by S. M. Reine
Where had they left off? Elise had enjoyed her week with him, whatever it was worth. Going to morgues and murder scenes together had been better than most of her other dating experiences. But she had never been all that interested in having anything with him other than sex.
Neuma had other ideas. Maybe Lincoln did, too.
And maybe both of them were smarter than Elise.
“I just stopped you because you need to know that I can feed off of sex, like a succubus,” she said. “It’s a very recent discovery. I’m not sure I can fuck without feeding, though.”
She expected him to look angry. James had been angry. But Lincoln’s pulse only accelerated, his eyes heated, and electrical signals sparked within his skull. “I thought… So it’s not just blood.”
“No. It’s not just blood.”
He rolled the thoughts over in his mind. His hormones had gone wild, like an ocean in a winter storm. He understood why Elise was warning him that she couldn’t have sex without feeding. He understood that it was an offer, and now he was contemplating the implications. Wondering, maybe, if it was something a good Christian man should do with a demon in Hell.
Without speaking, he cut into his pie with the fork and lifted it. He held it in front of her lips, letting her smell the aroma of it.
Lincoln watched closely as she opened her mouth to take the bite.
Elise still didn’t like the pie. It tasted terrible. But that didn’t matter—she still enjoyed what the sight of her eating it did to him.
He dropped the fork. His hands cupped her face and he kissed her hard, much harder than before. Hard enough that she might have bruised if she had been human.
She didn’t stop him this time. She hooked her hands behind his neck, locking him into place. The hunger in her swelled to consume her. His passion was building, shifting the flow of blood and hormones within his body, but the need that filled her was entirely different. It made her stomach cramp. Her heart pounded.
Elise pushed up the hem of his shirt, tracing her fingers over the bricks of his abs, no longer quite as defined as she remembered them. Goosebumps lifted in the wake of her touch.
“Lord help me,” Lincoln said in a husky voice. “How does it work? Feeding you? What do I—how do we do that?” He wasn’t going to argue with her. He must have thought it was damnation, and he was still going to let her do it.
Her fingers inched to the hem of the leather trousers, which were just a little too loose on him. “You don’t need to do anything special,” she murmured into his throat, nipping his pulse point gently. “Just everything that comes to you naturally.” Very naturally—she cupped his erection through his pants, sliding her palm along the shaft. His abs clenched. He trembled.
His hand burned a path underneath her shirt, shoving up the hem to bare her stomach, cupping her breast through her bra.
And then his hand froze. He jerked back.
“Elise?”
Lincoln lifted his fingers between them. They were slicked with amber fluid.
She looked down. The wound over her heart had opened anew, spilling blood straight from her heart, soaking through her shirt.
“Motherfucker,” she breathed.
As soon as she saw the damage, the pain slammed into her. It unfurled from her stomach and sent barbs through her veins.
She tried to stand and found that her legs wouldn’t support her. She lost her footing, hit the ground.
Elise wasn’t strong enough to stand. She barely managed to roll over.
She stared toward the distant roof of the Great Library. It was even taller than she remembered. The stacks seemed to be swirling around her. Her tongue swelled in her mouth, heavy and stiff. She tasted something sour. It wasn’t the cherries.
Lincoln’s face loomed. “Elise?”
She could barely hear him. She struggled to speak. “Poison,” she said, but he already knew. She could see it coming over him, too, slower than it had hit her, but no less powerfully. He swayed on his hands and knees. His face turned red. His eyes glazed over.
Lincoln had the presence of mind to fall beside her instead of on top of her. He gasped for air, clutched at his throat. “It burns,” he rasped.
Her stomach clenched, heaved. Bile rolled over her tongue. She vomited.
Elise pitched into darkness.
Ten
ELISE DRAGGED HERSELF toward consciousness. She could hear voices. She followed them out of the darkness into the light. “The chef’s gone. No idea where he went.”
“How can you just lose a cook? He was mortal. He couldn’t go far outside the walls and expect to survive.”
“Not unless he had help.”
A familiar man spoke. “Nobody has exited through the gates since she came back from the House of Volac. There’s no other way he could have escaped.” That was Gerard.
“Outta my way.” Neuma.
Elise tried to lift her head, but she felt heavy. Her bones hurt.
Cool hands brushed over her jaw. She peeled her eyes open to see Neuma sitting beside her. When Elise attempted to speak, her body clenched and bile surged in her throat again.
“I got a bucket,” Neuma said.
Elise rolled over. Half of the vomit managed to hit the bucket. The other half splattered onto the floor.
She groaned as she emptied her stomach. It burned in her throat, the wound in her chest, made heat prick at her eyes. And what came out of her mouth didn’t look like stomach acid. It was black and chunky.
“Bleeding,” Elise gasped.
“Don’t worry,” Neuma said, rubbing her back. “Some of it’s mine. I fed you while you were unconscious. Just get it all out.”
She didn’t have the choice to do anything else. She heaved again, and this time, she managed to get everything in the bucket. Elise flopped onto her pillows, wiping at her mouth. Her entire body ached as if with fever. “What the fuck?”
“Here.” Neuma lifted her wrist. She had punctured the skin with a dagger—just a tiny cut that flowed freely.
Elise latched on and drank, swallowing it down in long gulps. The warmth of it soothed her burning throat. She didn’t realize exactly how hungry she had been until she began to drink, but once she did, she couldn’t seem to stop. She sucked hard on Neuma’s wrist.
“There you go,” Neuma murmured. “Just a little more… Okay. That’s good.” It took all of Elise’s willpower to release her, but she had gotten good at respecting Neuma’s boundaries over time. She wrenched free. Fell back with a gasp. “Better?” Neuma slid a magicked ring onto her thumb again. The bleeding immediately slowed.
Elise opened her mouth to say, “Yes.” Her stomach lifted into her throat.
She spewed blood into the bucket again.
When she was done, she felt a little better—good enough to look around, at least.
They were in her bedroom at the tower. Through her bleary eyes, Elise could see Gerard and Isaiah caught in a tense conversation at the door. She couldn’t hear what they were saying. The sound of their hearts thundered too loudly in her ears.
“The pie was poisoned with some kind of metal,” Neuma said. “They’re trying to find the asshole that did it.”
Elise’s head was pounding. She struggled to think. “What kind of metal is poisonous?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Bet you it was mined at the House of Volac.”
“It’s not your problem right now,” Neuma said, smoothing her hand over Elise’s forehead. “Focus on getting stronger first. Vengeance later.”
She pushed Neuma’s arm aside and sat up. It made the room whirl around her. “Where’s Lincoln? Is he okay?”
The direction of Neuma’s gaze answered the question for her. Elise looked to the opposite side of her vast bed. Deputy Lincoln Marshall was unconscious on top of the sheets, sweat drenching his forehead, chest rising and falling rapidly. His eyes were still closed.
“He hasn’t woken up yet,” Neuma said. “I don’t know what to do.�
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The bed sheets were wet and sticky with Elise’s vomit. She kicked them off and crawled over to Lincoln’s side of the bed.
She pressed her hand to his chest and stared into his skull. He was sickly, fading, even as she felt herself returning to normal. Lincoln was a much less powerful demon than she was. Half-mortal. What barely gave her heartburn could kill him.
“Who did this to us?” Elise asked. She surprised herself with the heat in her voice.
“They’re still searching for the cook that baked the pie. Whatever did this to you, someone put it there on purpose.”
Another assassination attempt, and Lincoln was collateral damage.
Anger clenched in her heart. Poison was such an affront to her pride. A weasel way of trying to kill someone. There was no way to fight back against that—nothing to stab, nothing to shoot.
Neuma was still speaking. “I don’t know what to feed Lincoln. He didn’t respond to blood. Then Isaiah tried to heal him with magic, but that didn’t work either, and he’s the strongest witch in the Palace. We don’t got anyone better.” She said it so gently, like she was breaking bad news to Elise. The worst kind of news.
She was telling Elise that she thought Lincoln was still going to die.
Elise wasn’t going to let that happen.
She closed her eyes, took off her warding ring, and reached out to the only person she knew that could help.
Where are you? she thought, turning her thoughts inward.
Even though her eyelids were shut, she could see as though her eyes were open. She saw another world. An empty kitchen, windows that were fogged with ash, the faint orange light of fading sunlight. Someone had been cooking, judging by the faintest odor of gas. Candles burned on the countertop, casting flickering shadows on the walls.
It took James so long to respond that she almost thought that he hadn’t heard her, even though she felt the brush of his mind against hers.
James, where are you? she repeated, louder this time, pushing her consciousness against his.
No, he had heard—he was only shocked that she had reached out to him.
His voice in her mind was touched with sadness.
I’m home, Elise.
Rylie awoke to the sound of pounding. At first she thought that she was hearing the churning of machinery in Dis, and she was alert instantly. Her heart jackhammered.
She didn’t manage to get out of bed before the fists crashed through her front door.
Abel was on his feet in an instant, sending the sheets to the floor. He had been sleeping naked. His skin was slicked with sweat. “Wait here,” he said, golden eyes flashing in the darkness.
He crossed the bedroom in three strides, flung open the bedroom door, and launched into the living room.
“Abel, wait!” she gasped.
She tripped on the way out of bed, ankles tangled in the blankets. She hit the floor on all fours.
From her vantage point, she watched her mate fighting the intruders. They were silhouetted by floodlights outside. Those security lights hadn’t been turned on lately, since Elise had been protecting the fissure from the other side, but someone had positioned them outside her cottage and fired up the generators.
This is it, she realized with a wash of a chill. This is the end.
She wasn’t sure how she knew it, but she did.
Abel fell with a roar, pinned to the ground by several figures Rylie didn’t recognize—three men, all of them smelling like wolves. A fourth stepped around them and made a beeline for Rylie.
Levi Riese strode into the bedroom.
The sight of him made her heart stop, but she wasn’t surprised. Not really. Some part of her had known that this had been coming since Felton had confessed to biting Deepali at Levi’s urging.
“Come on.” He grabbed her by the elbow, hauling her to her feet. His fingers dug into her flesh painfully.
She jerked out of his grasp. “Don’t touch me!”
He reached for her again. Rylie balled her hand into a fist and swung. She wasn’t used to punching—biting and tearing, yes, but striking like a human, no—but she was still Alpha, with all of the werewolf strength that bestowed upon her. Her knuckles connected with his jaw. The force of it was enough to send him sailing across the room, back smashing against the wall.
Felton entered. He managed to dodge Rylie’s second, clumsier swing, and tackled her onto the bed.
He was heavy and hot on top of her. He seized her wrists, shoved them down next to her head. His weight straddling her chest pinned her in place.
Rylie’s wolf surged within, sweeping over her with fury. This was one of her pack, a submissive, and he had attacked her. There was only one way to handle such an attack: quickly, decisively, and messily, making sure that no other wolf would be stupid enough to repeat his sin.
Abel was shouting in the other room. Bones popped and ground as he shifted. Her wolf wanted to join him.
She could feel the massive, furry body waiting to overtake her, like the wolf’s flank was rubbing against the inside of her ribcage. Her fingernails had already fallen out. Blood slicked the sheets as she struggled against Felton’s grip, trying to bring her new claws to bear. Just a few more seconds, and she would have werewolf jaws, too—perfect to rip out Felton’s throat.
Her spine ached, threatening to extend into a tail.
No. I can’t change.
It was hard to think rationally while flooded with adrenaline, listening to her mate’s yelps as other werewolves beat at him. She could smell silver—they had come armed to restrain Abel.
But she couldn’t change. She needed to calm herself down. Needed to hang onto her human form, no matter how much it hurt her to do it.
She could tell by Levi’s smirk that he knew Rylie wasn’t going to change.
“Your sister will never forgive you for this,” Rylie said. She wasn’t sure he could understand her. Half of her teeth had already become wolf-like, and it made her lisp strangely.
Levi shrugged. “Bekah’s never been all that interested in pack politics.”
“Is that all this is? Politics?”
“That, and I just don’t like you.” He turned, raised his voice. “She’s over here!”
A pair of men came into the room. They were wearing Union black and they carried silver chains. Rylie’s heart felt like it was going to explode out of her chest.
“Don’t use those on me,” she said.
“Do you hear this?” Felton scoffed. “She’s begging. Some Alpha.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Levi said, cuffing him with a hard swipe. He knocked the werewolf off of Rylie. Even without Felton’s weight on her chest, she couldn’t seem to breathe. “We don’t have to use the chains if you come nicely.”
“Where are we going?”
His eyes glimmered. “Northgate.”
She hesitated a second too long. They moved to restrain her, and Rylie jerked out of reach.
“I’ll come,” Rylie said. She couldn’t fight them anyway—not unless she succumbed to the Alpha wolf’s brutal rage. And if she did that, then she would never be able to hang onto her human skin. She would lose control. She would shapeshift.
And then she would kill every single one of these people.
Rylie wouldn’t do it. She stood, and when Levi grabbed her arm, she didn’t try to break free.
Her gut twisted at the sight of Abel in the living room. He had gone down hard, and now his animal body was bound in chains. He was a huge, majestic beast with sleek black fur, almost more of a bear than a wolf. They had muzzled him and locked it with silver. His eyes were glazed with pain.
“Take that off of him,” Rylie said.
Levi ignored the command, shoving her out the door.
There was an SUV waiting. The back door was already open. Even chained with silver, it took four men to toss Abel into the cargo compartment.
“Get in the backseat,” Levi said.
Rylie obeyed quietly. They had Abel—s
he didn’t have any other choice.
The sounds of a fight hadn’t gone unnoticed. The door to the cottage across the street opened, and Trevin stumbled out, hiking sweatpants over his hips. The instant he saw Levi, anger flamed in his eyes.
“What do you think you’re doing, dude?”
“Stay out of this, Trevin,” Levi said. “My problem isn’t with you.”
Crystal shoved out of the cottage behind him. Her jaw dropped open. “Oh my God. Is this a takeover?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Rylie, change me!”
Only Alpha werewolves could change on command, but they could also force other werewolves to transform in between moons. If Rylie made Trevin and Crystal shapeshift, then the Apple would attack them, too. The cult had come with silver chains. Who said that they hadn’t also brought silver bullets?
How determined was Levi to get rid of Rylie and Abel?
Rylie couldn’t allow her pack to get hurt in this. There was a peaceful resolution here, somehow, somewhere—Levi wasn’t a great guy, but he wasn’t a madman, either. He was just an egomaniac with a grudge.
But even though she hadn’t reached out with her power to change Crystal and Trevin, both of their skins began to ripple.
Apparently, the silver chains hadn’t knocked Abel out hard enough to keep him from using his Alpha powers on them.
“No!” Rylie cried. “Don’t!”
Abel had never been as good at changing the werewolves as Rylie was. He didn’t do it quickly or painlessly. Tonight, though, he practically wrenched the wolves out of Crystal and Trevin, like he ripped open their human flesh and tossed it aside.
In a torrent of blood and fur, the two of them changed.
Levi shoved Rylie into the back of the SUV and slammed the door behind her.
She twisted to watch her wolves attack the members of the Apple. Crystal was brutal. Fast. Downright mean. She snapped her jaws shut on the leg of the nearest man and twisted her head, severing the limb at the knee.
Another man lifted a gun, aiming it at Crystal’s head.
A shriek tore from Rylie. “No!”
But Levi gunned the engine of the SUV, tearing down the road. He turned a corner before Rylie could see what had happened to Crystal.
