CHAPTER FOUR
Hard Training
So much had happened since my arrival, it was easy to continue being impressed at not only the sheer number of rooms this mansion held, but also the sense of grandeur they all had. My idea of grandeur was limited to the one night I had spent in the penthouse suite of a franchise hotel back in Seattle—there had been a mix-up when I made the reservation, and I had made so much noise about the situation they upgraded me just so I’d keep quiet about it.
But this was something else; this was like a palace, and each room told a story. The library may have started threadbare and empty, but now contained hundreds, thousands of books, each carefully selected for storing based on its relevance. The dining room was large enough to fit a football team, with space enough on the table to sit them all as well as their families. How many dinners had been eaten here? How many families had come through? How many parties? The gym was the next place I was taken, and it was every bit as grandiose as the other parts of the mansion I had seen, even if it was way more modern than anything else so far.
It wasn’t just a home gym; it was the size of a huge rec center, sporting an indoor pool, a sauna, and all of the modern equipment one could have expected from a gym. Leo didn’t bother with gathering sporty clothes, though, nor did he take me to the treadmill, or make me run laps, or lift weights. We simply walked to the center of the gymnasium, where he turned around and looked at me, with Aiden by his side.
“So,” Leo said, “if you’re a succubus, then that means you’re able to shapeshift. Can you?”
“I think so,” I said. “But I’ve only done it once.”
“Okay, then let’s see it.”
I looked around and scratched the back of my neck. “That’s the thing. I don’t know how to do it on command, know what I mean? It kinda just happened.”
“Moments of extreme stress can cause powers to manifest as a kind of self-defense mechanism, maybe that’s what happened.”
I shrugged. “I guess so. I don’t know what else I can do besides shape—”
Leo exploded into a cloud of darkness, then reappeared behind me. I turned hard, my heart leaping into my throat, pumping 100cc’s of adrenaline directly into my bloodstream. I backed away from him, but his hand shot out and grabbed my collar. His face had gone pale, his eyes were black, and dark veins stretched out of his mouth and across his cheeks.
“Feel like protecting yourself now?” he asked, his voice now several octaves deeper than it had been a second ago—so deep, in fact, his words reverberated inside of my chest.
I swatted his hands away, but his grip was too strong. He had me.
“Shapeshift!” he growled. “Shapeshift and live, otherwise I will kill you.”
My throat tightened and I found myself searched for Aiden, silently pleading for him to intervene. He wanted to. I could see it in the way his hands had balled into fists, in the way his eyes were fixed on Leo, in the way his chest was heaving. But something was stopping him. Loyalty? Fear? I didn’t know which, but I knew I was on my own, and that Leo was entirely capable of killing me, then dealing with the consequences later if I didn’t give him what he wanted.
So, I did.
Instead of trying to swat his hands away, I grabbed his face and pulled him close, assaulting his mouth with mine with such force and intent it seemed to scare him into letting me go before my lips could catch his. I straightened my shirt and stared at him from across the short distance between us, my breaths coming in long and deep, my hands flexing.
“You’re gonna kill me?” I asked. “You can try if you want, demon.”
All the fear now melted away from his face, Leo grinned a devilish grin and came at me again, breaking apart into that cloud of darkness before reappearing an inch away from me. I had anticipated this, though, and I moved hard to the left, rolling across the gym floor and breaking into a run toward the opposite side of the room.
I heard him give chase, and as he came for me, I told—forced—my body to change shape. Claws, wings, a different hair color, anything to keep him from running after me, but I didn’t know how to do it. I tried thinking it, willing the change to happen, but that didn’t work. I pushed my body as hard as it could go, running as fast as my legs would take me, closing the gap between myself and the end of the gym, and still nothing happened to my body; at least, nothing I could see or feel.
As the gym wall seemed to accelerate to greet me, I didn’t stop running or turn away. I simply shut my eyes and kept running, fully accepting the pain I would be in if I hit it at the speed I was going. Then the miracle happened. My senses sharpened to a fine point, so I could almost feel the air between myself and the point of impact begin to tremble as I got close; could hear the hot, heavy breaths of Leo in his—demonic—true form coming up behind me. When the wall was close enough, I leapt toward it, put my foot up against it, and then flipped in midair, sailing above Leo’s head and landing behind him.
He spun around, growled, and thrust his hands toward me, as if to try and grab my neck, but I ducked underneath his hands, got close to his midsection, and delivered a swift punch to his gut. But hitting him was like hitting concrete. The impact reverberated throughout my entire body before a single, sharp spike of pain shot through my arm and into my shoulder.
Taking my momentary distraction as an opportunity, Leo grabbed my hair, yanked my head back, and swept the floor out from under me, throwing me to the ground flat on my back. I stared up at him, clenching my jaw, air being forced out of my mouth wherever there was a gap, heart pumping like any beat could be its last.
“That was cute,” Leo said after taking a second to recover from the run I had just put him through. “But you can’t rely on your human strength to hurt a supernatural being; where are your damn claws?”
“As much as I think you’re a dick, I don’t want to hurt you,” I spat.
“Well you better, because I’m going to hurt you.”
Leo pulled his foot up, and for a dreadful instant I found myself staring at the sole of his shoe, at the scuff mark and the dirt, and realizing that in a second that foot was going to be all up in my face. The foot came down like the hammer of God, and it was another miracle I managed to roll out of its path. It slammed into the ground with so much force it caused a crack that stretched easily three or four feet and caused my ears to start ringing.
I scrambled back and struggled to get to my feet, but the pain racing through me was making my brain fuzzy, causing the room to swim.
“Stop fighting like a little bitch and hurt me,” Leo growled.
Anger flared within me like fire from an explosive detonation, and I saw red. My heart beats slowed down, but became deeper and louder, drowning out all other distractions to the point where Leo was all I could see, all I wanted to see. I lunged at him and threw my hands at him, fingers stretched, claws glistening and cutting the air, swipe after swipe, some missing him entirely, others falling just short of his midsection. One claw strike clipped his expensive blazer, tearing the fabric apart like it wasn’t there. Leo came at me with a fist wreathed in crimson flame, but before he could touch me, I was ten feet above him, carried there by the two powerful wings beating at my back.
“There she is,” he said, though his voice was muffled as though I had been submerged in water.
I swallowed hard, then scanned the gym and saw Aiden looking up at me, his jaw slacked open, eyes fixed on my flying form held aloft by two giant, leathery, bat-like wings. Seeing him like that snapped me out of my rage and allowed me to regain control of my body, of my mind. I told my wings to bring me down, and they did with way too much grace for someone only just learning how to use them.
My right foot touched the ground first, then my left. When I landed, the wings themselves wrapped around me before dissolving into a fine, jade-green smoke.
“Wow,” Aiden said, still staring.
I was panting. “What?” I asked, brushing my hair out of my face.
“N
othing, you’re just…”
“Just what?”
“Just bea—”
“Magnificent,” Leo interrupted as he approached, clapping slowly as he came, his demonic visage now hiding beneath his human form. “That was just spectacular. Who ever thought succubi had wings? I mean, what do they even need wings for? They’re sex objects, not hunters.”
“Who the fuck are you calling an object, asshole?” I growled.
“I’m just entirely impressed at what I’ve seen. You clearly have power Dante doesn’t, either that or he’s playing his cards incredibly close to his tailored, Hugo Boss shirts.”
“Or maybe he just doesn’t share all of his skills with people who don’t need to know.”
“Or, maybe still, he can’t do what you do. If that’s the case, I’d steer clear of him.”
“I should… what? What does that mean?”
“Never mind,” he said. “Now, on to the next demonstration.”
“Hasn’t she had enough?” Aiden asked, catching me entirely by surprise. He had said what I was thinking. I hadn’t felt it until a second ago, but the downer was quickly approaching—like coming off an intense a sugar high. The room was starting to spin, and I was increasingly in need of rest, or maybe twelve hours of sleep.
“We’ve barely gotten started,” Leo said. “She needs to learn how to use her powers, and I’ve been appointed as her tutor, so I get to decide what her training schedule is like—whether she likes it or not.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I can keep going. I want to know what else I can do.”
Leo looked at me and smiled. “See? She wants to learn. Now, where were we? Oh, right, shapeshifting.”
My eyebrows pinched at the middle. “Didn’t we already do that?”
“Yes, but that was a gross display of power. Now I want to see how good you are at mimicking someone else’s appearance.”
“I’ve never tried that before.”
“That’s the whole point.”
“Who is she supposed to impersonate?” Aiden asked. I could see on his face he was not enjoying this, but for some reason he couldn’t seem to speak out against his mentor or voice his opinion. Was there some kind of magic at work? Did Leo have a supernatural hold on him or something?
“Let’s start with something simple,” Leo said. “How about you impersonate… the Keeper?”
“But he’s a man,” I said.
Leo shrugged. “I don’t think it makes a difference. Now, go.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Drained
Hours passed; hours of listening to commands and willing my body to expend energy into shapeshifting to satisfy Leo’s desire to see what I could do. Growing wings and claws wasn’t difficult, but mimicking the appearance of a man, especially one I personally knew, was about as easy as trying to walk across a bed of nails barefoot. It wasn’t painful, but it was exhausting, and it didn’t help that Leo insisted on fighting me, just to make sure I was up to the physical challenge. By the end of it, I was feeling like I had been eaten up and chewed out by a wolf three times my size.
I didn’t let Leo, or even Aiden, see me like that, though. I made my way out of the gym with my head held high, and only allowed myself to reach for a wall for support once I had made it into the foyer and was confident I wouldn’t run into them again. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it to my room without falling over, and I hadn’t counted on there being anyone else around either.
“Lilith,” Dante said, with a sharp urgency to his voice as he rushed to my side; he had been coming from the library, I thought. “Are you alright?”
He held my arm and helped me get to my feet, wrapping one hand around my waist when I thought I wouldn’t be able to stand on my own. “I think so,” I said. “I’m just tired.”
“What happened?”
“Leo.”
Dante’s jaw visibly clenched. “C’mon, let’s get you up to your room.”
I wasn’t in a position to argue. My legs felt like jelly, my stomach weighed a ton, and my eyes were having a hard time trying to stay open. Still, with Dante’s help I managed to make it to my room where my bed, and my cat, were waiting. He walked me to my bed and eased me onto it, keeping hold of my hand until I sighed with relief, at which point he brushed his hand along my cheek and into my hair, making sure it was out of my face.
“He overworked you,” Dante said, still speaking harshly, with contempt.
“It’s fine,” I said.
“No, it isn’t. You aren’t a demon. This is why I rejected the idea of this paring in the first place. Leo isn’t qualified to teach you. He doesn’t know how far you can go without needing to replenish your reserves.”
“Replenish my… oh.”
I understood immediately. By replenish your reserves he meant, have sex with someone, because that’s what succubi did, wasn’t it? They had sex with people and stole their energy to reinvigorate themselves. Or, in my case, they kissed people and stole their energy to reinvigorate themselves. Whatever the case was, the message was clear; I wasn’t going to get my energy back until I hurt someone.
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because.” I sighed. “I won’t do that. I hate what I did to Aiden.”
“Aiden is fine.”
“Yeah, but who knows what would have happened if I would have taken more from him?”
“I do.”
I turned my eyes on him now and saw him looking directly at me, his brown eyes boring into me. He was stroking my cheek with his thumb, and I didn’t want him to stop. “Then why don’t you teach me?” I asked. “If you’re a match, why are you forbidden from telling me what I need to know?”
“The Keeper has his reasons.”
“And I can’t know what they are? This is my life we’re talking about.”
“I get that, but there are rules even I have to follow.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
My eyes narrowed. Of everyone in the house, Dante was always the hardest to read. I wasn’t sure if that was because he was the male counterpart of my species and had some kind of protection against my sixth sense, or maybe he was just good at hiding things, but I had caught a glimmer of something there, the faintest whiff of an emotion, only I couldn’t tell which emotion it was.
“Well, if you won’t teach me, then I’m just going to have to deal with Leo’s brand of training even if it’s going to kill me, because I won’t hurt someone else to help myself.”
Dante paused, took a deep breath, and pulled his hand away from my cheek, letting it rest on the bed, next to my head. I caught a scent there, alright, but it wasn’t emotion—it was his intoxicating brand of musky cologne. I couldn’t identify it, but it smelled all kinds of good, so much so I could almost feel myself starting to salivate at the thought of sinking my teeth into his flesh.
“You have to,” Dante said. “You don’t have a choice here. If you go too long without feeding, you will die. It’s just part of being one of us.”
I took a deep breath. My tongue danced behind my lips. Swallowed. “Okay,” I said. “You.”
Dante tilted his head. “Me?” he asked.
“Yes. You. If I’m going to hurt someone, I want it to be you.”
I caught a glimpse of his Adam’s Apple working, only he didn’t speak for a time. Was that fear? Apprehension? Hesitation? Whatever it was, the absence of conversation had allowed tension to worm its way into the space between us, charging the air like it had been once before—a moment in the library that had felt like a lifetime ago, but was just yesterday. Only now we were alone in my room, and there was no way someone was going to walk in on us. Maybe Dante was considering all of this too, and for an unthinking second, an instant driven by the kind of lust that made me bite my bottom lip, I hoped he was.
“No,” he finally said, and I felt the tension snap like a tightrope.
“Why?” I asked, my voice flat and unimpressed.
“You know why, Lilith. I’m an incubus; you’ll get nothing from me.”
“Really? Or are you just afraid I’ll hurt you?”
“I told you once before, and I’ll tell you again,” he said, his face inching toward mine. “I’m not afraid of your touch, or your kiss, or the power you hold between your legs.”
“I think you are,” I said, and I felt myself rise to meet him, planting my elbows on the bed and arching my back up. “I think you’re afraid because you’ve never been with a succubus. You’re worried about what I might do to you, or what you might do to me. You think we’ll kill each other before it’s over.”
Dante pressed his free hand against my chest and pushed me back down to the bed, shattering the moment and sending the pieces scattering to the wind. “No, Lilith,” he said. “You’re wrong.”
Frustration rose within me like a red tide. “Then explain to me what it is I should know, pass on whatever secret you’re holding onto and help me understand.”
He drew up a deep breath, then exhaled. “You’ll get nothing from me. We’re both empty to each other.”
“Empty? What do you mean?”
“We take from others because what we have, we can’t give. You couldn’t take what’s mine any more than I could take what’s yours. I wouldn’t be of any use to you.”
“You’d be of no use… who said I wanted to use you?”
He shook his head. “Right now, I’m not what you need. You have to trust me.”
“You know best, I guess?”
“I do. The Keeper doesn’t want me to train you, but I wouldn’t be doing right by you if I didn’t tell you what I know you need to do next.”
“And what’s that?”
“Feed.”
“I get that, but you telling me to feed doesn’t solve the problem that I’ll hurt whoever I… feed… off.”
“What if I promised you wouldn’t?”
“I’d call you a liar.”
Dante took one of my hands and pressed it against his lips. They were firm, and soft, and warm. He kissed my knuckles. “I wouldn’t lead you down a path I didn’t think you needed to take. You can kill a person with your kiss alone, but only if you want to. If you don’t want to kill them, you’ll just…”
Serpent's Desire_A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy Page 3
