Dark Temptations

by Penelope Harlow

  I pouted. "I can't just sit around and do nothing. I'll go mad." Not to mention the feeding... "What if I need to feed?"

  "Do you need to right now?"

  "That's not the point, idiot." I growled, rolling my eyes. My hands flexed in my lap, red nails pressing against the white of my thighs as I dug in my grip. "The point is, when I need to feed, if I don't act on it fast, it takes over. I do a damn good job keeping under the radar of mortals by listening to instinct and staying ahead of the curve. I can't do that if you lock me in a box all day."

  "I'm only doing this because that fucker owes me a new pair of heels, and some drapes."

  Sam roared with laughter. "Is that all? I'm sure if you ask nicely, they'll even steam your carpet for free."

  "Oh, honey, no one needs to steam my carpet. It's all hardwood."

  "I thought it was marble.”

  “Please, do I look like a stuck up bitch? Marble from wall-to-wall is for the new money freaks looking to be flashy for friends. And since I both lack friends and the urge to look like a cheap glittery hooker, the marble is reserved to one room."

  Sam sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Please, just go get some sleep, or do whatever it is succubi do. I’ll see you in twelve hours.”

  Whatever it was succubi did? Well, that was a very broad term.

  But hey, if Sam wanted me to be my normal self, he would be in for a royal treat tomorrow night.

  I had made it most of the day without a problem. A little shopping, a little sunbathing, a few dead corpses left for someone else to enjoy. It was all going so, so fucking well.

  And then I let my guard down, for one measly little moment. I didn’t even know what was happening until I heard the bark, and the command in Italian.

  I didn’t realize how much danger I was in until I felt the pain rip across my abdomen, the sound of ripping flesh just as shocking to the dead as much as the living.

  But it wasn’t until I watched the beast wander off, tail wagging as someone comforted it, that I realized I would be laying alongside the side of the safe house, dying the only way an immortal possibly could, until Sam would wake up hours later and find me on the verge of a more permanent death.

  It was both the best and worst pain I had ever felt my entire life. My right side felt like someone had erupted a volcano across my chest, spreading scalding lava across my flesh¸ consuming me from the inside out.

  Sam as beside me in an instant, swearing a colorful stream of curses. He tucked the gun into his waistband and kneeled on the ground, holding my upper half against his damp chest.

  "Jesus, Caroline, can you speak?" He asked.

  I nodded, somehow managing to roll my eyes. Always the drama queen. "I'm not dying, you stupid brute. It's going to take a lot more than some beast gouging out my intestines to get me down for the count."

  Cradling me, he scooped me up into his arms and made for the car. "We need to get you back home, before that thing comes back and finishes the job."

  "What part of I can't die don't you get?" I muttered, but let him place me into the car. In a split second he was in the driver's seat, pulling out onto the highway and joining the rest of traffic in a steady rush across town.

  "I... think it was a dog." I glanced at the wound on my side. Torn flesh and grey-blue blood stained the side of my dress. Well, there went my gorgeous designer gown. When I got my hands on that creature later, I'd fucking throttle it into next Tuesday.

  "A dog?" Sam repeated, frowning. "No, that wasn't a dog. We would have smelled it. Heard its heart, something."

  He had a point, as much as I didn't want to admit it. Bonus of being a vampire was hearing everything and anything that had a heartbeat to it; and yes, that included animals. Imagine walking into an animal shelter and listening to the different waves of heartbeats, all dancing to their own tune, and you're just standing there, swallowing all that noise. Now try being a succubus-half-vampire living in Miami and frequenting party sites. Check mate.

  "At least... it looked like a dog." I winced as another jab of pain radiated through my middle. "Jesus, whatever it was, it tore me a fucking new one. Gives a whole new meaning to the term 'ripping a new asshole'."

  "If you start shitting in the car from that hole in your side, I'll kill you myself for ruining such perfect upholstery," Sam swore, but the joke fell flat. Vampires, let alone succubi, didn't expel anything that was remotely linked to bodily fluids. We were dead, therefore there was nothing pumping us with blood and all the fun juices that made mortals so alive and messy.

  "It's not as bad as it looks," I assured him, biting back on a new wave of pain. His eyebrows shot up into his hair, and he dared sneak a peek at me. Catching his reflection in the windshield, I watched him turn a shade of white to give bleached sheets a run for their money. "Sam, calm down. It's just going to need time to heal." Or... something. I honestly didn't know. In the years I had been a hybrid, I never had experienced a wound as badly as this one. Cuts and broken bones were fixed by swallowing a few souls, maybe draining a poor schmuck of his blood for a little flavor. They were like morphine; it dulled the pain, if only for a little. I may have been dead, but I still could feel when things weren't right in my body. Every immortal carried a vague version of the pain receptors that worked in the nerves of our mortal shells. While a broken bone would feel like agony for a mortal, to us it was like a bug bite.

  Judging by the pain burning through my midsection, this wound would have been fatal to a mortal. To me, it just flat out sucked.

  I moved to shift the weight away from the pain, but it only made it worse. Searing heat lanced up my side, spreading through my chest like an electric shock with bite. I couldn't hold back the whimper that made me feel weak, but I'd be damned if it wasn't painful. The wound was deep, at least a few inches, and probably made a mess of my insides. Which wasn't much of a problem, seeing as succubi or vampires didn't use them, but that didn't make it okay to remove them on a whim.

  "I have blood and booster packs back at the room. A few of those and you'll be good by daylight," Sam's sure voice distracted me temporarily from the pain. For once, I was grateful he was such a jabberjaw.

  Except one thing. No, the only way that this would heal would be with a feeding. The kind that required more than blood.

  "Sam. Blood isn't going to fix this."

  "What?" He asked, looking at me for a moment before focusing on the road. He took the exit towards downtown, barreling through traffic like it was nothing. "Of course it will. You said so yourself, you're not dying."

  "I mean blood won't fix this, because I need something a little more... alive." I said. Amazingly he didn't think to offer me souls first. Given how we met, I would have thought for sure he knew what helped and what hurt. Blood was more or less a middle ground for me. It didn't really help with anything, and it didn't hurt either.

  "You're talking about bodies." He figured out, finally. I practically saw the lightbulb glow behind his eyes as his brain kicked to life. "Okay, you can feed off of me. I can get you in bed and take care of everything else."

  On second thought... he wasn't the brightest at all. I must have imagined the lightbulb from being so weak. "Sam," I grumbled, impatient. "I need souls. Not sex. Not blood."

  Silence trickled between us, and at last he seemed to get it. If he was mortal, I would have sworn his cheeks were coloring a bright, burning red. He managed an awkward little breath before turning away from the safehouse, driving down the district towards my paradise. Clubs, raves, and everything in-between like sex dens.

  "I don't know how you..." he started, turning onto a narrow road and looking at me helplessly. "I don't know how you feed. Do you do it in the clubs?"

  "I bring them home, fuck them with the passion of a sex depraved forty-year-old male catching fresh eighteen-year-old tail, then call your sub department to take care of the bodies." I had broken it down to a neat little science over the last few years. Not by choice, granted, but now that I had it in a s
ystem layout, it certainly made disposing of corpses much easier than it had a decade ago.

  "So what, you want me to lure some bodies to the car, keep them spelled until we get home, and let you drain them in that tiny little apartment?" Sam asked, making a face. "No, we have to have an alternative. I don't want the stench of dead human in our safehouse."

  I sighed. He wasn't going to make this easy, not by a long shot. I knew he didn't like what I did, but he didn't have a choice in the matter. Not this time. "Sam, you're going to have to bring them to the car," I said, hating the fact that I had grown so weak. "If I go into that club, I will take every soul in there, and not by choice."

  "I thought you liked getting your fill of a person when you fucked them."

  "I do. But there's a difference between fucking someone and sucking them dry, and walking through a club swallowing souls like I'm at a keg challenge in a frat house."

  "What are you going to do when they get to the car?" He probed, and I could see he hated that he wanted to know. It disgusted him.

  "You know, chat, invite them for tea next week at the little house on the corner, and then eat them." I rolled my eyes and fought the urge to punch him for his stupidity. "I'm going to kill them, Sam. Right fucking here. And yes, we're going to cover it."

  He shook his head. "No. I'll take you inside the club. You're not killing people left and right on the sidewalk outside a club."

  I dug my palms into my eyes, smearing a hint of my eyeliner across my face. Whatever. The smoky look was in anyway.

  "Sam, where do you think we're going?" I asked, eyes still covered.

  He made a noise. "The clubbing district, why?"

  "Get back on the highway, and get off on Exit 12."

  "Why?"

  "Because we're not going to a mortal club, you idiot," I spat out, fed up. He claimed to be so involved in his community, and yet he forgot the best place for injured immortals to visit? "We're going to Kellie’s. There's a bottle of Faerie blood with my name on it, and two mortals looking to experience the night of their life."

  Like a lightbulb flicking to life, Sam's eyes began to glow. They widened, and he quickly spun around on the road, ignoring the protest of blaring horns behind him.

  "Caroline, have I ever told you how fucking brilliant you can be?"

  I grinned. Of course, he recognizes this now. We glided down the highway, me in the passenger seat sweating out a pain that was only growing with every minute. I continued to stare at the gaping hole in my side, and how it looked almost like a bite of a cookie. Chomp chomp chomp.

  The building came into sight before I knew it. It was small, a little brownstone styled place wedged between two other joints, one a Hookah spot, the other a Mexican food spot the Fae loved to frequent when they wanted to lure mortals into their games. It was a bold, brilliant red, flared with an equally brilliant blue that almost looked like a colorblind idiot painted the joint. The windows were covered with thick boards painted to look like the inside was a flash of lights, which it was, but this way there was privacy for the fun business inside.

  Parking nearby, Sam was over on my end helping me out when he stopped and looked at the wound. Or rather, he looked down and quickly jolted his eyes back up as the fun shade of white claimed him again.

  "If you go in there looking like that, people will talk," he said.

  "My trunk," I pointed at it, pushing him towards it as I braced myself against the frame of the door. "There's outfits in there, ready to go. Grab one, and don't forget the matching heels with it."

  He didn't take the kind of time I would have on deciding on one, but in the end he picked a winner. a BCBG dress their head designer crafted for me out of boredom, slinky and black and covered in enough printed gems to make me look like a drop dead diva. Paired with a classic pair of black pumps, and I was set. It was classic, clean, and yet flirty enough to keep myself pepped on the outfit.

  I wasted no time pulling off the torn scrap of fabric off my body and discarding it on the ground, slipping the other dress over my body. Pain flared through me when the soft material touched the wound, but I repeated the mantra in my mind that it would heal in a few more minutes, or so help me I'd kill the Fae behind the bar.

  Shoes on, and a quick shake of the hair, I flashed Sam a winning smile. "Shall we, Detective?"

  He cradled me close, careful not to touch or accidentally brush the wound hidden under my dress. Ahead, the bouncer waved us in without much thought, merely nodding at me. They knew the drill. What Sam didn't know was that, the only time I came here was to deal out to the Fae, or collect on their expenses.

  Inside, the club music was loud and wild. Mortals and immortals blended as one on the dance floor of the first floor, the few stragglers that didn't dance lingering near the bar that wrapped around the left half of the room. Mesh hung on the walls like an underground work club, and murals were painted on the walls behind them. In the daylight, minus the boards, this place was home to some of the best, sweet Fae blood money could buy. And in private rooms, no less.

  Which also were available during night hours.

  Pressing up to the bar, I guarded my wounded side expertly against the grind of people from the dance floor, and the loners who spotted me and began to move closer. I was giving off my luring powers without even trying.

  "Cassius," I called out to the Fae behind the counter. He flitted over, a shimmer of wings behind his back. The cut-off vest top worked well for him, especially when blended with the tight crop pants and decorating tattoos that painted him like the walls did.

  "Hey, pretty succubus. What's happening?" He grabbed a glass and began to prep my standard drink, mixing liquor without thinking twice. "You're not supposed to be here until next week. Something come up?"

  Sam glanced at me quickly, but didn't say anything. His hands covered me protectively, lingering on my skin like a jealous boyfriend. In another world, I would have found it adorable and arousing.

  "I need a room, and I'm cashing in on my ticket to Clara," I said, handing in the little red chip I fished from my cleavage. It landed on the counter with no sound, the bass far too loud for anyone to hear the musical chime that played from it.

  Cassius took the chip, holding it up to study it for a second. Finally, he said, "You sure?"

  "Do I look like I'm not sure?" I fired back.

  He shook his head, pocketing the chip and moving to the end of the bar. A bouncer, shrouded in the darkness, stepped forward. They exchanged a few words, only for the bouncer to point at the pair of red double doors across the room before starting his way over there.

  "Have fun, succubus," Cassius called to me as we left. I waved him a tiny goodbye. The pain was growing, which meant the wound was probably starting to spread. Who the hell knew what that beast had in its bite that could kill me. Assuming I could even heal the wound, there was no telling what it could do to me long-term.

  The bouncer led us past the double doors, down a wide and vacant hallway painted the same vibrant red as the outside. Unmarked doors lined each side of the hall, appearing every so many feet. If I listened closely, I could make out the moans of those who had also cashed in on their chips, gaining the experience of a lifetime.

  "What was the chip for?" Sam asked in a hushed tone as we came to the end of the hall. The bouncer opened the door without knocking, gesturing to go inside.

  "I'll tell you when I'm not dying from some rabid animal bite," I promised. He helped me inside, and once in the door closed behind us.

  The room was delicate, a far cry from the rambunctious clubbing atmosphere outside. Eggshell colored walls, trimmed with a bare hint of grey lace and crown moulding, brought the room back to a time long lost to the current generation. Hardwood floors, polished and virtually untouched, covered the floors save for a small grey round carpet in the center of the room. Resting on top of the rug, a chaise lounge chair colored a soft yellow was placed, the only furniture in the room.

  "What the heck is this?" Sam
breathed, drinking it all in with wide, innocent eyes. "Did we step through a portal?"

  I laughed. He was so naive, and given the age difference, it was astounding he didn't know everything that ran around the ring of the underground. "No. These are the more private rooms of The Club. VIP access, or those with a chip they wish to cash in."

  "How is a chip going to help you with that gaping hole in your side?" He asked, taking me over to the chaise chair and setting me down gently. I only felt a small spike of pain that time, which could be either good or bad. I didn't dare think of it as bad. Bad thoughts invited bad energy, and I was going to be damned if a dog bite was going to take me down.

  Thinking of the small red chip, I smiled fondly. "They're a gift from the Fae. Given to those who have done a great kindness to them. It used to be all about one clan versus another owing them favors, but when the DreamWalkers got involved, their police force, they brought the idea of the chips into play." I shrugged with one side. "It made things easier to track."

  "And that much harder to earn," came a soft, light voice from the door. Sam and I looked over to see a petite Light Fae standing with an ethereal air around her. Her long, fair blonde hair hung in loose curls over her shoulders, blending into her pale skin and shocking pale eyes. Long ears peeked out of the mass of her hair, diamond studs in the tip of each ear point, followed by rings of gold and white. Purity marks; the more one had, the more pure the Fae was. It was considered an honor to have just one ring, let alone a dozen or more on each ear.

  The Fae smiled, bowing as the silken kimono tied around her body swished in a delicate turn of the air. "I am Clara. Caroline Gray, we meet again."

  "You know her?" Sam asked, twisting his glance between the two of us like we were aliens from another planet.

  I pressed a hand to his arm, digging my nails into the skin just enough to flare his senses. "Stop asking stupid questions."

  He opened his mouth to protest, but closed it after another glance at the Fae. Giving me a meaningful stare, he stepped back to one of the walls, watching like a shadow.