrid, there is still some human blood in there,” the chaos demon muttered. “Barely, from the looks of her these days, but it’s there. You’ll react just like that until you get the hunger under control.”
Ella frowned. He knew about the hunger?
Ella, bella, my sweet girl…
She brushed at her ear with her shoulder, then finally squirmed out of Malachi’s grasp. With a huff, the demon set her down, then nudged her toward the bed. When she didn’t comply, he shoved harder, bending her wobbly legs to his will.
“Sit down.”
She bristled at the command. “Malachi—”
“Sit down,” he growled, one enormous hand falling to her shoulder. She felt the heft of it, like always, but somehow it was more manageable now. He had always manhandled her—on the odd time that he did—with such ease. In that moment, she was fortified. Concrete. Just as unyielding as the demon towering over her.
Until the hunger pangs started up again.
And then she was just—broken.
