by Lexi Ostrow
He heard bones crunch in his ears and tasted blood as the sticky fluid dripped from his nose onto his lips. The taste didn’t offend him, but he wasn’t interested in spilling anymore of his blood. Without warning he closed his eyes and let a trance fall over him. He could hardly feel the alternating hits and slams of his head into the building behind him. Instead he was sliding his way around the minds of the Stranglehold Demons. What made them tick? What sent them running with their tails between their legs? Their brains weren’t as simple as he would have assumed, they had more depth than should be possible for a species used as nothing more than lapdogs and errand boys. But what they were was extremely similar. He couldn’t tell Dean’s brain from Arial’s.
He wasn’t aware of how much time had passed, but his ability to look in their minds was growing fuzzy. They must be killing him. Killing him and he hadn’t gotten to claim Eliza as his, hadn’t felt what sex with his mate would be like. There. There it is. Just in his path was the answer he needed. Seraphina.
She began to form in the alleyway. He couldn’t see her clearly while he was trying to make her seem real because his eyes were closed. But he would know her anywhere, one time in bed with her had branded her in his mind. Her hair was long, curled around her knees, and a red dark enough to be blood in color. Her eyes were an ice blue-grey and her skin a pale porcelain. For a minute he wondered if he would be erect thinking about her, but assumed not, given his recent mating and all consuming sexual thoughts about Eliza. One last touch and he had the fake Seraphina speak.
“Fools. Stop now or I’ll see you killed.” The seemingly unending attack on his body stopped. He could feel the tension around him vanish when the brothers dropped his body onto the ground. The jolt took him out of the trance and the vision vanished.
A hand wrapped around his neck and Arial’s deep scratchy voice filled his ears. “You thought you could scare us? You’re worthless, a piece of shit.” He felt his windpipe crush just slightly under the pressure.
“Let him go, Arial. It’s just as well. We weren’t to kill him anyway.” Dean, ever the less violent of the two, was actually his savor tonight. “You’re off your game and behind. Seraphina has a list of people, humans and even a few demons that you need to kill. Top of the list is Greyston Westham and his new lover, the tiny human with odd colored hair. Get better and get them or she’s going to drag your arse down to Hell and remind you of why lesser demon’s typically don’t live their full lifespan.” Without another word the two walked away from him and back into the early morning hours. Being Seraphina’s go to boys they could easily transport themselves, which meant someone was going to die for Seraphina to be able to transfer such power.
Carefully, he picked himself up off the ground. They were right about one thing though. He needed to get his energy back or next time they came for him he wouldn’t be able to stop them and there wasn’t a shot in hell he was taking down Greyston Westham. Greyston was an Incubus Demon who had given it all up to protect humans because the demons hated his kind, found them utterly useless. Most were killed by higher demons and bled dry of their blood so their sexual potency could be dropped into drinks and used to seduce anyone at anytime.
He’d been on amicable terms with Greyston for the better part of the last century and he’d figure out some way to change the target. Even if it meant he had to break his ties with Seraphina, which he was fairly certain he couldn’t do, but he would try. Sure someone else would go after Greyston, but they also may just leave him alone…maybe.
Lucius was torn. Half of him wanted to track Dean and Arial and see if the Alliance members would get them. He had seen the Alliance teams work one or two other times and it was entertaining to say the least. The other part of him wanted to resume his latest activity, stalking outside the clock worker guild for a chance that his Eliza might come out. No rational part of him was speaking out to remind him he needed to dream hunt.
The decision was out of his hands when a blur of yellow and an inhuman scream crossed his path and raced toward the back of the alley. Seconds later two men raced past him, his eyes followed them and confirmed what he had thought. Alliance members. He took a step behind the trash heap and almost gagged as he inhaled the putrid smell.
He never took his eyes of the two hunters chasing the Thrasher Demon down. Both were foreigners, a Frenchman and an Irishman. He watched utterly fascinated as they drew their guns. He’d seen them use the strange devices before, but was shocked to see a difference in both of them. One was big and clunky, he could see the small purple crystal at the end of the barrel of the gun, he’d no idea how it produced a beam of stinging, burning light, but it did. The other was different though. It was small and had the smallest puff of steam coming from the butt of the gun and he could hear a clicking sound. The same green light burst forth from it though and the smell of burning flesh and inhuman screams returned.
Lucius didn’t dare move. He wasn’t strong enough to take them down. He was simply going to wait as they disposed of the body. He’d always wondered what happened to the bodies of demons they took down. One began to speak and he took note of the French accent lacing through the words. The Frenchman began talking into a strange device on his wrist and he heard people responding. It was surely the devil’s work, except the devil was never real. Lucifer though, didn’t have those powers before Seraphina dethroned him. Then the men did the weirdest thing, they sat and waited.
He grew twitchy sitting behind the trash pile. In fact, he’d stopped smelling the wretched scent he’d been there so long. He considered pretending he was drunk and stumbling out from his hiding spot and trip all over himself down the street. But he wanted to see what would happen. So he waited with them.
His body was growing numb from sitting perfectly still when the secretive steam bikes pulled up to the alley. Men carried burlap sacks and he watched entranced as the original hunters sliced the demon into pieces, and dumped him into the bag. “Astounding.” His whisper was louder than he meant and when they turned their heads to look at him he lowered himself closer to the ground and backwards into the shadow of the building. They finished their work and passed by him not seeing a thing.
But as the Irishman passed, Lucius got the distinctive smell he’d grown to know as Eliza’s. Lavender and sweets. His prick hardened immediately at the thought of it. He had been stalking her outside the guild, but he hadn’t gone into her dreams. He made a guess that sexual torture at the hands of his mate wasn’t a good idea. The first two nights he had gone in and she’d driven him wild with lust. But she’d never allowed him to fully fuck her and he didn’t have the strength to not devour her a fourth time. So he’d been relegated to stalking.
Not tonight. Images flashed through his mind. His own fears; images of her wrapped in the Irishman’s arms and the man’s body covering hers. His nails bit into his flesh and he cursed. “Well, what are you waiting for then? She doesn’t even know you’re real, so fix it.” If she was with the other man she would certainly come out and greet him when he returned from the dangers of hunting. And if she did, he was going to have to figure out how to tear them apart, and if she didn’t well then he was going to show her exactly what it meant to be mated to someone like him. But not tonight, tonight he would simply watch and then he’d find someone’s dreams to haunt so that he would be ready for her.
Chapter 4
She chewed her lower lip as she tried to reach her fingers all the way around the seat of the transport motorbike to tighten the cog on the improved upon engine. Eliza’s tongue slipped out between her lips in her intense concentration. “Come on, come on just a little more.” Her finger touched the gear necessary and slipped off, the rough edge stinging as her finger slid over it. “Bloody hell! Her curse rang out through the lab and she heard the snickers around her and promptly went back to reach for the gear again. “Stupid hands, stupid short arms.” Her fingers kept flailing just out of reach of the item and she continued to curse her physical appearance. Mos
t women in the ton had long slender arms with delicate fingers to match. But not her. Her arms were long, sure, but her fingers were far from slender or delicate. Ten years working in the labs with cogs and gears and all manners of metals had left them chubby and swollen.
She leaned forward and pressed her breasts into the side of the transport. No doubt the men around her would be judging her for not having the intelligence to test the capacity of the steam and crystal to work together before placing it inside the bike, but she had never been the most logical of thinkers when she was working. Sure, her brain matched wit and formula with all the men in the room with her and even the few women in the normal levels of the clock making, but that didn’t mean she went about it the easiest of ways each time.
“Aha!” Her finger grazed the gear, but this time she was able to wrap both her index and forefinger around it and give the necessary tug. It barely moved which either confirmed she had done it properly the first time, or was an indication into her lack of strength. Either way she was done trying. Her knees ached from being slammed into the floor all day and her breasts were beginning to ache from the pressure of being against the seat.
She rose off the floor and brushed any dust off the tan breeches; oil would never come out and she had long since stopped trying. She felt the familiar cracking of her joints in her back and she grimaced a little. She needed to speak to the guild physician about such matters before she could no longer stand up right. Ignoring the discomfort for now, she turned to her desk and frowned when the little golden key was nowhere to be found. Her eyes narrowed as they ran over everything on her extraordinarily unkempt desk and she did a mental catalogue. Files, spare gears, oilcan, charcoal drawing sticks, ink, quill pen, her own pocket watch, her communicator…but not a key to be seen.
“What could I have done with it?” Her eyes dropped to the floor as she peered under the desk to ascertain if it had fallen below her workspace. “Perhaps it bounced off?” She let her eyes scan around her and put her hands on her hips and let out a frustrated growl.
“Lose something again, Eliza?” Douglas, another lab worker, had a playful tone in his voice as he teased her.
It wasn’t uncommon for her to misplace the smallest of things. But it still grated her nerves. She’d been working on this project for over a fortnight and this would be the first time it was complete enough to even check if the bloody thing would cycle on.
“Of course I did, Douglas. A day should not pass that I do not live to infuriate myself with such small and yet crucial mistakes.” Perhaps more dramatically than was needed her body flopped into her chair and she shut her eyes trying to visualize where she had last seen the blasted skeleton key. The cushion protected her from any real pain, but the motion still jarred her a little and of course, Douglas chuckled again.
“I think I may be able to cheer you up. Maybe be your knight in shining armor.”
She popped open one eye and raised a brow at him. For years he had toyed around with her this way and yet he’d never made so much as a move on her. In fact, the only man who had ever made a move on her was a drunken noble at her family’s holiday ball three years prior. The rest had simply seduced her for the fun of it and left it alone, none wanted to marry her and she’d accepted that. If someone did have to be flirting with her she supposed Douglas was handsome enough, thick bushy hair and deep brown eyes covered by silver wire spectacles. He was lithe, but not terribly tall.
“Well, don’t you want to ask me how that will be possible?” He wiggled his brows at her and she flushed that she’d fallen into one of her waking fantasies.
“Oh, but of course, Douglas. Anything you might be able to do to brighten up my sour mood would be most appreciated. I fear I will have to go to the clock worker’s level and have them create a whole new lock and key and install it before I can see if I’ve done what Master Agardawes has wished.” She could hear the grumpiness in her tone followed quickly by her mother’s incessant chiding that women of the upper echelon do not use such tones.
Lost in her thoughts until Douglas cleared his throat it took her a moment to focus on the gleaming item in his hands. The small, gold, skeleton key.
“Oh Douglas! You found it!” She leapt from the chair and swung her arms around his neck before she realized the impropriety of her action and hastily pulled back. “Forgive me, I wasn’t thinking of anything but that you saved me from certain failure just now.”
His cheeks were ruddy with a flush too. He merely nodded and cleared his throat. “I happened to watch you bump it off the desk a few moments ago. Grabbed it in case it really did go missing.”
She smiled again. “Thank you, Douglas.”
“Any shot you two might get back to your assignments and stop chattering? Some of us need the quiet to work if you don’t mind.” Stephano’s accent was laced with annoyance and Eliza had to put her hand over her mouth to cover a chuckle.
“Sorry, Stephano. You know us women, we can’t do anything without chattering away.” He grumbled something in confirmation and she looked back at Douglas. “What do you say to seeing how my calculations played out?’
She could feel herself giddy with energy. She’d established herself as top in the guild many years ago, but wasn’t often given projects because she had a tendency to make dire mistakes. But not this time. She’d checked her calculations multiple times. The request had been a speed boost to their current transports. At present, the little steam bikes were running purely off of a combination of kinetics and steam that they’d been given money from the Royals to reproduce a steam engine’s pieces, but on a much smaller scale. They had been in place prior to her becoming a member of both the guild and the Alliance of Silver and Steam. All together she had found them quite proficient. But her opinion meant nothing, she was never the one on the back of one, her hair tousled about in an array as she sped off in chase, or fleeing from one of the many demons that lurked the streets. No, she merely got to be the scientific mind behind the items, except when she was testing them.
This new bike would be perfect, but a slight bit louder than its predecessor, which was the exact opposite of the request, but she hoped the advanced speed would overrule the noise problem for the time being.
She’d figured out a way to amplify the current engine with the introduction of a crystal, just as she had done with the ray gun Kellan had been boasting was “sheer perfection” since she had given it to him. The kinetic energy from turning the key would set the cogs moving, the cogs would, as always, generate the power needed to keep the gears and cogs moving and power the device. But the addition of the crystal meant that the steam would heat it up and cause heat energy to pulse throughout the steam bike and amplify the already working power source. It was quite ingenious and she wasn’t terribly certain why it had taken her so long to put the engine together upon realizing the crystal was the perfect beacon of energy.
Douglas smiled and winked at her before setting the key in her palm. “She’s all yours, Eliza, I wouldn’t dream of starting her up for you.”
She smiled back as she wrapped her hand around the key and turned back to the steam bike. She took a deep breath and slipped the key into the hole and turned. As with the other bikes, she could hear the slight clink and clong as the gears began to grind and twist together. Within seconds the steam began to swirl behind the bike, white puffs of air that she watched float over Douglas’s legs.
“Come on, come on,” she chanted silently under her breath as she waited for the steam to start to power the crystal. For now, the bike was simply as it always was. She bent at the waist and placed her hands on her knees, searching for the tell tale glow of a crystal. She could just barely make out the faint purple color through the steam circulating. Sighing she stood upright and glared at the bike.
“Um, Eliza? This appears to be doing exactly what it always does. Produce steam and probably chug along.” Douglas’s voice held confusion and defeat for her failure.
Her eyes narrowed and s
he glared at him. “Thank you for pointing out my failure. I’ll be sure to notate to Master Agardawes that you noticed such before I went back to the st-“ She didn’t get to finish her word, let alone the sentence. A large boom rocked through the room. She lost her balance and shifted slightly, her hip slamming into her desk. Curses were floating through the room, all seemingly aimed at her. Rubbing her hip she looked at Douglas and then the bike. It was on fire.
Orange flames licked up from the inside component of the bike. She hadn’t the foggiest what had gone wrong. Perhaps she had allowed the crystal to overheat? Or mayhap it was too large a size? Frustration spiked and the room before her was speckled with dots - something that always came with her intense frustration. She didn’t move an inch, she merely stood back by her desk and watched as the bike continued to flame.
“Turn the bloody thing off, Eliza!” She heard someone shout from the other side of the room.
She shook off her frustration and stupor because he was right, if she didn’t turn it off the room would fill with smoke. With a sigh she leaned forward to pull the key out and growled when she neglected to twist it and the metal somehow bent, most likely made malleable from the heat of the flames.
“Damn it! Move out of the way I have to get this outside.” She was shouting even as she put her hands on the handle bars and started walking the bike toward the exit. The labs were deep within the guild on a sub level to conceal them under the many workshops of actually clock working. But now it was going to spell disaster.
She hit one of the desks on the way out and her hand slid down the metal handlebars that was heated from the flames. A streak of pain shot through her palm and she smelled burning flesh before she pulled her hand away. The bike almost toppled to the side as she pulled her hand back. Disgusting pockets of skin bubbled and raised off her hand, a burn more serious than most she obtained from her failures.
