by Larissa Ione
She glanced over at him, the wariness in her gaze dimming slightly. “You do?”
He nodded. “It’s another one of those inherited things from my father. Some of us, like my sister Suzanne, don’t experience a complete drain on their powers. But most of us do.”
This time when she looked over at him, she didn’t look away. “And how do you restore your energy?”
“Sleep or time. Or...” He opened his mouth to reveal his fangs. “We feed.”
“Oh.” Her eyes flared in surprise, but darkened as she looked at him. “Oh.”
He already knew she was special somehow, given that she could feel his shadow wings, but now her sultry voice flowed through him like hot honey, slow and sweet, and his body responded, awakening from a centuries-long coma. The thaw had started when he’d sensed her fleeting touch on his wings, but this was even more intense. He felt a little logy but at the same time euphoric, as if he’d shotgunned a barrel of Champagne.
This was bad. He’d spent dozens of years teaching himself to suppress his carnal desires—at least, the ones that involved him and a partner. Memitim were supposed to avoid self-gratification as well, but masturbation had fallen into a “don’t ask, don’t tell” thing over the last few decades, and he’d never really obeyed anyway.
Now he was getting all kinds of feedback from the body he’d always considered perfectly trained and conditioned, mentally, emotionally, and physically.
This was exactly why Memitim weren’t supposed to interact much outside of the Memitim community. This was exactly what he lectured Suzanne about.
And this was exactly what could get him eliminated from consideration to be appointed to the Memitim Council.
“Who...who do you feed from?” Aurora asked, her curiosity overriding her residual anger.
“Whoever we want, really.” His mouth started to water just thinking about it. “My brother Maddox can only restore his power by drinking from demons. Some of my siblings prefer feeding from their Primori, but I’ve always preferred to feed from people who prey on others.”
She shuddered, but when she spoke, her voice was steady. “Is their blood stronger? Better fuel or something?”
Her theory made sense, given that Primori were all special in some way, and human predators were a special kind of scumbag, but no, that wasn’t why he did it.
“I feed from people who hurt others because it forces them to feel the pain and helplessness they inflict on their victims.” When Memitim fed, they were supposed to do it while their donors were sleeping, but that was one of the other guidelines he chose to ignore. “We can feed without causing pain... We can even make it pleasurable. But some people don’t deserve that.”
“A friend of mine claimed she was bitten by a vampire once.” Aurora’s slim fingers stroked her throat absently, as if imagining a set of shiny fangs buried deep. “She said it was amazing.”
He’d never understood the fascination with vampires, nor the erotic nature of feeding, but the idea of latching onto Aurora’s vein and taking her inside him for nourishment was suddenly his number one fantasy.
Shut it down, man. She just went through a traumatic experience.
“I’ll take her word for it,” he said, but damn, now he couldn’t get the idea out of his head. “Now, what about you? How do you recharge?”
For a long, drawn-out moment, she eyed him, probably trying to decide if she should tell him. And then, just as she opened her mouth, Drayger’s heraldi sparked to life, vibrating with a proximity alert.
“Shit.” He shoved to his feet and raced over to the window. There was no one in sight, not even a passerby with a dog. But he could feel a dark presence. And it was close. Drayger had brought his evil side out to play.
“What is it?”
“Not what. Who.”
“Drayger.” She leaped to her feet and shoved them into the black flats under the coffee table. “Where?”
“I don’t know, but we need to get out of here.” He took her hand and flashed to Sheoul-gra...
Except he didn’t. They were still standing in her living room.
She looked up at him. “Is this the part where you do something to get us out of here?”
“I was pausing for effect.” He tried again. Nothing. Fuck.
“I get it,” she said, releasing his hand to peek through a crack in the curtains. “You’re a drama queen. Can we go now?”
“I can’t flash. Your trap must have drained me.” He dug into his pocket for his cell phone. Cipher or one of his siblings would come for them. But the moment he saw the scorch marks streaking his phone’s plastic and metal casing, his heart sank. “Your trap fried my powers and my phone. Can I use yours?”
She moved toward a yellow table where a charger sat, but she stopped after two steps and cursed. “It was in my purse. Drayger got it.”
He didn’t miss the slight waver in her voice when she’d spoken Drayger’s name. “Where’s your landline?”
“I don’t have one.” She scowled. “Do people even have those anymore?”
Son of a bitch. “Computer?”
“My laptop was in my car. Which has probably been towed by now.” She hugged herself as if cold, her gaze darting from window to window. All her curtains were drawn and her back door locked, but the open floor plan left them too exposed. “Look, Drayger is just a human. We can walk out. He can’t hurt you, right?”
“Most likely, no.” He guided her toward her bedroom, which was a green and orange ‘50s bonanza. “Pack a bag. We’ll get out of here and find a Harrowgate. You can use it to get us to Sheoul-gra.”
She frowned up at him. “What’s Sheoul-gra?”
He stared at her in disbelief. “How can you not know that? You’re a demon.”
“This isn’t the time for a lesson in all things Wytch,” she snapped as she hurried toward the bedroom closet, “but I assure you, I’m not a demon. Most of us have so much human DNA in us that we have only a fraction of the powers our ancestors had. Our people are dying out because we tend to mate with humans and dilute the Wytch genes.” As he eased up to the window to look out, she whipped a duffel bag from the closet and started filling it. “But there’s now a growing movement to save our people, like the Wytch dating websites.”
“Online Wytch dating? Have you tried it?”
“Ugh.” She disappeared into the tiny bathroom, where she banged around in drawers and cupboards as she talked. “Sort of. My mom signed me up. I’ve never gone on a date, though. I don’t feel the need to date other Wytches just to preserve our race. Man, that pisses off the parents and every old-school Wytch on the planet.” She emerged with a toiletry bag, which she tossed into the duffel before zipping it. Straightening, she squared her shoulders and faced him, her gaze fierce and unafraid, her jaw set in a stubborn line. “I’m ready.”
No, he feared she wasn’t ready. If she didn’t know what Sheoul-gra was, there was no way she was ready for what she was about to see.
* * * *
There was a serial killer outside Aurora’s house, a serial killer determined to butcher her slowly, and yet she was perfectly calm. Well, “calm” was a bit of an exaggeration, given that she was shaking like a leaf and her heart was tap dancing on her rib cage. But the fact that she wasn’t alone, and that the person with her was an angel, gave her a much-needed boost of confidence that she wasn’t going to die.
Of course, the fact that said angel might let her die if “fate” required it was a little disconcerting.
“Front door or back?” she asked.
Hawkyn heaved her duffel over his shoulder, the ropey muscles in his arm flexing with every fluid motion. “Front.” He moved to the living room. “Stay next to me. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
He took her hand and opened the front door slowly, peering out before giving the signal to go. But as they passed over the threshold, she struck an invisible force. Pain radiated through her nose and cheekbones as she bounced back into the house.
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Instantly, Hawkyn rushed back inside. “Aurora!” He dropped the duffel and framed her face in his hands, his sharp gaze assessing her for injuries. “What happened? Are you okay?”
She nodded, cupping her nose. “I felt a ward. The bastard trapped me inside here.”
A blast of heat roared through the house, and the temperature shot up at least twenty degrees. She always kept the house at sixty-five degrees this time of year, so the instant jump to summer temps was like stepping into a dry sauna.
“How the fuck is he doing this?” Hawkyn’s raw curse bounced off the walls. “He’s going to force heat exhaustion and then take you while you’re too weak to fight back. We need to get you out of here now.” He slid one warm hand down, his fingers skimming lightly over her jaw and lower, to the sensitive skin on her neck. His gaze darkened, locking with hers. “With your permission.”
Blinking, momentarily confused, she watched him flick the pink tip of his tongue across a fang. Oh, right. He could feed from her to recharge. Take her blood with those huge, gleaming canines.
She waited for the revulsion to kick in, but instead, something else happened. Something...hot. Hotter than the serial-killer induced heat that was testing the limits of her deodorant, building quickly, as if they were inside a pre-heating oven. Her breasts became achy, and between her legs, a honeyed rush of wetness bloomed.
There’s a serial killer outside.
The sudden thought came with a blast of memories, of Drayger with the scalpel that made tiny, stinging cuts. Of him with the skinning knife that removed flesh with a wet sound you could hear through your screams. Sharp things and his laughter and pain—
“Will it hurt?” she blurted.
“I’ll make it feel good, I promise.” A fresh blast of heat drove up the number on the thermostat near the door to 103. “But we need to hurry.”
She nodded, and his emerald eyes darkened even more, holding her gaze prisoner as he lowered his head toward hers. Gently, he tilted her face to the side and opened his mouth over her throat, and she shuddered with a mix of anticipation and trepidation. She’d only dated a handful of men in her thirty years, wasting most of them on her high school sweetheart, a human who had never known the truth about her. If he had, he might not have cheated on her during their junior year in college. Then again, maybe he enjoyed the curse of flatulence she’d cast upon him, affecting him every time he kissed a girl.
The other guys had come after the breakup, nothing serious, mostly rebound dates she’d used for sex. Wytches needed to discharge their energy often, either with sex or magic, and she’d gone through an extended anti-magic phase for a while. But not one of those sexual partners had made her nervous the way Hawkyn did.
Granted, none of them had fangs. Nor had they been supernatural beings, let alone angels. And none of them had looked like Hawkyn, with his six and a half foot, thickly-muscled build, a cocky smile that radiated confidence, and intelligent eyes that she doubted missed anything.
Hawkyn’s breath whispered over her skin, and she shivered as her anxiety became excitement. As his tongue flicked across her vein, she even had to hold back a moan of pleasure. When his fangs sank into her flesh, the mild pinprick gave way to a shocking spear of ecstasy that went straight to her core.
His arm slipped around her, bracing her body against his big one as he disengaged his teeth and repositioned his mouth. She let herself go, let herself sink into him as he swept her up and then settled them both on the couch so she was straddling his lap, her sex pressed firmly against the impressive arousal behind the fly of his jeans.
He took slow, easy draws, one hand holding her head in place, the other gripping her waist, settled tamely above her hipbone. His pinky finger wedged between her waistband and her sweater, and consciously or subconsciously he was stroking skin, his touch adding to the heat that was building inside and out.
Under the circumstances, was it bad that she wanted to rock against him to ease the maddening desire? But despite his erection, he made no indication that he wanted anything more than her blood, and she sensed he’d chosen this position not because of how they fit together, but because he could keep an eye on both entrances and most of the windows.
A drop of sweat trickled down her temple, and she glanced at the thermometer. 115 now.
Shifting slightly, Hawkyn let out a groan and swept his tongue over the punctures in her throat. She felt no pain, only a pinch and tingle that told her the holes were sealing themselves.
“Are we done?” she whispered, making no move to climb off him. She wasn’t even sure she could. Her bones felt like noodles and her muscles like water.
She was still ragingly horny, though. So horny she’d forgotten to make an attempt at drawing energy from him, even though her palms had been pressed against his back, holding him close as he took long, deep pulls from her vein.
“Yeah,” he said roughly, tucking her head into the crook of his neck and shoulder. “I just need a minute to clear the fog.”
“The fog? Outside?”
His chuckle made her bounce, and she almost gasped at the electric sensation of her breasts rubbing against his chest.
“In my head.” He arched, just a little, and she did gasp at how his erection rocked into her mound. “And my body.”
“I get that,” she murmured into his shoulder. “Because I feel like I drank a couple of Long Island Ice Teas spiked with some kind of super-aphrodisiac.” Reluctantly, she pushed herself up, just in time for another heatwave.
125.
“Come on,” he said, lifting her off him. “We’re going someplace much cooler.”
“And where’s that?”
He grinned as he flipped the duffel into the air with his foot and caught it in his hand in one easy motion. “Hell,” he said, taking her hand. “We’re going to Hell.”
Chapter Eleven
Aurora didn’t have a chance to ask Hawkyn what he meant by saying they were going to Hell. One moment they were baking like oatmeal raisin cookies in her house, and the next they were standing on some sort of raised platform in a place that resembled part of an ancient Greek city.
She looked down at the round stone pad beneath their feet. “How did you do this?”
“Angels can flash directly to or from this portal. Almost everyone else arrives via a twin portal in the human realm.”
Okay, but where, exactly, were they? Lush, green grounds stretched forever, dotted by fountains and forests, streams and paths. A massive white building with doors that could allow entrance to a dinosaur was flanked by smaller buildings, temples, and courtyards where people sparred or practiced with weapons, and seated in a small amphitheater nearby, what appeared to be a handful of bored-looking students were listening to a robed guy giving a lecture.
“This...this is Hell?”
“Sort of.”
How could someplace be “sort of” Hell? Was it like how his father was “sort of” evil?
Hawkyn squeezed her hand, pressing his palm against hers in just the right spot, and a current of energy sizzled up her arm, astonishing in its intensity and made even more astonishing by the fact that she could feel it spilling into the empty tank inside her that held her power. Usually she had to make an effort to absorb energy from people, and it was a slow, steady charge; it never rushed in like water from a broken dam.
When he released her hand, her knees wobbled from the sudden disconnection from his nuclear-grade fuel. He gave her a brief once-over that wasn’t remotely sexual, but tingles followed wherever his gaze landed.
“You okay?” he asked.
No. Not at all. Touching an angel running on a full battery took some getting used to.
“I’m fine. Just a little freaked out about being in Hell, you know?” Holy shit. “This isn’t exactly what I expected.”
“That’s because this probably isn’t what you think it is.” He nodded in the direction of a marble statue of two horned, hooved demons fighting with a trident and a spe
ar. “The demon realm is called Sheoul—it’s what most people think of when they reference Hell. But Sheoul isn’t where evil human souls go.” He made an encompassing gesture with his hand. “This is Sheoul-gra, sort of a sub-realm that houses the true Hell, where the souls of demons and evil humans are kept until they’re reincarnated.”
She looked around, but it was hard to believe this place was full of malevolent souls. “I don’t understand. Where are the souls?”
He guided her down a stone path toward a blocky building with a lot of glass-less windows. “They’re kept in the Inner Sanctum.”
“I see,” she said, even though she didn’t. “So why are we here?”
“It’s where I live.”
She nearly tripped over her own feet. Angels lived in Hell? Since when? What was happening? Somehow she managed to not blurt any of that out, instead keeping her cool the way her brother had always taught her and asking just one tame question. There would be others later. Many others.
“Why?” she asked. “Angels living in Hell is contrary to everything I was ever taught.”
Not that she’d gone to church or anything, but seeing how religion was everywhere, she’d managed to pick up a few things, and one constant in all the various religions that mentioned angels was that they resided in the other, less demon-y place.
As they walked through a grassy courtyard, he explained how Memitim were raised by humans, taken from the human world as young adults, and trained at various locations around the world, but that they could also come here to live and train...because apparently, their father, the father of all Memitim, ruled this realm.
As they approached a building Hawkyn called Hotel Hell, panic frayed the edges of her control. She was in a strange place full of strange beings, and she didn’t know nearly enough to be comfortable here in the least. She needed more information before she went any further.
Planting her feet, she grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop. “Wait. I need more.”
